The Forsaken

Rock provided Braun some strange comfort.  While the cold, damp air waged war with his fever, the rock wall remained firm and unyielding – an oasis of predictability amidst the torture.  He would miss the rock should he ever leave; unlike his holy icon, the wall had been present in his time of need.

Sleep was just about to embrace him when the squeal of old iron pulled him back.  His muscles tightened of their own volition, his knees bending to his chest, hands tucked beneath his chin.  He turned his face into the corner, begging the stone to soften and swallow him up.  A blow was sure to come, or a slice of magic in the veins, or another old nightmare.  Yet there was only silence, a quiet so long and grave he wished for pain to break the tension.

In time he braved a sidelong glance, wary of what might befall him.  The Gnome stood in his usual spot, coated in shadow, a faint red glow coming from his eyes.  Braun eyed his stillness with mounting concern, and was nearly relieved when the dreaded voice rang in his cell.

“Did you feel that?” it asked in its horridly deep rumble.

Braun pretended to think, afraid of revealing his ignorance too quickly.  He settled for a simple shake of the head.

“You did not?” came the voice again, mocking.  “Your lord, touching down among the mortals?  My, my, my – you really are far from him.”

Braun felt a flicker of warmth in his chest.  Flashes of his lord striding toward the amassed Orcs, the one and only vision he had to cling to, filled his mind.  Was he near?

“Seems he intervened in Blackplane City.  Though only your voyeur god could possibly know why.  Perhaps your friends are there?”

Braun really did think that time.  Could they have made it through alive?  Even without the ghost in their company?  There was still so much haze around the whole endeavor.  What were they even doing there?

“I don’t know,” he croaked.

“I think you do,” the voice replied calmly.  “I think you know perfectly well that they are.  Why else would your flying knight see fit to touch his divine toes down in such a dreadful place?”

The Gnome was upon him in an instant, out of the shadows and nose to nose with his pathetic prisoner.  The hot, red eyes bored through Braun, resisting the efforts of his eyelids and keeping them pried mercilessly open.  Braun saw, with great regret, that there was more in those eyes than the usual malice.  There was glee.  Wretched, malevolent glee.

“I told you,” came the rumble.  “I told you, didn’t I?  He did not come for you.”

“He will,” Braun whispered, too weak to stop himself.  “You’ll see.”

“Why?  Why would he, really?  After all the peril, after all the suffering, after everything you’ve been through – he goes there.  Where the others are.”

“I…”

“You hate them,” the voice purred.  “I know you do.  I see you.  You cannot hide from me.  You hate them – her in particular.  She, who has thrice seen him in the face.  While you languish.  She, the youthful convert, the latecomer – favored by your fickle god.”

Braun flinched forward, intending to improvise some sort of attack, but again, he was too weak.  Even his spirit, until then so bold, even in the throes of astral battle, was gripped by fatigue.  The Gnome’s words struck deep, his armor too flimsy to protect him.

“I pity you,” the voice said – and for once, Braun believed him.  “I pity the way you’ve thrown your devotion away to one so selfish.  He is unworthy of you.”

The vision of Stedwick directing him away loomed large.  Seeing Mara’s face, struck by her holy encounter, swam in soon after.  Suddenly, he could see through time and space to Blackplane City, sparkling and resplendent, adorned with Helmian symbols.  In this paradise his lord and his rival frolicked, building a bright, new dominion.  While he watched from afar, behind bars, unseen.

“You are angry,” came the voice in his ear, soft and comforting.  “I understand.  I understand rejection more than even you can know.  I, too, have been forsaken.  I, too, have been weighed, measured, and found wanting by those who are themselves unworthy.”

That bright new future began to burn in front of Braun’s eyes.  His hands clenched to fists in his lap as heat coursed from his collar to his cheeks, banishing the wet air.  A lifetime of disappointment suddenly pressed hard on his shoulders.  The Eye of Helm had never seemed so distant.

“There is a place for you yet,” said the voice, oddly muffled.  “Perhaps.”

With that, the Gnome was gone, leaving Braun to burn in his corner.  A part of him tried to fight off the flames, clinging to the holy symbols, clawing after Sir Finnian’s sage wisdom and comfort.  But the cold fire of reality was setting in.  None of them were with him.  He was alone, but for the Gnome with the glowing red eyes, and the unknown others who howled their agony through the tunnels.  They were his only friends.

Suddenly, the weight on his shoulders was lifted.  It came to him like a shaft of light through the clouds: there was no Eye watching him.  No loving god to guide and sustain him.  The world was like his cell: dark, small, riddled with pain.  Helm was a charlatan at best, a lie at worst.  It seemed a good cause for him to sink even deeper, yet instead he seemed lighter, freer, ready to fly at a moment’s notice.  All he needed to do was break out of his cell and spread his wings.

Perhaps the Gnome was right; perhaps there was a place for him after all.

Little Krahl

Salty air stung and tickled his face as he stood erect at the bow, reminding him with each twisting blow how strange and stupid he was acting.  He had been trained since youth to hold his head down as much as possible, to shield his visage behind a shoulder, a hood, a mask.  It was a matter of safety – wariness that warped his very body.  The earth was barren and the air full of razors, and that was just Nature; the mere sight of his green-stained flesh invited much greater rebuke from most mortals.  By grace or irony or both, at least one mortal had done otherwise and taught him to be safe in discretion.  He wondered what she would think of him now.

“Staring won’t make that horizon get here any faster,” said the captain, a man by the name of Amal, who bore a certain grace and strength despite sporting many signs of suffering.

“Don’t you have men whose job it is to stare at the horizon?” he countered, unable to hold back a sneer.

“Yeah, but I pay them.  You’re just doing it for free.  I find that odd.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had stranger passengers than me.”

“That I have.  Dragonborn.  They were much stranger than you.  But at least they had eyes on something better for them.  You, on the other hand…can’t imagine why you’d want to go where we’re going.”

He choked back another rebuttal before it fly out, thinking of how she had told him to hold his tongue around seafarers – they were not to be trusted.  It always amazed him how learned she was about the ways of the world.  One would think a human woman wandering around the Cliffs of Grumbar would have little in the ways of wisdom.  Yet she was there, and for what he never knew.  Not that it mattered: she had been there when she was needed.  When the clan had moved on and left their runt behind.  When his mother had finally faced enough shame.  In her he found a new mother: Ms. Krateky.  Warrior, sage, survivor.

Captain Amal lingered for a while at his side, expecting a response.  When none came, he busied himself with ship things, muttering bemusedly to himself.  The greenish passenger was unmoved.  He was finding practice in standing at the bow and facing the unknown – a rehearsal for resistance, for the reclamation of his right.  The pearl pendant felt particularly heavy against his chest.  Ms. Krateky had tried to rid him of it.  She denied knowing where it came from but she could not keep the truth from him.  It broke them apart, a wedge greater than age, race, gender, or temperament.  Her lie brought greater pain than any mere whisper or stare or strike could do.  So he left her, and went searching for more pearl.

The horizon remained flat a long time, promising nothing.  His fingers moved unnoticed to his chest and fiddled with the pendant.  Thoughts of his cohort grew of their own accord and threatened to drop anchor back on Stonebeach, pulling him back from the task at hand.  His attachment to them – or their attachment to him – was dangerously tight.  He had allowed himself only one attachment in life and that had only been a pantomime.  Pretending.  That’s all they were doing.  That’s all he was doing.  Pretending, in order to get by.

A smirk crossed his face.  What he was doing would serve them all.  It would serve everyone, or at least he hoped.  Pretending, it seemed, had propelled him toward doing what no other could do.  It had propelled him, so often on the outside, toward a new reality where his place inside would be beyond question.  There would be time enough for friends and lovers when his work was done and his rights reclaimed, half-blood or not.  Perhaps then they could matter more.

A faint point emerged on the horizon, upsetting its oppressive flatness.  His eyes narrowed in strain and he watched as began to take shape slowly, almost with anguish.  It was several minutes before the call came from the crow’s nest – so much for a paid lookout.  His heart pounded inside his chest in time to the rhythms of the crew.  In time he could hear royal drums in his head, thumping along to the admonishments of Ms. Krateky.  “Little Krahl,” she would say over and over again, each syllable a hammer blow to keep low and open to her.  

Pretending, just pretending, even if it did save his life.  They would never have the chance for something real.

“Little Krahl,” he muttered to himself.  “Little Krahl no more.”