False Eternity

DATE: IMMORTAL REIGN 1023 MONTH 4 DAY 7

“Remember Logram, Dramien?” Susie became deathly quiet. “Half a day’s ride west of Sothrend. Nothing but cows. It was my home.”

“Razed by Dracon raiders more than a decade ago,” recalled Dramien, grimacing. “Our cavalry arrived too late.”

“We did no such thing,” protested Naya. “Dracons have prin –”

Naya. Ruxian squeezed out a word and cut off the fiery Dracon. Continue.

Susie screwed up her face, her brow taut with distress. The jangling chains betrayed her trembling. Wide eyes fixed on the ground, she opened her mouth. A whimper escaped her lips. Her breathing shallow, it took the nun needed several tries to form another sentence.

“You…can’t go to…Logram anymore,” Susie muttered, as if talking to herself. “It’s…gone. No memorials. No graves. Not even one brick. The regent ordered the…cleansing.” The merciless metal rings jingled in delight as it bit into her shuddering wrists. “But I still see it…at night…the row of windmills, the leaky roof, the snotty brat who hung my sister’s underwear outside his house like a trophy…”

“I’m not apologising for something we didn’t do,” said Naya, though without the fiery confidence. “I mean we wouldn’t…never mind.”

Sobbing, Susie’s shaking had the chains chime a discordant tune. “I’ll never forget those horns,” she managed between gnashed teeth. “I’ll never forget the number 42.”

A relieved Naya released a breath she had unconsciously held while a staggering Dramien steadied himself against a tree, staining cuffs with sap. Ruxian dimmed to a metallic grey. Susie’s story had too much palace intrigue for his comfort. Given his firsthand suffering under the Eternal Empire, this should not have surprised him.

“So that’s why Captain Morrel...” trailing off, Dramien buried his face with his hands.

“Hung himself, yes,” Susie snickered. “Bless the Goddess. You had the same men under you, Captain Gilverman. It’s not easy, having to look at their filthy mugs for all those years.”

“Then why blame it on us?” pressed Naya. “Papa died in the –”

“The regent commanded it,” said Susie with an air of resignation. “On the pain of death, not that he expected survivors.”

Dramien discharged an elongated sigh and looked to the sky. “But why?”

Magic. Ruxian answered, his body giving off a snowy sheen. Tax.

“Correct,” said Susie. “Without the heroes to...sacrifice...well, they simply turned on anyone who had affinity for magic. The Dracons were perfect.”

“How can you stand to work for them?” screamed Naya. “After all this.”

“Easy,” Susie murmured, laughing. “Fear. The more people I hurt, the safer I am.” Her knuckled whitened. “I will not be a victim. Never.”

Ruxian turned his pinhole vision towards Dramien. He was a shadow of the good-natured knight who drove the cart. Within mere weeks, the empire he served crumbled like a wooden fence barring the advance of stampeding bulls. The corruption even claimed his unit, the heroic 42nd, his pride and joy, dragging it into the depraved abyss. As a wraith, Ruxian felt the man’s pathos, shame, and anger rippling through his ethereal folds, infecting him with the same existential dread gnawing at the knight.

Dramien pointed to Susie. “Unbound her legs.”

This time, Naya did not argue.

“I don’t need your sympathy,” snapped Susie. “My neck was consigned for the gallows the moment I spoke of Logram. Just kill me now. Unless you want your fellow Dracons to lynch me.”

Naya shook her head. “That’s something you’d do – because you’re a coward.” Retrieving her garash, the Dracon coiled the rings around her arms. “Mother Blackmoon shelters all victims of empire.”

“I am not a victim,” Susie hissed. “I chopped off the horns from Dracon children as they begged for me to stop. Give me a chance, and I’ll lop yours off too and deliver it to the church for my pardon.”

Blade in hand, Naya froze. Dramien! Ruxian’s outburst blinded him for a moment. Blinking, Dramien started at the message just as Naya sheathed her weapon.

“Papa said criminals are often victims too,” said Naya. “Mother will try you.” With that, Naya yanked at Susie. “You walking, or do I have to drag you through the mud?

Susie took a step forward.

Naya gave the nun a toothy grin that failed to reach her eyes. “Thank you.”

DATE: IMMORTAL REIGN 1023 MONTH 4 DAY 9

If his extended out-of-body session was the most bizarre experience since arriving in Targonia, swinging in a pendulum motion inside a lamp was definitely the second. Susie, ever so resourceful, had prepared a portable prison that – with an unexpected twist – became his new carriage. As much as he cursed the claustrophobic confinement that restricted his perceptions to the hazy glass casing, it meant the party no longer needed to wait on him to ooze over the enchanted earth.

“Do you hate me?” asked Susie without looking at the lamp.

Ruxian mulled over this. In the end, he quoted a comic book character. It takes a real man to forgive a woman.

“Could’ve just said yes,” sniggered Susie with a mirthless laugh.

I liked you better when I didn’t know you. Ruxian played along, turning the lamp orange. Were you really going to dismember me if I didn’t knock myself out?

Susie scratched her chin and rolled her eyes skyward. “Probably not. You were barely a man.”

You sure you want to anger me? Ruxian bounced back. I can turn my memory into pictures for others. Catch my drift?

Cheeks scarlet like the cherry tomatoes from the far west, Susie shook the lamp hard, scrambling Ruxian’s vision into a nauseating whirlpool of colours.

“Do that and you’re dead.”

Well, I pretty much already am.

Susie’s shoulders dropped. “I’m…sorry.”

With the exchange at an end, the rhythmic rustling of boots on foliage kept them company. Racing ahead, a euphoric Naya pointed at the jagged alps across the horizon. The steep, treacherous slopes had even Dramien swallowing. The sizeable obstacle almost made Ruxian glad to have lost his body. He simply did not have the legs to cross these mountains.

“Come on,” shouted Naya. “My home is just over the hills.”

“Hills?” Dramien scoffed. “How did you even…”

Sword flying from its scabbard, Dramien searched the woods while Susie hid behind a tree. Slowly, Dramien shuffled towards the nun when a garash blade sped for his nape. The knight ducked under the sneak attack and pivoted, slamming his shoulder against the full brunt of a horned attacker. Dramien grunted as the impact sent him sliding back, his boots digging two muddy streams in the mossy overgrowth.

Sprinting back, Naya screamed. “Uncle, stop!”

“Stay back, fool girl!” the Dracon roared back.

The flurry of garash slashes washed over Dramien like a torrent of steel. The defender in turn built an impassable wall of arcing strikes. The crisp clinks and loud crashes came so fast that it reminded Ruxian could not keep track of their weapons. Unlike Naya, her uncle maintained a relentless rhythm, as though the chains were his arms and the attached blades his fists. The fluidity, variety, and intensity had forced even Dramien into retreat.

The Dracon gave chase, catching Dramien’s hand with his chain. The rings groaned as the two men pulled, with the Targonian slowly reeling his enemy in.

“Fancy seeing you here, captain,” the Dracon hissed. “To what pleasure do us humble Dracons owe the Targonian champion?”

“I come in peace, Thogar,” replied Dramien, still clinging to the chain. “You know I mean no harm.”

The Dracon chortled. “As if your sword could. Next time, bring your spear.”

Ruxian could feel their exhaustion weighing him down as the two warriors put their weapons aside. Like a dog with wet fur, he shook his body, trying to shrug off the lethargy that sept into his smoggy mass.

“Interesting companions, girl,” Thogar growled at Naya. “We need to talk about how to choose better friends.” He then turned to the party. “We go once everyone is blindfolded. Welcome to Mount Dragonspine.”