Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

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Peter_Abelard
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Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

Post by Peter_Abelard »

Ashes and the Moon


She was singing.

Dusk’s light was turning the canopy golden, laying shadows from the trees across the shorn grass all the way to the river’s edge, tidy lines like a composer’s staff, awaiting the muse.

She sang.

This was her favourite time. The forest chorus was transposing, a new harmony arising to last the night. This was the magical time in between, when she could hear the echoes of the spirits of the wood return to her in her own voice, the diastole of her own beat, vowing peace and safety for all she loved.

Peace secured, she rocked gently on her porch swing, enjoying the cooling air on her skin, all tension fading with the sun, the declension of a day that had served well, and kept its word.

Kal pushed the door softly, stepping around both creaks in the porch boards to hand her the wine.

“Happy?”

She sipped and smiled, nodded once.

“You were right, Kal. About everything. I love it here.”

He’d told her for so long, of his dream. The cottage on the island, at the edge of the wood. Shelter, a life apart. Peace. Family. She would put off considering it, every time he mentioned it. There was always something in need of doing, in the city. It was never the right time. When matters are calm. Next moon. One more spell. But he was right. This was right.

“T’lerenden?”

She pointed to the left, at the stand of birch trembling in the river breeze, and the son Kal had insisted they name after her father. He had spent most of the afternoon cutting and shaping arrows to fill his quiver. Her tiny hunter. Blessed by Solonor Therandira, as her own father had been. Kal’s pride.

“He should clean up before Clarianna arrives. He’s likely covered in mud and full of splinters. Has he eaten?”

Sarenna sniffed and smiled.

“He’s well, Kal. It won’t matter to her anyway. She only wanted to share some news, she said, in her sending.”

She could feel Kal’s tension rising. Their bond had always been strained, the High Seeker and the honest thief. Both unsettled at thoughts of the other, without ever truly understanding what united them. Kal had chafed at her not coming to see them before now, and now he was restless at the thought.

Sarenna knew what had kept her sister from their door. Clarianna had always said this cottage was her dream too, as much as it was Kal’s. Not for herself, but for them. She wanted to believe it was possible. To survive, and escape into joy, off in the woods. Peace. A dream she needed to believe could be true.

It was easier to believe in something when reality didn’t get in the way. That’s why she hadn’t come, before now. Kal, the honest thief, for all his gifts, had never understood that. That a beautiful lie has a truth all its own.

She set her wine down, and pulled him to her swing. Rested her head on his shoulder, as she had done a thousand times. And gently, softly, sang. Sang to the night, to protect all she loved, with a voice as quiet and sure as Selune’s path across her sky.

T’lerenden was calling in the fading dusk light.

“Mama, your friend is coming. Come see!”

Sarenna kissed Kal’s cheek, squeezed his hand, and walked to where her son stood by the river.

“Is that her, mama?” he said, pointing across the river, in the darkening wood.

It wasn’t her.

No silver and blue, shining bright and striding with purpose and poise.

The figure was shuffling forward, low in the underbrush, hard to see clearly. Cloaked in a familiar red. The figure hobbled out of the shadows of the forest, and rose tall, standing on the opposite shore. The music of the wood vanished in an instant.

“T’lerenden. Get back to the house. Now.”

“Why, mama? I want to meet her. She dresses like you, mama.”

Sarenna could feel her insides tightening, her blood turning cold. She was shivering with rage and fear. She coughed, and felt her throat constricting as she did. The red crone on the opposite bank grinned horribly, her face covered in seeping boils. She cackled, a dread sound that cut across the deepening silence, stealing Sarenna’s air from her lungs.

The crone stepped into the river, and it turned to fire.

Sarenna, her voice gone, turned to push her son towards the cottage, but the cottage had vanished too. Her green island had turned to swamp. Two crocodiles snapped their jaws at each other. A circle of yuan-ti hunters appeared out of the air, standing around a body laying in the muck, his back full of arrows.

Sarenna staggered back as T’lerenden wrapped himself around her middle, grasping tight.

“Don’t leave me, mama. You can’t leave me.” T’lerenden looked up at her with pleading eyes. But not with the eyes of her son. His sockets black, what had been eyes were now two spots of demon flame.

The creature grasping her spoke, and it was Ryzz’ voice she heard. The voice of a demon. The voice of hell.

“You’ll never leave me, nor I you. We are one, Sarenna. What rots you from the inside binds us.”

T’lerenden’s features melted and became Ryzz the gnome, and then the gnome’s shell cracked and split, the demon Ryzz emerging, growing, and crushing ever tighter around Sarenna’s centre. She looked behind her. The red crone walked out of the fire onto the shore, dragging a greatsword, its blade still red with the heat. She looked up. Selune in her sky turned blood red, then golden, a great coin suspended, then ripped in two.

Sarenna, every part in agony, emptied her soul in a silent scream.

* * *

She woke, her mouth open, her body aching with fever. The fire in the Guild’s hearth had long been out, and nothing but ashes remained. In her sleep bile had been draining from the corner of her mouth, down her leathers and onto the loaf of bread Bjorn had given her, her clawed fingers dug into it, still pressed tightly to her stomach.

She threw it into the ash. Wiping the bile from her mouth, she crawled out of the chair and hobbled across the Guild hall, wrapping her cloak tight around her to fight the chill. Vana was elsewhere. She pushed through the door and out into the night.

A blanket of ashen grey cloud obscured Selune’s disc, but it was there, a hint of its glow still visible.

Tomas, she thought. It was time. Mustering what remained of her strength, she crossed the Square to Steven’s cart.
Character arcs are sharp, pointy little things. A little blood may spill!

Now Playing: Luva Si'nede, Olivus Angustian
Past Characters: Valyar Floshin, Sarenna Irithyl, Millicent Riverstone, Dev Revels, Catarina Helms, Fenris Estelmer, Arryn Temple, Penrose Hawke, Kara Ravensfell, Arana Belecthor
Peter_Abelard
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Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:42 am

Re: Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

Post by Peter_Abelard »

Longing and the New Moon (A Plague Tale)

They had taken so much from her, but they hadn’t claimed everything. She still had her sight.

Selune’s new moonglow was only a faint halo, a dim hint of what was to come, but it was enough for her. From her perch at the top of the stair above the Moonlight Soup Kitchen she could watch the street below, and follow its path with her eyes all the way to the pier, and the slow rolling iridescence of the harbour waves.

Three times tonight alone she had watched the shadows approach the kitchen door, hands resting on dark hilts, their eyes reflecting out the malice within. She would rise in her perch, and the shadows would flow away, back to the safety of their new brothers and sisters, coiled like springs at the ends of dark alleys throughout the Docks.

Every night of her watch brought the shadows into view, and more and more they were faces she recognized. Faces of the desperate and the broken, the hungry. Faces of the ill, and forgotten, reaching out for any hope, for any redemption.

The Plague Rats were ready and all too willing to offer their cure, and welcome their new brothers and sisters in. Every night their disease spread and their numbers grew, claiming Waterdeep’s forsaken as their own.

She knew what these lost souls needed, as well as she knew her own longing. They needed a chance. Another path to take, than down the Plague Rats’ dark alleys.

And now she had six.

Six courses stretching and tensed, like strings on her instrument, awaiting her song. All that remained was to play. But which was the song to cure and renew her?

She knew which one would save the lost ones out there on the darkened street; of the six there was truly only one that could. But she saw just as clearly that the cure alone wouldn’t be enough. The lost and the desperate needed to hear a voice, one strong and zealous enough to counter the call of the Plague Rats. A voice to sing of compassion and hope; a voice that cared. A voice she did not have.

What she had instead was a chorus of voices, crowding her mind, making her doubt which string to pull and sound.

Adam, Clarianna, Wren, Wyk, Laird, Dorian, so many friends professing of the light they saw in her, the beauty. Trust, and reach, they would say. We believe.

Kal, who knew her most of all, and without a shred of fear let her into his mind, to see what he saw, feel as he did. You are my beacon, he said, ever bright.

But a beacon of another sort for others as well. Darker voices in the chorus, drawn to her pain and fear, as bright and sharp as any light. Vanrak, Vansa, Ryzz.

“Why come to me?” she had asked the night, “What is so special about me?”

“There is nothing special about you,” it answered. “But you have fallen farther than most.”

And there, finally, her course revealed. All the choir of voices drawn together into one singular, beautiful, agonizing note, the siren’s call.

“You haven’t fallen far enough.”

In her mind it was finally silent. She stood naked in the deepest circle of her doubt: the ring of trees surrounding, her shadow wood holding all her fears. She rose, and stepped toward the dark.
Character arcs are sharp, pointy little things. A little blood may spill!

Now Playing: Luva Si'nede, Olivus Angustian
Past Characters: Valyar Floshin, Sarenna Irithyl, Millicent Riverstone, Dev Revels, Catarina Helms, Fenris Estelmer, Arryn Temple, Penrose Hawke, Kara Ravensfell, Arana Belecthor
Peter_Abelard
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Posts: 335
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:42 am

Re: Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

Post by Peter_Abelard »

Tower and Mouse (A Plague Tale)

She was drawing.

Her sharpened charcoal scratched furiously over the parchment, the bite of her vision nearly ripping the surface with every strike.

Little Mouse. The giant northman had asked her so gently, and soft.

“May I call you Little Mouse?”

It had taken all of her will not to slap him.

How dare he?

Her fingers, claws around her instrument, brushed her fury upward across the paper filling and shading the high walls of the tower, rising from the valiant and righteous statues at its base.

The clamour of morning in the Soup Kitchen was all around her as she sat at her chosen spot, her chair facing the back wall of the crowding room, her table shifted so she could better view the painting of Sune hanging on the wall above it. A familiar face appeared to her right, holding soup and bread and angling in at the chair beside her. She hunched over her drawing, protecting it, and laid her leg across the other chair. She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. He spoke softly, gently too. Just as Saman had, voice drenched with concern.

“It’s crowded, Sarenna.”

Her hoarse whisper seethed out.

“I don’t care, Laran. Fuck…off.”

Laran turned, a soundless appeal to Tomas, who simply shrugged and went back to cutting bread. A stranger at a near table shifted to offer half his seat, and Laran gratefully retreated.

Little Mouse.

Her nail of charcoal scratched its pace once more.

She’d shown him too. Her hidden treasure folded reverently and tucked carefully behind the left side of the painting of Sune. She’d worked lovingly for a whole night on it. A portrait of her sitting by the Inen Falls in the elven glade, her beauty radiating out as she sang, the trees of the glade leaning in to listen more carefully, to be nearer to her.

How could he not have seen? Seen what she was? What she lost?

Little Mouse.

She sketched in Selune, a bright circle in a cloudless sky shining her message down on the tower beneath. Her judgement.

Saman had seen what fire remained in her at least. In her eyes. He had told her so. Told her the legend of his tribe’s chieftain, of his victory, where none could be hoped for. Of the chieftain’s will to overcome. And hers.

He meant to bolster her, she knew. To help. To give a light to one at the edge of a dark wood. But he couldn’t know. He couldn’t see what she’d lost.

Her fingers slowed in her drawing. More delicately now, she traced carefully in the shimmering edges of her wings, her outstretched hand, her beautiful body in the moonlight singing her soul into the night, for the tower below to hear.

Goddess, how she loved to fly. To be that free. How could he know what she had truly been?

“May I call you Little Mouse?”

She settled back in her chair, massaging her aching hand, and realized Tara was standing near.

“Sarenna. You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry.” She winced, tried to focus on her art.

“Sarenna … please. Have some of Betty’s soup. You’ll feel better.”

She shook her head and rose from her chair, hissing in crescendo.

“You don’t understand, Tara. No one does. I don’t want to feel better. I…want…my fucking life back!”

The noisy common room had quieted. Most faces looked away, at anything else. The few turned her way were masks of empathy, professing how keenly they felt and knew her pain.

Gods, she hated them.

Tara’s hand had risen to cover her mouth, her eyes widened with shock. Shock at what she saw on the parchment.

The Tower of the Third Circle, melting and collapsing under its own weight. Selune in her sky, the jagged fault line widening, sundering in two. Sarenna herself, high above the Tower, wings at full breadth, emptying her soul in a shout of power to fell the mighty tower beneath her. The triumphant song of destruction.

Sarenna slowly rolled her parchment, avoiding Tara’s eyes. Tomas’ gentle voice of pity carried across the silent room.

“Sarenna, maybe you should…”

She held up her hand to quell him, and hobbled out of the Kitchen before he could ask her to.

She walked to the end of the pier where Tomas had told her of her fate, slumping down to sit on the planks, her feet dangling over the water. The sun had risen high enough to have burned away the morning fog that clung to the Docks. The harbour was glass smooth, and the hot sun was pulling a mist from the water that rose in slow tendrils into the air.

She thought of Clarianna, in the height of her power, the night she had miraculously banished the demon Ryzz as her friends watched awestruck, in the sewers under the city.

How the malevolence of the demon had turned to vapour before her spoken word, wrapping in tendrils about her outstretched arm, to fill the vessel she held. How its evil power could only draw near to her, never touch and stain, the Priestess Unblemished:

“Be locked away where only Truth may know what you were. Be locked away so that only Knowledge remains to stand as warning.”

Sarenna had never coveted another’s voice so completely, never heard a song she knew so utterly she could not sing.

And now? What was her voice now? In a room full of sickly beggars and thieves, all she could evoke was pity.

“May I call you Little Mouse?”

She crumpled her parchment into a tight ball and let it drop into the sea. Leaning forward over the deep, still harbour, she watched the tendrils rising, and wept for a sky that would never be hers.
Character arcs are sharp, pointy little things. A little blood may spill!

Now Playing: Luva Si'nede, Olivus Angustian
Past Characters: Valyar Floshin, Sarenna Irithyl, Millicent Riverstone, Dev Revels, Catarina Helms, Fenris Estelmer, Arryn Temple, Penrose Hawke, Kara Ravensfell, Arana Belecthor
Peter_Abelard
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Re: Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

Post by Peter_Abelard »

The Song of the Low (A Plague Tale)


Amidst the noise of the evening crowd at The Moonlight Soup Kitchen, Sarenna climbs on to her chair, raises her hands, and waits for faces to turn, and voices to quiet.

In her newly reclaimed but softened voice, she speaks out to the gathered:

"Hello everyone. Most of you know me by now, but for those of you who don't my name is Sarenna. I've been more or less living here for about a moon now, eating soup and bread like you are, and trying to heal. I haven't spoken much, to many of you, because my illness had stolen my voice from me, but as you can hear, it's starting to come back. And I have this place, Tomas, Betty, and all of you to thank for it."

Sitting back in her chair as the loose applause settles down, she speaks again.

"It's been a long time since I sang in front of anyone, so be patient with me. But I'd like to sing something for you all that I wrote, to show my gratitude to Tomas and all that he's done for me. You can clap along, like this if you want to...just not too loud, please. My lungs aren't what they once were. It's called the Song of the Low."


This is a low song
For the children of need
For the city’s forgotten
Who live by the sea

The mighty can’t hear it
In mansions on hills
They’re deaf to your suffering
They’re blind to your ills

I sing to you softly
For that’s all that I may
My voice full of power
Has left me today

I once was the mighty
And stood on their hills
My life was a banquet
And I ate my fill

Blessed by the goddess
Fortuna on high!
I sang for the heavens
I was deaf to your cry

I once was an angel
But an angel no more
My song is a whisper
And I’ve come to your door

The banquet I fed on
Held poison within
It rotted my insides
It blistered my skin

My cloak brought no comfort
My rings were like chains
My cabinets of healing
Could not ease my pain

I cursed at the heavens
For laying me low
For casting me into
The life that you know

Stripped of my glory
Pulled from my sky
Silenced completely
But I heard your cry

I came to your alleys
In hunger and fear
I found you and whispered
“Why am I here?”

You carried me inside
You fed me your bread
You gave me some comfort
You lightened my dread

There are many who doubt you
In mansions on hills
They don’t know what feeds you
They just see the ills

But I’ve sat among you
And know why you group
I’ve drank of your mercy
I’ve tasted your soup

Now sing low together
As we gather to feed
For the city’s forgotten
Who lives by the sea

Now sing out together
It’s your voice we need
For the city’s forgotten
It lives by the sea
Character arcs are sharp, pointy little things. A little blood may spill!

Now Playing: Luva Si'nede, Olivus Angustian
Past Characters: Valyar Floshin, Sarenna Irithyl, Millicent Riverstone, Dev Revels, Catarina Helms, Fenris Estelmer, Arryn Temple, Penrose Hawke, Kara Ravensfell, Arana Belecthor
Peter_Abelard
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Posts: 335
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:42 am

Re: Ashes and the Moon (A Plague Tale)

Post by Peter_Abelard »

A Moment of Silence (A Plague Tale)

She leaned on the garden fence beside the Safe Haven Inn, white polished helm in her hands, and watched the butterflies flit from flower to flower. Such fragile beauty, moved by a will deeper than thought, of self, to seek what would sustain them. They had no fear of her hand when she reached for them. Did they know somehow? That people would see them, and know they deserved to live? So lovely, ephemeral, and fearless. How could anyone see them, and not be captivated?

She ran her fingers over the smooth surface of her helm, and recalled the sound of Wyk’s waddling feet padding furiously after her the night before, and smiled in spite of herself. Her beloved nuncle, his voice raised in outrage that she should ever doubt his faith in her.

“I believe you can make more of a difference than a thousand Tomases”, he had cried, “But you must WANT to do it.”

She hugged the helmet to her stomach and stood with a wince. Her voice had returned to her, but she was still a shell of what she once was. Her body bent forward, skin covered in boils, a few tattered wisps of grey hair clinging to her scalp. She may have cracked the chrysalis, but she was still buried within its withered case. You must want. Of course she wanted. She wanted to be restored, to rise on the breeze in glory for all to see. She deserved that, surely.

But more than that, she wanted Wyk’s words to ring true. She wanted to believe that she could be all that he saw in her. To let go of the leaf, and rise, fragile and beautiful, fearless.

“What do I do? Tell me what to do.”

She leaned back against the garden fence and watched the traffic in Kerrigan’s Square. It was bustling. Adventurers, yes, but not just. Hurried people, in search of food, a new plate, a dress. Lovers returning to each other’s arms, or dashing away from arms before their loved ones saw. With so much fear and distress flowing through the Docks Ward now, it was as if its tide of despair had lifted the survivors onto the Adventurer’s Quarter’s rocky shore, and now they were all scrambling to make sense of their lives on this strange island.
Purposeful, striving, reaching. Maybe they didn’t fully understand what lifted them from their perches either, but at least they were moving. What was she waiting for?

Her whole life she had relished the invitation. The hand extended, the door opened to her. What she adored most of singing before an audience was the moment of silence before she began, the heavy air of expectation that surrounded her, like the embrace of a loved one who has longed to see you again. Kal, Lady bless him, who had been her guide, always. Held every door open to her, no matter the cost to himself. Clarianna, at long last opening the door to the Vault of Sages, and sharing the room within that held what she loved most of all. Even Vale had held the door for her, to her new room in the Guild, so long ago. And how she’d laughed with the joy of it. Invitation was the scent of the next flower, the promise of nectar that awaited her, if only she would rise, and fly.

She knew where the door was, to the Plague Rats hold, knew what lay inside waiting. And still she demanded they find it for her, hold it open, and call her inside.

Her back ached. Her helmet of bone, a skull in her hands, weighed heavy in her grip. She knew for certain there was little time left to wait. Either she broke free of the withered bonds that held her, or she would be crushed inside by her own fragile growth and die. She pushed free of the fence and crossed the Square.
Character arcs are sharp, pointy little things. A little blood may spill!

Now Playing: Luva Si'nede, Olivus Angustian
Past Characters: Valyar Floshin, Sarenna Irithyl, Millicent Riverstone, Dev Revels, Catarina Helms, Fenris Estelmer, Arryn Temple, Penrose Hawke, Kara Ravensfell, Arana Belecthor
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