Slàn Leat, Aevos

[KidKrinkles 2044]

[!] These events are only known to those participant and those they have spoken to: please no metagame.

 

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A breeze swept across the dormant dunes of Portogrene’s shore, scattering sand through the trail of bootprints that led to a lone palm. The man’s armored hand pressed against its rough bark, coconuts swaying overhead. He stood in silence as the briny air filled his lungs, one eye closing against the sting. Here was where it had begun—when he broke the Storm’s grip, arriving as an outlander, a stranger. He had been piss-drunk, his half-rotted boat carried ashore by chance or madness. One would need both, after all, to hurl themselves into the sea with no skill and only a prayer.

 

Yet the Three had kept their pact then. With liquor still on his breath and fire in his chest, he had begun his new life in that coastal town. Soon came Alexander, the prince, and his fiance, Lavanya; too, a court that welcomed him with honest ease. He’d met his love, Viktoria, in those castle tours, and befriended the sagest and humblest of Canonism he’d ever known. In those days, merriment felt simple, untroubled by crowns and feuds. Balian’s Queen Sybille—with her rigid pageantry and gilded court—offered warmth to the odd Adunian: she’d offered him direction, and flexibility, and grace too. In those halls he found welcome, in those streets he felt the world was still whole. His gaze drifted now toward a mound of sand, beneath which lay the buried armor and capes of Kingsguard—laid to rest by his own hands, with his wife’s beside him—when the Empire rose and the fractured mosaic of mankind’s crowns turned to glass.

 

✦

 

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He walked long and hard. Gangrel, his steadfast Numenedain steed, was lost to time. After years of service, she had earned her rest, her spirit roaming the Mountain’s carved steppes. He could not ask more of the old girl—not after all she had given him. Of his two geasa, one was to plant a tree at every crossroads of morality, and so he laid Gangrel to rest among brambles and budding branches, a living marker of his own turbulent chivalry.

The knight rattled on, alone now, down the stilled roads of southern Aevos—a plated pilgrim on his farewell tour of the dying world. Through the humid air he passed like a ghost of steel and memory, his body animated by burning nostalgia. Numendil rose before him, but it was no longer the home he remembered. Nearly eighty years had passed since the sobered knight first smiled his widest smile to a guard at its gate. Within its walls he had found companions who became kin: Raug, Clover, Eldacar and his family, Maeril and hers.

Numendil had stood in defiance of all he was raised to believe. His parents had told him the Adunians had never risen from the dirt left by their forebears—but Numendil proved them wrong. He still recalled his first meeting with Tar-Caraneth, unable to contain the awe that spilled out of him: You’ve really done a lot for our people. This is beyond my wildest thoughts. In those days, joy came easier, unshadowed by the years. The walls of the White City had seemed higher than the stars themselves. He did not yet know how direly they would be needed—but when Clover named him Wraith-Seeker, he embraced the title without hesitation: perhaps foolishly.

That title had taken his shine. One’s first brush with death is humbling, and each return makes it harder to hold a bright smile. When those monolithic walls fell, he learned how swiftly, how easily, he would die for Numendil—a pike through his chest. It was Bastian who bound his wounds and humbled him, yet the throbbing never left, a tenant lodged in his ribs.

These days, it aches for time lost. Once they left Aevos, the bricks that held such familiarities would be swallowed and churned, when Orsathiael inevitably regained his strength and ground down those memories into mortar and dust. Perhaps that wound too would vanish, he wondered? Birds of paradise warbled, and distant howls thread through the humid south, and he returned to himself.

✦

 

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He wandered around, through Garenbrig and spied Formindon, wishing his old liege lords well. It was hard to hold anger against those he had served most of his life. His eye cast to the fields where Arianna had saved him, to the Kingswood and the Aryn-an-Eryn, where he had held vigil as Lord-Warden and Ranger. His old camp lay idle there, and the ashes of Freyl’da scattered still.

Ildon’s flowers stood still as he swept north, their bees too quiet beneath the star-speckled sky. Through Petra’s tunnels he passed unbothered by bandits and fiends, who themselves fled Aevos for far-flung shores, fleeing Orsathiael’s dormant shadow. At last he came to a crossroads. His gaze turned to Vjardengrad; refuge, home, hearth for his friends and kin—but something tugged him away. Perhaps it was the Mountain’s peak, burned into his retina like a damned North Star. He turned instead northwest, through the tunnels, toward what had once been the star-kissed city of Celia’nor.

He remembered facing Pale Lords and mystics there, working with its folk to uncover Raug’s killer, and the poltergeist that had once inhabited him. He had idled in Celia’nor for years, telling old tales to its youth, peddling cigarettes and alchemical wares. Danzen had warned him often that the place was poisoned—but sweet memories always dulled the taste.

He came at last to a pond south of the city, before a great tree. The breeze carried wild growth and the still air of vineyards and empty hamlets, abandoned since the city’s fall. His ears twitched: a light scamper above, the shifting of weight, someone moving with practiced ease. Who else still lingered on this continent? He placed hand and foot to bark and branch, keeping close to the trunk as he climbed, through the foliage, nearer to the moon, until at last he spied her: the silhouette of old Marigold.

Through the boughs came a rustling—heavy branches bowed aside, leaves snapping under the weight of armor. A gauntlet thrust up through the greenery, and with it a familiar curse.

“Fucken ‘ell…” Victor spat a leaf from his mouth, boots testing each branch as though his weight were an intrusion on the tree itself.

Above, a small shape stirred. A rasped gasp, then a laugh caught in disbelief. “Is… no. It couldn’t be! Ser Rorin?! My old llir?”

 

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He paused, squinting through the canopy. “Aye. Aye, it’s me.”

The musin balanced easily upon her branch, aged whiskers twitching, yet still nimble as ever. She patted a limb beside her. “Careful, adventurer.”

He grumbled at the invitation, but took it all the same, settling into the crook of the bough with a weary smile. Smoke curled from his lips, his elbows resting on battered sabatons. “Stressed, as ever. Lookin’ for te’ good in it all. Same cycle, same fire. Yet folk like us, somehow, we make it t’rough… t’rough fire, demons, gods, knives… to old age.”

She coughed, laughing softly. “Ah yes, as ever… Same dilemma as always. Tell me, Rorin—are you satisfied with your adventures? I’ve had so many, I can barely remember them all.”

Her eyes—clouded with cataracts now—still sought him. “You still have many ahead. Descendants are funny like that. But I fear I am at my end.”

He tilted his head, voice gentling. “Mm? You sound ready to expire. But I dun’ see grey on your whiskers yet?” A careful eye set upon the musin, as if the weight of his gaze could break her: she had gotten old…

Her gaze turned upward, nostalgic: moving across the canopy of the Adventurer’s Club through the haze of her cataracts. “A lifetime of lliren, of adventures both good and bad. I never thought I’d leave the plains, but I’ve come far for a musin. Aevos has been kind. We’ve both come such a long way since Urguan’s gates.”

He snorted, eyes trailing toward the city’s ruins. “Knew you’d go far.” Then, after a pause: “Ye’ve any regrets, old friend?”

“Regrets?” She smiled, hand to her chest. “How could I? From first adventure to last, I had the best friends any soul could hope for. Even when evil pressed in, we fought together with purpose. In good times and grim alike—I wouldn’t trade it for all the stars in the sky. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Even with the Mountain, everyone came together for a cause… that was inspiring.”

Rain pattered through the canopy, beading on his greying hair. He asked softly, “Have ye’ more in ye?” 

She shook her head.

“I do have one request, before I go… If you ever meet my daughter, Ruby—set her on the right path. She’s stubborn, but you were kind to me on my first adventure. I know she would be safe in your counsel… I just want to make sure the rotten thing might have the chance…”

He grinned despite himself. “Rotten thing. Unlike you to say. Gladly—I’ll watch your youth as my own.” A pause afterwards, “Say, how bad have yer eyes come te’ be, Mari? If ye’ve some capacity: I’d show ye’ somethin’... less t’ey’re too… foggy.”

Her whiskers twitched. “My eyes are dim, but I can still see a little.”

“Then close ‘em,” he said. His voice turned low, ritualistic, his soul’s green fire sparking behind his eye. “Remind yerself of yer adventures, Mari. Loves, hardships, all of it.”

She obeyed, trembling, covering her face as nostalgia flooded in—pink-tinted visions of youth, scents of grove and glade, family and comrades alive once more. Tears came, then dried, leaving only peace.

Victor clasped his hand as if seizing a firefly, then leaned forward. He kissed his knuckles and brushed them against her brow. “Sleep well, ol’ friend.”

Marigold leaned back, her breath steady, the night air soft upon her fur. “I’ll see you soon,” she murmured, sleepily, “my oldest friend.”

She curled among the branches of her queendom, and the knight climbed down more easily than he had come, his departure quieter than his arrival.

✦

 

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The frost of empty Norland drove against him as he made his way toward the docks at Solgaard. There, a tall woman—bronzed and aged like wine—and a young man, slender and strong with his father’s eyes, stood together in quiet conversation. The not-so-silent tread of the knight drew their attention as he raised a hand in greeting, the evening sun setting westward behind him, gilding the three of them in its final light.

“Glad ye’ dinnae leave wit’out me. I know e’ wuss a close one.” His voice carried with weary humor as he came to Viktoria and Mikail—his wife and son.

“Took vy long enough, Papej. I was worried age finally caught up,” the young man jested, turning toward his father with a stoic grin.

Victor’s arms wrapped around him, and he drew a long breath of relief. “… and I’m damn glad ye dinnae get ‘urt in all t’is mess.” He savored the smell of his son, the firmness of him, before easing back to look upon Viktoria.

The once-Duchess of Reutov had already stepped forward. Wetting her thumb, she brushed away a streak of saltwood from Mikail’s cheek, preening his fringe as only a mother could. In her other hand she held a decanter, bronze-amber liquid sloshing with age and character.

“Leave without vy?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips. “Then who would Y share this with?” It was the same smile that had arrested him the first time he’d seen it—an ageless warmth that time itself had failed to steal.

Victor only snorted, quiet admiration in his eye for the small family he had found, and made, in this ghost-laden land of chains and brine.

“Well—are vy ready to set sail? Get on with it all?” Viktoria pressed, hand on her hip, the other resting easily with the decanter. “Y’am sure everyone jest eagerly awaiting vyr arrival in particular.”

“Mm.” Victor’s gaze drifted past them toward the familiar boat at the end of the dock, its hull restored, its deck loaded with a few boxes of provisions. The salted air carried the scent of berry pemmican and dried orange peel. “T’ey can wait’a moment longer.” His voice softened, and a faint smile curved beneath his mustache. “A’ t’ink we’ve earned a moment te’ breathe.”

And so he lingered, just as he had once lingered on the sands of Portogrene. The sea called again, as it had at the beginning, and in time it would take him. Soon enough the tide would press against the hull, and the dock would wash clean of his footprints—just as the shore once swallowed the tracks of a drunken castaway who staggered into Aevos, never to return the same.

✦

 

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The shores of Aevos shrank into the horizon. He had done this before—left a land behind.
While his wife and son drank and chatted, the bowie sat quietly, his eye fixed on the fading peak of the Mountain.

His gaze dropped to his hand, resting upon the edge of the vessel, as though at any moment it might wrinkle and turn to dust. As though the Chainfather himself might raise a wave to swallow what he had stolen from Aevos.

But no end came.
And no matter how far they sailed—
the Mountain remained.

 

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Afterword

I just wanted to write a little sendoff for some memories of Aevos, its been a fun ride, and I wanted to revisit some memories-- though there’s a lot of names, characters, and things that I didn’t touch on.

I’m sick so I’m going to add image attribution later. See y’all in Ass-ur-ass.

Cheers, thanks for reading.

 

PS. Sorry for deleting and reposting this two or three times: the pages kept breaking, and making me a very sad man.

[confusedjester 814]

Spoiler

bro i thoguht this was a pkpost and i almost tweaked tf out

 

[KidKrinkles 2044]

3 minutes ago, confusedjester said:

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bro i thoguht this was a pkpost and i almost tweaked tf out

 

Spoiler

Jenny is DEAD!!!!!!!!

 

[ChainedDragons 1374]

Spoiler

I echo the first comment, bout gave me a damn heart attack thinking he died - based writing though. beautiful