Hell in a Cell

The cells had become arid since the so-called necromancer was brought in. Dry. The lights seemed dimmer, the company quieter. The raving man Ayana had knocked the teeth out of seemed a bit resigned to it at this point.

Lonny had stopped bringing the man meals as they piled up. He wasn’t eating. He wasn’t doing much of anything. Sometimes Lonny would catch him without his noticing, looking dead ahead. Smiling still. As if his face had frozen that way. It never looked quite right, and no matter where his head would point, his eyes always seemed to fixate upon the guard—even when it seemed he didn’t notice. His breath never rose nor fell, his hair never shed, nor did it seem to grow. Beyond the expression, it was as if the whole of him had frozen.

Yet, midday, he spoke to Lonny for the first time since his arrest.

“A visit in the eve.” He spoke an olde tongue whenever Lonny overheard him.

The guard did not respond, already on-edge.

“Tis no doubt he hath already begun to spread word of mine self. Mine true self.” The lanterns snuffed.

“What does that mean?” Lonny held his breath.

The candles began to go out, one by one. In the dark, the necromancer’s form began to flicker. A storm beneath his skin showed flashes of his skull and spine.

“Tis the end of mine stay here, Alonzo.” Lonny had not spoken his name in some time. When he was steward for then-Lieutenant Lachlan, the man had nicknamed him and it stuck.

When Idris spoke, it was as if his lips moved the same as Lachlan’s. The man he was before he was Captain. It was as if he was stealing the mannerism. Digging it up from his grave.

Lonny reached for his sword, even if the bars meant it would find little purpose. He was scared. Visibly scared.

That meant he had to stand his ground.

“You’ll be staying here, mister Idris.” His voice teetered on cracking. The skeleton flashed again. The bars of the cell had started to become visible in the dark. Red hot.

His grip on the sword tightened.

No answer.

“Mister Idris.” Lonny asserted.

No vocal answer. The bars flew from the cell. He raised his right arm to try and stop the collision but he was cast on his back before he knew it. He tried to pull it off of him but his sword arm couldn’t muster the strength. It wasn’t enough. He used both.

Only one rose to push the metal off of him. The pain was immeasurable. Lonny could see his right laid on the floor, away from him.

The flickering skeleton stepped forward, picking up the stray limb and laughing. Laughing at him. His hand searched the ground around him for his sword but found nothing. Idris—that thing that was Idris—stood over him. Light formed in Idris’ hand and lowered toward Lonny’s face—then a pillar of stone shunted Idris’ form into the ceiling.

There was a moment of silence as Lonny heard another voice in the dark.

“I haven’t done that one before.” Another guard, Ayana.

Before another word, the foundations of stone began to glow. Fire beneath the rock.

A crash. Lonny’s vision cleared of smoke and dust after a moment. He couldn’t see the other guard. He couldn’t see half of what he used to. He could see daylight. The guardhouse was devastated. A smoking wreck around him. Everything was smouldering with heat.

He could see his sword now.

“Please. Please don’t.” He could think only to beg as it rose from the ground and snapped to Idris’ hand, stood over him.

Then the spirefolk descended into the depth.

Lonny stirred in the hospital, half of what he was last he woke.

• Lonny, a recurring guard character, spent much of the campaign making arrests and facilitating jail visits. He is not an important character, nor will he become one, but he was friends to a few of the townsfolk. Currently, his efforts direct toward the rebuild of the guardhouse.
• Ayana, a former Lictor, made scarce appearances throughout the campaign; her fate determined by town hall vote, she was not sent back to the Lictors when an appeal was made to forgo violence for her and the other brigands of her band were to remain in town. She would go on to join the guard, and, witnessing Bracchus' pact with Facet, join under magic tutelage. Meriel's frequent meetings alongside the discussions with the "insurgent" four are the reason she and Lonny both live following Idris' detonation.
• Idris, a traveler, has made away from the town beneath the Spire. Idris' presence infrequent and progressively more fueled by enmity for and from practiced dark magicks placed the wizard in the prison when the time came that Idris would bid be somewhere else. Idris' departure was preceded by a moment with Veena, whom was raised from the dead by Idris' hand.

Lodestone

She was frailer than they had thought. The dreamer-upon-dreamers was never known to Gwaine and Ana until now, and it was clear she only knew them from stories. She expected something else of them both.

Still, she wept tears of joy into Ana’s shoulder. The warrior was unused to comforting. She gave the once-prophet a pat on the shoulder, looking out to the ocean.

Gwaine and Garland were not in her initial vision, it was unclear to them all why Ana would be—just that the girl had seen a lightning bolt and her spear both. Gwaine came in another, as a man made of stone with a shield where his sword would be. Garland was a bloody briar, she said.

Ana laughed when she heard as much.

She had dreams of many of the knights. Only a handful still drew breath.

The handmaid that accompanied the dreamer was still in remission. Gwaine had seen her like before, but not in this state. It was animalistic. Distorted. It unnerved them both, but the dreamer was fixated on the guard dog’s survival.

It was unclear what to do next—for each of them. The girl was still having visions. Ana had held her child near to term, due any day now. It was fielded to find Garland and his band, but even as a next-of-kin, they were wary to have him around the child.

They still hadn’t settled on names.

Gwaine’s hand fidgeted. It searched for his sword without his noticing. With the monster hunters somewhere still. He wondered if Ana felt that same longing for her spear. Perhaps it was all the more, for she had inherited it.

The tide was setting in now. Crashing, building waves striking against the cove.

The dreamer spoke.

“Last night, I saw something on the tides.” Her voice held like glass, ready to shatter.

“The viridian vessel? With the strakes?” Even now, Ana eagerly clung to the interpretation. She held Cerys’ schematics in her mind enough that Gwaine saw etchings of them in her cell.

“Something else. A ship of your knights. The ones that headed to the garden.” Gwaine frowned when the dreamer spoke.

“Only a handful of survivors from either, I’m afraid.” He felt a pang in his heart saying as much. Those were his allies—even the worst of them.

“The ones that didn’t.” The dreamer said.

Another wave crashed at the shore.

Water broke.

• Sir Gwaine "the Garrison" made infrequent appearances as a member of the Knights Lictor, appearing to vouch for Konrad's sparing at the end of his duel with Sir Garland, retrieving Diarmait following the joust, and yielding to Drenmir's blade at the end of an ambush. Devoted to his cause, but more devoted to his family, he survives because of an appeal made to his role as a father. Mercy made by another.
• Dame Ana "the Spearwife", the Master-at-Arms for the band of brutes, was given a similar fate, made to surrender second. She held hostage Cerys, determined that visions ascribed of votes would be what mattered most when seeking the garden--which ultimately led to the ambush that left many of the couple's fighters to die.
• Taliana, the "Prophet-Saint" of the Knights Lictor, left to die in the mountains, was found by a scouting troupe after Helara retrieved a tip-off from Gwaine. When the Knights Lictor had found the entrance to the garden, she was dumped with her palanquin, defenseless until her handmaid Blanche came to keep watch over her. She lives because of the action of the Spirefolk.
• Blanche, the loyal handmaid, became something beyond herself to protect Taliana, even as injury and infection threated to do her in. She survives only because of the intervention of Konrad, following a duel that saw her succumbing to her mutations. Alive but changed, she cannot return to life as a handmaid, but she can return to a life.

Off-Keyed

Garland sang and played with his band of ruffians and scoundrels, but mustered little mirth on his face for it. He had been told to lay back when the spirefolk marched for the Garden, and the words came from the only lips that could sway his ear.

So he seethed, instead.

A glower, staring at the horizon. At the distant mountains as drunkards and dancers and fools tripped and stumbled around him. His armour sat with a smith, eager to restore it back to the picturesque shining knight it was meant to portray on his bastardization of a body.

It was a celebration for the rest. He let them have it. None of them knew they were discarded by their crusading leadership. Whatever treasure lay in the garden, beneath the Lampwood—viridian strake or snake oil—was never to be his.

A string on his harp snapped under a finger that had long stopped playing. Garland excused himself. The band did not stop without him. He found a perch near the cliffs in the dark of night and looked off to the mountains.

Smoke. Sizeable amounts. An amount that would burn a great tree. Whatever the knights’ plan was had gone up in ash. It was all for naught.

He rocked his head back and laughed, sat on the rocks with a wicked grin.

The smile of Sir Garland the Gargoyle.

• Sir Garland Penrose, the heel of the Spire, was coaxed out of attending the events of the Garden to his own chagrin. A constant source of annoyance to the town, making three duels his own for the spectacle of beating someone alone. Defeated in council election and now nominated a second time, Garland suffered no comeuppance during the events of the campaign beyond waking each day as himself.

Routed

Spurred away by infighting, Templar Knight Bethany led her loyalists for the hills. A return to their mobile camp. She felt aimless. She felt like she had made a mistake. It was impossible to tell just how far the mistake was, be it recent or distant, that led her to this moment. She looked at her retinue among herself, considering what their next steps would be.

Her horse had broken an ankle as they fled the mountains. The so-called knightess felt sadder eating than starving. No one had said a word since she ordered the retreat.

She saw the fire in the distance. If there was a tree, it was like to burn. If there was a weapon, it was like never to be held in her hand.

As foretold.

• The Knights Lictor of the Lampwood were broken by the combined forces of the Spire and the Ravens. While one of the Templar leadership managed to escape, the other had mere moments to fight before blades and projectiles reduced him to pulp. The lot of them, convinced of their own fable, were unsuited to let blood upon the receptacles for each that locked the garden away, and none of the Knights Lictor would see the garden themselves.

Lakeside

The lake was calm. A strange feeling. One felt in his bones. In his wings. It had been so long since much of him had touched water, left inside wraps beneath steel.

Tancis hadn’t realized his yearning until now.

At the centre stood a woman, fair as any, awaiting him. He bid her hello by hand, she bid the same back. She was speaking, but no mouth moved. It was like the words washed through him. He understood.

He understood his oath, too.

He did not understand how he came to be here—how anyone had—only that he had been searching for it.

Now he had found it. Found her.

It was if his hands moved on their own. He lost track of what he was saying. Her voice haunted him. The lake felt like it was teasing him. The last time he had felt water was when he washed ashore, barely alive.

When that thing had burnt him. It spoke fire like a dragon. It must have been a dragon. He knew not what else could do so.

All the overwhelming thought and feeling came to a head at once. Then something switched.

The dragon knight felt it in his armor. Somewhere, Idris exerted magic—and yet he lived. It was beyond the pain from a lapse in safeguard. He stood on his own for the first time in some time.

He stood alone, the Lady gone. Words remained.

Still sworn, no longer bound.

An oath upon himself.

• A minor NPC, the “Dour Drake” was kept from death by the intervention of Idris, but roused to life by the people of the Spire; given cause to seek out purpose elsewhere rather than remain at the beck and call of the wizard. It is because of this—because of discussion with Eibhlin, Harwyn and Gallavan, that the Lady of the Lake was sought and an oath was sworn.

Crowning Achievement

Donnel agonized listening to the advisor reading the letter. The court of the High Moon had been more and more monotonous, as if some kind of test. Some method of coaxing out the grandest of patience from him; only then would he be worthy of the funds they desired. Needed.

It was the consort—a demeaning title, he thought—Songmin, who listened and nodded. She raised a hand to cover her mouth. The author of the letter was with child, it seems. There was some visible giddiness among those in audience, alongside others that considered it scandal. It became clear Donnel’s lack of reaction was scandalous too. The Walljack feigned something of muted shock, trying to keep with the others in court.

On a starlit path, you.

He pardoned himself as the consort began to speak a reply to be penned. He looked up at those same stars and thought of his brother back home. Surely he was well—he had not written back in some time. He was to attend a ball soon alongside some woman of mild esteem and even milder height.

Donnel assumed it went well. He assumed a lot about his brother. He assumed they were still looking for this sought after thing and that finding it meant they could be paid, debts erased.

Donnel assumed a lot of things. If he didn’t, it meant he’d have shoes to fill—and his brother’s never quite fit.

• Their goal unrealized, the Finns are left without a leader and without funding. Following their killing of the councilman Pip, the lot of them attempted to assert Jonathan Finn’s authority upon the people of the Spire, spurring action against the remnant council—yet even after, the group were seen as uneasy allies when the circumstance presented itself. Jonathan Finn saw the Garden of the Aedall with his own eyes, but did not live to see it burn.