38th of Glade, Year 114
You heard from him, he said.
From the Jailor himself. From Aldrin. They're trying to recreate another one -- another blasted, sodding Huntsman. Replace what they lost with Dalen. They think they can do it.
...Are you sure? It took them hundreds of years, they--
They can. They know exactly how it works, now, the curse. And they only had one mouth to feed, no longer six.
...But they're still trying to grow. I heard they want to evolve past Huntsman; they think they can. It's absurd.
Right now, he continued, they need to stop the bleeding. They're losing their ground. Our people are crowding to us by the thousands, and for once, Dranoch hegemony is being questioned. They need to replace what they lost; to show us that they can surpass our attempts to oust them. So we need to show the people of Sil-Elaine, again, that we can oust them even without the use of deception and sabotage. We need to kill Lady Glairen, and we need to kill her soon.
. . .
On one fateful silver-clouded morning, with Silfanore's usual shimmering fog cleaving suspensefully through the wind, Taelian was awakened by the most urgent of knocks against his door.
"Wake up, Cleric," the voice commanded. He recognized it.
"Darnan...?" the young Ebon Knight called, rising from the firm foundation of his poorly-built bed. He immediately began to stretch his neck as it was in discomfort, as it too often was, and the suddenness of his awakening made him feel only worse for wear.
"Wake up," commanded the Ashwraith. "They've decided they're going to hunt Lady Glairen before she evolves. And you're on the mission."
Taelian had listened intently; curiously at first, wondering who they had decided to dispatch to handle the decimation of the powerful Cardinal. Aldrin, perhaps? A league of his Black Revenants? Curiosity immediately became doubt as he was answered, and doubt twisted within him almost immediately into a descending spiral of negative emotions. Why him? . . . Why me? He stopped himself as he realized Darnan was likely lying to him. Joking. He only rarely had a sense of humor, but that only made the gravitas of his jokes all the more. He tended to sweep people from beneath their feet whenever he played his jests.
"I get it. Who's actually on board?" Taelian asked.
"...Taelian," the man began. He twisted the door knob and slowly opened the door, the burly silver-haired warrior facing Taelian with an utterly sobering expression. "I'm not lying to you. Aldrin himself has cleared your position in the group; you will be with me, Temiril, Vilara, Irina and Vendrael."
Vendrael.
His old mentor. The one who had recruited him to the Remedy as a child -- who had done so knowing he was an orphaned boy with nothing left to lose. The one who had explicitly denounced his value to Aldrin, ensuring his path towards becoming a Famished, only for the strain of guilt to force him to try and salvage the wreck he had left behind. Of course. They would not only put him on a death run, they would tether him to the man he wanted to pretend had died the moment Taelian woke up with a mutilated soul.
"...Fuck that," he said. "Fuck Vendrael. If Aldrin wants me to die on this mission with a man that I hate... he can come and command me to go himself." Taelian seethed. He was so angry -- at the audacity of it all.
"You're not as important as you think," Darnan replied. And he was right -- he wasn't. Taelian was a low rung, better-than-nothing fuck on the Remedy's scales. A Cleric. He wondered if Aldrin had even known his name before plastering it onto his public list, and if he still remembered it thirty minutes after.
"Fuck this," he repeated, angrily shaking his head. "Fuck the revolution. I don't want to die."