The Verge

[Taelian]

20th of Ash, Year 118

He sat on the furthest seat back inside of the underground train, looking through one of the industrial metalwork’s few windows to peer along the fast-moving rock wall. They were headed to the Imperial Badlands, the only place in Daravin anarchist enough to allow them to properly fade into obscurity upon arrival.

Taelian would then hire a caravan to take him to Arlain, then portal or ride to Amoren. From there, he would need to figure out a way to get to Dalquor, then Zaichaer, then Kalzasi where his entourage would be. His fellow Ebon Knights, only just plucked from their posts in Zaichaer to move to the new and more promising city, where Aldrin thought he could entice the Siltori matron to lend him her aide. Even if only in weapons and farthing bills.

For now, it was… dull. It would be two days of traveling on the train like this, as it was an old train barely clinging to life. He was astounded the Adh Nuaihm - a group of Famished, faux philosophers - had managed to maintain the infrastructure of such a goliath rail. It ran probably for as long as Lorien’s Great Viaduct, or so he had heard, only they didn’t have the resources of a Kingdom and a million Hollows to work the length.

Famished were good workers, he supposed. Free of the vices of discomfort, dissatisfaction. Taelian himself had always been resilient. Being a physical and emotional flatline had some benefits.

“Taelian?” a voice called to him. It was Elindra.

“Hey,” he answered back. Normally - with any other person speaking - they might have inquired as to whether or not she was enjoying her time with that dashing gentleman she’d met at the station, or how she was doing. Taelian, as always, said nothing instead.

“Do you…” she began to stammer, “...do you plan on staying with the Remedy when you arrive? I’m going to Arlain, Taelian, our old home. It’s run by humans… but they say it still has all of the white spires. The beauty. Built strong enough to survive the Sundering — can you believe it? There’s the potential for a good life there. Instead of… going back here and dying, living in the mud and eating mutated rat meat. I hear Kalzasi is beautiful too. All of the pink flowers and tall mountains; it’s exceptional in Glade and Searing, and through most of Ash. Both of these places…”

“You’re not coming back, are you?” he interjected.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Elindra replied. “Not now. Not until Sil-Elaine prospers again. We live long lives, Taelian. If we don’t throw ourselves at the Dranoch, begging those beasts to kill us, we may live to see a lot of change. The Sundering’s corruption on Sil-Elaine isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. Perhaps in two hundred years, it will be truly beautiful again? We’ll be able to build proper farms once more, and…”

The younger Cleric found himself frowning. There was no way he could bring himself to be happier. She was betraying them, betraying her people. Hoping to wait it out. It would never, ever come to be. Not if the good ones, like her, all fled.

[Taelian]

“The Dranoch won’t all elect to throw themselves to the Nametaker’s Tides. We have to be there to fight them. If we don’t, Sil-Elaine will never be beautiful again. We will be the only livestock that grow and are plucked. You know that, Elindra. It pains me - for whatever I can even feel - to know that you would abandon us now.”

And that was it. She lowered her gaze, her bangs running over her eyes, turned on her feet and stepped away. She was either too disappointed in him, or with herself, to speak. And that was more than alright. Growing steadily angry, he knew that he did not want to hear her words. They would only make him angrier.

The train rocked. Aggressively, in fact. Every surface was shaking and the car shook; the walls seemed to be banging against the edges.

“We will now be undergoing turbulence,” a Famished announced from the head of his individual hold. “Daravin - which we have begun to enter - is undergoing earthquakes at the moment. Do not fret; this is a common occurrence and is significantly below the threshold of concern.”

He rolled his eyes. The Famished spoke like artificed automatons. Even the Awoken had more grace.

“If I must defecate,” an old woman began, the turbulence causing for her teeth to disturbingly clatter, “what shall I do? I fear that my excretion may bounce from the pot and fly back into my crevice!” she roaringly exclaimed. Everyone in their sector of the train began to laugh.

“It would just remind you of home, Miss,” a young man joked. Another round of laughter. Taelian often wondered why those obvious jokes were always considered so funny; was immaturity not cliched to death?

“Ser Ebon Knight,” a child approached him, running along the wine colored carpet of the train. “Do you need a friend to hunt Dranoch with?” he asked.

“No,” Taelian replied. “I’m only accepting monster-slaying partner requests from those with voices of a sufficiently high octave,” the Cleric joked. “I’m also —“

He paused. There was rumbling from the car in front of them, and not the sort that came from earthquakes. It was an intense and disproportionate fit, with clattering and thudding rebounding from their walls directly into his. The train continued to move.

It was so loud - the rail, the earthquake, the chattering and worrying. He almost did not hear what was going on before him — almost.

But he did.

“My God,” he whispered to himself. There was, beneath all of the noise, the faintest yell of screaming from beyond the nearly soundproof metal. A third against the door - a single, hard one. It was something being thrown into it.

[Taelian]

Taelian focused all of his efforts into a flame, at the core of his palm. It was his one way of knowing whether the unspeakable had occurred, without taking the huge risk of going in blind. He had to do it. He had to know.

He focused on the screams. On the… octaves of them. The silent breath that followed; the ghostly gasp. He focused on the lingering intentions of those who had fallen, and those who remained, and tried to discern between the two. His eyes shut. A ghastly wind touched his cheek, and he drew upon the heat of his Black Sign to warm himself. And to illuminate the darkness before him.

His eyes opened once more. It was dark — the people in their seats were screaming skeletal beings, their mouths agape. Their flesh, skin and bone colored in before long, but they were still tarnished with a deathly glow. Everything - every corner - was shrouded in black, with specters attempting to rush forth to take out the flame. They did not want to be seen.

A departed ran through the door, entering Taelian’s cart from the one up ahead.

“Help me!” it screamed. The specter was a woman, it appeared, of long white Elven locks. She cowered behind the first car, and Taelian stepped forward along the row to communicate with her more directly. He knelt beside her and into this dead realm, he began to speak.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"That man!" she screamed, shaking her head and sobbing. Her voice echoed. Blood began to pool beneath her feet. It was -- somehow he knew this -- a sign that she had recently died. She was still so intact; a pristine soul. Nothing like the wraiths that crowded these underground caves. He could tell... that many of them were Siltori, from the first genocide wherein they had been forcefully relocated to Sil-Elaine. "He attacked us," she said. "He killed my mother. She was sitting right beside me, I--"

The Siltori began to shake her head, looking down to the flowing pool of blood. "He killed me too, didn't he? I thought we had escaped the Dranoch... why are they here? How did they get here...?"

"Did a black aura emit from his weapon, or his claws?" Taelian asked. He needed to know if it was a Cardinal.

"Yes," she quietly said. The woman's eyes widened, and she looked up to the ceiling of the car. She looked confused, and then she began to fade.

Taelian closed the flame, peeling back the veil between the two realms. He looked to those around him - cowering in their seats - and he frowned. "Everyone," he shouted, "there's a Dranoch Cardinal in the car before us. He's killing everyone."

It was not a reagent any of them wished to swallow, but they did. In Sil-Elaine, everyone was used to loss and grief, and subversion to their beliefs. This was no exception, and so it was characteristically easy to rein them in. Sadly, even those without the Black Sign inscribed to oppress them were often as docile as the Famished were. No one even yelled in fear as he made his proclamation.

"You're an Ebon Knight, are you not?" the old woman, who had sat across from him, asked. "Go and kill him then. You all speak of your devotion to protecting us -- so do it now, when it counts. This is in order for us to all have a better life."

Right, he grimaced. Taelian steeled himself. He stepped forward and quickly pulled on the latch to the car before him. He noticed that there were no screams emanating from the room any longer.

The door opened, and he danced backwards, avoiding what he thought would be the immediate lodging of a pair of claws into his throat.

But instead, he saw a horrific vision of its own; one that brought him complex and varied emotions, filling him with dread and relief.

The Dranoch was dead, pinned against the wall with one of Elindra's Flare-enhanced arrows lodged through his throat. In his grip, however, was her throat... which he had crushed within his palms. Around him were the scattered, dismembered bodies of nearly a dozen, with several more passengers cowering in utter terror from wherever they could possibly hide in order to sob.

All of them... Taelian when looking into the Dead Realm, the Dranoch when facing his death, Elindra when fighting bravely; these fearful souls as they witnessed atrocity all around them, had seen the verge between life and death. And while some of them had stepped through, the ones that remained did so with the reluctance of fear, and the worry of how far they really were from death's ire-wrought glimpse.

[Nyx]

Taelian

Points: 5/5

Magic?: Sigilic Pyromancy 5 Points Awarded

Lores:

Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing
Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing: The Verge between life and death
Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing: You're still physically present in the living world
Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing: Can be used to communicate with specters
Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing: The recently dead are the most intact
Sigilic Pyromancy: Searing: The Dead Realm

Elindra: Dead

Loot: N/A

Injury and Overstepping: N/A

Comments: ... I should have been expecting this really. Of course she's dead! Why must you kill everyone within 2-3 threads of them being introduced? Why do I even trust you at this point not to kill an NPC almost immediately? I really shouldn't, and yet so foolishly I do. Aside from all the sadness and death, or perhaps because of it, it was a really good thread that just compounds Taelian's trauma making it feel both so much better and so much worse every time I review a thread with him and Riven in it. I awarded full points for magic in honor of the fact this is the first time Taelian has used Searing so he is discovering a new ability. Well done.