Legend of Ransera

A difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one.
Joy is simply easier to carry
than sorrow. And your heart
could lift a city from how long
you’ve spent holding what’s been
nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those
who know how to do that.
Those who could find a tunnel
that has no light at the end of it,
and hold it up like a telescope
to know the darkness
also contains truths that could
bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,
look close, tell us what you see.

-- Gibson.





Time was in the habit of leaking free of the wayfarer as though his flesh were a sieve. Thin slices of seconds were pungent where they flattened in his footfalls and the hours were too busy hooting in the spikes of sentinel trees to remember themselves in the long yawn of afternoon. He loitered too long on the road where it opened, the valley of vanished Illuminarcus beyond, and weighed all of his shadows against the pure light thrown off by the citadel. With his breath fogging the air, weathered, dark clothing only almost warm enough for the unseasonable chill, he listened to the snow in the high mountain peaks melt into new streams and felt very small. Tall, proud ancestry strung up his bones, but yet this haunter-son slouched, chin down and in need of a shave. He slouched, and he stalled.

Dhruv’s memories had not returned so much as they rioted. He knew all of them and understood as well they meant very little. Nothing, or next to it, in this place that was not Ailos, that could not house any who knew him. Fragments of the Dawnmartyr story, their fall and this return, had reached him with no real effort. He’d sat, night after night, in a garden, in a bar or cafe, by the water, anywhere in Kalzalsi at all and with no effort heard a hundred stories of the the order that caught him when he’d fallen, that he had half raised when all creation was chaos and darkness. A wind caught him like the past, vivid as the pounding of his heart with loneliness. It was, by now, a very old and familiar feeling. The sun had returned to the world the same day he had, he’d discovered. The thought caught a sharp smile to his mouth before he turned from the glow of white stone and golden trees, careful for all his lingering illness, slow healing injuries, and hauled himself back into the saddle.

The reins were gripped in one hand, fingerless gloves not warm enough in the languishing light. The moons were visible though the sky still cupped light, even the odd third the sight of which had caused him to feel painfully alien. There was time for him to take the road back down to Kalzalsi, straight through the city to the Black Road and beyond. This borrowed mount would not do for too long, but he could see her cared for until he found another. Stronger. Faster. More resilient. Anything living that traveled with him had to be, else it might last but it would never stay. They just became ghosts in his corners. There were plains and forests, seas of opportunity brimming with a thousand ways to his end and all he’d ever needed was one. He could find it, or he would find someone who needed him again.

This was one of many times he’d waited in this pass, watching the lights, interrogating the shade. Too many times since the curse had ripped him from the last home and dropped him into a Kalzalsi sewer. Not once had the stranger come any closer to the citadel nor send any message or word to its gates. What was he supposed to say? His name had long since outrun their ever saying it clearly.

It meant there wasn’t anyone left to be surprised when Dhruv turned towards Dawnhold this time instead of away, the worst of his shadows lightening in the soft growing glow of dangerous hope. There was at least one thing he needed to collect first.

The pathfinder had been cold since a combination of time and fate had dropped him into a Kalzasi sewer, so much so that the corruption pulling the phoenix’s call out of tune felt more like a memory, played only in his mind until the horse beneath him released a violent shiver. Dhruv shifted naturally in the saddle to maintain balance as hooves stamped the snow and his spine straightened with a roll of strong shoulders. Air froze in his chest as he watched the blizzarding spiral of the ice eagle in its assault on the gate. He dropped low over the aging mare’s neck to murmur a caution as she danced back in a crack of ice that had Dhruv firming the grip of his knees to her sides.

The gates of the citadel held beneath the mad bird’s screams, deflecting spears of ice in a roll of freezing wind back over the road. The hytori had just managed to pull the horse’s head around, heels down as they prepared to run – the gate guards were well protected by their god’s manifest of miracles, and he their only threat as they might feel propelled to leave that safety to aid him – when as second set of wings threw their shadow over them. In the screaming cold that frosted even the stubble on his jaw, his mount dangerously restless in her fear beneath him, and with the leeching of health and power the Clock of Aeturnus had charged him with this time, Dhruv Val’Esdraelon wondered if he had arrived at the end.

In the Sundering, Dhruv had envisioned death like leaving the fires early, when full dark was only just settling itself about the stars and friends and lovers laughter carried you down in heavy arms. He’d done so quite on purpose, an old trick to convert fear into courage hard-learned centuries before the world had even heard the name Kaitos Diraegon. The vision was painted atop the memory of a future he’d never gotten to have.

The crash of armor hammering down onto rock was his only warning before the world exploded in a wash of silver-white fire. He clung to the horse’s back as she bucked and reared, blinded by the light bursting around them and the haunting cry of the icewing phoenix being thwarted by another winged being.

Lightbringer. It moved through him like a weary sigh, leaving the half-moon of a funny smile on his face. He had only moments to take the man – no, the demigod – in, black stars winking in and out of his vision and as he finally wrestled the frightened horse into some semblance of control. A nudge of a knee and she leaped, eager, for the gates and little swarm of guards whose calls sounded like the distant whistle of the wind to Dhruv’s blasted senses. Timing was everything in this life, perhaps especially his, and so he waited until the shadow of the gates cut across the snow before slowing the horse and pushing down a knee to the saddle in order to twist around, free hand reaching sideways and low for something that was not yet there.

The reaving rune sizzled against the skin of his forearm, hidden by weathered, dark wool, as Dhruv twisted tendrils of aether that sparked towards forming the glowing shape of a truly ancient longsword. The hour was timeless and, for the first instance since being so unceremoniously dumped in this here and now, he felt almost like himself. Dark rider on a lonely road. An unnamed guard at a holy gate. A stranger who, while watching the icewing phoenix be felled by a single blow, was slowly but steadily realizing whatever all was left of the Order of the Dawnmartyr had absolutely no need of his help.

The sword was just a scent, old blood and older dreams, a gleam of a razor-sharp blade in its half formed state when it dematerialized in a crumbling cloud of strange-colored sand. The old horse huffed out a hard snort and stomped the sand into the snow while Dhruv lifted his chin and turned haunted gold eyes to meet the regard of his rescuer.

“Eh.” A grimace and he shook his head, silent laughter shaking through the cold in his bones. Talon was thrown a wry and reckless smile, forcing frozen limbs to relax a little in the saddle. The golden white heights of Dawnhold were framed behind him. “It’s the bird I’d worry for –” A beat and he offered the demigod an elegant head and shoulders bow that was as impossible as the rest of him. “ – Morning Lord. You have my thanks and my debt.”

A thought occurred to him, a rustling memory from the age before this, and he craned his neck to get a good look at the mountainscapes beyond, trying to spot any signs of one of the macabre storms, in the event the cursed phoenix had flown through one windward.

There were weary shadows beneath the brass in the rider’s eyes as they turned from the yawn of mountains to resume their study of the winged demigod. That smile of his possessed a certain charm, hard though it was. In the right circumstances, it could be downright disarming.

“Sweat and steel, if it will suffice. But I won’t turn down a fire. Any fire.” He relented with an inclination of his head even as he slouched further in the saddle. His cloak was weathered, greying wool, gifted to him by another unlikely rescuer. He was the sort of man who would have rather earned it, the idea of charity a sting to a thoroughly abused sense of pride.

Dhruv glanced at the gatekeepers and the glow of the citadel and wondered at moths and flames. The borrowed mount stomped again, restless, and with a shake of his head Dhruv dismounted in a single, fluid movement and tilted his head toward the gates in a hopeful manner.

“But first, my lord, can I take a look about your library?” Gods, he hoped there was a library. A study, at least, with enough books to aspire to the title of library. Surely this revitalized knighthood could not have strayed so far from its origins to not have appropriate respect for knowledge and learning. All he had heard and his own findings so far were encouraging. “It’s why I’m here,” he confessed. Afterall, the Spellforged had just been dispatched so there was time.

Wasn’t there always? Or never.

He didn’t look like much of a warrior, though everything about him tightened at the words mist and shadow. It sang old pain through his bones, his joints, regardless of his youthful appearance. Then he didn’t look much of a scholar either. Dhruv was content to look like nothing. It had supported him in the spycraft aspirations of his lost youth, but it had never been meant to become him.

“Mist and shadow, some old things just won’t die,” he muttered, more to himself than Talon.

There was something unbalanced about him, something at once here and not, neither now nor then. One hand was always reaching back, the other forward, and memory sifted through his fingers like sand. His smile was gone, the corner of his mouth turning down before he nodded to himself and refocused on Talon. He had not been expecting to meet the famous and powerful avilae, but rather to do his dealings with stablehands and chamber maids and the like to get what he was after and be gone again. He rather didn’t expect the Morning Lord to stick around much longer, not when there were more important matters to attend now that the phoenix had been dealt with.

So he stood before the gates of Dawnhold, empty handed yet determined, waiting to be let in. Hoping to locate a library and, within it, an old book with an even older ring tucked into the hollow carved out of the pages.

“Dhruv.” The rider offered, equally divested of its trappings. For a few moments, he forgot about the cold while watching the gates swing open for Talon without so much as a whisper. It reminded him of something, though without the ring he was searching for, he was hard placed to say what. Head echoing, he cast a final glance in the direction of Light’s Reach and followed Talon into Dawnhold.

Silver trails of light revealed the path to the Hall of Records and Dhruv’s chin went down, strong, long fingered hands gripping either elbow. After a few moments of thought, he turned to his host.

“It’s an honor, Talon. Thank you for your hospitality.” The slight bow Talon offered before launching skyward surprised Dhruv into a blink, face tilting back so he could watch the avialae fly through the soft, energizing light emanating throughout the air since he’d passed through the gates.

He did not say whether he would join at sunset, a fact that might go unnoticed; however, it was in display of habit that had become part of his very character. Dhruv did not make promises he wasn’t prepared to keep, the result being that he rarely made them at all. Even statements of future acts without the heft of promise were often avoided. It was not for lack of wanting to be tied down, to feel beholden and be relied upon.

Dhruv released a small shiver, arms unbraiding, and shoved handfuls of gold-streaked hair back from his face took around. A short whistle to his horse to signal that she ought follow, and he led her to the quartermasters to see her stabled. He addressed her care himself, effectively smiling his way around the stablehands until they let him do as he wished. The familiar motions gave him an opportunity to think, to allow the strange grace of Dawnhold to turn his blood from exhaustion to restlessness again, and to thaw his own bones. He briefly considered a bath to finish warming all that was yet frozen inside him, but thought better of it once he realized the line of his shoulders had relaxed and his jaw unclenched – this place was already working its magic on him, and he could not afford to let it.

It was the Athenaeum he ransacked first.

A mental map was made of the library within the Silver Tower and details were added as he explored. There was not an aisle he did not wander down or a corner he failed to poke his patrician nose in. Topics listed in his head as he followed the path of riddles from archaic texts to lovingly maintained almanacs, pulling books of all titles and sizes from the shelves to fan their pages in the holy light. Nobody appeared to pay him much attention, but then going not undetected so much as unremarkable was a special talent of his. Or, it had been. Those who did look might have been taken aback by the juxtaposition of someone so clearly out of place who at once could have been any well weathered Pathfinder, earnestly seeking answers to another horde of secrets.

He talked to himself. Mostly it was under his breath, the language he used musical and deep. The wise might recognize it as the ancient Vallenor it was, probably by the clever turn of phrase he spat out when slamming a book shut involving a rat catcher and a dog’s ass. At one point, he almost pitched a volume of rune poetry out of a window before remembering where he was and, very carefully, slipping it back between its leather bound neighbors with a loud clearing of his throat. That was about when he decided to try the Hall of Records. On his way out of the Silver Tower, he swiped no less than three sausage rolls and consumed them in small, steady bites all the way to the Temple of Light.

Time dripped. After several hours he thoroughly lost track of it, as was his curse, while crawling under a table stacked high with books some loyal archivist was sorting through to tug a small, nondescript journal out from a stack of what appeared to be discards. Somewhere to his left, there was low chatter regarding resourcing and research, and Dhruv settled to a seat on the floor right where he crouched – still under the damn table – to open the book. The sheer sight of the penmanship on the age-stained pages caught his heart in a vise and he was immersed. Footsteps and conversations flowed around and over him, the light outside the Temple of Light grew shadows long as memory as he sat frozen except the occasional turning of a page. One hand was folded over his mouth, elbow to the bend of a knee. The temple required no lamps to be lit against the darkness, so it took the loud closing of the records hall door to force him to surface through several centuries of heartbreak.

He reached a hand out to grip the edge of the table and stick his neck out, squinting about for a minute. Finding his little corner of the records hall largely empty, he stuck the journal into an interior pocket of his overshirt, snatching his cloak from where he’d forgotten it over the back of a chair, and turned his feet to the setting sun. Disappointment mingled with determination. He had been foolish to imagine that the very ring he need to be whole in this new hour would be located so easily.

“What percent of the texts in Dawnhold were of those evacuated from Ailos?” He greeted Talon a short while later in the foyer. “Do you know?” Bright, sharp eyes caught up the grandmaster, eyebrows arching as he turned. “Are they well recorded? Is there a master archivist you think I could convince to lend their expertise for a few hours?” A beat and a mouth meant for smiling skewed with self-deprecation. “If I stop asking you questions, will you let me come back?”

One of the patrol leaders who had been conversing with Talon delivered Dhruv an admirably sharp side-eye as he passed. The hytori’s grim smile did not so much as flicker, but he did tip the man a wink while folding the cloak over his arm. The notice amused Dhruv far more than it shamed him for all his nosy ransacking and taking advantage. For all his grief and humor, he still possessed a fierce pride and it demanded its share of founder rights in this seat of the Dawnmartyr.

“In the morning?” Dhruv echoed before remembering it was night. Dark had crawled up out of the trees while he had been haunting the libraries of Dawnhold. The gold in his eyes wanted to shine brighter for it, and he started to smile his understanding when the red dragon appeared and all of those rote and easy words blistered in his mouth.

A hip sank out in an ignoble slump, chin going down even as his eyes stayed up. Thoughtful. Watching. It tended to take some while of observation, but eventually it would grow clear there were secrets in legion trapped behind white teeth. Most people who got that far assumed this made him untrustworthy. Most people were intellectually stunted hell puppies.

“Aoren.” He bowed. Simple, direct, but somehow more eloquent and pure than anything else about him. After all, nobody offered deference quite the same way a revolutionary son of Sol’Valen could – nobody’s loyalty was so hard won.

It was the moment when the red dragon leaned toward Dhruv, looming over him with a possessive hand at his demigod lover’s back, and surprising him into silence that he gave himself away. Not that he had been hiding – not exactly at least – but he was certainly uneager to fully introduce himself like some arrogant beggar at his descendent’s door. There was no blood between them, or if there was it was so great many generations removed as to mean nothing, be nothing. Like everything. Like him.

His smile didn’t falter; it hardened. He stood his ground, visibly weaponless, in old, borrowed clothes, obviously still recovering from some grave injury and illness by the manner in which he comported himself, and gave not so much as an inch.

“You smell like Vicis,” Dhruv informed that flash of fang, smile finally softening as though just to be difficult.

His eyes ticked to Talon, weighing, and after a moment he nodded and gathered up the threads of facts and rumors he had tugged along with him throughout the day to offer his observations. It was delivered matter of factly. “If there are multiple incident reports scattered within reasonable distance of the Icefalls, then it stands that the dread mists have already achieved level two threat. You’ll have more on your hands than a corrupted icewing phoenix. If the people of Light’s Reach are shielded by the Spellforger’s wards, then…” He hesitated, eyes somewhere – no, somewhen – else. “How far from the village are the Icefalls?”

Abruptly, he bit back an oath and shot Aoren a look. “That doesn’t count.” He began to unfold his cloak, resigned to returning to the cold, and turned slightly toward Talon. “I’ll need to borrow a mount. Little Willow has known better, and faster, days.”

There was no helping it now. He was going. There were people involved. Families.