8 - 2 [Magus] Dance the Danse Macabre with The Godlings of the Pale River The Lone Sparrow - 1st of Evening Star, Year 1125 A.E.

Me ears are burnin’; someone’s talking of me.

Probably ma cursing the way I left.

Couldnae be anyone else.

They’re all dead.

Barry let out a chuckle equal parts dry and grim.

There was a neatly folded set of clothes atop the bed of the room; a nice and long tunic of green with slitted and twined sleeves, brown breeches and some clothen “boots.”

Donning the stuff was a bit difficult, what with his arms being wrought of fleeting and vaporous shadow. The sorcerous limbs were without much in the way of strength or resilience in their present state, their forms easily disrupted when encountered with strain of any kind.

In a puff of blacken smoke, they turned incorporeal, the clothes falling back onto the bed in a messy pile.

Feckin’ nine-damned magick. It’s like learnin’ the Forms all over again; tripping over meself without any sort o’ dexterity.

The arms reformed but a blink later, coalescing from the formless and ill-defined vapor. The act was near-instant and without need for waking thought.

Much like the shadows from which they were wrought, their shapes were fluid and sharp both. A bit sinister too as the skin of his sorcerous limbs writhed and shifted like roiling waves of the Dark Ocean in monsoon.

The remnant bit of his will that dwelt within their substance insubstantial made them apt to return to their proper semblances—Barry knew so by way of the intrinsic ken he received from his sorcery. It was part and parcel of himself after all, and thus some amount of knowing was sure to follow.

At least, I don’t gotta depend on another to learn every single bit ‘bout magicking.

With a few fits and starts, the Lone Sparrow donned the clothes.

The clothing sat comfortably on Barry’s frame, as comfortably as non-tailored cloth could be, though the breeches felt a bit stiff near his upper thighs. The “boots” were simply two swathes of fabric tied almost all the way up his shins by some leather cord and with soles to at least ward off any harsh rocks from his feet.

All in all, decent if simple wear. Nothing too fancy like the regalia worn by priests proper, neither was it the threadbare and roughspun gown of peasants.

Finally, me prick’s outta the breeze. Was gettin’ comfortable with all the freedom and whatnot, but, oh well. At least the loin-guards here are made of good cloth.

It don’t itch.

The Lone Sparrow looked around the room, its confines three span long by five span wide. The bed was tucked into the left corner of the room, beside the window with a chest to its right. Thankfully, the shutters were closed, lest any of the biting wind get inside. A hearth was carved into the rightmost corner of the room, the brickwork that held it in place cracked and darkened unto pitch.

The room had been well-used and worn, as the pitted and rough fire pit foretold, though also solidly built. The walls were all quarried stone beneath thick layers of plaster, some sections left bare as the coating turned to dust. Much of the veneer was still tacked-on, mostly.

Atop the chest was a mess of burnt, ragged cloth and blackened, jagged steel; remnants of Barry’s armor and gear, no doubt. He opened the lided trough to find more scraps unfit for anything other than a trash-heap.

A pang of worry went through Barry as he felt around for something he already knew he would not find.

His father’s axe; lost.

One more grievance he added to the tally against that nine-damned warlock. His body and spirit heaved in sympathetic wrath, the emotion bouncing off each and rebounding, becoming stronger and stronger still.

Blood burned through his veins, bringing heat to his flesh as his breath came out in hissing fits. His spirit pulsed and thrummed in the violent tattoo of a skald’s drum, the looping pathways roaring with substance insubstantial—or mana as the Priestess had called it.

Barry distantly felt himself reach for the blade coated in honey at the back of his head. His awareness was split in twain—rope unwound unto twin threads—one in the waking world and the other in the realm of dreams.

His vision was superimposed with sights of somewhere not here, as if he had gone cross-eyed or been struck upside the head and seeing double.

Then came the whispers, susurrations of a serpent most lilting.

Silence the light. Snuff out the noise.

In the black of his mind, he stood at the precipice between grey waters and a great maw.

Bring about the dark, bring about the quiet.

The greyen waters fell down into the unseeing abyss unending, dragging him along ever just so. It mattered naught that his mental form stood upon the surface of the waters no different than the stone his true feet beheld; he was still pulled forth.

Break apart its bones and suck the marrow dry.

Within the abyss was a Name, the Last Name to be Uttered.

Teh-

He stopped a hair-width away from touching upon the hilt of the Blade Coated in Honey. The utter need and compulsion to draw its accursed steel was nigh-intoxicating. The beckoning—the call of ash—a siren’s song.

But still, Barry let go of his mental questing, the fingers of his will relaxing and parting away from the Name of the End of All Things.

His awareness was reknit unto whole rope, half his mind no longer in the realm of dream. No longer within itself.

He let out a long breath of air, expelling a bit of the overturning froth of frustration and rage that simmered in his insides.

Stregor’s words came to the fore and into the fold as he took to the Flowing-River Breath, a balm and thorn to his soul both. For it reminded him of someone he cared for, and…

It reminded him of someone he had cared for.

Anger is fine, lad. Anger is a spark, it can be useful. A spark can light a fire.

A blaze is uncontrolled. It will consume all in its way and leave nothing but ash.

Do not let your heart burn uncontrolled. Channel anger with shackles of breath, lest it be your funeral pyre.

Icy fury settled in his bones in the wake of the blazing wrath, all forged patience and restrained anticipation.

Barry would have his vengeance. Now was the time to calm and learn all that he could. With his newfound sorcery mastered, he would have a blade fit to slay the Man Clad in Black.

Perhaps, even, he would be able to wield the Name that clawed at the confines of his mind; fetter and shackle that it had become.

Tehlos…what’s it mean? Why do I know without words what it is, yet can’t speak the dastardly thing’s meaning. Even my thoughts can’t give proper form, can’t bind it to the breath.

In between bouts of the turns and twists of the Flowing-River, Barry let out a long, suffering-laden sigh.

No matter what it is, I will bring that wretch into the Pale, with or without it.

He would have his vengeance, cold as the bones that likely lined the ruins west of Berrowden. Cold as the waters that had taken his arms of flesh and bone. That had taken his kith and kin.

Cold as the Song of Ice and Ash, seethed his thoughts, foreign words put into the mouth of his mind.

It disturbed him to no end; to have eld whispers in the hollow dark in between his ears. He felt like his sanity was slipping through the cracks of his fingers no different than water.

No matter that he held cupped hands, the liquid would find way to slither out.

With another full rotation of the Flowing-River Breath, Barry patted and checked his clothing once more and opened the door.

He had magicking to learn.

Barry, questions simmering in the aetpot that was his head, asked aloud, his words echoing through the halls.

“What was that thing ‘bout exorcisin’ spirits that the priest spewed on about ‘for I passed out? ‘Bout needin’ to know where the battle was?”

His own voice was eld to his ears, like an feyen imposter or some changeling of sorts donning the skin of his likeness. It had felt so after he awoke from Eternity Between Blinks; that strange place of soul given form.

Inhabiting the flesh felt…strange.

“It’s nothing pertinent to the now, lad.” Said Emilia, her tone beckoning no more inquisition, for now. “Follow me to the porch. We can get you some sunlight, and I’ll answer your questions then.”

Barry followed Emilia through the halls of the church, steelbound doors and stoneworked walls to his sides at all times. Unlike his room or even the leiggan’s quarters, the halls were bare stone brick without a lick of plaster.

Huh, now why’s that? Mayhaps to cut costs?

They bent once, twice now in total, a spiral staircase wrought of quarried rock going upwards at the corner, and then went straight until they reached a closed door; steelbound like all the others and wrought of a base wood so dark it was nearly the same shade as pitch.

With a click and a wrench from the priestess, sunlight streamed in and so did a gust of cold so chilling it bore through to the bone.

Barry did not shiver; it felt familiar and friendly, this sensation.

He felt himself swaddled in a blanket like a babe, safe and comfortable in the embrace of the elements without.

Home, came a word unbidden to the lips of his mind.

The temple opened up to a strange little clearing of sorts, a few good twenty-five span long and ten span wide. Barry realized that the building was actually a box, not too dissimilar to a chest without a lid—there was no roof but a little lip to ward off the elements at the other side. Theirs was the only entrance, or perhaps exit, into this place.

And the precious treasure that this chest beheld lay at the center: a tree, ashen-white and of wowan, without leaves yet bearing crop. Little fruits of red and purple alighted its branches, tiny yet plump and juicy, even in the winter—strange for no fruit took to the cold well. Even if Berrowden was in the Kedweni South, the town still lay in the Northern Realms proper.

One could not escape a cold winter here.

The air outside was biting, at odds with the lushness of the plants and greenery that lay huddled around the leafless wowan. At the far end was a bit of roofing to keep out the rain and snow twain, a kiln that looked to be made for pottery standing beneath the host of clay shingles and wooden frame.

So that’s the porch.

Two rocking chairs lay underneath the roofing, just enough space for one’s feet to be far out of any would-be snow fall with a bit of comfort.

At the sight of the already crackling fire inside the kiln and of sitting down again, Barry wanted to run to the other end. Yet he stayed back, following after his newfound mentor until they reached the shelter.

Best he not make a bad first impression.

Besides, the cold was not entirely stifling. His muscles felt stiff yet his spirit and mind refreshed from the frigid dousing that pierced through the vital warmth of his chest.

His soled feet smacked the stone-paved path with ease as his lungs pulled in the cold into his flesh.

Home. The word came unbidden once more, a tugging little fairy that flitted on the edges of his thoughts. It danced the knife’s edge of conscious awareness and sleeping will, flirting atop the thin, cutting precipice with the cadence of an imp mischievous.

The Lone Sparrow found it strange, this affinity with the elements without. He was not a man so comfortable in the cold without a proper coat or cloak

Has something to do with my sorcery—but what? How does this relate? More and more questions I’ll not have answers to so easily.

As Barry pondered his eerie sense of kith with the cold, the priestess laid back into a rocking chair with all the ceremony and pomp of a tired mutt falling to the floor. With steaming cup of something somehow already in hand, a dainty little thing of cracked porcelain inlaid with silver, she arched a brow towards Barry.

A single sniff sent his face into a badly hidden snarl of disgust, nostrils flaring at the scent.

Where'd she get the teh?

“Thanks, I’m good.” Barry answered, the herbal and saccharine qualities of the drink making him nauseous and unease in the bowels with just a whiff.

He prefered hooch of any kind rather than stuff imported from the more sothron Realms such as kahveh or teh. A true-blooded Kedweni Northerner Barry was, so he cared not for drink without a kick.

Although, he acquiesced to himself that should his kin have been from these warmer parts, Barry would’ve developed a taste for the stuff. For he remembered how much he hated ale at the first sip. Yet, after some time with the drink, Barry found his gut wanting more.

“No worries, lad.” Said Emilia, her voice as creaky as the chair she lay upon—a thing common to most elderly folks. “Now that we’re all good and comfortable, let us talk about that priest of Oriath and his concerns with the location of the battle.”

The Priestess put up a hand, forestalling Barry from speaking.

“We already found the place and did the purifying rituals. It was surprisingly fine when we got there. But, we still did the rituals just in case and buried the remains upon the subsequently hallowed ground.

“There were no undead and the feeling of wrongness in the air was practically gone, but a lingering bitter taste in the Fabric of Spirit.

“Stange, given at least a soul or two should’ve been stuck in the banks and shallows of the Pale River. Violent and sudden deaths do that to the remnant will of a man—make him wont to hold onto the living realm with claw and fetter.”

With a spoon taken from beneath the many folds of her sleeves, the Priestess stirred her teh before taping a sip. She muttered under her breath a hiss and a chidding, looking at the hot beverage as if it had committed some grave sin.

She continued to stir as she cleared her throat and spoke.

“Sorry for that lad. Anyhows, where were we? Ah yes, the talk about the Tregthekkar’s ruins…”

She let out a breath like steam from a kettle, equal parts frustration and fog.

“In a battlefield with enough scorched earth to reckon Solaria kissed Terra, there were no remnant spirits. Where there’s smoke there ought to be fire, yet there was nary an ember left behind when the devout of the war-god got there.”

Emilia lifted a brow, favoring Barry with a questing as she sipped upon her teh once again. A seethe could be heard, yet this time it was not a result from her burnt tongue.

Neither was it from her.

The Lone Sparrow let out a hissing and trembling bout of breath in preparation of having to recount the slaughter of his cronies. His eyes were hollow and stuck in the middle-distance as he relived the horror of it all.

And the beauty.

He had Awakened, after all. He had brushed upon the divinity of existence itself, upon Truth—Da’ath.

Barry had peered into the inner workings of the Wheel; the Grand Cycle of Creation Neverending. He had unearthed and imbibed upon the ken beyond mortal ken.

The visions were profound and soul-scaring, enough so that Barry doubted he would ever forget.

Yet the succor of newfound magick and the lifting of scales upon sight was nothing but bitter-sweet. The acrid taste of sorrow on his tongue made him tear up, sulfur of the Nine that it was.

Yet he did not truly cry nor sob. Not that he found wrong in such a doing; to each their own and all that.

It was simply not his path. Having felt so weak and scared of his pa growing up in the Hamlet, that right bastard that struck him any time he did something not to the man’s liking, Barry did not wish to be so anymore.

He was tired of the crying. Of the weakness, the nine-damned weakness.

And so he changed.

His mind had been hardened unto steel by all the killing and battle, adapting to the hammer of strife that pounded away at the mettle of his spirits.

Both good and bad came with having adopted Stregor’s way. He would not break from stress and strain without, bending as did steel for he was not brittle iron.

Unfortunately, he knew that he would eventually cut himself upon the edge of his own making, for all things had their end in their source. Barry’s battle-hardened being would die thus in battle.

At the thought, a piece of Sevenfold scripture came unbidden, conjured by the chains that bind memory to memory.

Live by the sword; die by the sword.

It was an apt piece of kennen, at least somewhat honest and true. Not like other words he heard in passing that beggared for purity of heart and blind adherence to the High Laws.

Thinly veiled excuses to hunt down dissenters and prolong particularly wretched conditions such as serfdom.

Barry shook his head and got back to focusing on his retelling. He had taken a lull in between the assault on the Tregthekkar’s Keep and his band meeting with the warlock. He needed to breathe, to shackle his wayward and troubled thoughts with fetters wrought of lung and slow air.

The Lone Sparrow could not retell without a few breaks and pauses. Even the mettle of his mind was not immune to such abuse.

A sword striking repeatedly upon rock was doomed to chip and shatter; a waste it were, to do as such; folly and sin both. To break fine steel was blasphemy to a warrior of fortune, and Barry would have none of that.