Trades and Punishments

by Luke Thomas

Dear Diary,

The new day dawned not to a rooster's crow, but to the sound of crying children and the low murmur of parents trying to soothe a fear that has no easy comfort. We awoke in a field of refugees, surrounded by the ghosts of our home. An unease hangs over this makeshift camp, a fragile hope mixed with despair, and every pair of eyes looks to us for guidance we do not have. There was only one place to start. We had to go back. We had to see the ashes for ourselves.

Wolf’s Rest is a graveyard. The homes are skeletal husks, and the proud stone of our keep is now just a collapsed pile of rubble, a tombstone for the life we knew. Hayley sent Fiachna, her raven familiar, to scout the Silver City, while Alistan went to check the old windmill and the fey portal hidden in the cave beneath it. He found traces, clear evidence the gate was used, but not enough to account for the sheer size of the force that attacked us. They came from somewhere else. They poured in from another wound in the world.

As we approached the windmill, we saw Fiachna streaking back across the sky, four owls in hot pursuit. Familiars. Sentinels of whatever new power holds Keralon. The raven was faster, a speck of black ink that outpaced its hunters, but the message was clear: we are being watched. The city is closed to us in more ways than one. A sending from Ileas to Sir Callos, the head of the Long Table, went unanswered. We are truly alone.

We walked through the ruins of our home. The walls were gone, the air thick with the stench of soot and death. Here and there, the body of a guard lay where they fell. I whispered the words for *detect magic*, my senses expanding to search the rubble for anything that might have survived. We found a few items, coated in grime but intact. But my books… my spellbooks, my histories, my journals… all gone. Pages of knowledge and memory turned to feathery ash. It felt like a part of my mind had been burned away.

Nearby, a pyre had been made of our servants. Liliana, her face a mask of grief, moved to give them a proper burial. As she did, the rubble shifted. A hulking construct of metal and spikes clawed its way out of the debris. Impaled on its protrusions were the bodies of our friends, our allies. I could feel the magic, a vile necrophagy draining their last vestiges of life and twisting it into undeath. A shimmering spirit rose from the pile. It was John, a gentle guardsman never far from his pipe, whose family had lived just down the road. "So cold..." he cried, his spectral form reaching for Liliana, trying to steal her warmth, her life.

A raw, guttural scream tore from Liliana’s throat. She charged, her blade smashing into the construct that was desecrating the memory of our friends. The thing struck back with a massive spiked fist, sending her flying. As if summoned by the violence, a second construct emerged from the ruins and swiped at Ileas, knocking the poor satyr aside as a fresh wave of howling spectres swarmed him. I summoned a fire elemental, a swirling vortex of flame, to ward the spirits away from Liliana as she struggled to her feet.

When Liliana’s blade finally clove the first construct in two, the spectres it controlled vanished, their tormented faces softening into expressions of thanks before they faded. We converged on the second one, which exhaled a cloud of green, noxious smog. We coughed, our eyes watering, but pressed the attack. A combined strike from Alistan and Liliana finally brought it down, and the last of the captured souls were freed. In the wreckage of the constructs, we found it: the three-towered crest of the royal house of Keralon. The King’s own sigil.

We buried our dead. As we dug, Alistan grimly tried to piece together workable armor from the shattered plates of his own and his sister's. Gael, on watch, noted several owls sitting silently in a charred treetop, their heads turning in unison to follow our movements. We ignored them. Just as we were finishing, a lone rider approached.

It was Sir Sileos, the master of the Briar Ring. My former commander. He came with his hands raised in a mockery of peace. He told us this was punishment, sanctioned by the King for our "insurrection." Our lands, our titles, our people—all forfeit. Hayley spat at him, her words dripping with contempt, telling him a king who uses fey as his executioners is the only traitor here. Sileos’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. If that’s how we felt, he said, then they would have to turn their attention to the fair Lady Galiene. Alistan’s love. They would hate, he said, to have to hurt an innocent, unconscious girl.

Rage, pure and hot, flared in my chest. Alistan and Hayley unleashed a torrent of curses, but Gael, ever the calm center of our storm, held them back. Sileos laid out the terms: Galiene’s life for the Mask of Vincent, the very relic Gael now carried. There was no choice. The risk was too great. We agreed. When we asked of Sir Callos, Sileos informed us he’d been arrested for sedition, the Long Table disbanded. The King was cleaning house.

He returned shortly with a cart, Galiene’s still form wrapped in bearskins. Gael handed over the mask. After a moment of magical inspection, Sileos nodded, satisfied. He said the King would be pleased, and so long as we never returned to Keralon, we would be left alone. A hollow promise. We took Galiene and left the ruins of our life behind.

Back at the camp, Rachnar offered what help he could. A settlement near his home of Latebra Velore was possible, but with conditions: no hostilities against Keralon, and their dragon, Velora Morenthene, would not tolerate another of her kind—Galiene—in her territory. We asked for supplies instead, and he agreed to procure them. Then Feyris came to us. He spoke of growing power, of strange dreams of the royal court and being chased through a forest by a black-haired woman in fine clothes. He offered to join us, to help build a new home.

But it was Elsa’s words that cut the deepest. She found us by the fire, telling us we had simply gotten on the wrong side of the King, that we should be glad to be alive. She urged us to forget it all, to return to Tarn and live quiet lives. It was the exact same speech the deer-masked noble gave us in the Feywild. The realization struck me like a physical blow. She knew. She knew about the plots against us, and she either did nothing or… or she was a part of them. The warmth I once felt for her curdled into something cold and bitter. Another betrayal.

Late that night, after Hayley had a tense magical conversation with Lady Rootskewer—who denied coven involvement but admitted one of their own had helped the King. However punishments had been dolled out, and Hayley was now the proud owner of a new toad.

It was a scream that woke us. Lumiria. She burst into our camp, her eyes wide with terror, and threw herself behind me, begging me to save her.

I instinctively threw up a shield of force, my hands alight with fire, ready to face whatever monster pursued her. But the figure that emerged from the darkness was no monster. It was Amarra. My mentor.

"Well, well," she said, her voice dangerously calm. "I hope that fey bimbo isn't your latest conquest, Luke."

I stepped between them, trying to calm her, making her promise not to harm Lumiria. She simply rolled her eyes, flicked her wrist, and Lumiria dissolved in a shimmer of arcane energy, banished back to the Feywild. Just like that, she was gone. I stood there, stunned into silence.

Amarra turned her piercing gaze on me. "How goes the quest for the elemental hearts?" she questioned as she settled down by our fire. I stammered that I had three, with access to the fourth. "And your craft?" I showed her. With two waves of my hands, I pulled stone and soil from the earth, weaving it into the shape of a small, sturdy house. The effort drained me, but she seemed satisfied. She studied my face for a long moment, then gave a single, appreciative nod.

"Good," she said, a hint of something unreadable in her tone. "I'm here to help."

I don't know what that means. Amarra has been gone for so long, long enough that I no longer know what side she would be on. She was never a friend of the fey, and was one of the masters of the elemental hearts. But they had fallen under her watch. The betrayal of Elsa still felt raw on my soul. Looking at the raw, new house standing in the middle of our refugee camp, I can't decide if I've just found our salvation, or invited in a new, far more complicated disaster.
– Luke

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Trades and Punishments

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