CHAPTER 2 – Outside of Fate.
SIGIL (DAY)
Shade awoke the next morning after RESTING and contemplated her next move. She doubted there was anything worth value in Tiresh, so she decided to take the path to the north. It would lead her to the uninviting forest, but she figured that there might be something worthwhile there. As she walked the path, she took note of just how everything seemed somehow different than she remembered when she was a child. Things were darker now, and there was a definite sense of grimness that filled the air. She recalled that as a child, there was a time when the hill she was crossing was covered in a field of beautiful flowers and the trees weren’t such a dark shade of green. It was inviting back then, before the dead began to walk again. The Kingdom wasn’t perfect of course, nowhere is. But now the very boughs that had offered her comfort as she walked into them seemed to warn her away. The trees loomed over her, the canopy blotting out the sun almost entirely as she plunged deeper into the forest. And then, suddenly she arrived in a grove.
The Gnarled Tree (DAY)
The first thing that she noticed was the Gnarled Tree. In the middle of this dark wood rose a strange, twisting ash tree. Its bark was rotting and yet as the rot spread, it also strangely appeared to be renewed. It gave the tree the appearance that it was writhing. The next thing Shade noticed was that there were three more of those men in frayed robes. She didn’t recognize any of them, but they were surrounding a bush in the middle of the grove, muttering observations to themselves about it. Shade couldn’t hear them, and she considered for a moment whether to sneak away or FIGHT them. She realized that she couldn’t do much else unless she FOUGHT them. Her experience with the three men yesterday had proven informative, so she considered her best options first. She didn’t recognize the bush the men were investigating, but she did recognize that they were keeping their distance from it. She wasn’t sure why, but decided that was unimportant. As she was considering her options, one of the men glanced her way and frowned.
“There’s a woman over there.” he said, pointing at Shade.
“Excellent! The Stars delivered her unto us! We’ve been needing a test subject to feed the bush.” the other said.
The three men attempted to advance upon Shade, but Shade was fast on the draw – before they could even react she had let loose a rock from her sling. It found its mark with a sickening crack between the zealot’s eyes, and the man crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The attack must have taken one of the other zealots by surprise, because he stared at his fallen comrade in disbelief. The third however ignored this, and advanced upon Shade. He ran straight for her and drew a thick wooden club, which he slammed into Shade’s shoulder. She let out a hiss of pain and turned her attention to him. Shade didn’t like the way the bush suddenly seemed to writhe itself, as though it were awakening from some sort of slumber and decided to avoid getting close to the bush itself. The second zealot was shaken out of his stupor from a shout by his comrade and he rushed at Shade, drawing his own weapon, a broken short sword. The club wielding Zealot bashed Shade upside the head, momentarily dazing her. She stepped back from the club wielding zealot, clutching her head where he had bashed her. The other zealot took advantage of Shade’s momentary distraction and stabbed her in the left arm. She grit her teeth and shrugged the attack off as best she could and drove her long sword into the club wielding zealot’s gut. The zealot gurgled up blood and Shade kicked his corpse from the end of her sword.
Shade whirled around to the final zealot. He approached her with a leering grin and punched her in the diaphragm, knocking her breath away. As she doubled over in pain, she saw a vine shoot from the bush and hurl something from itself onto the ground next to it. It looked like a caltrop carved from a splintered bone. She decided then and there that she definitely wanted nothing to do with the bush at all. She straightened up and bashed the zealot’s mouth with the pommel of her sword as she stepped away from the man.
He spat a tooth out and snarled. “You’ll pay for that, bitch.”
He rushed her again, driving his blade into Shade’s hip. She grunted in pain and wrenched herself free from his sword. She had to end this quickly, as she wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. She swept the man off his feet and stabbed him through his sternum. He clutched the blade futilely and then fell slack against the ground, dead. She turned her attention to the bush just in time to see it throw another caltrop of bone on the ground. It didn’t seem that it could hurt her as long as she didn’t step on them, so let loose several stones from her sling until the bush stopped moving. She carefully swept the shards of bone to the side and investigated the bush. At the base of the bush she found all manner of bones from squirrels to wolves with roots tangled around them like greedy fingers. A vine was curled around a small rat’s skull, which was obviously beginning to crack when the bush was defeated. Shade figured that the bush must’ve pulled corpses in to fertilize it and then used the bones to create the caltrops for self defense. She decided to SEARCH the area and found within the pile of bones. She also took stock of her surroundings again. Though the gnarled tree was new, she was certain she had been to this glade before. She took a few minutes to SEARCH for a path she knew was here that should lead to the boat house. And she found it – hidden through some overgrown bushes, which she easily hacked away as night fell. She began walking to the boathouse again, determined to return to the island tonight. Along the way, she decided it prudent to drink one of her healing potions, unsure of what she would find on the island tonight.
BOATHOUSE (NIGHT)
The first thing she noticed when she arrived back at the boathouse was that there was a distinct lack of blood or any other sign of her battle with the zealots yesterday. If it weren’t for the lack of blood, she would have thought that the Crimson Duke had claimed their bodies for his army of undead minions. The spectral boatman was waiting for her in their boat again, and she decided to ask them about this.
“Er, hello,” she said to them.
“Good evening, Engraved.” they replied in that crackling, ephemeral whisper of theirs. “I sense that thou wishes to ask a question. Wouldst thou also wish to travel to the island yonder?”
Shade nodded as she got settled into the boat. “Yes, and yes, I do. Yesterday, I fought some men here after we returned. Do… you know what happened to them? I thought maybe their bodies got claimed, but… there isn’t even blood or a new footprint.”
The boatman regarded her for a moment and nodded. “Thine eyes deceive thee not. ‘Tis true that the corpses of thy foes are no longer here. But it is not because a necromancer has claimed their bodies either. Thou art outside the tapestry of Fate now. This is why thou cannot DIE, and why thou can no longer pay me in what I wish. When you meet thine demise, thou shall reawaken at thy sigil, on the same day as when thou DIED. The same happens when thou chooses to REST at thy sigil. The only way to end this is to seize the 7 Runes of Obron, and use the power granted to thee to wrest control of the loom of thy Fate. Some foes, by their own nature are outside of the Weave of Fate and will not return. The one thou calls ‘The Crimson Duke’ is one such example. For him, it is because he is directly tied to your Fate by virtue of being the one who first slew you,” The boatman paddled the boat as they explained this, “Another such is the Lost Knight, though this is because he has cast aside the yoke of his own fate by failing to die when the Ruined King seized the Rune of this realm. And obviously, so too are all the Rune Lords like you. Thou art two sides of the same coin. Ah, it appears that we are here. When thou art ready to return, I will answer more questions. For now, safe hunting, Engraved.”
Shade disembarked and considered this new, troubling piece of information.
RUINOUS CAMP (NIGHT)
Shade wandered through the empty camp, her head dizzy with the knowledge that her foes would be alive the next time she came through that area if she RESTED at her Sigil or DIED. It certainly would affect how she handled some of her resources going forward. She shook her head of those thoughts and turned them toward the present. She knew she wouldn’t find the health potions here to refill her stock, but she vaguely remembered seeing some notes before she headed out the last time she was here. She decided to take the time to SEARCH the area for those notes. After a time she found them and studied them. They were notes about a necromantic ritual that the Crimson Duke was going to attempt on the Ruined King at the very last moment to seize the Rune for himself. The plan obviously backfired, and the Crimson Duke fled after besieging the castle. The majority of the rest of the notes were about searching for a way to separate the Rune from the Rune Lord, and claim it himself.