Lastlight's Revenant #15

The room was dim, lit only by a single candle flickering on the desk. Sylrithiel sat behind it, her fingers curled around the edges of a book with no title, its blank cover smooth as bone.

She looked up as Garran entered, her silver eyes clouded with confusion.

For a long moment, she simply stared at him. Then, hesitantly, she spoke.

"Garran...? Garran Dornblade?"

Garran raised an eyebrow. "That is my name." He crossed his arms. "Didn’t know elves had such terrible memory."

The book snapped shut in her hands—and vanished into thin air.

Sylrithiel’s expression darkened. "It’s the opposite," she said sharply. "But I was careless with my magic. No proper casting. No time to weave the threads cleanly." Her fingers flexed, as if searching for something lost. "I paid more than I intended. And I didn’t even get to choose what was taken."

Garran opened his mouth to demand an explanation—what price? What had she lost?—but she cut him off with a raised hand.

"What do you intend to do?" she asked, her voice steadier now, though her gaze still held a flicker of uncertainty.

Garran studied her. She was deflecting, and badly. But the demons were at the gates, the city was burning, and whatever secrets Sylrithiel carried, they would have to wait.

"As it happens," he said, stepping closer, "I’m here to discuss just that." He leaned against the desk, lowering his voice. "Beneath this city, there might be ruins. An older foundation, buried by time. If we can find a way down, it could be our only chance to get these people out alive."

Sylrithiel hummed, tapping a slender finger against the desk. "It’s as sound a plan as any—assuming these ruins exist." Her silver eyes flicked up to meet his. "What role do you expect me to play?"

Garran didn’t hesitate. "Can you find a passage to the ruins? And if it’s not here, can you hide everyone long enough to reach it?"

A sigh escaped her lips. "Peering into lost secrets and hiding truths isn’t the domain of a sorcerer." She tilted her head, as if listening to a voice only she could hear. "That would require an inquisitor of Saelith."

Garran frowned. "Inquisitor of who?"

Sylrithiel's fingers stilled against the desk. "What the elves once called Seravain," she said, her voice carrying the weight of centuries. "The Whispering Thorn, to your people. That's what we called her long ago in our prayers... before the schism tore the old ways apart."

Garran's hand instinctively went to his sword hilt as his mind flashed to the Inquisitors of Seravain—black-clad fanatics who moved through the night like shadows, their knives ever-ready to purge "heresies" against the Five.

He'd seen their work firsthand during his knighthood; entire villages gone silent after some whispered rumor of pagan worship.

"The elves worshipped our gods?" The question left his lips before he could stop it, his mind warring with sudden unease. If those fanatics ever learned that even a whisper of elven devotion to the Five still lingered...

Sylrithiel's lips curved in a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "For a time. Though we knew Saelith as the Silent Watcher rather than your Whispering Thorn. Different masks for the same divine truth." 

Her nail traced the grain of the wood. "But that was before your Radiant Court declared all other interpretations blasphemy. Before the pyres... It's a complicated subject, and we seem to have veered off-topic..."

A chill ran down Garran's spine. He'd carried enough sealed orders in his knightly days to know what she wasn't saying—the Purges of the Inquisition in times past, when entire elven enclaves had burned for the crime of "imperfect worship."

"Complicated indeed," he muttered, forcibly steering the conversation back. "But you're right—not the time."

Sylrithiel’s smirk was thin and weary. "Now then... back to your plan." She waved a hand, dismissing the thread. "We’ll have to find the way ourselves. As for hiding everyone..." 

A glint of something dangerous flickered in her gaze. "We don’t need concealment. We need a distraction. Something to make the demons look elsewhere when we move."

Garran crossed his arms. "It’d need to be a hell of a distraction."

Her smirk sharpened. "Leave that to me." She rose, her movements fluid despite the lingering disorientation. "Though I’ll need help. And time to plan."

Garran nodded. "You’ll have both." He turned to leave, then paused at the door. "Just make sure whatever you’re planning cleanses as much demon filth as possible."

Sylrithiel’s laughter followed him into the hall—light, melodic, and utterly without warmth.

...

The bonefire spat embers into the bruised twilight, each one winking out before it could singe the barricade of sharpened stakes and splintered market stalls.

Garran flexed his fingers near the flames, watching shadows writhe across his gauntlets like the ghosts of old wounds.

Around the church’s perimeter, other fires burned—small, desperate things, their light clinging to the huddled shapes of watchful soldiers. The scene was too familiar. A decade of nights with the Repentants had been spent just like this: backs to some crumbling wall, blades across knees, waiting for the dark to birth teeth and claws.

The only difference here was the silence. No drunken taunts. No hissed oathbreaker slung his way. These men stared into the flames with the same hollow-eyed exhaustion as the damned, but without the cruelty to spare.

'Desperation makes brothers of us all,' Garran thought, 'right up until the demons come.'

"You seem distracted."

Kaelvar’s voice was gravel wrapped in smoke. He extended a waterskin, the leather worn smooth by generations of Varekai hands.

Garran took the offering without comment. The first swallow hit his throat like a torch to dry tinder. He coughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What the hell is this?"

"Wolf’s milk," Kaelvar said, baring teeth in something too sharp to be a smile. "Mixed with kharad—fermented mare’s blood. My people drink it to remember that life bites back."

He watched as Garran took another measured sip. "So. The duke’s whelp. You called him friend." The unspoken question hung between them, edged like a gutting knife. Is he?

The kharad burned its way down to Garran’s stomach. He studied the flames, remembering Edric’s blood-flecked grin in the church, the way his fingers had trembled around his sword hilt even as he joked about meeting his ancestors.

"Friend’s too heavy a word, one I learned to use sparingly" Garran said at last. "But he didn’t flinch when the walls fell. That’s rarer than gold."

Kaelvar grunted, swirling the contents of the waterskin. "You mourn him already, and he still breathes."

Garran exhaled through his nose, watching the firelight lick the rust from his vambraces. "Edric’s fate was sealed the moment those claws tore into his gut. No use mourning it." He flexed his sword hand, the joints popping like knuckles of a hanged man. "Still. Wish I could’ve done more for him."

A dry heh escaped Kaelvar. The Varekai warrior leaned back against a splintered market stall, the bones in his hair clacking softly. "No need to fret over spilled blood, oathbreaker. You can't do more—" His tattooed fingers tapped the waterskin. "—but I did."

Garran’s head snapped up. The fire cast Kaelvar’s face in jagged shadows, turning his grin into something feral. "What did you do?"

"Gave him the freedom to choose." Kaelvar shrugged, as if discussing the weather. "To die whimpering in a bed, or as the warrior he wishes to be." He tossed the waterskin. "Seemed kinder than letting the rot take him slow."

Garran caught it, his grip tightening. For a breath, the night air hung thick between them—the unspoken truth of what kinder meant.

He stared at the waterskin, his jaw tightening, then took a long pull. The kharad burned, but not half as much as the image of Edric’s boyish bravado crumbling under pain.

A warrior’s death," Garran muttered. "Suppose that’s all any of us can ask for now."

Kaelvar chuckled, low and rough. "Speak for yourself. I intend to die old. My wives singing, my children laughing, the Maw’s filth nothing but bones in our glades." His chain slithered through his fingers like a serpent tasting the air. "A man should leave something behind besides corpses."

Garran’s mouth quirked. "Huh. You can say decent things when you’re not spouting your ancestors' riddles." He raised the skin in a mock toast. "I’ll drink to that."

"Slowly." Kaelvar’s eyes gleamed in the dark. "Night’s long, and the skin’s not bottomless."

Somewhere beyond the barricade, a shutter banged in the wind—a hollow sound, like a coffin lid closing.

Garran took another sip anyway.