B2 Chapter 17: Screams of a Friend

A week ago – on the road to the Dreadwood

Caledon sat with the reigns in his hands. He stared out into the darkness of the evening, staring up at Idriel and Valafor as the twin moons shone down upon Elucidor. With a gentle nudge of the reigns, he guided the horses along the cobblestone path, as they carved their way out of Brimstone’s winterlands and into the highlands.

They left the eternal winterstorm behind them. Brimstone and the Verscallian Peaks at their backs, they entered sweeping hills of green. In the moonlight, a mixture of gold and silver, Caledon admired the way the wind swept through the idle blades of grass, sending waves rippling over the hills.

He stared up at the twin moons, scars evident on their surface. As a young boy, he had often marvelled at them, wondering at what lay beyond their world of Elucidor, in the darkness beyond.

What nightmares.

He stared at his palms.

If it was nightmares he was looking for, he didn’t need to travel far.

The serenity was interrupted by voices at his back, originating from within the carriage.

“You will all have a choice, in the Descent.”

“With my utmost respect, Lord Ratlad, I disagree. A choice between Insanity and survival is no choice at all.”

Caledon lips upturned as Shiver bestowed her second nickname. It seemed like she had attempted to reach a compromise between “Ratlad” and “Lord Quietus Vingrave”. Thus, had “Lord Ratlad” come about, and Caledon was certain that it was here to stay.

“How many times have I told you, it is Lord Quietus Vingrave to you, young Fearshaper. It is not an equal choice, no, but a choice nonetheless. That goes especially for you, Shiver.”

Before Shiver could rise up in opposition, he held his walking stick aloft, halting her reply.

“Between Insanity and survival, you say? I have said it once before, and I shall say it again. They call it a “descent” for a reason. The further you descend, the more readily you will invoke your nightmares into reality. But so does the distance between you and your Fear, close.”

Cast from the light within the carriage, Caledon admired Quietus’ shadow. Impeccable posture, the bearing of a king of a forsakened kingdom, he liked to think. In Icey’s absence, he had worked hard to share all he knew about Fearshaping. And of what awaited them in their descent.

He had noticed, that ever since their descent from Anhedonia, their guides had regained more of themselves. His guide had finally suffered to tell him his name.

Zel. Beyond that, he had received little more than insults.

“My message for all of you is clear. You are free to cease in your descent at any stage. Too many an elf has fallen to Insanity, seduced by the power that the darker stages of Fear promise. Delirium, and most of all, Dread.”

Vale interceded, as she raised her hand enthusiastically, giving them all a glimpse at what had so annoyed her tutors.

“But Lord Quietus, isn’t the goal to reach Serenity? The final stage of Fear? To be released from our Fears forever?”

“Ahh what a curious question. You continue to surprise me, my charge.”

“Oh, thank you-“

“With your IGNORANCE! Foolish of you, for one with such an honoured name as Revenant! Parroting the untruths that you encounter uncritically. I spit on your grave.”

Vale sputtered, reeling from her guide’s insult in abject horror. Shiver’s laughter erupted from within the carriage. Even Caledon couldn’t help but crack a grin.

Along with his regal appearance, Vale’s guide of death had regained some interesting methods of insult with Vale’s descent from Anhedonia.

“Many an elf has perished, following a hopeless dream. Serenity is tantalising, but the journey is fraught with death and terror. When you journey into the Dreadwood, seeking to descend from Trepidation, do so with intent. The symptoms of your Fear will deepen, their ability to reach and torment you, enhanced. Especially so for all of you, descending as gloriously as you did, with immaculate Fearcores to show for it. You, Shiver, most of all.”

Quietus’ words ended the air of levity that had previously permeated the carriage.

The undead rat continued, his tone no longer light. His green eyes burning with a fervour that they had lacked a moment before.

“I know, why you descend, Shiver. Know that her sacrifice was for you”

“It’s my fault that Icey’s gone.”

Shiver’s words hung heavy in the air. She delicately drew her Phobia into reality, peering into its cracked surface, white mist peeling gently off the blade of ice. Her eyes scoured it as if searching.

For a sign.

“Had I not been such a thoughtless idiot in my descent, maybe she’d still be here. I owe it to her. If I descend, perhaps I can save her.”

“No.”

His acidity had turned to warmth in an instant.

“It is our pride, as guides, to guide you into the depths of your Fear. To help you master your them. You, more than anyone, dance at the edge of Insanity, mocking it. She cares for you, but she would never forgive you if you descended only for her. Tell me.”

The rat peered through the gap in the fabric roof of the carriage, into the night skies above.

“What is our purpose? The prerogative of guides? Have you pondered it?”

Vale once again, rose her hand with enthusiasm, heedless of the change in mood.

“Ooh ooh! Obviously, to guide us in the mastery of our Fear, like you said! To teach us-“

“We exist to stave off Insanity. We bear some of the burden of your Fear, so that you may descend.”

“Lord Ratlad, at times I feel like you drive me to it-“

“As do you, for us. A different form of burden.”

Caledon whipped his head around, staring, as his peers were, at the undead rat.

“What? Lord Quietus, do you remember something?”

“No, I do not have all the answers. All I can speak to is that which I am. I yearn, for connection. I possess glimpses of a past life, long forgotten. A lesser form. I walk an alien world. But this, I do know.”

The rat’s green eyes flared to life.

“We exist, for each other. Together, we brave what we could not, alone. By accepting Icey as your guide, you gave her what we crave the most, Shiver. A companion. A reprieve from our isolation. A way to rediscover ourselves. Even in her pain, her wish is fulfilled. The choice to descend is yours alone. Do not make light of her will by-“

Caledon yelped, as Shiver tumbled into the driver’s seat beside him. She shut the window into the carriage, bringing an abrupt halt to the rat’s protests.

“Welcome.”

“He’s especially talkative today. Needed a break.”

‘Spending time with a Brimstone is your way of taking a break?’

They exchanged a smirk.

“Didn’t you know, there’s nothing more cathartic than killing a Brimstone. Careful, lordling. It’s my favourite hobby.”

Caledon chuckled and enjoyed the warm night breeze. Shiver broke the silence.

“So, what will you do?”

Caledon grimaced.

“Once we reach the Dreadwood? I’ve been asking myself the very same thing.”

Caledon paused, letting the silence fill the air between them. He was hesitant to break it, but he forced himself onwards – as much for Shiver as it was for himself.

“I want to know why father had to die like he did. Why Vetrian was so intent on killing him.”

Caledon’s eyes darkened.

“All this Insanity. My dead grandfather, turning up alive. These claims that my father is allied to the Revenants. The lies about nobles being the only ones capable of Fearshaping.”

He shook his head.

“Silas made it seem like Highlady Flora has answers. Beyond that… I haven’t a clue.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Caledon’s eyes met Shiver’s cerulean eyes, which shone gently in the lantern light. He swallowed.

“You mean with Fearshaping? I-I don’t know. Frankly Shiver… I don’t know if I can do what you did, for revenge. My Fear is… a terrible thing.”

The girl let out of a soft laugh.

“Then you’re wiser than me, lordling. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been filled with so much… hate, things would be different now.”

Melancholy dripped from Shiver’s lips as they formed into a soft smile.

“Lord Ratlad has it right, it is our choice, whether or not we descend. Vale’s decision is clear.”

Shiver smirked.

“You wouldn’t think so, given how jumpy she is. Out of all of us, she’s the surest. Who would have guessed it.”

Caledon nodded. Despite appearances, Vale pursued her revenge single-mindedly. You didn’t glimpse it, in those pretty lavender eyes, that had a habit of frustratingly making his heart temporarily malfunction. Nor in the way that she betrayed her bearing as a lady, sometimes prissy and arrogant in simple ways that surprised.

But Caledon couldn’t help but look to Shiver in surprise.

“You left yourself out. Aren’t you sure about your descent?”

Shiver grimaced and turned away from him.

“It’s easy for the rat to say, isn’t it. That it’s my will alone.”

Shiver continued, staring at the hills as they passed.

“You would know, wouldn’t you. You’re a lord. What happens when we delve deeper into our Fear. The consequences.”

Caledon nodded. He had seen it, firsthand.

When his father walked, he left flame in his wake. His aura of flame, even so carefully controlled, posed a danger to all of them. Even given its nature as a regenerative flame. Compared to his father’s Fear… Shiver’s Fear of ice was all-consuming.

Just seated in her proximity, Caledon could feel the cold begin to sink into his skin, and she had barely descended into Trepidation.

“You’re afraid that you won’t be able to live with Pov and Marta if you further descend.”

He nodded in agreement, understanding. He looked down at his palms and saw them covered in blood.

“I can’t trust my own reality. I can’t trust myself, even as weak as I am in Trepidation. I wish I had taken the choice offered to me, and attempted to awaken a Fear of flame like my sister. I was so ignorant, thinking I could awaken a Fear of something I loved… Creation, or some form of it, to craft wonders that would be of benefit to elven society. Such an arrogant dream.”

As he turned his gaze towards Shiver, his eyes found her eyes. Since descending, her irises had lightened. “Eyes the colour of snow in a thunderstorm” was no longer such an arrogant, fanciful descriptor. How cruel, to have to choose between saving her guide, and living the peaceful life she had dreamed of, with her family.

Descend and become a threat to those you love.

Or abandon the guide that had sacrificed so much for her, despite barely even knowing her.

Shiver’s smile so often visceral and uncaring, stretched painfully. Caledon placed an arm on her shoulder reassuringly, shaking her ever so slightly. It was a fragile façade, that he knew Shiver had hid behind. Like a razor thin pane of polished ice to divert the gazes of those who sought to pierce it.

“It was easy for the rat to say. “My choice”, my arse.”

Caledon gently withdrew his hand from her shoulder.

“He doesn’t hear her screams.”

He tried not to flinch from the burn of the cold.

----

Before she had awakened as a Fearshaper, Vale’s nightmares had come in many forms.

They had never lacked variety, tormenting her in a myriad of ways.

She walked the halls of the Archcity of Death in her nightmare, once more. She was asleep after her brush with the bodysnatcher. The creatures of the hamlet beyond had fled after her triumph, and she had retreated there to rest after her sojourn through the Gravewoods. Quietus was taking watch, as she slept.

She passed the corridor of paintings she had visited in her previous nightmare. This was her second, since descending to Trepidation.

She walked before towering wooden doors carved from the ebony flesh of lanterntrees. Pushing the doors open, she walked onto a walkway extending out from the castle into the cliff that bordered Soulhaven.

The Archcity was sandwiched by two such cliffs, suspended in midair by an unknowable force. The walkways themselves would not have been sufficient in supporting its weight. When she had first glimpsed the ivory cliffs, and seen how Soulhaven had been positioned, her first thought was the impracticality of it all.

Wouldn’t it expose the Archcity to a height disadvantage, if its enemies appeared on the cliffs bordering it?

That was the arrogance and ignorance embodied in the armies that now comprised the bones that built the cliffs to their heights.

In truth, they were not cliffs of solid ivory, but of an intricate latticework of bone. The masterwork of a Fearshaper of bone, one of the castle’s long departed former masters, who had surely reached Serenity.

They doubled as crypts, housing her father’s vast armies. Yet even they were not enough.

Silent wind tugged at her hair as she walked onwards, bringing with it a soft sound. It sounded like the ebb and flow of waves.

She still remembered peering over the edge as a young girl, looking into the shadowy depths beneath Soulhaven and picturing a dark and vast river of souls that flowed beneath it.

Her step-sister Savagery had taken great care to correct her assumption, by chucking her off the walkway to catch a glimpse of the waves.

Waves they were, the undead that roiled beneath Soulhaven. A river of bone, sinew and death. The endless hordes of her father wandered beneath the city, the rattling of bones melding into a chorus akin to the crashing of waves.

They were her father’s prize, the fruit that her father had reaped in his Rampage of Undeath. The result of bringing Archcity and humble village alike to their knees, such that even elves in fringe towns, like Eleric, would tear her limb from limb were they to discover her identity. Thousands of their friends, family and beloved reduced to the sound of crashing waves of bone in Soulhaven’s depths.

Her father had caught her mid-fall, before she had joined them, of course. An enormous skeletal appendage emerging effortlessly from the cliffs to catch her, and return her to the walkway.

It had been the subject of her nightmares for weeks. Drowning in a sea of undead, her flesh being rent from her bone. Being crushed underhand by the very appendage that had saved her.

Those were the nightmares that she had prior to her awakening.

She wished for them back. Those were the easy ones.

Vale now stood in a nightmare that terrified her. But she couldn’t bring herself to run.

The presence that had joined her as she walked Soulhaven’s halls in her previous dreams had finally revealed itself to her. The courtesy of the invocations that she had gained, which revealed a dimension to her Fear she could never come back from.

She began to understand Quietus’ words of warning, all those days ago in the carriage. That she should stride in Trepidation with intent. That it would draw her nightmares closer to her.

The woman was dressed in beautiful black robes, trimmed in darksilver. She had elegant eyebrows, that framed entrancing lavender eyes.

Burgandy lips, same as the day she died.

Her mother floated before her. More terrifying than on the day of her death. Free from the cheap tricks of her Fear designed to induce terror. Her skin was not marred with decay. The bone of her jaw was not visible. Her entrails did not leak onto the floor and drag along the ground as she walked.

Instead, she appeared before her as she did in life. Smiling a kind smile, that quivered, held a breath too long as her mother often did. Growing self-conscious of it, turning away, embarrassed, only to grace her with a more genuine one.

Her lips moved, and Vale experienced true terror.

Her mother’s words fell on deaf ears. As they had, every single time Vale had met her in the nightmare.

“She was beautiful.”

Vale fought to control her expression, avoiding Quietus’ gaze.

“So much for keeping watch. What if another bodysnatcher creeps up on me?”

Her guide ignored her.

“For all of death’s terrors, it strikes the deepest in the simplest of ways.”

Quietus looked up at her, her heart in her throat.

“The yearning, to hear those that have departed, one final time. To have pointless conversations with them. To laugh, love, and despise them all over again. Do you see now, my young guide. Why your father failed to comprehend the depths of death. Why he does not have the power that you do.”

He stared towards her mother, as she did.

Then, he calmly met her gaze.

“He did not love as you did.”

Her mother’s lips moved wordlessly, inviting her to decipher them. Tempting her.

Vale’s vision flashed in her rage. Love? They were two sides of the same coin.

She directed her words to the Asale Revenant of her nightmares.

“Leave. You would torment me, even after your death? You’re selfish as always, mother.”

She hadn’t expected the woman to react, but she glimpsed the stutter in the specter’s lips. Her heart ached, as her conflicting emotions came to a head. She screamed.

“Go! Leave me, you’ve done enough. I’ll save Dawn, kill father, and perhaps his death will make up for his sins. Nothing will make up for yours.”

She felt tears slip from her eyes, unbidden.

“You knew the man. You could have saved us. Your sweet words won’t work on me, it is a blessing that I can’t hear them.”

The nightmares in which she fell to the undead, her flesh rent from her skin, where she was crushed underfoot, rising to join her father’s hordes…

Those were not the nightmares that scared her.

The nightmares that Vale truly Feared, were those that brought with them a quiet dread.

That acted as a mirror, reminding of her greatest regrets.

And her greatest wishes.