Audience With Verdan

The guards escort Renard to a small castle not too far out of town. Being such a small country, there are no fiefs within it but the one Lord Verdan presides over, which means he rules the whole country. It’s a position that on the face sounds like kingship, but exactly because he doesn’t have any fiefs or territories governed by lords beneath him, were his authority scaled against comparable figures in Lacren, he’d be much closer to a Count than a monarch.

Which isn’t to say that his influence is lacking, but that his short reach likely has kept his ambitions insular. The manner of the two guards as they escort Renard remains serious and quietly tense, as though capacity remains for Renard to decline Lord Verdan, which in itself reinforces Renard’s confidence that going forward to see him is safe.

An attendant in the antechamber asks for Renard to disarm. He does, then panics as the attendant motions to separate from Renard — but acquiesces quickly, seeing Renard’s strangely and surprisingly abrupt urgency, to staying within Renard’s vicinity. The younger guard returns from speaking with Lord Verdan, and announces that Verdan will now see Renard.

Renard enters the throne room. Though decently spacious, the darkness and plainness of this room’s uneven stonework saps any feeling of grandeur, as though he has more entered a vacant dungeon than anywhere a king would want to sit. Verdan himself is similar. Though his outfit is richly ornamented and plainly well-kept, an underwhelming lack of authority in his posture degenerates him into an everyday brigand on a throne.

He is also wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, many of which are stained and seep with yellow fluid. The cloth obscures his face, eyes, and expression, but Verdan’s head dips with clear amusement at Renard’s alarm upon seeing him. That alarm fades quickly, as awareness he stands before a leader of a potentially hostile nation jerks Renard’s chin up, feet forward, and back straight.

The bandages are thin enough not to muffle Verdan’s voice. He greets Renard by expressing his surprise that he came here, but in wistful contemplation, also voices that it is perhaps a motion of fate that a servant of a ghoul would find himself cast to Verdanheim.

Discomforted, Renard snaps. And what are you, creature? Also a ghoul?

No, no. Verdan laughs, rivulets of that subtly odorous fluid frothing and streaming like piss down his front. That young guard, who remains present and watching, winces at Verdan with pain, then at Renard with accusation. Verdan smooths his dirtied bandages, though his hands cannot clean them — whatever horrific constitution he has underneath, he seems long accustomed to it.

He is not a ghoul, or a witch, he continues. But only a man who has tampered with Nix. It’s truly an unfortunate state. Some would think you lose all your humanity, upon even touching the venom that rises out of that hole. Kha-HAH, HAH, HAH, he spits up more laughter as if puking.

Renard cringes, but understands. Surely few would wish to associate with a nation run by a man who looks like this — rather, if Verdan speaks true, it’s incredible his land hasn’t been persecuted and destroyed as a hexant kingdom. He is conceding himself corrupted by Nix. Renard glances to Kingslayer, abruptly nervous about staying too long on this cursed soil without it, but refocuses to Verdan.

And what, your grace, solidifies your good soul?

Ahh pish, s-s-s-so sceptical, sceptical of me, Renard? The Cavalier. Verdan shifts in his seat, his frivolity waning with genuinely wounded disappointment. He explains, Nix has its way of enslaving people… whether that’s by body, mind, or soul. Everyone comes to it eventually. Some of us are just more damned, to feel that sting echoing before we have died… a lash for the ambition of breaking this cursed thing apart. So scepticism, no, it’s not new at all, and poor Verdanheim is left all alone. The eyes and tongues of lords and ladies squeal, cockroach! Skitter to your dark! Now I… my state frightens the prospects. It quite likes us to feel disgusting.

Though Verdan is saying profoundly reassuring things and agreeable motives, Renard cannot help but feel more and more uneasy, and this conversation more and more precarious, as Verdan grins beneath his bandages.

What have you come for?, he asks Renard.

Renard’s hand floats to where Kingslayer’s hilt would normally rest on his hip, but finds only air as he clears his throat. Though unsure how to answer, he forces confidence into his voice as he requests that Verdan give him more insight into the nature of this land and this kingdom, first.

Finding this fair, and content to talk about it, Verdan obliges. Verdanheim is a nation of dregs. Founded not long before the calamity that was the opening of Nix, it is the only nation anywhere near Nix’s border that did not relocate its key settlements and structures away from the pit and abandon the territory as a holding entirely, or even just stay put, but actively drew closer. That’s because Verdan’s grandfather, the nation’s founder, was drawn to Nix with incredible curiosity and a sense of higher purpose. Though aware from the second he saw the pit that it was a dangerous place, he suspected that the solutions and secrets behind the phenomenon of ghouling could only be found by delving the hole.

Verdan pauses as Renard considers these words. Was Verdan the Elder successful?

Verdan splays out his arm to indicate himself. If Renard is asking whether his forebearers entered Nix — yes. And even came out again. By Renard’s reaction it’s clear that he regarded the very prospect as doubtful. Which is a fair, even correct, thing to think, if you have ever stood at the top of the pit. Simply descending into it won’t necessarily send you downward. The air and space itself is warped, especially at that opening threshold, as if forming a barricade. This is the quality that complicates organised delves, of which there have been an attempted handful over the decades… the Ordish, for example, have attempted to construct bridges to establish a trade route here to the West, though to say ‘attempt’ is rather a disservice to them, as truthfully they were successful. But the barrier shifted like a rolling tide, devoured their bridge, and left them where they began. The same is true of stairways down that we in the West have built.

Though fundamentally curious how these delves went, and eager to know Verdanheim’s secret method of entering Nix, Renard shifts his focus to question how and why a community remained here regardless. Surely not every civilian shares Verdan’s personal interest in Nix. Because that’s the population Renard has seen here — civilians.

The young guard shifts uncomfortably as Verdan too shifts in his seat. Then cackles. How scary it is to know another lord’s soldier was eyeing the breadth of his military resources!

Tis merely reflex, Renard rebuts.

Hoo, poor Verdanheim hopes! He puts his hand to his forehead dramatically. Well, well, Renard, he will gladly talk about his bloodline’s achievements until the whole of Nix closes up, but probing into the circumstances of the local peasantry is a little too much for a stranger. Oh, Verdan’s no tyrant, of course, but let them first be less of strangers. Renard has come to Verdanheim in allegiance to what lord?

Renard falls quiet.

Verdan tilts his head, unsure what to make of this. Because Renard hasn’t been acting like a rootless mercenary, but it also strikes Verdan as odd for him to be comfortably welcome in Lacren, when it’s highly probable that his former ghoul lord marked him. Others perhaps can’t understand the attraction darkness demands once it courts you even in passing, how irreparably it snares you… Verdan can. Verdan also has lodgings and money, and an open position in his ranks for a talented swordsman.

For Nix, of course, notes Renard.

Of course, Verdan mutters. Ohh! You are a hard little nut. There’s other lords in your mind, and I’m just not pretty at all!

Though vaguely guilty, Renard cannot shake his basic question, and basic suspicion, of why Verdan has been delving Nix — a question that even Renard can tell is a little too delicate for the answerer and revealing for the questioner for him to straightforwardly ask it. Though it ostensibly aligns with Renard’s goals to place himself with Verdan, if his motives are not righteous ones Renard can agree with, then he would rather stay with Lacren than do anything by his tune.

It seems unlikely to Renard that Verdan too seeks the destruction of Arsene. His words do not seethe with enough hatred or zeal, but with the quaint paranoia of a petty lord happily farmsteading his patch of ground, which happens to include the enticingly unconquered frontier of Nix… and that which, after corrupting him, has asserted itself as his place. By that impression alone, despite his twisted appearance and erratic demeanour, Renard does not doubt his nature as basically, entirely human.

To the ghost of a man that I never knew, Renard answers. That is to whom I am pledged.

Though he had conceived it as a confident denial of Verdan, doubt flashes through Renard’s chest as he speaks. If these words are true, should he not ally with Verdan anyway?

Pledged to a dead man, but I am alive. Verdan implores. There’s nothing good I can give you?

Stricken with an abrupt wave of sadness, after a pause, Renard shakes his head.

I see… ohhh… Verdan moans, frowning beneath his bandages. Maybe we aren’t so compatible. Wah! That’s so sad! I thought we and Verdanheim maybe could be good friends. Boo hoo! Oh well. Verdanheim’s here if you lose your tether. …Lacren knows this?

Thrown off-balance by how smoothly Verdan seems to be letting Renard just leave after everything, Renard nods. It’s not openly spoken about out of politeness, but it’s also not a secret in Lacren that he’s still, at heart, the Iron King’s lackey.

You’re incredibly lucky to have such a kind home, says Verdan sincerely. He rolls his shoulders. But now a Lacrenese general has just gone romped over his lands. As a statesman, that’s a bit problematic. Mmh, but it doesn’t need to be bad. If Renard could sate Verdan’s curiosity about something, then we can retroactively agree this was his condition to entry and Verdan will forgive him for all the trespassing.

Renard clicks his throat and turns his head aside. If you are the lord, you will do as you will.

Don’t be sour when it’s true, Verdan chides teasingly. Renard’s visit really is very scary! If his allegiances and motives are unclear even to himself, then who knows who he could fall in with, or whose purposes this visit could wind up serving. But if his loyalty is still with Lacren, well, Verdan sees no reason not to reach out to them with good will. Yes, what he would like to do, and what may serve Lacren in the future, is if Verdan could get a look at that sword.

Renard freezes. What good is that for!? He wishes to snap, balanced against a profound awareness that Verdan is not making this move frivolously — this is a political manoeuvre that is going over his head, where he doesn’t have the place to say no. A shudder rises across Renard that he cannot suppress.

Delicate, is it? Verdan hums, waving his servant holding Kinglsayer to him. Come, come.

As the invisible string between himself and Kingslayer strains, Renard’s panic bursts out. Shouting, he sprints after the servant and grabs their shoulders, wrenches them to face him, and pleads for them to return Kingslayer. Guards along the room startle and move to restrain Renard — Verdan gestures them to stop, as Renard is not attacking the servant, but is hysterically begging, “stop, stop!"

These pleas do not move Verdan though, who extends his open palm to Renard to urge him calm and to halt. Guards stand ready to intervene if Renard takes another step closer — as the servant scales the short steps of Verdan’s dais, an absolute sense of paralysis and powerlessness closes over Renard more than anything he has felt in his life. The terror drops him to his knees, and though the sight of that servant and Verdan fondling Kingslayer locks his mouth in a silent scream, he cannot look away, as much as Renard would not be able to look away if Verdan were bouncing Renard’s beating heart off his ankle like a hackeysack.

He cannot even move like this. His body is Kingslayer, helpless.

Fascinating, Verdan mutters as if Renard is not there. He glances up from the inch of unsheathed blade he has been scrutinising to raise Kingslayer over his head—

Renard gasps, pushing himself off the fl—

—off the floor, he cann—

—cannot breathe, so much—

—darkness, he is drowning, he must, escape this dark and—

Satisfied, Verdan lowers the sword without lifting it experimentally back up this time, allowing Renard to stay properly conscious. Renard gasps, flails, and panics back to his feet, the mindless urge dominating him wholly to sprint up that dais and rip Kingslayer safely back into his grip. Dizzy and nauseous, he struggles to orient.

“Hm," Verdan holds out the sheathed Kingslayer for Renard to retrieve. “Steady-steady, there you go. What a very interesting phenomenon! How frighten—" Verdan cuts himself off and hugs the blade back to his chest, staring at it through his bandages. Renard, sweating and with tears in his eyes, takes the first heavy step towards the dais — Verdan absently raises his palm, gesturing him to stop.

Hopelessness and confusion, in this silence and under this easy authority, are all Renard can feel as he indeed pauses. Despondency weighs in his face and in every muscle. Verdan’s guards watch him, but moreso Verdan, themselves off-guard and curious of what spurred this order.

Verdan’s fingers inch up to his head, slip under his bandages, and slowly, begin to unravel them.

“Lord Verdan!" that one young guard shouts, breaking position to rush up to the dais. He moves with a paramedic’s urgency, as if he were watching a child heedlessly bring to his lips a bottle of poison.

But he fails to intervene before the bandages fall, and the horrible visage beneath is exposed both to scrutiny and to the elements—

—The visage of an entirely ordinary young man, eyes bulging wide, who pinches and squeezes the flesh of his own cheeks, disbelieving.

Verdan wordlessly jolts as the realisation settles that the flesh he is feeling is his own and real. The young guard’s advance too halts in shock. Verdan hugs Kingslayer even closer as he frantically unstrips the bandages from his hands, too, and again finds the appendages beneath to be completely smooth and normal. His astonished stare needs no explanation as his gaze carefully shifts to Renard: ‘oh, my god’.

Though Verdan can’t know how this happened, it seems the witchbane in Kingslayer has — temporarily — removed his corruption.

Verdan can’t let him go now. Though Renard knows this, he still cannot move — the anger that would move him to bash Verdan’s skull in is being restrained by the fear of knowing such an action would destroy him, and when he consults deeper inside himself on whether attacking Verdan may be a righteous action worth destroying himself for, all he finds is a village-boy petrified by problems too great for him.

Verdan lowers Kingslayer to his hip.

“—Be my servant," he says abruptly.

“You snake," Renard snaps. He punches the stone pillar beside him — Verdan is poised to move out of Renard’s conscious range if he makes any move for him, and even if the guards are theoretically weak enough for Renard to barrel through, there are certainly enough to grapple and slow him so Verdan can run, with Kingslayer, out of Renard’s range.

If that happens, who knows if Renard would ever wake up again. If he did, it would be in a cell.

Renard punches the pillar again, harder. “You snake! Worm! Snot!" He punches again, veins throbbing on his neck. More furious insults pour out of him, but even as they do, Renard cannot find the courage or the idiocy to move and so declare actioned malice against Verdan. He howls, Lacren will hear of this! She will take you, wicked rogue, and cut your neck from your shoulders!

But still, Renard does not move, only panting and screaming in impotent fury. Sadness and resignation shade Verdan’s gaze as negotiation removes itself as an option. Renard plainly doesn’t have the capacity to give Verdan reasons not to imprison him. Would the mercy of returning the blade, and the lightness that act would have on his conscience, be worth losing the immense practical benefits of keeping it?

While Verdan contemplates that question, Renard simmers. Rushing forward to attack Verdan, stupid as it is, may be his only option. Chin jutting out, Renard lowers his throbbing hand from the pillar to his hip, closed into a fist. A bulge in his pocket brushes against that fist. Renard’s brow scrunches as he kneads the bulge, then reaches into his pocket — in his grip, he finds Pleione’s rock.

He’s kept it on him this whole time. He’d just forgotten about it after dumping it in his pocket, since he hadn’t needed it.

Renard’s mind blanks. A fury roils so great and so incendiary inside him, it snaps past Renard’s capacity to even express. Not because he is angry to have discovered the stone — but because the solution it presents both for himself and for Verdan is so perfect, he hates it.

“This stone," Renard presents the rock on his open palm, precariously calm. “Is enchanted in the same way as Kingslayer."

The call works to pique Verdan’s interest. He calls a servant to retrieve the rock, takes it, then experiments to confirm its enchantment as effective as Kingslayer’s by having that servant bring Kingslayer away to the edge of the room. Indeed, Verdan does not begin leaking or seeping anything foul, nor does his body twist into any kind of abomination.

Verdan tosses the rock up, snatches it out of the air, and smiles to Renard happily, as if he had not just been on the precipice of enslaving, imprisoning, or indeed killing him, but rather as if they have been friends on the same page this whole time.

Renard forces his sneer down into a scowl, swallowing his anger to further inform that Lacren’s court is in possession of a shaman who knows the principle, and the method, behind infusing objects with this enchantment.

This information satisfies Verdan, who returns Kingslayer and tasks Renard with delivering a letter of introduction to Lacren’s Queen, so Verdanheim can begin negotiations and diplomacy with her to learn these secrets of witchbane. The letter will also, hopefully, help Renard get back to Lacren with less fuss from the kingdoms between there and Verdanheim, now that he has a legitimate reason to be passing through as a courier.

This all arranged, Verdan smiles to Renard and wordlessly fondles the stone. Renard, too disgusted to speak, stuffs the letter of introduction into his luggage and adjusts Kingslayer’s set on his hip, frustrated that it, and his tongue, must remain in their scabbards.

With that silent resentment as his chilly goodbye, Renard resupplies, and exits Verdanheim.