Concurrent Lives

In the following days, though largely mundane, life begins to change.

The first priority for Renard is sending that letter to the Queen. He arranges couriers to deliver the report and the items from Ashurst that morning, who depart without fuss — seeing their wagons go from his study window, Renard feels the satisfaction of a simple task done, his role completed, and the eagerness of wishing for the Queen’s reply.

Next is Fidel. Renard finds him a room at the local inn and discharges him into the employment of the town’s huntsmaster. While Renard already knows the man and they enjoy a positive acquaintanceship, the fact that Renard pays him, though secret to Fidel, encourages him further to take on the task without complaint. And though not wishing to breathe down the boy’s neck, Renard inevitably asks the hunter on an incessant basis how Fidel is doing.

First impressions sound great. Fidel has taken to the work — and second impressions, then third impressions are the same. As the season turns, Fidel settles in to this role, growing more comfortable, confident, and skilled, though still withdrawn and unsociable with the people around town. Not impolite, simply distant.

This distance intrigues Renard. While part of him cheers to hear Fidel is doing well, this hint of hesitance, and of dissatisfaction, stokes a smile in that black pit of his heart that desires far more from Fidel than some everyday peasant. If the hunger of ambition underneath may burst and bring him back to Renard — then let it, and let it soon. After the passage of a full season, Renard himself is growing impatient.

He swallows back that darkness, though it lingers still, as the calm routines of the rest of his life move equally on in their rhythms. Behind these everyday scenes, quiet anxiety rises, about what may happen with the war on Arsene. Will the front stay quiet, or will it grow worse?

Though he confesses some worries to Colette, Renard finds himself unable to discuss the true crux of what is bothering him: the agonising juxtaposition of the seemingly divine hand of coincidence that is pointing him towards Nix, in fulfilment of the righteous pact made with the forging of Kingslayer and the uttering of the Iron King’s last helpless plea of, ‘Renard!’, and the perhaps cowardly sense that this whole crusade could stop here, and everyone could retire to enjoy everyday life at the side of a loving spouse until they were both grey-haired in rocking chairs, contented on the happiness that this house and this land gave them until then.

And even if the serpent would strike him in death — truthfully, for all Renard’s life, this system has been so mundane and constant that it took him conscious thought and research to even conceive there was something abnormal. People have thrived, built families, made dynasties, and enjoyed themselves greatly for generations in spite of this curse. It is horrific, and it is spiteful. But is it the end of the world?

The Queen has responded by letter. She is polite, but terse in her writing, thanking Renard for his report and for his handling of matters in Ashurst. ‘I will discuss this valuable information among my advisers’ — of which Renard apparently is not a part. A profound disappointment and feeling of lostness comes over him as he realises that, in such an important and personal matter, he will not be kept in the loop.

At least, not by the Queen. A second letter comes soon after from Pleione, who is an adviser, and one apparently close to the Queen’s ear and mouth for all the detail she writes of her plans.

Pleione! Renard raises his hands to the sky over his reading desk. You fast dove of a woman! Come to Meurille and we will make you a parade!

Renard fixes his reading glasses and leans deep over the letter upon the desk.

These findings in Ashurst are first of all, concerning. While much of the letter contains Pleione’s questioning for more details of the encounter with Arsene, she also confirms a lot of what Renard had been thinking and offers her speculation, and knowledge, to fill the gaps inbetween.

The corpse Renard found, that emerged from the rift, indeed belongs to a soldier from Verdanheim. Cross-referencing reports from Verdan, Pleione concludes that this soldier, in particular, must have been part of the forward force in Nix, and that before he died, must have been assigned to seek pathways around the barriers that have been frustrating the army’s progress for some months.

Nix, Pleione reports, is filled with ‘spacial barriers’. These are invisible, but highly potent planes of distorted space that repel passage and twist away motion vectors of whatever nears them, situated on a consistent point or spread across a consistent area. This makes them distinct from the ‘spacial holes’ that shift constantly throughout the region. Indeed, most all of Nix’s geography shifts in that manner, but there are specific regions and routes where the land is more stable, which are where the barriers become prominent.

The army has been progressing deeper into Nix along these stable routes, but has also been running into more of these barriers. Most of them, they have been able to circumvent or break through application of witchbane. But now the army has been stuck for over a year at the threshold of a truly enormous and truly robust barrier; so great that Pleione can only envision it to mark ‘the end’ of the relatively navigable levels the army has traversed thus far.

This soldier’s knife would have been one of the more powerful witchbane-infused implements supplied to the army. Verdan has reported numerous failures in attempts to break this strong barrier, and that attempting to force it produced a dramatic reaction that consumed the soldier who administered the procedure. Pleione thinks this body is the result of this incident, and that the witchbane must have had an effect… but not enough of one, and somewhere between the initial reaction and the destruction of the witchbane, been redirected to open that tiny hole in Ashurst, which Kingslayer then widened.

This all said, the closeness of the rift in Ashurst seems to worry Pleione less than the appearance of Arsene’s projection there. She is not sure what it implies, but does give her the impression that Arsene’s attention is shifting upward, though that he would likely be growing more hostile towards those actually positioned in Nix, if they are bothering him, than Lacren specifically.

As for the Queen, she is confused on how to take Renard’s report since it does not feel to her that she has pressured the beast at all. She is, however, thinking strenuously about the encounter, and wishes first to speak with Verdan. She’ll decide whether to push further or commit to a different approach once she’s heard from him, while instructing the army to hold in the meantime. This correspondence will take some months due to courier times.

Great relief takes Renard upon reading this letter. It sates his anxious mind with confidence that affairs in Nix are still moving, while indulging his hesitant heart with the assurance the ‘next’ motion will be slow. Once again, if Renard is obligated to act, that is contingent on the Queen’s choices, and until she herself decides a trajectory, Renard can enjoy his normal life with Colette and Fidel in the meantime.

He can, he can, he can, and still — the very knowledge that he is waiting so attentively for letters, news, and signs, for that moment where he will and must be unsheathed, tells him upon which slow, inevitable current his heart is currently resting.

Fields roll into plains dotted with sheep and cows. Upon a small hill on horseback, along a trail he often traverses for leisure, he looks down upon the town filled with the people he knows and protects, the humble villages on the outskirts, the great house where sings his precious Colette. As the yellow wheat sways in the wind, and the warm breeze crosses his skin thick with the smell of the earth, the profound sense comes again over Renard that he is finally home.

Is it worth giving this up?

Renard sighs out his nose, the question ever hanging, and straightens his grip on the reins to go forward.

A new letter comes from Pleione.

Renard grabs the thing, walks quick to his study, and tears it open. Upon skimming only the first line, he about has a heart attack.

More rifts!

Forcing himself steady despite the panic locking a ball in his throat, Renard, with his tight shoulders and clenched jaw, squints back down to the paper.

More rifts, reports Pleione. Reports have come from several principalities around Lacren of similar anomalies as the one found in Ashurst. These were all found in their ‘initial’, or ‘prodromal’ state, as Pleione has taken to calling it, wherein the most visible aspect of the forming hole is those queer and unstable ‘shimmering tiles’. Though the Queen and Verdan have been in correspondence, there is still a delay in forwarding orders from base camp down to the forward camp in Nix. Pleione suspects the soldiers in the forward camp may still be trying to assault the barrier, and this has produced more ‘rifts’ — these pockets of weakened, reflected space where the veil between the earth and the void is not yet open, but visibly thin.

Stricken by the localisation of these rifts to Lacren, Renard whips out regional maps and charts their reported locations. No pattern emerges; albeit within the radius of Sebilles, they are sprawled all over the territory. Could one even be in Meurille, undiscovered? No, surely not. Renard patrols this land diligently and doubtless would have found it if so. The randomness calms him minutely as it suggests a lack of conscious intentionality behind the formation of the rifts, supporting Pleione’s conjecture rather than evincing any attack.

Renard reads on.

In the manner that Renard himself did in Ashurst, minus the application of Kingslayer to ‘pop’ the rift, the Queen’s men have blockaded and shut several of the rifts. Renard releases a breath of relief. The Crown appears to be addressing the situation suitably, dampening any urgent, immediate need for Renard’s intervention.

It is over the next weeks that Pleione’s words grow more frantic.

It was not the soldiers, Pleione writes. Your monarch may suspect the Lord Verdan’s faith, but I trust his report wholly. All attempts to strike the barrier ended after the death of the man with the knife, and the witchbane-tipped arrows they shot at the barrier prior shattered before even touching it. Rather, Verdan attests there is a visible current that occasionally appears and fades, running as a river but shifting sinuously as an eel, that runs beneath and is somehow tied to the barrier. He struggles to explain the phenomenon in the same way that everyone in Ashurst struggled to explain the rift, but even this vague testimony has instinctively worried Pleione.

The Queen then has decided her plans. If the barrier cannot be broken, they must lure the beast up to them. They shall decide the battleground, and there spring a trap, by which the army will strike Arsene’s throat swiftly and utterly. The principle of the tactic is long tested and effective, but Pleione thinks this plan is monumentally stupid.

It took all the enlightened knowledge of a bodhisattva to banish the beast down; surely, it would take an equal degree of enlightenment to countermand and lure the beast up. Plus, to break and allow Arsene above his seals, and closer to the earth, is a fundamentally terrible precedent to establish. And then Pleione questions, does this army have a single weapon that can even scratch the beast, is there a single warrior or mystic who would not immediately be turned and overwhelmed, is she cutting due process, is this not too hasty, could a wild tactic as this even work?

Further meditation on Verdan’s report of the ‘current’ shakes her too. Her mind conjures an image: a great beast is sleeping, but tosses, shifting, in its slumber, unable to comfortably settle, as there is a needle in its bed. The needle pricks it; this opens a rift, and the beast shifts again, and as the needle scratches its skin a new plane of flesh is pricked…

The Queen’s strategy and the motions of this current must be broken now, Pleione urges. She has made her stubborn mind and does not listen to me. If words and revelations will not pierce her bones, what can must only be action — the one implement I know attainable within my power that might break this course is the one sheathed at your side, which, although with careful precautions, should not be impossible to replicate.

With reports of yet another fresh rift screaming up from the paper on his desk, Renard writes back and assures her no need.

He feels strangely composed as he again looks over the town. Renard sets his hand upon Kingslayer’s hilt, and in a difficult mood, visits Colette.

Renard divulges his correspondence with Pleione, and confesses the growing weight pulling him towards Nix. Though he does not say definitely that he will be drafted, or will be going at all, the underlying sentiment of fated responsibility to be there does communicate. Colette argues, she fights, in her quiet way; ‘can the Queen not tend what she’s wrought?’ ‘these rifts — she must see the danger, can she not stop?’. And oh, oh, oh, that is exactly what he had been thinking, and what he had begging; that she would see the futility and stop of her own accord. But therein rises hatred and anger simmering like a smoking coal. Give up! Give up on this? How could she dare!

Were there not need he be there, had the Queen exact control, indeed, Renard wouldn’t go. But it is more and more seeming that he is in fact needed, indispensable as if by divine edict, and that, if left to her own hands, the Queen very well could bungle everything, explicitly because, that among her available options, she did not have Renard.

Is it only to bridle the foolish pride of the Queen? Colette cries.

No. Of course it is not, Renard snaps.

But then why must this thing die?, Colette wails. How could it be so thick in your heart?

Renard truly cannot answer that question. Why is it he is drawn so obsessively towards Arsene? Is it for the good of the world — no, not really, and never really. It was more Iron Kings and Marions, people he actually had seen and knew. But the Iron Kings and Marions are long dead. Is the memory and vengeance of some dead men, who do not control Renard’s life any more, worth the risk of losing his life with Colette? Why is he so willing to sacrifice it, over — what?

“I fear a disaster," Renard admits. “I truly do."

Seeing Renard’s doubt, Colette calms and composes herself. A sly gleam flits through her eyes, quickly drowned by longing and compassion.

“A child," she proposes, stroking her belly. “To remember you, no matter what happens."

The perfection of this compromise rattles Renard with surprise and satisfaction, as the two of them collapse into the sheets.