The Independent Summit

Travelling through the rift between Sebilles and Nix had been chaotic. Travelling between the pocket of void and the scene in the image, however, is only disrupting for how sheerly undisrupting it is. A mild sensation passes as if pushing through a membranous sheet, which instantly and easily gives, and upon the next step, the group stands somewhere utterly else.

It is another void. This one is darker than where they just came from, despite being absent of those shadowy voyeurs. No stars even vaguely suggest their presence in the sky. It is a blackness so encompassing, it suggests itself both to span to infinity and end as a wall before Renard’s face, that he shall bump gracelessly into the moment the should step off of the island on which he stands.

For indeed, as it was before, this is an island in space. Unlike before, the surface of this one is visible, laid as elegant stone tiles that form a path through a small garden. Renard lets Fidel and Orpheus down. While not the place they expected, Renard does not doubt his impulse to divert here was correct, and indeed, though disoriented, nobody complains.

Behind them is another vertical bar of scenes. At a glimpse, the selection of destinations has changed — and thus they may hop through, and are not stuck — but what more grips Renard’s attention is the sight before him of the garden.

It’s lovely, and very small. It is like a fragment nobleman’s yard has been chiselled out of the earth and hung like a jewel. The stone path winds between beds of flowers, small iron trellises, elegant tables with seats, and lemon trees proudly bearing fruit. For how familiar and pleasant the place is, though, it is steeped with a quiet melancholy, found in the darkness of the surrounds and the stillness of the scene. There is no wind that tousles these plants or carries their scent, no taste of day or night in the blandness of the light, no chirp of birds and no whisper of leaves. It is so alive, and yet, so flatly dead.

A noise of trickling water alone breaks the stillness, from a fountain at the end of the path. And there, upon that fountain, is—

“Maiden! Be ye lost?" Renard calls.

—a woman, seated on the rim. She perks mildly to attention at Renard’s call, but does not seem surprised or disrupted by the group’s presence.

She is extremely beautiful, with long flowing hair and a long flowing dress. Her eyes and skin have that same exotic light hue as Pleione’s, but something about her presence shines even brighter in a way that is positively ethereal. Moonbeams reflect through a thousand facets of diamonds inside her, and tenors of their glow shoot from underneath up to her skin. Though dirt muddies the tail and sleeves of her dress, the whiteness of the rest of it is so pure that it must have been woven from clouds in heaven. The air of serenity in her eyes only accentuates her attractiveness further.

The fountain she is seated on blends into a rock face, artfully carved and inlaid with hundreds of precious and glittering gems, all in different colours. Their arrangement behind her evokes the illusion of her having resplendent, rainbow-hued wings.

“Leave as promptly as you measure safe," Orpheus urgently mutters. “Have caution."

“Hardly much of manners, to turn away from a lady upon seeing her face!" Renard laughs, sidling unworriedly up the path. “Maiden, how comest ye? We explorers may guide your way—"

“Ah," she gasps, raising her palm.

“—out," Renard finishes, and his foot falls, and the entire vision of the fountain and the woman closes instantly to black, as were a candle snuffed, and left Renard in darkness. Renard jerks back a step and the sight of the fountain and the woman returns.

Addled by this strangeness, and now heeding an instinct of caution, Renard readies his hand upon Kingslayer and eyes her askance.

“Please wait," she says in a voice as quiet as a thread but as strong as a church bell. “It is that dark blade you carry, it broils horrible things in the air… I must close my eyes, when it comes so near."

“It is a blade that banes the rotten blights of the ghouls," Renard notes suspiciously.

“And yet other things," she assures. She tilts her head to peer over Renard at Fidel and Orpheus, her hair spilling like water over her shoulders. “You’ve come very far into the night, further than I think you could know. Here is my garden of respite… not anymore loud with the host, but that I have kept for ones such as you." A mild smile rises on her face. “I am glad these years of waiting have not been without purpose."

Renard scrunches his brow, struggling to grasp the meaning of the strange implications in her words.

“Is the purpose that you would gobble us up?" Fidel calls from beside Orpheus, setting him on the grass. “That has been the reception of most we find here. So different are you from screaming and pits that your sanctuary shines mostly as dubious."

“Is it so peculiar? That light shines in the darkness?" She shakes her head with quiet pain. “Was this world always so sick? Even so far out as here, the foulness is young… but here to you is our home now made home to beasts, shadows, ruins, and curses, that it is all the terrestrials could… or will see." Her mouth quivers, and her expression drops with incredible sadness, and sympathy. “It hurts me, to know what’s been done to you."

Fidel falls silent, and Orpheus hesitates, but for Renard, something clicks.

“You claim you are one of the ancestors," Renard blurts.

The woman nods.

“Those stars, to whom Pleione speaks," he continues.

“I have known many Pleiones," the woman answers vaguely.

“Pleione Gayle, she missions in the west. Do you know of her?" Renard insists.

“I have known ones who have known her," she answers. “And who have given their aid to her. She’s uncovered the alchemy that rejects this disease, and turns its nature against itself… an incredible good that resists the tide. By her advance, travellers now come, and my vigil is made fruitful… this I understand."

This testimony is all correct. To know all of this so precisely, she cannot be lying.

Renard’s hand upon Kingslayer relaxes as his mind wanders. He has always known, or rather been told, that the stars in the sky are the souls of people. Further, though he had not consciously considered it, it does make intuitive sense that ‘Nix’ has brought them further away and in stranger places than simply down and down into a hole. The pervasive darkness, and occasional beacons of distant stars, attest they’ve come so deeply into the abyss they are crossing the night sky itself.

The possibility that one could encounter a star, and in fact talk to it as one would any person while traversing Nix, though startlingly sensible, never occurred to Renard. Pleione’s arcane manner of contacting these celestials made conversing with them sound far more abstract.

“What has been done to us?" Orpheus interjects. “You speak of injuries, afflictions?"

The woman opens her mouth to speak, but Renard interrupts first. “Nay; she speaks of the rot. Were not for its poison, we…"

…would become like her. All of us, when we would die, would become not like ghouls, but like her.

It is not hypothetical — it is how it was, for every one of us, until the last hundred years.

Renard falls silent. Become like her — beautiful, graceful, surrounded by pleasant things? No, though they are enchanting, it is not these aspects that makes the comparison, and acknowledgement of humanity’s lost birthright, so painful.

It is rather the aura of absolute peace that exudes from every pore of her. She is not a robot, or without independence, for she expresses her own sadness, will, and regret. But there is an utter contentment that underlies these things, a foundation of total satisfaction and kinship, that she is not alone, but connected to hundreds of dear fellows, not self-satisfied, but suffused with compassion for all lovely things, and not ever afraid, but comforted in pure virtue and secured transcendently into the best version of herself she could be.

Jealousy, though vile, itches in Renard’s chest.

Proceeding the conversation, the woman nods. “This is a projection of a rib of the independent summit, Anelle… I was never so prominent that a stranger would know my name. All of your predecessors grieve for your fates, and all of us wish ever to aid you, that this curse upon the earth may be defied…"

The beautiful ancestor, Anelle, pauses to again look over the party. Seeing that trio are all silently listening, and attentive to her words, she continues.

“But we are limited," her expression again falls. “A weight presses against us the lower that we reach — it smothers us before we could touch the ground. It’s only by the invitations of dedicated children like Pleione Gayle that we are able to act, but the weight of the earth even then can greatly constrain the communication of our gifts."

Pleione’s ability to grow those water-plants must be exactly one of those gifts. But the question that jumps to Renard is: “Maiden, who is the coupling that fathered the West, and the blood that fathered the land of Lacren? In what image are they found?"

“There were many first couples in the West," Anelle mutters with an odd hint of rue. Her eyes haze over and she recites, “by Yuriatrus, son of Tybald, son of Hashar, son of Kriotone, son of Feren, son of Lat, son of Irelle, son of Kothat, son of Ruamatus, son of Richet, son of Duadoros, son of Lamal, son of Timothy, son of West, son of Jocar, who is a seed of Herbert and Josephine, was the nation of Lacren sown; these bones are spread across many images, but many are in the ward of the glorious conquering sun, that you see as a lion."

Impressed at the breadth of her knowledge, a new, and more delicate, question also jumps to Renard’s mind. “Maiden, then can you also know, of this generation, the name of the firstborn to Lacren’s throne?"

“This one did not reach us," Anelle answers.

It had been a fragile hope, but hearing that someone with such power and knowledge does not know something that Renard conceived as so simple rattles him with profound sadness. There exists for the ancestors a world so interconnected that they may effortlessly rattle off the histories of men to the beginning of time. And yet, of those of the present… nothing.

That old image of the Iron King in exalted gold returns to Renard’s mind. It has truly, truly been a long time since he has ever considered this thought. But had the Iron King been born — rather, had he died — a hundred years earlier, that image would have been undoubtedly realised, up here, in the heavens.

Everything, Renard thinks. That serpent robbed everything.

As Renard falls morosely silent, Orpheus speaks up instead. “Lady Anelle, forgive our wariness. In such straits, we are bound to take your help, and gratefully. We are—I am, greatly wounded, may you heal these wounds?"

“To impart that is not my authority. I’m sorry," Anelle answers.

“And this boy has been afflicted by the curses of this place, can your wisdom mend this?"

“Nobody has that authority," Anelle answers, peering over at Orpheus’ hand upon Fidel’s writhing leg. “But, by the work of Pleione Gayle, you’ve the implements to mend that on your own."

Hardly more than a temporary solution, to adorn him in witchbane in the same way as Verdan, Renard thinks, but lets the disappointment fade. It’s not ideal, but it is workable. Moreover, Anelle is probably suggesting that a more considered application of witchbane could mend him permanently — it’s something for the group to figure out later, and a very hopeful prospect.

“Then what is your ‘authority’?" Fidel asks.

Anelle grins and cranes back her head with satisfaction, as though she had been waiting for this question. The rainbow of gemstones inlaid in the cliff-face behind her all flash, and she gracefully reaches back her hand. A turquoise-blue gemstone falls out of its place like shed feather and lands smoothly in her palm.

She leans forward, presenting the gemstone. Her thumb rubs its smooth edge — and from between her fingers then falls a stream of glittering sand, which gives way to a flow of blazing molten steel, which gives way to a jet of yellow vapour, which gives way to trickling cascades of crystalline water.

The sight stuns the three men silent as Anelle straightens herself and holds the jewel out in offering.

“It is pure?" Renard asks. Even as Anelle nods, he is already squatting to collect a bead of the liquid upon his finger, as it runs down the trails between the tiles in the path. He pops the bead into his mouth before anyone can object or even grasp what he’s doing. A scandalised yelp, a little too late, rises from Fidel.

Renard has not made a habit of tasting the venom in natural water. Still, there is no burn or bitter taste to impress him to any poison — in all regards, this is the same as what he’d retrieve from a Lacrenese well, or actually purer. Seconds pass, one, two, and he does not keel over. This appears to be an enchanted artefact that can (indefinitely, as the ceaseless flow soaks up past his soles) generate drinkable water.

Renard urgently marches forward a step to claim the gemstone — as happened before, Anelle and her fountain instantly vanish from sight, and reappear when Renard embarrassedly shuffles back again. Cursing under his breath at his own slowness, he fumbles to unlatch Kingslayer’s scabbard from his belt.

What stops him is Anelle, who slowly shakes her head at him. Not you.

Though dejected, he follows her gaze to Fidel and Orpheus with understanding acceptance. Her gaze wavers as if she is uncertain who should receive it.

Renard marches back to join Orpheus and Fidel, deposits Kingslayer on the ground to cover Fidel’s leg, and props up Orpheus to guide him to Anelle. The journey should be short, as she is barely even six, seven meters away from the seam in space where they started, but in feeling him so closely, and seeing how he strains to even lift his head, it is clear to Renard that Orpheus is so horrifically weak that he would not have managed this trip alone. It is frankly a miracle he is even still conscious and speaking.

He also seems only an inch from vomiting all over Renard’s boots, and it is unclear if this nausea comes more from physical weakness or from physiological disgust of being so near to Renard.

“Fair mistress, we come so far," calls Renard as the tug of Kingslayer strains lightly in his chest, and as Orpheus’ heavy breaths rasp up to his ear, only halfway to Anelle. “Pass it the distance?"

But Anelle does not respond. She only remains holding out that cascading gemstone, her stare as severe as a statue.

Abrupt guilt lashes Renard that he must have said something wrong. Carefully, he sets him palm on Orpheus’ back and inches him forward as far as he can reach while not approaching nearer himself. Orpheus looses a sigh and steadies himself to walk further.

He takes a single step, and a sharp, unpleasant hum cuts through the garden. Orpheus yanks back his hand and falls back to Renard for support. His ring finger on his good hand is ratcheting madly, as though it wishes to rip itself from his hand, but it is not the finger itself that is wrong. As it had been in Ashurst when Kingslayer was immersed in that corrupt water, Orpheus’ witchbane ring is stressed, and is coming near to snapping.

“You are struggling," Anelle notes.

Orpheus grunts in his throat as he carefully begins winching the ring off along with his glove. He pauses.

And he turns, and he stumbles past Renard, in the exact wrong direction to retrieve the gemstone. Even as he falls to his knees, had he not purposefully changed course, he would’ve been able to reach it!

“You bumblefoot, what are you doing?" Renard hisses.

“Let’s check our exits," Orpheus mutters. “Our place is too queer…"

“We are in Nix, of course it is queer! Are you not the one who most knows that?" Renard snaps.

But Orpheus’ only response is a look of mild disdain, mild merely because his lightheadedness has sapped even the strength to keep his eyes open confidently. Nursing his sweat-sodden brow, he jerks his chin for Renard to inspect the exit bar.

Renard makes it only a step through the wet ground before frustration and hesitation wrench him to glance back at Anelle, still holding out her gift expectantly. Ridiculous! Renard thinks. They fell a ghoul and flee a pocket of nowhere, but cannot even reap the rewards of something as simple as crossing a room!

And because they are fumbling something so simple, Renard finds himself frozen in place with shame and regret, that if they depart now, they will be massively failing Anelle. It is not even the disgrace of failing to secure Lacren such a powerful artefact, and struggling to explain to the nation why they surrendered it, that sticks in his mind as the greatest concern. It is rather the image of Anelle staying here in the dark, hand outstretched forever, until even her spirit breaks to the slow sorrow of defeat and resignation, that the people she waited a hundred years for that she could confer this gift, did not even take it, and left.

“Lady Anelle," Orpheus calls, “you say there are others — can they too make footholds like this, that could bridge us, to our camp?"

Silence stretches as Anelle considers these words. Slowly, she withdraws her hand, stops the flow, and sets the gemstone on her lap.

“No… this is not possible," she answers. “Our wards are too estranged to intersect, of those who would bare to come to this depth. This is not a pleasant state for us…" she looks down at the dirt straining her sleeves. “…but it is the only one by which we could ever reach you, so tangibly. At this density, most fear falsities in their gifts and intentions. …My nature is such that I will bide it anyway, as my house is receded from the ones more available for children to reach." She quibbles with her lip, her gaze lightly downcast, but not defeated. “If you will leave here, then, I will reach where I can for a pathway… that will return you to where you wish…"

She closes her eyes as she says this to focus, the gemstones behind her again glittering. The vertical exit bar expands horizontally and clear scenes spread in the air in their own quadrants like pages of an unbound book. Unlike how it was getting here, most of these scenes appear mild, of meadows and towns rather than fleshscapes or acid pits, though all seem lonely, lost, still, and deserted.

“That one," Orpheus gasps.

Anelle nods. A scene of a dirt path aside a barren field, unfamiliar to Renard but apparently familiar to Orpheus, spreads like a massive fan across the floor behind them that pushes all the other scenes out. They are free to leave.

“Go, to mend your bodies," Anelle says. She crosses her hand over the gemstone. “I will be here, to await your return."

Guilty hesitation niggles at Renard. “Orpheus, you know these fields?"

Orpheus nods.

Plainly, though, Orpheus’ army did not stumble on a portal to Anelle while traversing the field before.

“Wise maiden, how do we return to you?" Renard asks.

“By the same route you came, if the space has not shifted…" Anelle answers. “Even so, I am confident, ones as you could find a way."

Renard puckers his lip. Curse it! How they even arrived at the pocket that linked to Anelle was a fluke uncertain to replicate, and instinct insists that any normal linkages to her sanctuary would also begin at a depth far lower than the camp. If they leave Anelle now, it is crushingly unlikely they would find her again. And yet, even as he frustratedly musses his hair, a placating certainty closes over Renard that their reunion is an absolute law. Visions arise. Himself pushing down and down into the deep, striking through masses of shadows, an unstoppable slash plunging through the night, and, as if raising a lighthouse out of the sea, victoriously, finding Anelle…

“You’d like us to climb a mountain." Fidel’s voice cuts like a lance through the vision. Renard jolts to look upon him.

Standing surely with Kingslayer in hand, as it had been when first meeting the boy, all from the noble jut of Fidel’s chin to the firm accusation in his tone teems with effortless, natural authority. A dash of teenage impetuousness completes the portrait, of someone who could truly utter blithe resentments at royalty. But in his eyes wavers a tension — a nervousness, seeking a specific response, that these were not coincidental words.

All the same, what cheek! First the Queen, and now this, mouthing off to his betters. “Fidel, dare you not—" Renard growls.

“—Ah," Anelle gasps.

Her surprise stays Renard’s tongue. Anelle looks this way and that, in flustered alarm.

“A lion, an oxen, on three vertical stripes…" Fidel continues, tension draining out of him like a long exhale. Like some rambling madman, he is describing the Lacrenese flag.

Anelle in a panic rises from the rim of the fountain and rips a large leaf off a nearby shrub. She sets the turquoise gemstone on the leaf, and like a little paper boat, pushes it on a course towards Orpheus and Renard. It skiffs over on the shallow water still coating the ground to bump against Orpheus’ knee.

Renard can only stare in stupefaction as Orpheus reaches to pocket the stone — his hand flinches back, and he tugs on Renard to help him. Renard hurriedly stuffs it in Orpheus’ beltpurse, his body moving separate from his mind as he boggles: what on earth did Fidel just do!

But Fidel presents no obvious answers and neither does Anelle, who merely stands there in paralysed shock.

Renard pats Orpheus’ purse secure and rises, his tongue too numb and knotted to find the right goodbye courtesies.

“—Wait," Anelle urges, seeing them ready to leave. “I am not so confident now that my gift will stay virtuous… please, be swift to take it from this place. …Truly, be swift as you can, or I fear all I gave you was..."

“Was what, woman, what!" Renard snaps. “A coal or a bomb, what curse do you now regret!"

“Sire," Fidel murmurs. Though quiet, the reprimand works to temper Renard’s outburst away from Anelle. Instead he glares down to Orpheus, and the full pouch on his belt, stricken with a fiery urge to rip the damned bag off of his girdle and fling it into the black.

The urge fizzles down into a simmer as Orpheus hoists his injured hand over the pouch as if to protect it and returns the glare: Don’t.

Was it not you who was sceptical? Was it not I who agreed to receive her?

Fine.

It is so frustrating to be the only one who doesn’t understand what’s going on!

“Please, be quick," Anelle says. “And be well."

Orpheus and Fidel both bow their heads, sparing Renard the need to need to voice a goodbye. Still, he can only bite his lip in roiling frustration as he scoops up Orpheus and readjusts Kingslayer on his hip.

How pathetic is it to part with another without sparing even a goodbye. But now, for some opaque reason, to wish a sincere and goodhearted farewell to Anelle now feels the act of a moron, of a buffoon who truly knows nothing. So are Renard’s final impressions as he spares one last glance over his shoulder to Anelle, and steps, with Fidel, into the fan.

Again the sensation passes over Renard of breaking through a thin membrane. He falls through the floor into the scene — with a light, ‘hup’, he catches his footing and lands without issue in the sod of the barren field. The sky overhead, which disappears behind rolling green mountains, is a sick, pallid blue, rather than the black that has been so prolific across Nix — but the persistent air of sickness and stillness assures that this is indeed still Nix, and not the surface or even Verdanheim.

Two things strike Renard immediately.

Firstly, in his mind’s eye, is the image of Anelle. There she sits, in her garden on her fountain, bright in his sight as a beacon — that grows impossibly distant, shrinking, further and further, into just simply a pinprick. The moment Renard’s attention shifts even an inch from this image, it disappears utterly, shrunken too small in the air to be more than a speck of dust on the road.

And secondly, is the atmosphere. An implacable pressure so pervasive that Renard had not realised it existed abruptly lifts, draining away smoothly as his body enters this new scene. The difference is as starkly obvious and refreshing as stepping from a humid tropic into a snowcapped mountaintop. The frightening thing is how profoundly Renard did not realise the ‘humidity’ was affecting him.

For as quick as that mountain-air lightness washes over him, smooth as an exorcism, so does his anger fade out of him. Renard jolts with recognition that the resentment he held not even a second ago towards Anelle and Orpheus and Fidel, and even himself, had been needless. More than simple realisation, though, comes the profound lack of impulse to do anything so ill-considered as throw away Anelle’s rock or curse himself for slipping behind.

Instead there is only clarity, and fear. Anelle’s warning to move swiftly now registers as earnest, rather than provocative.

So being, following the guidance of Orpheus still slumped in his arms, Renard breaks into a run through the field. Fidel follows aside him.

“Young Fidel!" Renard calls, natural curiosity welling over the scab of impelled jealousy. “How did you know to impress that ancestor?"

“I do not know much to boast, sir, the place was just very strange!" Fidel answers. “Everyone seemed faintly mad, and Anelle — the way that she spoke was like a riddle, woven with allusions more solid than any of us. How else couldn’t she see she was acting against her purposes?"

Purposes? What purposes? Renard thinks, but an implicit understanding comes over him. Yes, it is rather strange, after professing an unconditional desire to help them, that Anelle needed to be coaxed to just give them the rock. Perhaps that disconnect had not been a result of ceremony or vetoing or limitation or judgement as Renard had naturally assumed, but of Nix’s atmosphere also affecting Anelle.

Dread washes over Renard in that second, but passes as quickly as his next footfall racing upon the sod. The kid is a genius… or at the least, saved them from stumbling into an irrational end.

“And yourself, Fidel? You are well?" Renard checks.

“I’m all together, sir," he answers. Indeed, at this range to Kingslayer, nothing would tell that Fidel had been altered.

They breach a threshold in the middle of the field, and as if stepping from one face of a cube to another, enter into a different scene that heaves up to meet them — of the familiar, still, lakeside meadow, and of the merciful silhouettes of tent-tops.