Friends Like These

[CJK]

((Closed except with approval. Please, don't use to meta your characters suspicions/opinions about what happened or characters involved changing. The narrative structure is going to be weird and probably unravel backwards.))

”Pray to your Goddess, Eleanor.”

The Priestess was beaten. She knelt where her Friend had left her: her arms shackled behind her back, bound high on the post behind her. She had waited long enough for her Friend to leave before the façade broke. Supplications turned to sobs, defiance turned to fear, and the Priestess… was never more than a middle aged woman betrayed, resigned, and left to the mercy of the undead. As her sobbing gained strength, her blood continued to spill from the deep, jagged 'X' carved into her chest. Who knows whether it was the sound of her psyche breaking or the intoxicant of fresh blood that called out to the horrors that lurked in the swamp. In the past, she had hammered the point time and again what an abomination the Dead Marsh was; the abominations were now free to strike back.

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The Scheming Chergan was sinking. As the Grey Priestess's knees sank in the fecund swamp mud, her heart of stone sank in despair. She had brought this upon herself, and far worse was coming. She had strayed from the Narrow Grey Path and fast found herself bound by anchor after anchor drawing her deeper, deeper, and deeper into the petty plots of the mortal and material world. She had forsaken her devotion to the Mistress alone, and with every strike the dead showed how forsaken she was in turn.

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The Servant was… spared? The skeletons showed no mercy, could never conceive such a thing, yet they did not kill her. She was beaten and bloodied, but not bleeding out. Her head was concussed by blow after blow, many worse but none with the sting of betrayal of the first, but she clung to a semblance of consciousness long past her own power or will. The dead tried to drag her down to join them, but her Patron preserved her. Did the Mistress hear her begging, pleading for more time? Did the Fallen Prince, with his altar atop the mountain by her side, choose to trade her suffering for the strength to survive the night? Had something far Older and more sinister chosen now to keep it's promise to protect her, whether she wanted it or not?

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From the moment the Traitor's blade had left her neck intact, the question burned: Why?

From the moment she was dragged awake by the dagger carving an 'X' into her chest that burned with a wild and unfamiliar power, the question burned: What?

From the moment she realized that somebody with fell power over these undead was keeping her alive, but forcing her awake, the question burned: Who?

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Few but the Deadman and his bandits came so near the Inn these days. Fewer still at night, and none when such malevolence hung heavy in the air. There she would remain beaten, sunken, and broken until found by an unlikely trio long after the risen sun had sent the terrors of night retreating further into the marsh. It was the Glassblower that first recognized her. Together with the Scholar, she broke the bindings that shackled the broken woman. Eleanor’s eyes had long stopped seeing, her ears long stopped hearing, but the pain never stopped until her miraculous curse broke with the bindings. As she fell from the post, she finally fell unconscious.

The Priestess had always denied chance and coincidence, saying instead that the chaos of Nargun was the unwinding of cosmic fate that only seemed random to the blind eyes and feeble minds of mortals. Had she not been so blind and feeble in this moment, perhaps she would have laughed alongside that Grey God as the Gambler carried her away to the same hospital bed as she had brought him to only days prior.

[CJK]

Moments earlier.


“I don't lie to you.” The words fell from the Priestess' lips like a stone cast in the marsh beneath her feet. “If I die tonight, just take that as truth.” This Confidant was the only person in her life to whom she told only truths. True, she kept many secrets until it was their time to be said. Many more would now never be spoken. If she survived the night, Eleanor would forever carry the scars carved by blood and betrayal.

“I shall. And I shall remember you fondly.” The words came quietly with an unflinching truth from the darkness where her Assailant had faded from sight. If there was ever regret in the voice, it never reached the Cleric’s ears. Nor did it carry anger, hatred, or malevolence for the pale woman shackled and left to die.

The Grey Mystic’s voice faltered and shook as she offered this Most Trusted Traitor what she feared to be her last request heard by mortal ears, “Tell her what I was too cowardly to before, and all you have robbed me of.” Unseen tears flowed from her eyes at the thought of all the things left unsaid. Before she was betrayed, she had asked this Friend a favor: bring the woman she dared not call Daughter on the following day to hear the Priestess’ fullest confession in that most sacred and safest sanctuary. Things were accelerating, the endgame was approaching, and she deserved to hear the truth from Eleanor’s own lips before it all came crashing down. A confession that turned her Beloved Friend to betrayal once coaxed prematurely from her.

Time slowed and stretched as the Mistress’ Servant sank to her knees in the mud of the cursed marsh. “I shall tell her of your love. How you sacrificed all in hopes of protecting her. Noble.”

“Do so much as my Friend, and I shall forgive you.”