Myrkeners enjoyed a show. Their lives were hard. Their education was base (though not as base as it was a year before. Literacy rates had risen and that was an odd, strange gift of the last many months). They were dirt farmers and low craftspeople and merchants just getting by. They knew how to find enjoyment in life where they could and when that entertainment came to them, even better. The posters were only up for a day. The criers only cried for a day. This was a people in need of answers almost as much as it needed food and warmth. Even more than that, though, this was a people who needed an escape.
What was more entertaining than hearing the Governor speak?
At the allotted time, he would emerge to a hastily built stage in the market square. He used a cane. He was gaunt and pale. Each step seemed to cost him something, but he visibly paid the cost, teeth grit, determination in his eyes. He was dressed simply in his earth tones. Nicely made clothes that were hardly to be considered nice, not by the standards of this last season, that was.
There was strength in his voice when he spoke but strain as well. "I stand here before you, before my people, my very reason for living, for standing my ground, for fighting over the least few years. I stand here before you and i look at your faces. What do I see? Loss, pain, hurt, betrayal. Most of all, though, I see resolve. I see your hearts and your spirit in your eyes. I see survival and I see endurance. We survive. We endure." Known for his strength of breath, for his long sentences, he had to pause now and again. He did so dramatically. They endured, but... "I wanted something more for you though, for all of us. I wanted us to thrive. I wanted us to succeed. I wanted us to be something more than we ever had been before. Perhaps I wanted it too badly, because I knew, better than anyone, that we deserved it so very much."
The wind was cold and the sky was clear. His face had already become flush. "We reached higher than before. We dared in the face of history and menace. We took the hurt of years past and used it as fuel and drive. We dared to dream. We were not fools in this. We were not unprepared. We learned from our past. There were checks in place. There was groundwork laid. There were mechanisms contrived to push back against the darkness.
"Yet still, the darkness came, as it always does. It came in the form of a fae creature, a storyteller, a gnarled and twisted old thing, glamoured by beauty, and hiding, devilishly enough, in a frame that matched its true self. This creature fed upon us, upon our pain and our dreams. It distracted us with fantasies, shards of glass that contained our truest, most secret, desires and with beasts, wolves, and horrors that meant to distract.
"Ultimately, it meant to take our children, an entire generation, our future." His tone oscillated. This was a man who knew control, but could not hold it in the face of what had happened, not with the wind buffeting him, not with the physical weakness constraining him. Anger and offense seeped in. "We've known such horrors, but this time we had the means to fight back, to not prevent a tragedy but to contain it. We were able to bring the creature to justice, were able to punish it. When the Ashfiend struck, it was a year and countless deaths before we were able to end the threat. Here, the capture was within a day." Lives were lost, yes, but they were a drop in the sea of what had been lost before, what might have been lost. He still wore the pain of even one dead child under his regime on his face, sunken eyes staring out at the crowd with fire behind them.
"It came at a cost, however." His voice softened, weakened, but just for a moment. He would make those in the crowd strain to hear, before finding a second wind and projecting once more. "The girl who was Rhaena Olwak cared as you care, as I care. She went to barn dances. She befriended farmgirls. She chose Myrken over her own home. She suffered at the hands of Drow, at the hands of what befell Myrken. It was more than that though. Through her power, she felt the pain of others. She could not block it out; it was always there, a dagger pressing into her skull. When you hurt, she hurt. Imagine years of this. It left her broken, twisted, unable to deal with reality and unable to deal with life. She ran from reality and helped in what ways she could. She was harmless until the Creature's final spell took her saccharine fantasies and turned them outward. The Creature unleashed a madness within her. It turned woman into Monster. Rhaena now wanted to end the pain no matter the cost. She no longer saw how the pain shaped us, how it revealed our humanity and how our triumphs mattered all the more because of it. She lost sight of why the fight matters in the first place."
"Due to the Creature's vengeance, we traded one monster for another." So many words and so much emotion behind them, so much darkness and truth. It wore upon him, but he gripped his cane more tightly and continued onwards. He had been so young that even now, looking years older, he still seemed a young man, if one that had just been through a war. "Change, growth, progress, improvements in our lives and that of our children take generations and sacrifices. Rhaena had become blind to that. She no longer cared about the worth behind such things but only about the shiny exterior that life could be dressed in. She wished to bypass all of that work. She would hollow out Myrken and leave nothing but a beautiful, empty facade. All that was good and caring in her had been twisted and made into a mockery. She had become a Monster inspired by acts of kindness and goodness," and where else could such a being exist with so much verve and visceral impact than Myrken Wood. It made monsters out of all of them eventually.
"This happened gradually, and shamefully I was blinded to it." He pressed the cane down upon the stage, pushing back against it for support. He grit his teeth but did not look away from the crowd. "We were connected on a primal level and for a time she was able to distract me. As I dealt with more immediate threats, she was able to pass laws to others, warping their minds to think this was done in my name. Many ends that ultimately benefited you and your families were enacted through her twisted means. We are, on a daily basis, unraveling this web of corruption, for when dark actions benefit us as a people, we are likewise darkened by them. Just as we must not lose our humanity, just as we must not give up on one another, we also must not stoop to the levels of the monsters and creatures that would prey upon the innocent and the helpless." Finally, with a grunt, the cane fell and he stood tall, controlling his expression but not the pain that gleamed in his eyes. "We must be better than that. She was not, and we will have to rebuild our character and our spirit in response. I will not rest until this corruption is stamped out once and for all and we are better once again."
Having divested himself of assistance, he was left adrift on that stage with no support, with no aid. All he could do was stand as tall as he was able and endure. It's all any of them could do. "Ultimately, when her madness reached its apex, it was her goal to transform your minds in one fell swoop. All of Myrken would change forever in an instant. Despite further distraction, this time from the Crowd, I was able to permanently prevent this, to limit her power; however, I was betrayed and captured, tossed aside to where the Creature itself had been imprisoned. Her plans had been foiled so she was forced to turn to more mundane means, transforming one threat at a time, and devising whatever means available to influence or terrorize others.
"The good people of Myrken opposed her, the Marshall amongst others, but they were captured or transformed." Another pause, and a wipe at his brow. He was as human as any of them and this was too much, too soon. He had asked for time and some was purchased for him, but Burnie knew on some level, even if perhaps not deeply enough, that being away from public life had a cost of its own. With a breath, he would continue, voice booming even more loudly than before. "Agnieszka Kaczmarek, your daughter, your sister, your cousin and as much as a Myrkener as anyone, in a last ditch attempt to stop this madness, seized power. She had become the greatest threat of all and the Monster Olwak seized upon her, taking her mind with all of the power she had left. Agnieszka, however, continued to fight back. She continued to push her will and stubbornness and frankly, bullheadedness against the magical sieve that constrained her. She continued to try to fight free where no other could, even as the Monster Olwak forced through laws in her name.
"Even as you suffered in her name, Agnieszka fought for you and for herself." Another breath was needed and for a moment it seemed like he might collapse then and there. He blinked, a rare thing on this morning, and he exhaled and he continued on. "With a few others, brave souls that had gone to liberate me, including our adopted brethren Cinnabar Calomel and Gloria Wynsee, a man of strength and a young woman of the people, we destroyed the Creature I had been imprisoned with. At that same moment, Agnieskza finally broke free." His voice did not drop in intensity even as the pain within it mounted. "I was still loosely connected to the Monster that had been my betrothed on that day, you must understand. I saw it through her eyes and I remember what you do not, what even our sister does not. For Agnieszka Kaczmarek cared. She cared about her family, her home, her people and her duty so much that she was able to do what no other could. She broke free from the Monster Olwak's control and drove a blade into the heart of the beast that was strangling Myrken. Though she knows it not, it was she that saved them all."
He would let this revelation drift through the crowd, but only for a few scant seconds. There was more to be done and he only had so much strength left. "We were vulnerable because we had dreams. We were a worthy target for the Creature because we dared for something more. We saw those dreams contorted and twisted, the meaning behind them forgotten and discarded through the evil of Monster Olwak. Despite that, we cannot turn back. We cannot give up. We cannot lay down and wait for the next beast to rip and tear at our spirits and our lives. The dream is still worthwhile. There is more to life than just being beasts who breed and eat and die. We have seen the worst of it and now we can search again for the best. We will learn from this. We will work together and we will continue to push forward while ensuring it will never happen again.
"The winter will be hard. There will be hunger. There is a need to rebuild, but we know hunger and we know loss and we have rebuilt before, each time better and stronger than the last. There is nothing more human than compassion and there is nothing more Myrken than helping one another when times are darkest. We are Myrken Wood. We survive. We endure. We strive for something more. The darkness comes but we push back against it each and every time, and it will take more than this to end our dreams and break our spirit." Even with the last word his voice rang out. There was nothing innately special about Glenn Burnie. He did not have Cinnabar's silver hair or strength. He did not have Catch's size or even his scar. He did not have the warm beauty of a Zilliah or the cold, northern, handsomeness of Ariane Emory or Agnieszka Kaczmarek. He did not have Treadwell's mass or Gloria Wynsee's foreign thickness. All he had was his breath and his words and his spirit.
Today, like every day, this average seeming young man, looking very much the worst for wear had given Myrken Wood all that he possessed. Before it had not been enough. Would today be any different?