The Memory of Honor

[Teron_Ashfiend]

Uriel's smithy lay in the sprawling Myrken countryside, forgotten by many since the smith had stopped servicing his homeland since the loss of his arm. Disused, the house and shop fell into the hands of the occasional vagrant and wildlife that was able to squeeze inside. Since Uriel's potency had been restored, and then some, tell-tale black smoke once again drifted from the chimney. Uriel, with his soot-baked skin and untiring left arm, worked hard to please his master by hammering the damage out of his battered breastplate - damage visited upon it by Agnieszka and her companions at the ruined Kaczmarek farm.

The perpetual ringing hammer echoed across his thoughts as he stood just outside, revealed to the world free from his armor and clad only in the mummified remnant of a padded doublet and leggings, high boots whose buckles cinch firmly about weird, dead flesh. A cool breeze, flavored with autumn, drifted against and over his numbered bones with the barest whisper of sensation. For a moment he strove to remember the touch of the wind and the heat of the sun.

He remembered nothing, save that at one point he had known. Just as he had once known his mother and father. Just as he had once possessed a beating heart.

As the hammering rung on, he turned his searing gaze across the countryside that he had, until recently, walked with a hand ready to draw steel and shed blood. Butchery had long since become second nature, had long since stained even the holy blade Deliverance upon his back with the foul disgrace of murder. Yet a challenge, and a promise, from a simple squire had turned aside his wrath. For three weeks, of which two remained, he would remember his agreement with the bold girl and spare Myrken Wood.

For at the end of that time Vraal would be handed over to him. It was an offer made before, by both Ariane and Ignas, an offer he had dismissed as their being pawns of Vraal or simply promising out of a desire to protect the mapmaker. That it had been offered a third time had struck a chord with him, a chord buried in dust and the smoke of burning Myrken. A chord that played a note of mercy, of all things, of a moment to retreat for Myrken's own sake as well as his own.

Relent, the voice echoed in his mind. Relent, Teron.

With a savage snarl he dismissed his mind's wanderings, hand curling tighter against the sword at his side. Many had approached him lately, some lord's servant in Heath speaking to Valinor about alliances and war, Karie and Callisto both seeking the Ashfiend's ear. His shadow loomed over Myrken Wood and yet, untired by his personal war, he had agreed to putting it on hold for the words of a squire.

He told himself it was for the sake of curling his fingers around Vraal's neck, for making him suffer before perishing most painfully. Yet he did not quite believe it as the worm of doubt crawled though his consciousness. Doubt that he had not forgotten honor as he had mother and father. Though perhaps it was an insult, his promise, a display of vaunted honor so as to insult those who treasured it - that any could play by such virtues even one such as he.

He hoped someone would provoke him into breaking his pledge, as he turned and entered the ringing smithy, if only to spare him the price of such thoughts.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

He stood within the clearing that had come to be a temporary home for him. It stood along the banks of the Silver Lake, not all that far from either Myrkentown or the Broken Dagger. It stood in silence, unable to protest the deathfrost that had begun to cling to the trees and bear down lush plant life earlier than nature had ever intended. Leaves fell about him in great, gusting handfuls, alight with green and yellow and, upon scraping over his armored frame, touched upon the ground brown and black.

For his part, Teron merely stared out over the lake. When the ancient forged Deliverance, his mind wandered into the murky past, this lake had not yet been formed. He had come here once, long ago, when he was but an older boy, and remembered next to nothing of this place save brief recollections of the Frum Bearn who now mostly dwelt in Heath.

The past bore him along beneath its cumbersome weight, having grown torturous the more the infernal mapmaker pried and wormed his way into things best left forgotten, things that needed never again to see the light of day. Things that had come roaring to the surface, pregnant with meaning and significance in light of the artisan's betrayal. It had, he supposed, been an all too simple thing: Livia's servitude in exchange for the sorcerous artisan Lady Feather's magical focus - an item that amplified arcane potency to exponential degrees. An item obtained with a singular purpose, he reminded himself, as a mailed hand fell to the urn at his side.

An item whose power he had tapped into in order to punish the insolent Glenn. An item whose power had been revealed not to amplify his necromantic prowess but instead to drain and pervert his ability into its very opposite. Energy meant to expunge wrath seeded peace; that which was meant to destroy had instead healed. Which itself was most irksome as even his power was not enough to see his plans through to the end.

What haunted him was that he had wielded such power. Long ago, when Teron Ashfiend had not even been a glimmer nor an idea in Vraal's hateful, scheming eyes. When there had been only Penroll. When there had been mortality. When there had been light. A light ended in failure, as Glenn had accused him, and he knew the truth of it well enough. But it was not for that reason Glenn Burnie would be murdered.

The mapmaker would die because Penroll had to.