08. 🏰

[undread]

You wake up with a start. The last thing you remember is a sword piercing through your chest, the pain in your body, you consciousness fading away. You feel flashes of things - a dream of the first time you died, when you were but a girl, a vision of Delilah whispering to you as you die. Death is but a waiting game, my dear she says, her voice reassuring and agonizing in your head, as it always is. A vision of yourself trapped within the branches of a tree, so tired, so drained. Your friends beg you to fight her, but you tell them the truth, that you haven't been able to fight Delilah for 30 odd years, ever since you began hearing her voice in your head.

But those were dreams, and this is real. You're awake, and looking up at your friends (minus the blue guy), who are all standing above you worriedly. You feel strange. You thought you were dying, for real this time, but you're here. Something feels different.

You realize the wound in your chest is gone. There is magic in the world that can return someone from the dead; not necromancy, what raised you to begin with, but holy magic, miracles, the sort only a very special and favored person can perform. You notice, vaguely, the small blonde gnome woman who is there, she's a stranger, but she has the look of some sort of holy woman, perhaps. It's difficult to come by someone with that sort of power, and even more difficult to convince them to use it.

Especially on someone undead, who should have died decades earlier. You never thought anyone would do that for you. But your friends must have found someone. They must have called in favors, called upon friends, and that's why you're lying here on the ground, healed and awake.

It's hard to know how to feel about that.

But before you can speak, the holy woman steps in front of your friends, smiling brightly but obvious nervousness in her eyes. "Hi there! I just need to check something real fast. I'm Pike, Pike Trickfoot. Do you trust me?"

"No," Laudna says automatically. You notice at this moment another woman, a beautiful half-elven woman, pointing a crossbow at you. There's something familiar about her. You feel afraid and aren't sure why.

"She's trustworthy," Imogen assures her automatically. You don't think you believe Imogen. But you don't want to put your friends to any more trouble.

The healer puts her hands over you and nods. "It's her. Laudna. It's definitely Laudna. I don't feel anyone else."

The half-elven woman lowers her crossbow. "Laudna, welcome back. My name is Lady Vex'ahlia de Rolo."

That's what it was, the fear. Panic shoots through you. "Where are we?"

"We're in Whitestone," F.C.G. says.

You're frozen with fear. "Why...why would you bring me back here?"

The others try to reassure you. "It's okay, it's okay. It's not like it was. It's very different now," says Imogen.

"We had nowhere else to go, Laudna," says Orym. But he steps between you and Lady de Rolo. He's a halfling, he's only three feet tall, so he can hardly block the shot, but it's a nice gesture. Even so, you recoil. "It was the best chance we had of bringing you back."

You listen dully to him and nod your head. You're tired, too tired to argue, and terrified, but maybe you're asking too much, to ask them to not bring you someplace like this when they already went to so much trouble. "I'm so sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Orym says. "I'm sorry."

"Everything you went through." You can pinpoint it now, the discomfort you feel that they did this much, went through this much effort, for you. "Everything you all went through, you didn't have to do that."

"You're right," Imogen says sarcastically. "We should have just left you for dead and just gone on, checking out the moon." And then more gently she adds, "If you want, you can close your eyes the whole time we're here. You don't have to look at anything. But it is quite lovely outside now."

You look between her and Orym - both so kind. You trust both of them so much. They wouldn't trick you or lie to you. So you swallow down your fear and nod.

"Okay." You're not sure, but. "Maybe I'd like to see it."

Chetney introduces Pike Trickfoot and Lady Vex'halia de Rolo. Cryptically, Vexhalia says they've met before but you can't place it. The sad way you're being looked at, though, unsettles you. Lady de Rolo looks at you as though she feels guilty, as though she feels pity for you. You don't want someone like her, a fine lady, rich and powerful, to think of you at all, but if she does, you wouldn't want it like this.

"You're very pretty," you say awkwardly. It's true; she's beautiful.

"Well, so are you," Lady Vex'halia says. She seems to realize you've noticed her looking at you, though, and awkwardly changes the subject. "You are all welcome to stay, you must be exhausted. We have rooms for you in the castle."

The mention of the castle makes you freeze, terror and awe warring for control in your chest. You grew up a peasant in Whitestone. The castle was always out of reach, in the distance, something to aspire to see one day; the idea of having rooms in a castle is like a dream. But you remember the last time you were invited to the castle at Whitestone. Your parents, unsure why they had been given this honor, but so thrilled and proud, helping you dress to attend the Lord and Lady's banquet... You shudder and stare at the ground.

"Castle? Fuck yeah!" Chetney says, but Orym shushes him.

"Why don't we let Laudna decide?" Oryn says pointedly.

You shrink a bit, but Lady Vex'halia is beautiful and kind and you want to trust your friends, who say Whitestone has changed. "Just like you have," Orym says. You want him to be right.

"Maybe let's take it one step at a time," you say, a bit shaky, but trying to convince yourself it'll be alright.

"Everyone at the castle is really nice," F.C.G. assures you. "Well, except for one guy..."

As he says that, all of you hear the sound of guns being drawn, someone storming their way down here. The door opens and and there are four or five dozen riflemen and fifty guards standing outside surrounding the small bakery. Behind them, on a platform at a distance, a white haired figure with a huge mechanical rifle sits in position, the light from the sight glinting as he trains directly on you.

You tremble, your memories going back to dozens of similar memories, mobs driving you away, calling you a witch, a monster. But it never happened like this, with so large an army, and with your friends here with you. You can't help but be afraid that if they hadn't gone to so much trouble to bring you back, they'd be safe from this, and you wouldn't have brought this down on them.

"Vex'ahlia? Pike?" the man shouts. "Do I have your assurances? Or your authority?"

Vex'ahlia steps out of the door into view. "You have my assurance, darling."

He lowers the rifle, as do the soldiers lower their weapons, but you're still scared. Everyone starts to walk out, and you take Imogen's hand and quietly ask her to stay close, leaning against her.

You step outside and see the soldiers staring at you, some wary, some curious, some too young to know the horrors Whitestone has seen in the past and simply looking uncertain. But around them, you can see the city, and you see color. A light gray sky with broken bits of blue, vibrant rooftops with fresh shingles, gardens and flower bushes, a well kept cobblestone roadway. In the distance, the sound of people laughing and talking. This isn't like the Whitestone you've held in your memories for years, decaying and corrupted filled with beaten down hopeless people and the dead. But you realize it is familiar. In your youth, so long ago, this is what Whitestone was then, too. Just a city like any other, perhaps more gleaming and fertile than some. The last memories of yout home had always stayed with you, but now you remember running up these streets, visiting shopkeepers, playing in the yards and sneaking into the buildings.

You look up behind the crowd of soldiers and guards and can see, in the distance, the towering, vibrant bright green and yellow leaves of the sun tree in full display, healthy as it's ever been, turning into autumn colors. Its dead form, gray bark and gnarled branches and the stench of rot and decay, were a feature of your nightmares for so long. How long has it been since it came to life again?

Holding Imogen's hand, you walk towards the tree while the others shoo off the soldiers to give you a little space. There are little paths and benches around the tree, and people out enjoying the warm early autumn weather, curious about the mustering soldiers but not on alert for any serious danger.

"It doesn't seem real," you whisper to Imogen. "Like I'm still in a dream, just this one isn't a nightmare."

"This gets to be real now," Imogen says.

"Are you sure this isn't one of her tricks?" you ask.

"I promise," Imogen says. "Cross my heart."

They link pinkies, and then you step away. You walk up to it, actively trying to rewrite the vision of the dead tree in your head. You can see darkness and ropes swinging and the sound of screams, and the distance between that and the laughter of children and sunlight is confusing. You see four children running around. The youngest, a little girl, spots you and is started for a second, but when you give a friendly wave and assure her you're only "fun scary," the little girl relaxes, even smiles when you introduce her to Pâté.

There are children here now who have never known anything different, anything but peace. You touch the bark of the sun tree and it feels warm. And for the first time in a very long time, in nearly thirty years, there's no voice whispering in your head. It's just your own thoughts, and you feel okay.