Chapter Six
Personal Revelations

And now its my time, it's my time to dream
Dream of the sky
Make me believe that this place isn't plagued
By the poison in me
Help me decide if my fire will burn out
Before you can breathe
Breathe into me

"I Stand Alone"
written by Sully Erna
Performed by Godsmack

Five horses moved carefully along the long disused road on which they traveled, the once paved surface partially grown over, plant life having reasserted itself over the many decades since its regular use, narrowing the road considerably. The road was barely wide enough to allow two horses to stand abreast on a road that had once supported wide heavy heavy wagons. Once upon a time the road had lead to the ruins of the village of Tralgar, at one time a major transit hub connecting the ports of New Amsterdam with the rest of Faerun.

In the final, tense days leading up to the Time of Troubles, the village had been utterly destroyed by a black dragon known only to the villagers as "The Black Death". The soldiers who had been dispatched the following day had found a charnal house of demolished, acid-burned buildings and ruined fields. Not a single man woman or child had been spared nor a single farm animal or stray dog left alive. Its vaults, taverns and storage houses had been laid waste, leaving only smoldering buildings and the whispering wind.

It had taken four days to recover the few bodies that could be found buried in the debris which were intact enough to identify. In the end, they had been buried in a mass grave with only a marker blessed by the Chantry of Pelor to mark the their passing. Shortly after identifying the few intact remains of their fellow villagers, those who had fled the destruction vowed never to return and disappeared to the four corners of Faerun.

Plans to rebuild Tralgar were soon delayed by the series of short, brutal wars both during and after the Avatar Crisis and were ultimately abandoned due to the lack of people willing to relocate there and the transit hub was quietly moved to a more secure location further north. A new village gradually sprung up around it and quietly prospered, leaving the ruins of Tralgar to pass into history and the silence of its dead.

The dragon had disappeared soon after the attack, never to be seen again. Many suspected that, after eating so heartily, he had simply crawled into his lair somewhere deep in Hollander's Woods and gone into torpor, but few were eager or brave enough to enter his domain to seek him out. The few that had sallied forth, spurred on by tales of the vast riches held within never returned. There was plenty of profitable and much less dangerous work for eager adventurers to make a name for themselves, especially with Drow surface raids on the rise shortly after the troubles.

In spite of his haste to rescue Alexis, Richard Castle was no fool. He had been every bit as diligent in his research in the two days between his outburst in the Chapel of Pelor and their departure from New Amsterdam as he would have been with any spell he had not yet attempted. He'd wanted to know where exactly he was going and what he was walking into.

Though he knew that this road had not been part of the regular patrol schedule for decades -bandits had little interest in a road where no trade goods moved – The New Amsterdam City Guard still maintained a series of guard houses along part of it for defense purposes, though few who ventured this way strayed far from the road. Whatever crawling nasties were out and about seemed to know when the monthly patrol was coming and gave it a wide berth, which didn't give the guardsmen who drew the short straw much comfort.

Kate had Javier had volunteered for the patrol, which had drawn attention, but did provide enough of a cover for five riders to be seen leaving through the South Gate and turn onto the old trade road. The last time she had done so was shortly after Will Sorenson had trashed her reputation at court to refute his claims of her diminished capacity and prove she was still fit to serve, so she was familiar with the established patrol route, though neither she, nor anyone else from the City Guard had ever been further than the midway point between New Amsterdam and the ruins of Tralgar in over a century.

After two days ride, they had reached the last of the fully maintained guardhouses along the route and Kate had felt increasingly guilty as each mile of the road slipped by under their horses hooves. Though Castle had been more almost pleasantly surprised to find not only Ryan, but herself, Lanie and Esposito waiting for him when he had arrived at the south gate, he'd barely spoken a handful of words to any of them since mounting their horses to depart New Amsterdam.

She'd based most of her assumptions about him upon his reputation at court and completely overlooked how the son of a commoner might have come to be such a high-ranking member of Lord Weldon's inner circle in the first place. She had asked Knight-Captain Montgomery about Richard Castle after he'd walked out of the chapel of Pelor and the story had shocked her.

Though it was known throughout the shire of the part Weldon and Montgomery had played in the battle to retake Myth Drannor, little had been recorded of the battle-mage who had fought at their side. Castle had not been content to remain in the rear casting spells and throwing fireballs around like most of the other mages at the time. He'd drawn a sword and walked right into the fray, eventually standing shoulder to shoulder with her two heroes, outnumbered three to one after their their position had been cut off and overrun. With no armor and at the risk of his own life, he'd taken two crossbow bolts meant for Weldon yet stayed in the fight and saved both of his and Montgomery's lives, nearly bleeding to death in the process.

After the halls had been secured, the royal house of Evereska had personally decorated the newly minted Lord Richard Castle for valor above and beyond the call of duty. Though he should have been paraded through the streets and lauded as a hero, instead he chose to remain in the shadows and allow his actions at Myth Drannor to be overlooked by all but Lord Weldon, who had given him a position of prestige in his court and a place of honor within his inner circle.

He'd been able to raise a well adjusted daughter in spite of his reputation at court because that reputation had been a sham. A lie that had been allowed to propagate in order to keep Lord Weldon's rule over New Amsterdam intact for over a decade. A reputation Richard Castle had no more deserved, that she had deserved hers at the hands of Will Sorenson and a few nobles who thought she should simply shed her clothes and fall into their beds because they winked and nodded at her from their positions of noble-born power.

Lord Weldon had made many reforms in how New Amsterdam was run since the royal family had installed him as Lord of the Shire. There were those who mistook his benevolence for weakness and sought to usurp him. Many of those threats were not made in open court, but in back rooms or dockside taverns and needed to be dealt with by one who's hands were not seen as nearly so clean. Richard Castle's lack of noble pedigree made his supposed reputation easier to sell and he'd foiled more than one threat to Lord Weldon's regime with very few the wiser. Many such anonymous plots simply withered on the vine after a conversation with Castle in a dark alley or over a tankard of ale with little or no bloodshed. The conspirators in those that didn't tended to have very public and very messy accidents.

Kate was fully aware that this wasn't some romp in the woods to poke his head into a dragon's lair to see what happened, or some strange come-on like so many others before had tried with her. He was placing himself in harm's way this to save his daughter. He'd treated her with more respect than most and all but begged for her trust and she'd as much as told him she would give him neither.

They'd finally turned off the road onto the short path leading to the reinforced guard house. It's two story stone structure with an open cupola at the top, virtually identical to the others they had stopped in over the past two nights and dismounted their horses. Castle cast a detect magic spell revealing nothing unexpected, simply the protective wards that kept biting insects and vermin out.

As each of them began the laborious task of tending to their horses after a full day's ride, Beckett's eyes kept turning toward Castle as he released his mount into the paddock to graze and entered the guard house, eliciting a scoff from Esposito, seeing to his own mount.

"Don't know what you see in that guy." Esposito muttered, "He takes you down once in the training yard and suddenly you're pining after him like an errant schoolgirl."

"Espo, you know nothing about him you didn't hear crowed about in some tavern," Kate shot back, "I've actually taken some time to get to know him and he isn't as bad a guy as I thought at first glance. You should try it sometime, instead of believing everything you hear from tavern wenches down on the docks."

"If I recall you thought the same thing about..." Espo began, but was cut off by a death glare from Kate,

"You do not want to finish that sentence." Kate hissed sternly, before turning on her heel. "You and Ryan finish securing the horses and check the perimeter fence. We make for the ruins of Tralgar at first light. Guardsman Esposito, you have first watch."

With that, Kate stalked away from a rather shocked Esposito and followed Castle into the two story stone structure of the guard house.

"Come on, thief," Espo growled, giving Ryan a rough shove on the shoulder in the direction of the perimeter fence "we have honest work to do."

In a flash of movement so fast Esposito had no time to react, Ryan grabbed him by the wrist and flipped the larger man over his shoulder sending him sprawling onto his back. Before the shocked Esposito could recover, he found a boot pressed to his chest and the point of one of the Moon Elf's two slender swords at his throat.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, Guardsman," Ryan growled angrily, "I am not a thief. I am Kevin Ryan, Brother of the Forgotten Flower, acolyte of the noble god Corellon Larethian and sworn guardian of the Teu-tel-Quessir heritage. It was my sworn duty to retrieve priceless artifacts of my people which those nobles had stolen whilst desecrating the war graves of our honored dead. Those artifacts are now on their way to the royal vaults of Evereska, where they will be kept in sacred trust until such time as they can be safely returned and re-buried with honor."

With a near silent hiss, Ryan's sword slipped back into its scabbard, before he removed his boot from Esposito's chest and offered him a hand up.

"Now, as you said, there is work to be done," Ryan offered as he helped Esposito to his feet, "we shall speak no more of this."

Kate stalked into the main sleeping area of the guard house, the frustration with Esposito bubbling of from her as soon as she spotted Lanie at the circular hearth at the center which served the dual purposes of heating the guard house and cooking their rations. She had started a fire and had just begun adding wood to get a decent blaze going, the implements and materials to prepare food and coffee were resting at her feet. The place would soon be comfortably warm and they could share a meal. This would be the last relatively secure camp site before they reached the Tralgar ruins and Hollander's Woods. The next one would require a lot more work to set up, as it had not been used in thirty years, and then only hastily so.

"Ryan told me he would set some traps and maybe bring in some fresh game to offset our dry rations for a decent meal tonight, maybe even enough for a decent breakfast in the morning." Lanie offered.

"Our Mr. Ryan has quite the skill-set for a thief," Kate quipped in return.

"Kate, I've been around the block a few times, even did a bit of adventuring myself in my early years with the order, and it's clear to me that Ryan is no mere thief," Lanie replied. The armor and weapons he's wearing speak more to an Elven light cavalry ranger, of relatively old manufacture."

Lanie waited a beat until she was sure that Kate was following her reasoning, then continued.

"It is highly doubtful that a professional thief would have been spotted at all in order for such a complaint to be openly filed against him, not to mention the Thieves' Guild would have hustled him out of town long before Javi could have caught up with him. Have you ever known the nobility to back down when they've caught somebody stealing from them? Or better yet to apologize for the misunderstanding? I think there's more to him that meets the eye."

"So everyone keeps saying," Kate muttered, "Lord Castle included."

Kate couldn't get the image out of her head of the anger in Jennifer Ryan's eyes, directed not at her husband but at boring right at Esposito as if she meant to burn him down from the inside out. Which spoke volumes as to how much she knew about what what Kevin was up to and why. She looked every bit as lethal in her own way as her husband did when he appeared at the South Gate in Elven light battle armor, two slender swords crossed at his back and a bow that looked like it had been grown, not constructed. Kate wondered if there might be another bow and another set of battle armor in the Ryan household.

Espo might need to be wary should he ever pay another visit to the Ryan household unannounced, Kate thought to herself.

"I should have the fire hot enough to brew some of that expensive coffee of yours," Lanie offered to change the subject, "I think I saw Castle head up the stairs to the officer's quarters. If you want to mend fences with him you could offer him a cup."

Kate nodded and started for the stone steps leading to the second floor where the patrol officer would typically take up residence and was unsurprised to find the fully appointed quarters (complete with cot and map table) completely untouched other than Castle's bag and chest at the bottom of the spiral staircase leading up to the open air cupola which commanded the road for miles.

Every fourth patrol would stay out an entire fortnight and bring along a repair crew to keep the road from completely closing up and perform maintenance on the towers. This tower would serve as the base of operations, to send two person teams out to make sure the road wasn't being used by smugglers, slavers and the like. The patrol commander would keep watch for signal fires from the other two from the cupola above, if there was any real trouble, the guard force could fall back toward the city collecting all of the repair crews as they went to bring in a reinforced company to deal with it.

The patrols had become mostly a formality. Nobody who went on them really wanted to find anything, at least not the sort of things that Hollander's woods was known for. Whatever was out here in these dark haunted woods certainly didn't wish to be found, either. The last time a patrol had turned up anything had been almost thirty years ago, shortly before she'd been born.

A performing troupe of minstrels and bards had foolishly decided to take a shortcut through the old road to shave a few days off their trip and had run afoul of Kobold dragon cultists drawn by the proximity of a lair. In the ensuing chaos a young boy had gone missing, his frightened mother beside herself when the patrol had happened upon them. Her father had only recently taken his oath as a Paladin and it was only by chance or divine providence that he had been along.

He had taken charge of the patrol, rescued the boy and broken up whatever ritual they had been trying to perform involving human sacrifice. She'd heard the story many times, most notably the night before their departure, but her father never mentioned the boy's name. After returning him safely to his mother, her father had personally lead a more substantial force to Hollander's Woods, but the cultists had faded into the woods as if they'd opened up a hole and pulled the ground over themselves. Her father had personally led two more patrols there, but no sign of the dragon-kin or the bodies of the sacrificed young women had ever been found.

She'd gone with him on his last trip to the outskirts of Hollander's Woods when she was nineteen as his squire. It had been exhilarating to watch her father perform the rites to cleanse the site of the human sacrifices and attend to his duties as a Paladin of Heironeous. Her father had been her hero then, she'd been in absolute awe of him and remembered wanting to follow in his footsteps.

Guard-Lieutenant Kate Beckett tried not to dream such dreams anymore, not since the end of that patrol when she and her father had come home to find her mother's still warm dead body in her office. Nor did her thoughts linger too long upon the depths her father had fallen to afterward. It had taken him five years to climb out of that hole, and another five to find a place for himself in the world. She'd had to harden her own heart to carve out the life for herself that she had. One day, however, she would find the sons of bitches who'd killed her mother and broken her father. When she did, there would be a reckoning.

Kate shook off her recollections as she pushed up on the trap door at the top of the stairwell to cupola to be met with the most mournful flute music she had ever heard flowing around her. When the door was open enough to poke her head up, she stopped, transfixed.

Castle was stripped to the waist, sitting cross-legged with his back turned to her less than three feet away, his hands holding the flute to his lips as he played, pouring the mournful notes of his grief out to the night sky.

His back was patterned with a collection of scars. The two puckered evenly-spaced scars on his left shoulder bore silent witness to the two crossbow bolts Montgomery had told her about that had nearly ended his life twenty years before and a longer one down his left side, the graze of a blade on unarmored flesh. But what truly caught her attention were the fifteen interlocking white scars from a lash that looked years older.

Her instincts pulled at her in opposite directions, the first to flee and leave Castle alone with a pain she could only imagine -his daughter out there in the dark, held prisoner by gods only knew what - and his flute, the other to run to his side hold him and tell him everything would be all right. That they would find his little girl and bring her home safe. But she followed neither, his sad mournful song holding her transfixed, hot tears pouring unbidden and uncontrolled down her cheeks.

His daughter was out there somewhere and Castle had no idea whether she was alive or dead. But he had girded himself for war for the first time in twenty years on the off-chance she might be, shedding the facade the world knew him by in the process.

When Castle stopped playing, the mournful notes of his flute no longer broadcast through the small space and the spell was broken. Kate fled, her heart burning with shame for trespassing on Richard Castle's private pain and for having misjudged him so very badly on the word of the same people who also thought such vile things about her. Whom Castle had not believed when he'd sought her out for help, even though she had only wished to be rid of him.

Kate hid her face from Lanie as she took a seat at the fire.

"He's busy," she whispered, barely able to keep the emotion from her voice, "I didn't wish to disturb his meditations. I'll take him some coffee when it's ready."

The small band of adventurers had been so intent upon their own thoughts and revelations as it grew dark that nobody noticed the many eyes upon them from the dense forest, nor the shapes melting in and out of the dark just out of sight to block the road back to New Amsterdam.

"Let them come" the Black Death whispered in the Kobold's minds in the dragon tongue, "make no move to press them, but don't let them escape. The one I need will need his rest, his time will come soon."

**Author's note** Dun! Dun! Dun! Took me a bit to get this worded the way I wanted it. As much as I was hoping to make word count, I wanted the story to make sense more. Did you really think I could avoid going dark? I had to let Ryan work things out with Esposito -or at least begin to, and Kate needed to get a better idea of who Castle was. Enjoy!

(Yes, Bracken can get in the Kobold's heads projecting his true self into their minds. He's even more of a slippery manipulative bastard than he was on the show. I forgot how much fun writing this stuff can be)