Chapter 2: Remembrance and Revelation
"Is he dead?" "Funny you should ask that . . . I'm not certain if he was alive to begin with . . . " "What do you mean by that?" " . . . Never mind." " . . . All right. He has no heartbeat or breath, so I take it that he needs to be revived regardless."
Pain was predominant among the sensations that erupted in Azrael's mind as his heart and lungs came alive anew as the resurrection spell flooded life back into his battered body. His eyes snapped open, tearing up with the strange agony the enchantment gave him in what should have been like wakening from a sound sleep. He attempted to look around, but he could hardly see with vision that was blurred and streaked with glowing spots. With a suffering gasp, he found he could not hold onto consciousness and passed out.
"That's odd . . . " "Everything about him is odd . . . " "chuckle I think I need to hear both your stories . . . but not out here, help her get him inside, won't you?"
In Azrael's feverish dreams, it was the nightmare again, but this time, something was different. He stood over the sea of corpses once more, but as he gazed at their pain-twisted faces, their eyes suddenly came open and stared back at him with a grey, dead glare. Their mouths did not open, but he could hear them whispering to him, "You failed . . . You failed us . . . You failed her . . . You failed once more..." This time, Azrael found he could speak, and he protested their sibilant rasping, crying back at them, "I did my best! I would've died with you had fate not decided something different for me!" Yet they continued their condemnation, their eyes never wavering.
From behind him, he heard a voice he recognized all too well. "Was it fate that decided that I should die while you lived?" "Aelyena . . . I never wanted you to die, you should have lived, not me," Azrael choked, as he turned to see his deceased wife's remains stand up to face him. Her eyes were closed as she shambled towards him, blood still flowing from the gaping hole in her breastplate. "You are here because you keep failing . . . You failed to save me, you failed to save first your guild, then the other . . . Now you've failed again . . . " he could hear her say, her lips moving imperceptibly. "I'm still alive, I'll succeed the next time, I promise," he murmured, unable to look at her for shame.
With an unexpected tinge of hate in her voice, she continued, "Yes, a second chance. You always get second chances . . . Why should you get bailed out again and again while we keep dying because we called ourselves your friends? You Champions . . . you take all the glory while all we get is death, anger, sorrow, and pain. If only you had never existed . . . I would not need to have been either." Doubt entered Azrael's mind as the apparition spoke . . . something was terribly wrong . . . Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her . . . no, his sword lying on the ground. With a deft move, he flipped the hilt up into his hand with his foot and muttering a silent prayer for forgiveness, plunged the flaming blade into the gaping wound of the vengeful ghost.
The thing that had appeared as Aelyena disappeared into black mist, which swirled back away from the paladin. Two glowing red eyes appeared out of the morass and burned balefully. "Why are you here? You were expunged from my body!" Azrael demanded, hefting Aelyena's Fiery Defender into a ready position. I'll always be a part of you . . . much to my regret, the cloud growled at him. As it spoke, the dream began to fade to black about Azrael. Before it passed, he could hear the specter hiss one last time, If you are to die . . . it will be at my hand, and nobody else's. I owe you and your predecessors for forcing me into existence . . . I will pay back that debt of pain a hundredfold . . .
The darkness became complete, and for a moment, Azrael panicked, but slowly the blackness softened into light, and he tenuously began to wake up. He found himself on a soft bed filled with what felt like straw. His vision was still blurry, but as he blinked furiously, he began to see things clearer. Disgusted with himself, he muttered, "This is the sixth time this has happened . . . " " . . . Are you awake? Oh, thank Rodcet, we were afraid you wouldn't pull through," he heard a woman say, and he whipped around as the sound of her voice tugged a cord in his heart. He could barely see her face, but what he could see shocked him. "Aelyena?" he gasped in disbelief, trying even harder to clear his vision.
"No, but I'm sure why you'd have a hard time telling the difference . . . my cousin and I were always hard to tell apart," the woman laughed, and as the paladin's eyes finally cleared, he could see that while she looked like Aelyena, she had dark brown braided hair and brilliant green eyes, and was obviously several years younger than his late wife. Though she was wearing a simple country girl's dress, he could detect that she had strong and developed limbs from how the sleeves were tight against her arms. "My name's Radiane . . . I'm so glad to finally meet my cousin's husband at last," the younger woman exclaimed, moving to the bed where Azrael was laying, carrying a basin of water and a cloth. She touched the back of her hand to his forehead and sighed in relief. "It looks like your fever has broken. Even after my uncle resurrected you, it didn't appear that you would ever wake up. I've had to be 'rezzed' a few times, but it looks like you took it harder than I did. I guess it's more difficult the more experienced you are I guess . . . " she explained as she set down the basin on a squat wooden table nearby.
Though Azrael was stunned by the fact that he was staring at his beloved's cousin, the word resurrection cut through the haze of his mind like an arrow through mist. "Wait, I was resurrected?" he demanded. Radiane nodded, the single heavy braid swinging across her back. "After you fought off that dreadful thing, you must have died from the blood loss. You're awfully lucky that you were near our farm . . . I'm glad I didn't have to run to Qeynos to get help, I'm still not too confident about my abilities . . . " the girl told him, her eyes downcast demurely. I . . . died? Azrael wondered, but he shook his head. He'd know if he were dead, he would have woken up in a far different place if he had. "But . . . I just passed out!" he protested, attempting to sit up, but Radiane pushed him back down with a gentle hand, giving him a sympathetic look, remarking, "It feels like that most times, doesn't it? But don't worry, you're alive now, and we're all the more thankful for it."
"Well, we'll be even more thankful after we've had a little talk . . . " a man said from the door. Standing supported by a crutch, a grizzled-looking older man with slightly graying blond hair hobbled into the room. "Uncle, I'll wait outside and keep Lsanna company, if that's all right," Radiane said, curtsying to him. The man nodded, and Radiane moved off into the room from which he had come. He too was wearing farmers' garb, but he wore on his wrists metal bracers marked with a stylized thunderbolt. The older man noticed Azrael staring, and lifted an arm and gazed at the armor briefly, then back to the younger paladin and admitted, "Yes, I'm a Knight of Thunder, well, a retired one at least." Laughing quietly, he moved carefully to a simple chair not far from the bed, favoring his left leg, relying on the crutch heavily.
The middle-aged human man sat looking at Azrael for a few minutes silently before extending a hand and saying, "I'm Hrethel, by the way." "Er . . . pleased to meet you . . . " Azrael replied, gripping the older paladin's hand a strongly as he could manage in his weakened state. Noticing Azrael's uncomfortable look, Hrethel gazed up at the ceiling as he said, "I imagine you have some questions for me, and I'll answer some right now. You're still in the West Karanas, at the farm that I manage with the help of my niece, Radiane. After her parents drowned in the cold waters of the river in Everfrost during an unexpected thaw, I've raised her myself. I'll explain some more later, but right now I have a question for you." Hrethel's head dropped down to look pointedly into Azrael's eyes. "Why are you here, alive, and my daughter, your wife, is not?"
Lsanna sat down in the 'common room' of the farmhouse, sipping some tea to calm her nerves. It had been ages since Hrethel had gone upstairs to talk to Azrael. She had tried to pass the time by talking to Radiane, and had learned some remarkable things. Her parents had died permanently when she was just seven years old during a failed expedition into Permafrost. They had been forced to flee from the frozen lair of Lady Vox by a contingent of frost giants, who followed them to the river across Everfrost when the unthinkable occurred. There had been unusually warm weather that summer, and the heat flowing up from the south had weakened the river ice. When they had tried to cross, the ice cracked, and as soon as the first pursuing giant had placed a foot on the floes, the whole surface broke apart, plunging them all into the icy water. An ice boulder trapped her mother, and her father had drowned along with her when he dived down to try and save her.
"So that's why you limp . . . " Azrael remarked. Hrethel fingered his left knee, frowning at the lingering pain in the joint. "Yeah . . . there was little I could do about it. With a spear in my knee, I wasn't getting off that ice floe in a hurry. Kind of like the time you told me about how you were having trouble with that dragon across one of them ice bridges. With the giants shooting arrows at me constantly, I couldn't even manage to cast a spell to heal myself, though it took a long time for my mana to come back enough to even do so. Had to wait for the scheduled reinforcements to arrive a full day later in order to finally get to safety. 'Course, by then, my leg was in pretty bad shape, and it never did fully heal right. They managed to get me away, but we couldn't get back to the river until four days later, and that was far too long for any of our party to be resurrected," the older paladin explained. He hadn't found himself tearing up since Azrael's story, but as his eyes began to ache, he managed to blink them back, though he had to reach for his handkerchief again.
"Ah, where was I? Oh yes, when I got back, I had to do one of the toughest things I ever had to do . . . tell my niece that her parents weren't ever coming back. I had lost a brother, but her mother and father were both gone," he went on, pausing to snort loudly to try and clear his nose. "Radiane couldn't understand it, she was too young . . . But Aelyena knew somehow, it was one of those moments of intuition she had. With my wife gone already, she had been doing without a mother herself for some years, so she knew exactly how it felt. So, she became a sort of surrogate mother for her cousin, and they remained very close after that, bless their hearts."
"You never found out what your Aunt Ravenna was suffering from?" Lsanna asked, amazed. Radiane had joined her at the table with her own cup of tea in hand. "Uncle never really got over it . . . He was so sure that it was the Bloodsabers, but the priests at the Temple of Life said that it was something no spell could inflict, and it wasn't even infectious, yet she was dying from it just the same. She just wasted away . . . the coughing got worse each year, and no medicine, no healing spell seemed to work, though Uncle spent a fortune traveling, trying every cure he could think of. This was all years before I was born . . . Aelyena was just a little girl when her mother finally died; I guess we were similar in that regard," Radiane admitted, gazing down at her half-finished cup as Lsanna reached out across the wooden table to grasp one of the human girl's hands.
"The only problem was, Ravenna had been suffering from this . . . affliction for years, ever since she was little. It would go away, sometimes for almost a year, but she always relapsed. I felt so helpless . . . Nothing that I did seemed to help, and soon it was too late. I think that's why I can sympathize with you about how Aelyena died, even though my wife didn't die trying to save my life. Actually, I think she was trying to ease my pain in a way, because she kept saying, 'It's all right . . . don't worry about it, it's been a long time in coming, and I've gotten used to it', but I wouldn't let her just give up. But in the end, it wasn't up to me," Hrethel told Azrael, really crying now as he remembered his wife's illness.
The younger man had been listening carefully, and muttered under his breath, "Sounds like cystic fibrosis . . . " He thought he had been quiet enough, but the older man's eyes snapped open, and he leaned forwards to seize Azrael's shoulders. "What? You know what disease it was? Was there a cure? Is there a cure?" he demanded, his eyes wild. "If you mean to say there was a way I could have saved her . . . " he began, his voice low, but when he saw Azrael's sad eyes, he went silent. "No . . . not even in my knowledge is there a way to cure it. It is something you are born with," the Champion explained, wishing he hadn't mentioned the disease's name at all, as he had only succeeded in briefly convincing Hrethel that he had missed a valuable chance.
"Thanks for getting my mind on something else, Lsanna," Radiane sighed, filling her cup again. "So . . . it was your uncle who pushed you to become a paladin as well even though you'd have preferred to be a cleric?" Lsanna asked, taking a sip before she spoke. Though she had paused to undo her long oaken-hued braid, Radiane soon resumed her story. "Yes, he said that I was too strong not to learn how to use a sword, plus that it was some sort of family unity thing. Though I've gotten somewhat better at it, I still don't like killing monsters . . . though I can make an exception for undead and diseased things. Rodcet Nife despises them the most, so I think I can honor his wishes there at least," she explained to the wood elf, gesturing with her slender fingers. "Well, Father never had to push me into being a ranger. I had always been taking care of things . . . well, my younger sister especially, so becoming a ranger to protect nature and my fellow elves just seemed logical," Lsanna responded, thinking about her own origins for a change. Radiane laughed lightly and said with a slight touch of sadness, "See, I was the exact opposite. I had been taken care of so much in my life that I finally wanted to give something back. Uncle Hrethel took care of me, then Aelyena . . . I just want to be strong so that I can one day be just like them." She was surprised to hear a chuckle from Lsanna, and as their matching green eyes met, the elven woman replied, "I believe we're more alike than you think."
Hrethel's face was grim as Azrael finished describing the battle with the Chimera to him. "So, only by virtue of that amulet you have, can these kind of things be destroyed?" he asked, tugging on his beard. Azrael nodded, but clarified, "There aren't any Chimeras besides this one, but there will be more Fallen, up to five more. I've already defeated one . . . so I guess I was overconfident in trying to beat this one." Noting that Azrael still wore the Amulet around his neck, the older paladin asked, "Couldn't you give that thing to somebody else so that they can try and kill it while you rest up?" Azrael looked shocked that Hrethel had even suggested it, and the blond man was taken aback by the expression on the younger man's face.
"By Karana's beard lad, I didn't ask you to give your right arm to a moss snake or anything," he muttered, and Azrael actually smiled, and waved a hand to calm him down. "I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but it's not that . . . I can't take the Amulet off, believe me, I've tried." A puzzled expression covered Hrethel's face as he replied, "You can't take it off? But it swung about easily enough when we were removing your armor, it's not like it's grafted to your neck . . . " Azrael shook his head and explained, "I think it's part of the enchantment. I can't remove it because it can never be out of contact with my skin for even a second. For that matter, nobody else can try to remove it without suffering a deadly discharge of energy. A giant in Kael Drakkel found that out the hard way."
Hrethel thought for a few minutes, and then announced with a resigned look, "Well then, I guess we'll just have to wait until you're fully recovered again, though I doubt that . . . Chimera beast will show up again after that jolt you gave it." "Really . . . I don't want to be a burden . . . " Azrael began, but Hrethel cut him off. "If you don't want to just lay around, I guess you could train Radiane a bit, don't really need to walk far to give instruction, she needs to have more courage with her sword I think," he told Azrael in a strong yet cheery voice, clearly not expecting a 'no' for an answer. Smirking faintly, Azrael gave in and responded, "All right, if you insist." Both men laughed at that.
Hrethel was turning to go downstairs to tell Radiane to start getting dinner ready when he paused, and turned around. "If you're feeling up to it . . . perhaps I could see just a little spark of that power? You could do something small . . . like oh . . . knock the bowl off the table near you," he suggested. Azrael still felt extremely tired, but looking at the lightweight wooden bowl that had been carrying cool water for the cloth Radiane had been placing on his forehead up until earlier that day, he thought he could give it a try. Reaching out a hand, he concentrated, gathered his will into his hand, then . . . nothing. Frowning, he looked at his hand, then up at Hrethel who was waiting expectantly, and stretched out his hand again and tried harder, straining to make even just a small bolt hit the bowl. Not even a flicker of light could be seen. "What's wrong?" Hrethel asked after a while, disappointed by the lack of results. "The Third Power . . . I can't control it. My power is gone!" Azrael exclaimed, his face going pale.
To be continued . . .