A little sorrowed talk
Wintergreen grit her teeth. The man flies off in a huff one evening, drops his guard and gets turned into a psychopath by the Sin Writer, and triggers a chain of events that result in the death of her sister and most of her guild. Then, two years later, he has the audacity to sing as he shows up late for a meeting. Whisper truly had no shame.
But then, the day she lost patience with him, gave up and told him to go to hell, was the day he flew off in a huff…As Damien had warned her, ‘the day we refuse to talk to each other is all to often the day we lose the ability to’. She couldn’t deny her own role in this.
She, Miko Tanner, Al’Hazir and Rin Knotting were waiting in a small barn on the roadside, 20 miles south of Jence, just within sight of the southern walls, and just outside the strange cleanzone where the blight stopped short of the city courtesy of Noxala’s little-known truce with Reason. The blight did not touch this farm either, though it strangled the wilderness around it. Despite this, the fields were fallow, the farmhouse was a ruined wreck. Everything fallen to the blight of time, except this solitary building.
There was…history, in this barn. Reason’s parents had raised her here. Many of the Tokmor council were descended from families who once worked these lands. And a very long time ago, here was where she, Rhillaine and her companions had met to discuss the disappearance of their wayward friend, Aethin…but that story had long ago run its course. She was standing roughly where she had back then, but this time there was no Ijana lounging on the back wall, or Abal aimlessly pacing between the entrances…
She shared a glance with Miko Tanner, who was perched on a bale of hay and idly flicking pieces of it through her fingers, as she heard several light taps on the side entrance.
Tap-tap-tap-BOOM.
The door smashed open, revealing Whisper, his fist still in the air halfway through a knock, and a chicken with a talon also raised from where he had kicked the door in.
“That’s incredibly rude of you!!!” Whisper admonished the chicken. “Now they’ll have to replace the lock…”
“Baaaaaawk!”
“Gus!” Miko squealed in delight, jumping down from her hay bale and racing Rin to be the first to stroke his crest. He stretched his neck into their gentle affections, his eyes rolling back in enjoyment.
“The meeting was for an hour before sunset,” Wintergreen said tartly.
“My apologies, I know your time is precious. I was offworld.” Whisper quickly stepped around behind Rin and closed in on the threshing floor in the middle of the barn, over which a heavy plough was turned upside down and a circular wooden board was balanced as a makeshift table. He gestured to the table, and an illusionary map of Elanora rose from it. “The Conclave is preparing to strike. A coordinated assault on your golden acorns. They know you’ve been using them as relay points to push back on the blight, and they know if they can kill or blight enough of them, they can cripple you long enough to launch an assault on your tree.”
“Do they know that we know?” Miko asked.
“I doubt they’d care,” Al’Hazir replied. “When we take losses, at best we lose diamonds to return our dead to life, and sometimes even that doesn’t work. When they die, they reform at their tree. They can just keep coming.”
“The more powerful among them can,” Whisper corrected him. “Those who aren’t so progressed in their transformation are forming two armies. One here, at the Conclave Hall. One they’ve snuck behind you here, about Exidios.”
“Aww, crab…” Rin swore.
“That Exidios army is nothing the Verdant Light and the Duke of Pizol can’t handle, but this will tie them up,” Al’Hazir reasoned. “The one at the hall concerns me more. Are they going to break the truce at Jence?”
“More likely they’ll bypass this city and strike at Emberin Halls and Theaton,” Whisper explained. “Despite everything, Noxala remains committed to leaving Jence alone.”
“And whale we’re here…” Rin objected. “Noxala’s even fishier than I am around Jence, what gives?”
“Nothing fishy about it,” Wintergreen replied. “Noxala’s my sister. Reason is my…niece.”
Miko gave a low whistle.
“Nox lived here for a time with a wizard named Ga’ren Mikalan,” Whisper explained further, looking out the window to the fields beyond. “Ga’ren was a good man. He was a far better father to me than Jessep ever was. When Reason and I became close at Damien’s old academy, I would spend the winter break here with her. We’d help Noxala tend the goats, thresh the grain, feed the swans in the lake, and watch the crows pick over the remains of the fields after the autumn harvest…then Ga’ren developed a form of dementia. It struck him quickly. Before we realized what was happening, he’d turned all the farmhands into sheep. Permanently.”
“…oh,” Miko breathed quietly. “Gheksfort.”
“We didn’t have anywhere else to put them. Then we had to deal with Ga’ren. We forbade Reason and Nox from interfering, asking them to kill their own father or spouse…it was too much. But someone had to do it. He’d begun deluded experiments into undeath. So Ruby and I came here. I countered his magic…”
“And I ended his life,” Wintergreen finished softly.
There was a long silence, eventually broken by Gus’ clucking.
“Agreed, back on topic,” Whisper smiled gently. “You’re aware, yes, that Jaspier and I have recreated shield tokens for the Little Warriors. You can repel the Conclave assault, it’s true, but as Al’Hazir pointed out they will simply strike again. Or you can make a counteroffensive.”
“If they’re spread thin, they won’t be able to defend their own acorns as well,” Miko agreed. “But they’re not attacking our tree outright for fear of Lady Wintergreen. Aren’t we forgetting their guildmaster? Won’t Noxala just…you know. Eat us all?”
“The Golden Acorns have a porpoise beyond keeping thorns out, silly!” Rin giggled.
“Huh?”
“They’re not just relay points,” Wintergreen explained. “Elanora’s history is complex. As Rin discovered, everything we think of as normal and natural is a ‘blight’ of another kind. This world was never built to contain creatures capable of free will. Nathrael won the first war of the Elder gods, remember? So a ‘blight’ was unleashed by the other Whisperers of old, that contaminated all the soulless echoes Nathrael had created to worship only him, and granted them the freedom to worship whatever they chose. And so weakened, Nathrael fell to his family’s second assault.”
“So these Golden Acorns…they’re tapping into this ‘first blight’?” Miko asked in confusion.
“Think of it as the source of our free will, an echo of the first Whisperers,” Wintergreen replied. “So long as the Guild can hold the golden acorns, I can use them to empower a small strike team...”. And with the help of Whisper’s illusion, she explained the rest of her plan.
Miko, Rin and Al’Hazir looked across the barn at each other in sudden recognition of why they’d been brought here.
“Baaawwk buk buk…”
“You’re not going,” Whisper snapped. “So. Assemble your strike teams. Wintergreen will defend your tree, concentrate on the ritual, and provide teleportation to golden acorns. Al’Hazir will provide teleportation to our strike teams. Notify Salsten Riley and Duke Pitzovtolos to lead the free armies of Elanora and intercept the bulk of Conclave forces. And I…”
“Will lead the assault on Noxala,” Miko rolled her eyes.
“I will be doing nothing,” Whisper corrected her. “I will heal the injured, return those I can to life. But I won’t be joining the fight directly. This isn’t about me.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Whisper,” Miko objected. “I…I can’t say I don’t appreciate the new attempt at humility and all, but we could really use your help…”
“Bok Bok. Bawwk. Buk.”
“You’re guarding Damien Ironbrand, Gus, as we discussed,” Whisper cut the chicken off. “Lady Tanner. The perils of the multiverse are not on holiday because the Conclave has decided to hold your attention here. Quite the opposite. I can’t be everywhere. I can, and must, allow this world to choose its own destiny. But if you truly feel overwhelmed, then pray. You have friends, and uncles, in high places.”
He spread his arms wide, and the main door flung itself open seemingly on its own. “So, meeting adjourned! You all have much to do.” He began ushering them all out of the barn, and soon, there was no one left in the barn, except himself…
And Ruby Wintergreen.
“Nice speech to Miko,” she offered.
He stared for a good long moment, nervously shuffling one of his boots like he was a schoolboy called before a headmaster.
“I’m sorry I…” they both began, then trailed off. There was another awkward pause.
“Why did you come back?” Wintergreen finally asked.
Whisper said nothing. He just turned slowly to the exit and began to leave. He stopped in the entrance, and turned back.
“I hoped if I provided an obvious, obnoxious target for your frustrations, you’d take them out on me and stop blaming yourself,” he finally answered. “I acted like an ass. You told me to go to hell. Neither of us acted perfectly, we both made mistakes, but what we did was understandable and free of true malice. We didn’t cause Guildfall. And neither of us killed Noxala.”
“I once told Breac to not cheapen our choices by implying his were the only ones that mattered,” Wintergreen reminisced.
“That was good advice. You should listen to it.”
“But our choices do still matter. There’s no avoiding the role we played in the guild’s downfall.”
“True,” Whisper admitted, examining his fingernails. “We made mistakes. What is important is that we learn from them…but it’s equally important we not beat ourselves to death with them. Please, try to remember this. And try to remember how to smile at your guild once in a while. They deserve to see that.”
He turned into a white-crested crow, and flew away. Wintergreen took a moment to watch him leave, then prepared to tree-stride back to the guild hall…
“BOK BAYAAWWK BAWAAAAAAAAAK!” Gus crowed in her ear, causing Wintergreen to jump and lose her spell.
“Gus, you’re a menace to society,” she muttered as she began her spell over from the start.
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