The Light Will Fade Eclipsed

**"The Light Will Fade Eclipsed"** is the fourth session of The Last Enemy is Death. It took place on 02/18/2022.

## Synopsis

The Oracle of the Everlight has been retrieved, but the journey home promises to be no less easy than the road that led to it. In Dawnhold, conspiracies unravel like failing wards, and the light that ever shines burns cold and eclipsed. Tread lightly, traveler. These are dangerous times, indeed.

### Calm Skies and Rushing Water

Having successfully retrieved the Oracle of the Everlight, Sage, from the Dreamwood, Alana Polias, Arthur, and Sunflower all begin the long return trek to Dawnhold. The nights pass uneventfully, though not comfortably, as eyes watch from the dark. One night, as Sunflower keeps watch, Sage is awoken by a portentous nightmare. The sound of rushing water and howling wolves fills his ears, and sleep refuses to find him. As the watch changes, he confesses the contents of his dream to Arthur: they will attack again, try to take him. The beastmaster will return. To reassure the child-seer, Arthur grants him a knife. It is a well-worn thing, with the initials *A.S.* carved delicately into the hilt. Sage accepts the gift, tugs his blanket around him tighter.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away: the *Winged Leviathan,* an airship ringed in a current of elemental flame, cuts through the clouds, sailing upon the slipstream towards the city of Dawnhold. Upon it, observing the landscape that skirts by miles below, stands an automata of Sera Awen. He is called Alias: Alioth, and he has been sent by the Order of the Inverted Tower to investigate the failure of Castle Astielle's wards during the Feast of the Chosen Hero. He is joined by the tabaxi Calm Skies and a Summer Breeze, a fellow mage of the Inverted Tower, and together the two exchange theories as to what could have caused the enchantments' failure. It is no simple thing, surely: abjurations like the ones that were breached a tend ago do not simply fail of their own accord. Something must have happened to them, or perhaps happened upon them. What that something is, the two cannot yet say.

Greeted by Loremaster Bellorin Ruby-Eye and Prince Dorian Hadwyn, the two mages are brought quickly to Castle Astielle, where their investigations begin. The Master of Ceremonies is adamant, however: the temple where the wards were breached is off-limits, for the safety of all involved. Stonewalled by the Loremaster, Summer Breeze and Alioth conspire to meet once the sun has set and find their own way into the temple, Ruby-Eye be damned. There would be no answers without seeing what lay beyond the doors to the temple, and the two resolved to do exactly that.

As the light fades, our heroes returning to Dawnhold meet once more their hunter. The drow taunts the band of travelers, instructing them to hand over the child lest she and her wolves leave them once again for dead. Something has changed, however; they are stronger now, or perhaps more resolute in their quest to bring the Oracle safely to Dawnhold. A werewolf falls with a howl cut short and a dying whimper, and all that remains is the sound of rushing water.

### Part II

#### Eclipse

Dorian Hadwyn awakes from a dream of darkness and black chain, gasping for breath. A voice awaits him, beckons him to rise from his bed and follow. The princeling does so, follows the voice to the doors of the temple, where two guards stand vigil. With a dream that was equal parts memory and vision still vivid in the back of his mind, Dorian impresses upon the guards the right by which he may enter, and the doors are thusly opened for him. What he finds within is something he could never have expected.

Orenmir, the blade of the Everlight Champion, is returned to the pedestal from which Dorian had once long ago watched Alistan Arinson draw it, though its radiance is cold and dimmed. The voice again beckons the prince, who gently places a hand upon the hilt, whereupon the voice delivers its fell tidings: the Champion is fallen, the Everlight shining no longer in his eyes. Orenmir awaits its next Champion, the blade's power weakened, the light eclipsed. The blade is Eclipse, now, and will be until a new incarnation is born to bear the title of Champion.

But there is no time to wait for a new Champion. The light cannot afford time, and would fade eclipsed from this and all worlds thereafter if allowed to stagnate. No, a new hand must wield the sword that sunders darkness, but it is a power beyond any mortal ken. It will damn Dorian, to draw the blade from its pedestal. The light of the sun will drown him, but Eclipse calls the prince to submerge himself in it regardless. For the good of his people, for the safety of his world.

Without hesitation, Dorian accepts, and a shattered fragment of the Everlight binds itself to the soul of the prince of Astielle.

Our heroes converge on the temple of Castle Astielle. As the prince speaks to the Oracle, and to those that returned with him, Alioth comes to one conclusion: the wards were not breached, not forced apart or sundered by any force of magic. No, the answer is all too terribly simpler: they were deliberately disabled, by one who had both access to the wards and the ability to override them.

As if on cue, Loremaster Bellorin Ruby-Eye makes his entrance.