Sanctuary

*Vitalis*

S A N C T U A R Y

*IN THE NORTH men speak of ghosts in quiet whispers. Perhaps because they are surrounded by them – the armor-clad undead of the Silent Legion, the flickering Wights that haunt the mounds of the dead or the other, more regular ghosts that you have seen all across the Exiled Lands. The latter are more like memories than ghosts, spectral messages embedded in the universe for thousands of years. Apparently one of these ghosts haunts the Sanctuary Ruins – and has information about the Kinscourge. For those who are willing to listen.*

*Journals are a common thing,* Vitalis thought. An evening redness lit up the last of the west, and the rain fell.  Even among folk of oral traditions he found that in one way or another their thoughts found substance in script or stone within these exiled lands. These stories were perhaps the only thing of substance to be found at all, and this transcript had been sold for less than a silver in a market long since drowned. The fortress it had sheltered beneath had fallen even before that. So many keeps and cities and holdings: they near-to touched the sky in steeples and fanes to the gods of war and death and lust and chastity. All of them transient, little more than civility pregnant with ruin. In one such ruin the druid stood. He felt the downpour beat upon the roof of his capra bone cowl. They had called it Sanctuary, but that was an ancient word for the place now and belonged to those who had come and gone a thousand times before. There was no Sanctuary to be found here now save for those that made it themselves. Heimsgarar had called it something different. Was it simply ‘The Island’ to them? Already he did not recall.

Eydis had been a distant memory amongst the mists of his time here, yet her face thrust to the forefront in an unlikely place. One more living wight. One would expect the crack of the storm or the sting of a blizzard to accompany an old face in a new setting. In truth the face was not that old though the trenches of war had made aged scar tissue from what had once been fair. The setting however was familiar. He had stepped from the caravan expecting somewhere else entirely yet the newfound Heimsgarar fortress complete with Eydis and nordling guardians had stood proudly on ancient stone as if they had always been there revenant and antediluvian. Vitalis forgot faces and forgot names readily until it was prudent to know them again - such were the demands of his attentive fervour to Bori and the Mother Briar - but he remembered that Eydis in a previous life had called that lone crag far to the north of Sanctuary her home. They had been driven there again; driven out and away from the island.

Muck broiled beneath the slamming rain around his boots. How much time had passed exactly? The sun dipped low over the Spillway, and for a fleeting moment he was lord over a land bathed in shining crimson. He stood at the crest of the pilgrim-worn steps atop the tallest hill of the island, a giant of aching muscle yet himself eclipsed beneath the bones of the smallest broken tower of Sanctuary. The journal he held claimed the path he walked was a thousand years old, and a thousand ancestors had dwelled within. In recent times, it was merely the place from which Heimsgarar fled. Perhaps it was the old riders of Telith that routed them as it was hinted, or perhaps the whispering earth or the stone that refused to forget. This was a place of reflection, and there’s little joy to be found in any of that.

The cursed earth had already swallowed Heimsgarar’s efforts to tame these parts. Days prior he had stepped from the caravan into dusk and across the tired waters had seen motes of amber glowing behind the windows with warmth and welcome. There he had hewn wood and stone and then he had gone on his way. That was yesterday, today he mounted the last few steps of this desolate escarpment and stepped into the surrounding remnants. Brick and mortar and all of it worn and toppled. In the center of it all a statue of a rider clad as the journal had said and clutching as if in prayer the pommel of his greatsword. He stepped forward and the shadow of Ceranthir’s memory grazed his shoulder. He touched the stone and the old passage lit up anew. There came the voice as it had done, a beacon for the Silent Legion.

*You are not alone. You are not less than them. You can be free.*

*You do not have to believe their lies.*

*I have left these stones for you, my lost and misguided children.*

*I have subverted their sorceries so that only slaves of the bracelet can hear my message.*

*I am the mother of your race.*

*I am secret-bearer, god-killer, witch-queen.*

*I will guide you, I will teach you and when the time is right,*

*I will free you.*

Slaves. Secret-Bearer. God-Killer. Witch-Queen. These words stood out to him as vividly as Ceranthir beside him. Enthralled as he had been that long time ago, yet now a memory-wight of fleeting camaraderie and bitter reality. He knew now that the man - for that’s what he considered Ceranthir at the time - was a warrior of worthy sympathies and regrets and redeemabilities. He knew now that this man had used him and the gilded shackle that bound his wrist to decipher the message of the old Lemurian queen. It had been the one of a long series of betrayals. Ceranthir had done it all for faith and loyalty and upon both Vitalis spat. It was a fine thing, faith: yet the graveyards were filled to burst with both the bodies of faithful men and indispensable gods. It was a fine thing, and as good as any blade. He looked from the inspired face of Ceranthir to the lorestone and in the drumming rain encapsulated by Sanctuary, he found himself inspired in his own way.