You are sitting at your old massive working desk placed in your chambers, filling the research journal by the end of the day using all the notes you've made. Copper - the pet dragonkin that was brought to you by your father from one of his many expeditions in the egg stage of development - was ravaging your spare crinoline in the corner. For a dragling - the smallest subspecies of the dragonid kind that function as scouts and arcane janitors in their colonies - Copper always acted weird, having more common with a spoiled domestic tomcat than with a compact magical dragon he was hatched to be. But that was the pet you grew up with and loved, making you pay little attention to the mess the scaly rascal was periodically causing.
You massage your forehead and continue writing from where you have stopped:
"The specimen demonstrates all signs of higher thinking, which tremendously de-evaluates the hypotheses of its origin as an invocated entity. Moreso, during the testing lesson, it demonstrated the cognitive capacities higher than of an average youngling lander, showing the unconscious familiarity with the concepts of purposeful learning, analyzing, comparing, deducting, and abstract thinking. By the speed it mastered the new material, I've gained an impression that our subject possesses the "feeling" of language, which is puzzling in the light of the absence of any response to the main languages and dialects spread across Pheotor. The..." you stumble before characterizing the man who has brought your new studying project, "third party represenative described the encounter of the subject as "finding her in the midst of the Vustmark woods near the border of Lasir kingdom, all alone, frightened, and completely naked", which, if to be trusted, sabotages the version of the subject's origin as an outlander who consciously migrated to the known realms of Pheotor from another part of the wider world, as no one would likely make it this deep into the continent without at least some entourage, proper equipment, and basic awareness."
A series of heavy footsteps followed by a couple of hesitant knocks on the door to your premises interrupt your writing spree. Currently, there are only two persons in this house being of this weight category, and you are almost sure that it isn't Claudius who's disturbing you at such a late hour. This means only two things: a very serious and very overdue talk is inbound, and you might need some extra measures to endure it with at least some grace. You reach to the lower shelf of your work desk and take the extra measure, which happens to be a bottle of old berry schnapps. Then, after reaching for a glass and taking place on a sofa, you cry out to your visitor to come in. Unsurprisingly for you, it is Ulren, walking in with the signs of tension showing up from under his forcedly stone-ish face. From the moment he was hired to guard you and your sister during scientific expeditions to the moment he left you after a tragedy that shook your life, you grew to know him well enough to tell whether he is calm or only pretending. It seems like even after six years you could tell the difference.
You sip from the chalice and drill him with your gaze for a moment, then speak: "Do you have something to report, Kyres? Or is it something unrelated to the research subject?"
The man takes a small pause before answering, sweeping the room with the uneasy glance and then locking on at you. "Yes and no," he pauses to pick the right words to kickstart the conversation with the central topic known to you both, "you've shown hospitality to both of us, so at the very least, I ought to elaborate what happened after that event "
At the mention of 'that event' the memories you ineffectually tried to forget resurfacing memoreis and you drown them in a large sip of beverage right away. As you are about to ask something akin to "why, of all the reasons, did you leave us back then and where did you roam all this time before ending at my doorstep right out of the blue", the man provides with the answer: "I came across the unexpected chance to indemnify to some degree after all these years. That is what led me here."
This answer raises more questions than provides answers, filling you with irritation and your cheeks with hue. You feel like barraging him with a volley of particularly stingy and toxic questions, but instead of pouring your anger you just lift your chin at him in a challenging manner, supplementing the gesture with a proper sip.
"There isn't much to it. Your grandmother hired me to ward you and your sister during expeditions. Lindwurm or not, but one day I brought back only one of you. The Chain of the Kin teaches that whether one fails, they must either make it whole or move out of the way of the capable."
"And so, you just left two grieving women, who thought of you not just as of a hireling but a friend, to their own devices because the doctrine of the people you no longer belonged to sais so?"
Judging by the motions of Ulren's eyes, the conversation took the route he did not expect. "Yes and no," he said not-so-confidently after another short pause, "At first, I attempted to redeem myself by hunting and taking down the lindwurm that took Lilian. A day after I led you from the expedition to this mansion, I took the course back to the Freelander's plains, hiring a group of scouts and hunters when there. For twelve days we combed the lowlands and forests around the place where the livid reptile came across our previous group. We found neither the monster nor the bodies of your sister and the jaegers, just some scattered salvage, clues of what happened, and the conclusion that the bodies became fodder to the local wildlife and the lindwurm itself. Back then, I had a choice to return to two grieving women empty-handed and twice disgraced, unable to make up for the failure on my part, but... I opted against that."
You did not know this detail. The group of huntsmen that you and your grandmother hired after Ulren's sudden disappearance reported after the sortie that there were traces of another group operating in the location, so you could only build groundless theories until this day. The group hired by what remained of your already shrunk family, however, reclaimed your sister Lilian's silver locket, which you wear to this day and with which you are now nervously fiddling with the left hand.
"That simple? 'Opted against it'? In case you never suspected, all our family and especially Lily considered you a close friend or even something akin to an odd uncle. And yet, not only you left us, but also never attended her memorial," you lash at him verbally, not even trying to pick fitting words, "Is that how Bhorith cope with loss? Or is that how you repay for trust?"
As you spell the last phrase with the heavy emphasis on 'you'. From these words the giant slightly recoils and visibly squints, turning eyes away from you; his fists clench and poise turns closed for a moment. It appears that you pierced him where it hurts. Badly. The tense and uncomfortable silence hung as you unwind from an angry feat and he recomposes after a very unpleasant experience. After unusually long ten seconds or so, you reestablish the eye contact, and after five more, he speaks again, with hushed, tired voice.
"Back when I was sent on a tour to the Krodoss area as a svar-fyrjor*, my unit consisted of a dozen of soldiers. After the two cycles, four of them succumbed either to blight spawns from the Eastern no man's lands or to diseases. All junior military officers are responsible for delivering the grim news to the families of deceased after a campaign ends. And so I did. Three out of four perished had their families, all three of them received the news with restrain and dignity, but in the eyes of the women from two of them, I saw pain, anger, and the chagrin that it was their son and husband who died but not me. Neither I wanted to endure the same glare of your grandmother and to live day by day as under a trial nor I could carry on as a two-edged memento of the loss," he says and then adds wearily, "I too had a sister, after all"
You've got the answer that you craved for a long while, but you have also caused harm. And the worst part - the answer was not in Ulren's words but in the time you heard them: years after the moment when things might have gone differently if only you knew that he needed your support as much as you needed his. The feelings of guilt and vexation to chokes you, making it hard to violate the oppressing silence that ensued. You drink the beverage once more and train your eyes on the man whose guilt you never diffused but who still remembered you and provided with the unexpectable aid after years. He stares into the window with a blank gaze, and you feel even more guilty for snapping at him on an ignorant whim of yours. Your sister Lily was adored by everyone because she was the very definition of femininity and had unparalleled empathy while you always was the tomboyish sort, forceful and brutally straightforward. And so, you manage to come up with only one way to mend the damage you've just done - by being honest.
"Ren..." you start with the calmed voice, holding a pause and trying to capture Kyres' attention "...you're a fool and I am an outright idiot. We - those whom you may see as funny and irrational Landers - tend to cope with grief together, not by mobilizing but by supporting each other. In truth, neither I nor grandma Morinth ever blamed you for Lily's death. When a group gets rammed by an agitated reptile, losing three out of nine people before even realizing what was happening, it is a wonder that some of us made it alive. Never we had doubts that you did all you could in that event. And should you share your woes with us back then, this conversation might have never occurred". You make a tactical pause to let him digest the information and prepare to give more truths, "...I was angry at you not for the alleged failure, but for the disappearance without a trace or a word. I built theories of what has happened, but until this night it never occurred to me that it was my own failure as a friend to spot your unease in time. Never I was as good as Lily around people, and when we lost her, I failed to see what was in the brewing".
Your speech fixes the situation to some degree and the bulky man eases his defensive body language. You stand up a bit closer and continue, "Hey, Ren. What would you say if we forgive each other for what we have and haven't done, and leave this whole situation to the past where it belongs?"
"Isn't it why for we are having this conversation?" the man answers with a poorly camouflaged attempt to tease you, at which you sigh with ease and give him a cattish look. Relieved, you give up the momentarily urge to give your prodigious friend a hug. You attempt to wrap your hands around him like you and your sister used to years ago, but without her, it looks more like you are trying to cling to your now-embarrassed friend. But you don't care: you stand like that until a wide palm slowly lands on your head, utterly messing the haircut, and a voice follows: "Aye, Rosie, I missed you too". The very notion of familiarity you just showed to this Bhiroth mercenary would have caused a tremendous scandal in the echelons of Lyf nobility in which you must mingle as the last of the Dalgaard line, but it is not like Cooper (who is rolled in a ball, sleeping) has any interest in spreading rumours about peoples' attics.
Ugh! Damn be the haircut and these bloody shoes! You angrily shove the latter off an then carelessly flop onto the soft cushion, savouring the company that won't reprimand you for being yourself. Your hand stretches toward the uncorked bottle of schnapps. You ask Ulren if he wants some, but, predictably, he shakes his head in refusal (Roth races don't have a drinking culture, usually consuming alcohol purely for medical or other survival reasons).
"It was so long... what have you been up to and where you fared all this time?" you ask after gulping the sweetened beverage.
"Now there, six years isn't that long"
"Oh no! I won't let you slip like that. We - Lyflanders - don't live for about two centuries and consider six years as two like you do, so spill it out"
"Fine, fine. After that futile raid for the lindwurm, I decided to spend the rest of the season in Taoran plains, preparing to depart South to the Gvuroth domain with the first yellow leaves. There, I usually did bounties on varying beasts and monstrosities near the Old Karokum. After that, I ventured to South-East, passing by the Eastern Kingdoms one by one. Must admit, the things were and are foul out there - the western edge of the Andolan veld is contaminated with blightspawn and filled with alvizian remnants and brigands. Add the political and military tensions between most of the regional kingdoms and the duchies that seceded from Olfadir after the War of the First Star as well as the recent Olfadir invasion, and you'll have the landscape picture featuring crippling poverty, constant fear, and daily violence.
Things were so rough out there, that when I came across a Gvuroth trading caravan returning from their trip to the city of Vernon I instantly hopped at the opportunity to group up in return of my security service. Along the way, there were many different encounters, but the most dread of them all and most interesting for you as a biologist happened in early winter - a blightspawn hecatoncheires rampaged through the region. We barely managed to drive that thing away with oil and fire before it crushed the convoy.
Anyway, not long after the Passage day, I arrived the city-state of Nikopolis. Then, I had to start raising fortune and making a name for myself. The easiest way to do so was to participate in those arena games, but you know me and my code towards violence well enough to figure out the rest. In a few months, I stuck into a scene of an urban skirmish between local noble houses. My neutral response and cooperation with militia eventually granted me the employment as a personal guard of the local doge - a cowardly, sleazy, dissolute, but also very generous to his employees' doge".
Ulren makes a pause and leans back a bit, "I'll skip the story of what I did and faced in almost four years of service since it would take a whole day, and just mention that by the end of this period I was already a guard captain who gathered enough funds and connections to retire to civil life, buy a city house, and open a small artificery workshop. But two month before my planned resignation day, the coalition of powerful polis houses stormed the doge's residence with the intents obvious. The place was burned and ravaged, the doge fled, and I barely made it out heavily wounded, without the left hand, but alive".
He subconsciously rubs his left hand and continues, "I don't have to remind you of the physiological properties of Bhiroth, but perhaps you would like to know that the full recovery took over a year during which I spent the remnants of the fortune taken with me after fleeing to the polis of Sicorax. Then, I had to start over. Again. In the new place, my reputation was non-existent and there always was the fear that the Nikolopian clans might want to hunt me. So, I decided to begin my slow return to the North. By then, things in the Eastern Lands went even worse, as Olfadir began its terror, or how they call them "redemption" raids, and the overall criminality was on the peak. Finding bounties was hard, and among those that did not involve murdering someone was the one with a plentiful reward for capturing and turning in a dangerous vagabond vigilante. And so I took it, moving North after the target and hoping to outpace the competitors and the Olfadir regiment that was advancing at the Beilford. Eventually, I ended in the Vustmark forest, where I found Lucy.
When we reached Beilford, I already had doubts about my ability to return to Phaivean with the mark and with Lucy past all the havoc the westlanders left on their way. Since the very beginning when I met her, I thought about you and your theory of the global seasonal rejuvenation, as well as hoped for you to figure out who she really is. Abandoning the Midlands and the bounty for the sake of delivering her to you and finally tying the loose end in my conscience seemed the best solution for everyone. And so I did, after one of the roughest weeks in my lifetime".
You were attentively listening to your friend, methodically mixing the consumption of the story with the beverage, just like people usually do by pubs fireplaces. To no wonder, you began to feel a bit tipsy.
"That's... quite a lot of things you've been through. Like, a damn lot."
"This is the shortest elaboration I mustered," he says and tilts his head when noticing your decreasing degree of soberness. "Now, one does not ask such questions without willing to tell their own story. How were things treating you?" he asks and then adds while stretching his hand toward you: "And don't you mind if I carry that glass while you speak, hmm?"
You handle him the drinking appliance and playfully show him the tip of your tongue; that's the affable Ulren you knew. As he tries to make a bluff impression that your vagary wasn't funny, you put an effort to combine the pieces of the puzzling situation you were facing lately and which troubled you more and more.
"It is hard, Ren" you begin, "When younger, Lily and I dreamed of having full and careless lives. We built the imageries of us dominating the Royal Lyf Academia in flora and fauna research departments respectively, graciously representing our house in the parliament, and together enjoying the finer things of the nobility. Alas, the reality is always too different and way more complex compared to the fantasies of homegrown girls. A small part of me finds it comforting that Lily never found out how harsh the world really is, while another part still misses her greatly. With her support and advice, some things might have been much easier to solve or endure".
You nest on the cushion more comfortably, absent-mindedly snatching a pillow and pressing it to your core with the crossed hands. "about a year after you left, I finished my research and the Academia published it under the title of "on the origins of new species". The research caused a significant reacting from the scholar of all specters of views, granting me with the popularity among more open-minded, doubting, and skeptical biologists, while also summoned ire and disdain from the more conservative, conforming, and religious types. That caused a lot of turbulence inside the Academia and made me face the toxicity of the scientific environ. However, my scientific work almost instantly influenced my social life, causing a significant part of the Lyf aristocracy - mostly the old houses with strong religious ties - to consider me and my house the outcast while the Highfather clergy implied an anathema. Consequentially, it became much harder to run the business of the family".
You make a pause before continuing, "Or what's left of the family. There is only grandma Morinth, grandpa Rorik, and I left"
"I'm glad to hear that matrona Morinth is still among us"
"Yes," you answer, "she effectively outlived almost all of her 'friendly dames', and their daughters now think she's a witch. Grandma's Freelander heritage only reinforces their idiotic superstitions. But in all other aspects, she's holding strong. Currently, she is residing at the winter cottage near Draslin, still trying to reach out to grandpa Rorik with the persistence of a wasp. As for him, the whole world and everything in it ceased to exist for him when my mother passed. Until this day, he remains the wistful and loathsome old crank who do only two things: bathe in misery and fend off Morinth's attempts to rally him up".
You gaze slips into the nothingness of your room before you proceed, "Almost no one except Claudius, cook Gustoff, and gardener Andrew left of the old-time servants. I'm being pressed by the other houses at the parliament to vote for the bill that would make the patented remedies protected by Lyf law indefinitely and on top of that less accessible to the wider public, which goes against the core beliefs of the Dalgaard house. I haven't had the time or an opportunity to conduct serious research for a long while, which is weakening my positions at the Academia. I felt paranoid about growing dumber without having any serious ongoing scientific. I swapped a few bunches of guards but still, this house is 'guarded' by slobs and freeloaders who would, in the best case, idly watch the Highfather zealots burn it, pillage it, and violate everyone inside it in one way or another should it ever come to that. I haven't left the kingdom since that expedition and I hunger for the news from outside. But the worst of all - I am fearful that I may not have enough resolve and strength to save the house entrusted to me by all who bore the Dalgaard family name".
You shift your gaze and stare at Ulren. "It's hard, Ren," you dupe your the earlier statement, "it is very hard". But before he manages to say something, you snatch the initiative again: "But two days ago, you showed up and brought something, or rather someone, who may or may not become or lead to the scientific discovery of the century" at this mention you try to smile, "so the things are not hopeless".
He perks up a little bit and attempts to derail the conversation, "do you have any idea on... uh... what is Lucy exactly? Or where did she come from?"
You spot this lousy attempt and sigh theatrically, "Well, she's a female that is biologically almost similar to an average lander except for the spare pair of limbs and a couple of other less noticeable but significant details. She has the natural proficiency with the aspects, which, judging by your earlier description are the nigh-unstudied thaumaturgy coupled with either mind, emotion, or spirit. She is very oblivious to the ways the world around works but possesses mental abilities of a quite intelligent adult person. She loves sweets and you".
"What?!" the man asks out loudly, to which you counter: "Well, I saw how you read her the old parables in the library this evening. It is quite obvious that you are the closest person to her at the moment and she may even think of you as a family of sorts".
The man replies nothing but the color of his cheeks betray him. "Regardless, my main hypotheses is that she might be either a Genius Loci manifestation, ala "the local spirit", or a naturally or purposely conjured being. I need more time and tests to get to the bottom of it, but what is obvious is the fact we are dealing with something absolutely new".
You decide to use this attempt at derailment to ask Ulren the question which worries you most of all: "It will be cruel to separate her from you, and in light of all that we have shared tonight, I ought to ask whether or not you would like to stay and aid me like you did years ago".
His face produces a lopsided grin, his head nods ever so slightly, and he confirms, "Yes. I'll stay and help you out if that's what you wish. It would be only fair if I put that experience I gained from the service in Nikopolis to good use to make up for the years missed. And, if you want, I can assess the situation with the guards of yours tomorrow with your permission".
That was exactly what you desperately wanted to hear. Your face fills with a genuine smile and the eyes start do dampen (which you resist fiercely). "Thank you, Ren," you speak and your mind strays away for a few moments, "I was thinking of attending the family cemetery and visiting Lili's memorial. Would you accompany me?".
"Yes. As you said, I owe Lily that much," he answeres, "but now, you should get some rest: we got a lot of work to do starting from tomorrow".
You just nod and wave him goodnight as he makes his way from your chambers. Then, you sit back at your desc, digesting the whole plethora of emotions. You feel strange: hurt and soothed at the same time as if a very old splinter was just removed from you, finally granting the relief. You recall what you were doing before he interrupted you, and find it impossibly hard to complete the entry of the observation day. Instead, you cross out the "the third party representative" line and write "the friend" above.
You are smiling and trying to distract oneself from going completely sentimental. You scan the room and find Copper sleeping behind the heavy curtains with his scaly tail exposed from below them. Your gaze stumbles over the old portrait of your family: your mother before she fell ill to an unknown disease, your father before he ventured on a desperate expedition to the distant South-East in search of a mythical cure only never to return, young you, and your little sister before she was killed by the dragon-like monstrosity. You always found it hard to look at this portrait, while the thought putting it away echoed as the act of disrespect to those in the picture who is no longer alive. But today, you feel differently.
You take the opened bottle with berry schnapps and speak quietly: "Guess who's going to visit you, Lil," you find it extraordinary hard not to start sniffing, "we miss you so much". As you say that, you tilt the bottle up just in time before the tears break through.
