markers (elemmire)
Lightning streaked across the sky, impatient, and when the first roll of thunder hammered home it began to rain. Skandra pulled the collar of his coat high; with his hands he checked each button of the front to ensure it was secure. You could, after all, catch your death of cold. He laughed like he'd never laughed before, like he was testing the sound, as the rain began to roll off the brim of his hat. Sita was carrying the shovels. And Elemmire... if he looked closely, as he tried to once over his shoulder, it looked as though the rain was sliding off her form without wetting it. That was the sort of thing he might have expected, but it was also unnerving to see. Unnerving to witness. Nothing in her face told him if it was the magic or the other. Nothing was going to tell him, either, he decided. So he also decided not to think about it. Despite the fact that he hadn't touched them in hours the dice in his pocket sounded loud when they ground together. A whispering click-click that he felt to his bones. Spring and summer storms were all too common this close to the border mountains.
And this close to the Deadlands?
They'd passed them on the road, coming north. A bedraggled string of refugees. Some were pulling carts - their horses, they said, had died in the flight - while others were simply lugging armfuls of whatever precious pieces they could not afford to leave behind. No one had thought to bring food, he thought upon first seeing them. It was only that they'd been attacked by bandits. Without the Silver Dragons to protect them the bandits had taken whatever they wanted. These were lawless days, Skandra had grumbled in sympathy. Maybe he would have had more. Except they'd sent the Silver Dragons to kill him. So it really didn't bother him all that much. One story was as wild as the next, but all of them agreed on one thing. The Deadlands were spreading over the mountains. Thousands had perished just by inhaling the air. Skandra might not have believed it, but on the day they'd encountered those refugees, the sky was clear blue. Except for the mountains, which were topped by whirling cyclones of black, towering into angry clouds that seemed to stop at the peaks and resist blowing over into the river valley.
THe Deadlands were spreading. He shouldn't have been surprised.
Ashara had emptied. That was where the refugees were from, or at least where they were most recently from. Some had fled lands further to the south in search of a haven after the Breaking. Now they were driven off again. A pair of players sat on the back of a wagon, pulled by a mule too small for the job, plucking their harps. Most of the notes were sour. All of them were melancholy. Skandra had seen it in dreams that he could not explain, could not defend against. Never the future, always the past, but always the same. Death, and destruction, and a black hand clutching nothing but air that split the world in two. Imagery. He would tell whatever god would listen that he was sick of imagery, and sick of dreams that made no sense, but since there were no gods that would listen he did not have an audience for his complaints. That meant making them stop on his own steam. Which was, as it turned out, going to take a bit of work. Since he didn't know where he was going aside from the obvious now was the best time to make this stop. And yet he knew the whirling cyclones were just over his head, close enough to see if it were light. If the storm let up. They were still there. He could feel them.
Terrifying thing to see.
"What are we doing here?" Sita asked, not for the first time.
"Digging something up," Skandra replied in annoyance.
"So you said. But, what?"
"My effects."
The shovels were for a grave. This was one of many yards in this particular river valley. Its grounds were fertile now, if they hadn't been before, on account of the dead bodies passing into the soil. Many of them buried without so much as a marker. He'd marked his, with features that were too plain to steal and too heavy to move. On the off-chance, Skandra thought, that he might need to come back here. Part of him had hoped from the very beginning that he would be dead before such a need arose. Now that he was about to hold the Vel in his hand again he didn't know what to think. Why not just make new weapons, when the old ones had failed so spectacularly? Because it wasn't about failing or not failing. It was about using the things you were familiar with. He could design and build something in about four months. Less if he had a dwarf to build the pieces for him. A waste of time. Time he could not afford to spend. These were the weapons of a gambler and a thief. They would have to do for now.
Wandering through the valley with endless graves as their only company had unnerved his sister. Much as staring at Elemmire unnerved him now. They would pick their way through craggy uneven surfaces with jutting rocks and makeshift circles of Lorien, makeshift seals of Armas, as though it was nothing. How many had died in this valley after the Breaking? Fleeing, being robbed blind, turned away by brutal forest sentries of Astarii or desert bandits that were too far west of their domain? The Elves were not cruel. If they'd let the refugees pour in it would have ruined the country. He still felt something like pity for a person with no place left to go. It was in many ways the story of his life. One that the Elves had helped to write, though probably not in the way they'd meant. Now they were at a very particular spot. He knew it because, before the storm had rolled in, he'd found the snarling tooth of a mountain. A peak that seemed to lash out sideways instead of straight up. It was under that snarling tooth that Shantar had been buried.
Lightning crashed. The sideways peak was illuminated, almost directly above them.
Skandra smiled.
"It's a hell of a thing," Skandra talked in a loud voice as he moved. "Stealing from old friends. I just can't think of another option."
"You could let all of this go," Sita pointed out reasonably.
"I made a deal down there," he told her with a laugh. "You don't just crawfish on a deal."
"Which means you've done it numerous times."
"If your statement wasn't so accurate, it would be offensive."
Shantar's marker was easy to find. The symbol was made of stone, seemingly random rocks that were laid just so in the shadows of a boulder, in the shadows of an overreaching willow tree, a shape that likely no one had seen in some time. The Blackguard had gone out of existence before most of the people who passed through here were even born, and even then, they were not so well known. An elf would not recognize it. A kid as young as Sita would not recognize it. When he saw it, it made him think of a dead wife. It made him think of a dead land. A shattered remnant was streaming up the river valley now to parts unknown. Ashara, like the family of Tyullis, was dead. All that was left now was to bury what remained. It should have made him sad. Thinking of her should have made him sad, should have killed his desire to do... whatever it was he was going to do. But when he looked at Elemmire, at Sita, he saw something else. A chance to save something else. If it was worthwhile, if it was worth doing... then he wanted no part of it.
Wasn't true anymore. They were staring at him. He realized he'd just been standing there, scowling at Shantar's grave.
Damn the old man for leaving him alone in this. The stones were covered in moss, but recognizable. This close to the face of the mountain grass grew only in patches. The rest was rocky stony dirt. Reddish in some places, brownish in others, clumping together to form packed earth. Not hard to dig up, though, especially not with the rain. He just hoped he didn't get too much mud on his boots. Sparse trees made him feel exposed, but if anyone came into this particular end of the valley, they were looking for something. So it wasn't as though any random traveler could just pass by and find him. Was it? Well, time would answer that, too.
"Now we dig," the Immortal pronounced, and extended a hand for one of the shovels Sita carried with her.