18: The Ring and the Reckoning
4/15/2025
"Why would they know my name? How did they find me?"
The words hang in the temple air, heavier than incense, thicker than the quiet.
Dr. Thorne exchanges a glance with the party but says nothing. Instead, she gestures toward the nearby bench where Sela sits, curled under a patchy wool blanket, her fingers wrapped tight around a cup of untouched tea. The Temple of Pelor—what’s left of it—feels more mausoleum than sanctuary. The stained glass is cracked. The altar scorched. The sun symbol above the nave hangs crooked, as if ashamed.
Sela doesn’t seem to notice any of it, eyes frantically avoiding the unmoving form of Brenna Kaelstone.
No one answers her—not right away. Dr. Thorne exhales and steps back, giving the group space. Candles gutter in the draft from a broken window. Dust glitters in the slanted morning light.
She absently touches her collarbone—fingers brushing a spot just beneath her skin, as if trying to erase something only she can still feel. Clovis’s amulet gives a faint shiver against his chest. That vibration, subtle but undeniable, only happens when something unnatural is near. Sela doesn’t notice. But the amulet does.
Clovis notes it aloud, and Janos brings his axe near her—discreet, careful. The celestial light flickers, revealing the edge of a hidden mark.
Narvane leans in. Eyes half-lidded, voice low, he focuses his senses on the residue of magic clinging to her skin, seeking the shape and signature of the enchantment hidden beneath.
The glyph flares into view: a binding etched in blood-magic and shadow, layered with compulsion. It was meant to enforce silence, to erase identity, to claim ownership. And beneath it—shame, fear, helplessness.
Clovis grows impatient, demanding the truth. Sela snaps. Her voice shakes, but her story comes out:
“I wasn’t allowed near her chambers. I was just a servant. But one night, I was delivering wine to the lower halls and I heard voices—urgent, whispering. I should’ve turned back. I didn’t.”
“The door was cracked open. There was a stone altar. A prisoner, strapped down, barely breathing. And above him... Drusilla.”
“She wasn’t just watching. She was at the center of it.”
“The gem pulsed. Like a heartbeat. Like it was alive. She pressed it to his chest, and he screamed. Veins blackened. Skin cracked. His soul... should have fled. But it didn’t. The gem drank it.”
“She staggered. Something pushed back. She snarled, ‘This bitch is still fighting me.’ Then she turned to the scholars and said: ‘Bring me another.’”
“She was going to keep trying until she got it right.”
When asked where Drusilla is, Sela replies: “In her manor in Freebush. Her web of death. Where else, idiot?”
Narvane offers to remove the mark. In return, Sela sketches a map of the manor from memory. She’s wary, but resigned. The Whispering Dead can follow the mark. Without it, maybe—just maybe—she has a chance.
The spell is clean, efficient. The mark dissolves with an invisible snap, and Sela slumps, breath shuddering. But something else happens. Narvane feels it—a backlash, a pulse that leaps across the tether. Somewhere, Drusilla knows.
The party prepares to leave Greenvale under the looming shadow of that awareness. As they ready themselves, Eldran Stoneglint pulls Janos aside. He reveals a passage uncovered on the Starblade’s hilt—mention of the Unity Forge, and a fragmentary phrase: “The Three That Were Broken.” But the words twist when Janos reaches for them, eluding meaning like a dream half-remembered. Something within the blade—something ancient—seems to push back, resisting clarity, as though the memory itself does not wish to be uncovered.
Despite the tension with Magistrate Mathis, the party is not pursued. After restocking, they slip through the northern gate. Mathis watches, impassive. A young guard offers a polite farewell.
The Journey
The forest greets them with unspoken relief. What once festered now heals. Johnny feels it in the branches, the soil, the stillness. The Forest Guardian’s return has shifted something deep.
That night, as the party sat around the campfire, truths long buried began to surface. Clovis leaned forward and, in a quiet but firm voice, told Johnny that he had once saved his life during the Battle of Freebush. Johnny raised an eyebrow, uncertain whether to believe him or not.
Janos, staring into the flames, admitted the march reminded him of the days he fled Broughoic’s cleansing campaigns. The weight of those choices still clung to his shoulders.
Johnny, drawing in the forest air like a lifeline, spoke softly of the Heart of the Mountain—how he could feel it calling to him more with each passing day. Something was wrong in Tahoma, and he feared the damage might already be done.
And then Narvane, with an almost imperceptible shift, rolled up his sleeve. For a moment, a faint scar shimmered against his forearm—the ghost of a sigil long broken. It had once bound him to the Obsidian Circle. He met Clovis’s gaze and said, “I broke it. You can too.”
The fire crackled. The night held.
The Fighters Carnivale
On the second day, they find the camp.
Weathered wagons in bright, peeling paint. An open ring of trampled dirt. Cages. Smoke. Steel. The Fighters Carnivale.
Captain Derros Vale greets them coldly. Clad in a mismatched suit of scavenged plate and bearing the haunted weight of old campaigns, he eyes the group with practiced detachment.
“Move along,” he says. “Unless you’re looking for work… or trouble.”
The air hangs still.
Then a prisoner near the arena—gaunt, shackled, half-mad—locks eyes with Johnny. His voice rises, cracked and fervent:
“He rings like a hollow bone!”
“The match fits. The pulse aligns!”
“Stillborn stars, stilled by him. The Shard knows!”
Vale’s expression shifts, if only slightly. His eyes narrow.
“That was not for your ears,” he mutters. “And now you leave me no choice.”
He raises his voice. “Tradition demands response. One on one. A champion from each side. Or...” He lets the word hang. The threat unspoken but clear.
Johnny steps forward. “This is the crew that killed my sister. Either we fight them all—or I go in.”
Clovis doesn’t hesitate. “I say we fight them all.”
Janos shrugs. “Small chance of success. Certain death. What are we waiting for?”
Vale’s jaw tightens. “So much for honor.” He turns to his warriors. “Shut them down.”
Clovis charges forward but is caught by the Black Chain’s weapon—a spinning length of steel that sweeps his legs from beneath him and slams him into the dirt. As Black Chain prepares to land a crushing heel stomp to Clovis' head, Janos barrels in, swinging The Celestial axe with savage ferocity. The strike connects with Captain Vale’s leg, severing it cleanly and sending the captain crashing to the earth in a cry of pain.
Johnny, eyes locked on the chain-wielding brute, looses a piercing arrow from the Starlit Quiver. It slams into the Black Chain’s chest, forcing him back with a guttural roar.
Not far off, the witch raises her staff. Lightning arcs toward Clovis and Janos, but Narvane lifts his hand and speaks a sharp, angular phrase. The spell fractures midair, reduced to harmless flickers that scatter into the wind.
Before Johnny can reposition, Mavros Kel roots him in place using a sigil - his feet bound invisibly to the ground, unable to move.
Narvane unleashes a volley of arcane missiles that scream through the air and strike the witch dead-on, exploding with destructive, chaotic force. Armor and cover are blasted apart. Unfortunately one strikes a nearby tent dead center into the canvas wall of a nearby supply tent.
The explosion is immediate. The tent erupts in a cone of fire, flame billowing upward as the dry fabric goes up in seconds. In the spreading inferno, smoke rolls heavy over the ring. The sky above glows orange. Vale—clutching what remains of his leg—watches his carefully ordered world catch fire and unravel before his eyes.
Amid fire and smoke, Clovis forces himself upright, bruised but not broken. As the Black Chain bears down again—dagger raised—Clovis traces a shimmering rune into the air with one hand. A sudden pulse of will ripples out from the Hexxer, seizing the duelist’s mind. The Black Chain falters mid-stride, eyes unfocused, grip slackening as the sigil clouds his thoughts. In that moment of hesitation, Janos charges.
His celestial axe swings in a low, rising arc, cleaving through the duelist’s arm and chest in one brutal motion. Blood sprays in a wide crescent as the Black Chain crashes backward into the dirt, lifeless. The chant of his name dies on the lips of those who had gathered to watch him fight.
Vale yields, bloodied and broken. “Leave my camp,” he commands. The prisoner tries to speak again—“She’s waiting in the quiet places where the bindings fray!”—before he’s gagged.
Johnny isn’t done.
As the group retreats into the treeline, the sounds of confusion and fire crackle behind them. Johnny pauses—face still, eyes hard—and draws two radiant arrows from the Starlit Quiver. He notches both at once.
“Justice,” he mutters. “For my sister.”
He looses the volley in a single fluid motion. The arrows arc over the smoke-wreathed arena and strike true—one into the heart of the fighters’ supply cluster, the other into a caged wagon near the prisoner line.
The impact is thunderous.
A rolling boom shatters the relative calm. Flame washes outward in overlapping waves. Tents erupt. A wagon tips. Something metallic screams as it warps under the heat. Figures scatter in panic, their shouts drowned beneath the roar of fire and splintering wood.
Johnny watches until the glow of destruction reflects in his eyes. Then he turns without a word and follows the others into the dark.
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