Arc 3: Chapter 10: A Storm Arrives
I found Rysanthe inside the Fane’s temple shrine. Dusk had fallen, and the encroaching night awoke the sacred pools. They shone dimly with a silver lambency, yet only served to make the edges of the shrine darker — as though they ate the light rather than gave it.
The second Doomsman, or more precisely the first, stood with her back to me as I passed through the pillars, so I only saw a dim, sharp silhouette, the impression of white hair sewn with bones. A rod of dark iron hung from the right side of her hip. Rysanthe Miresgal, Silberdaughter, Moonsbane, Death to the Deathless, turned to face me cast in pale witch light and shadow.
The drow elf was a slight thing, showed pleasant dimples when she smiled, and had a kind voice with just the barest hint of laughter in it. “Alken. It is good to see you well.”
I stopped near the first of the pools. They were spread irregularly through the interior of the open-air temple, reflecting one of the more ill-omened constellations. “I’d started to think you’d be in the Underworld until spring,” I said.
“I have not been in Draubard,” she told me, beginning to skirt lightly around one of the pools. Like Oraeka, she wore light garments despite the freezing weather. Her outfit had rarely deviated since I’d met her, consisting of a short dress of pale blue-green silk belted around the waist and shoulders with decorative motifs of silver and ivory. Her sandaled feet crossed one in front of the other with each step, as though she balanced on a narrow beam.
I frowned. “I thought you’d been called away for some mission for the Silver Council?”
She nodded, finally stopping just out of arms reach of me. “True,” she said vaguely, glancing down at one of the pools. Her reflection in the water had transparent skin, showing pale bones beneath dimly glowing like hot iron. I peeled my eyes off that unsettling sight.
“I have been in the north,” she said at last, closing her rose-violet eyes and breathing in as though inhaling the most pleasant of scents. I knew, then, that true night had fallen. “Attending to… unpleasant matters. This winter has been rife with profane necromancy and wild behavior among the untethered dead. My brand has been used too frequently of late.” She placed a hand on the iron rod at her hip.
The north again. “You look tired,” I said, inwardly wincing at the irony of being the one to say it. However, I couldn’t ignore how dim the faerie light around the elf looked. She seemed almost mortal.
“I will recover,” she said, enunciating each word. “But yes, it has been a difficult season. I battled a ravenmother in Lindenroad for several weeks. She was on the cusp of lichdom.”
I shuddered. “I might have been able to help, if you’d called.”