Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

he begged me to understand that, “I’ve been kept as a hostage—forced to pay my room and board and serve as their maid while they rob and kill defenseless passers through. In some way, some awful way, I am almost glad to think them gone…but they were my family, Burningsoul. My only kin.”

“Had I known that, Adonisius, I might have done things differently.”

“It’s no use speculating or wishing things were different,” lamented the man, wiping the back of his hand definitively against the high peak of his cheekbone and then replacing the helmet to somewhat obscure the sorrow in his face. “No, no use. And for the best, perhaps, that they are gone and I’m now free…but I am honor-bound to shun you now at best, Paladin. At worst—I dare not even dream of avenging the violence commissioned against my kin. Not as concerns one such as you.”

Looking pained, the misshapen lowered his head and said, “I suppose you and the others will be putting up in there for the dark?”

“We planned on it, Adonisius, but—”

“Then stay as my guests,” he said. “It’s my property now. Stay as my guests to permit me to thank you for my inheritance. And then, kindly leave at bloom’s first light.”

Thinking of the misshapen’s intimate familiarity with the tunnels of the Nightlands, I dared ask, “Perhaps you might be good enough to take us some way that would hasten our leaving?”

The gamble paid off. He looked reluctant but nodded in the end, saying, “Yes, I can show you an expedient way back to the surface, though it is a taxing climb at some points. Let it be my final payment to you, then let us do business no more. Life down here is dangerous enough…the last thing I wish is to be haunted by the specters of my ancestors, not just for failing to avenge them but for too often helping the man who took their lives.”

I will admit—in those days (or blooms, if you are reading this, greatest love of all my loves), I had rarely spared deep thought to the lives I took in battle outside of prescribed. It was the nature of my station to pray each morning and night for my own welfare, for the souls of my ancestors, for the salvation of the lives I had taken in battle, and for the manifestation of Weltyr’s will upon the planet through my works. Therefore one would think me used to slaying my enemies…but that was just the problem.

I was used to it.

After a lifetime of prayers, I had been hypnotized into not thinking with any great depth on the lives Weltyr ended through Strife; through me. I had not before been confronted face-to-face with the family of any creatures, criminals, or monsters I had slain. Indeed, I had seen these vanquished foes as little more than obstacles between myself and Weltyr’s will. It had not yet fully dawned on me that the Day Bringer could easily have allotted me the same fate.

However…in that moment I could not help but see, at least in small part, the pain I was capable of causing. Though I had never thought the taking of a life was a small thing, I realized in that moment that I had never been in touch with death. Not really. I turned entirely away from Oppenhir, whose awful void-realm was the black pit to which I sent those heathens and opponents to Weltyr who were, sadly, beyond repentance. In failing to contemplate the nature of this death, I felt somehow I had done both it and myself a strange disservice.

Certainly I felt I had done Adonisius a great disservice—even in my freeing him from his proverbial shackles. Before I could say anything to this effect, however, the misshapen bent his head and retreated into the dark.

“I’ll come meet you all here at tomorrow’s bloom. The journey will be a few blooms and darks. You’ll have to forgive me if I keep to myself.”

“I understand.”

Though he hesitated, perhaps wishing to say more, Adonisius at last turned away. He went off into the tunnels of the Nightlands to spend time in contemplation for his dead relations, however complicated that relationship had been. I felt oddly chastened…not by Adonisius, but by that great inspirer of all magnificent things both good and bad. I felt my god had, as they say, “called me on the carpet” in some way, though I was not yet sure of the specific lesson he wished me to learn.

“You’d think he’d be relieved,” said bratty Branwen under her breath, perhaps only projecting her own joy at being rescued. “Those brigands were abysmal creatures.”

“That may be so…but what family is without its controversy?” With a lift of my brows at Branwen, I shook off the interaction with the misshapen as best I could and gestured the high elf back toward the door of the appropriated den. “After you.”

“I’m nervous to walk in on them…oh, I’m afraid I embarrassed myself.”

“Not at all. I’m sure they’re used to an adjustment period when it comes to those who live aboveground.”

To my disappointment but Branwen’s sure relief, whatever had occurred in my absence had left all three dark elves entangled and content. When we found them, their bodies at relative rest save for the petting of an indolent hand along a miscellaneous limb.

“Did we hear you speaking out there?” Valeria’s innocent question, her eyes lit with a mischief I had not enjoyed knowing in her while she was captive to her city.

“I’m afraid these weren’t just any band of misshapen brigands,” I told them, kneeling down to kiss Valeria upon the mouth, then Indra and Odile upon their cheeks. “These were the kinfolk of our guide from before. Adonisius.”

While the veteran adventurers did not look particularly moved by this appeal, Valeria—softer-hearted than any of us after a lifetime of living in the Palace of Roserpine and caring for all the citizens of El’ryh—appeared shocked. Her lips tightened into a thin line while