VEYL: First Campaign Thread

Harper hadn't moved through any of it. He'd kept writing about Mirana, every word spoken by her good friend. He held the drum soft under one hand and let the anger crack open around him without adding to it. Finished, he set the charcoal down and spoke once the others were done, not loudly, but in the way that made people stop and listen.

"She fed people for whatever they could spare. Lost money doing it but kept doing it anyway. She thought the little things fixed the world....Seeds...Roofs...Clean water." He looked up from the journal, his eyes moving from Rory's sword hand, over to Cork doing her best to stand tall, and over to Solya and her harp, but finally landing on Dorn. "She started every story with 'now, this may not be true, but.' She laughed at goats in strange places. She collected buttons because she thought they meant somebody passed through trying to hold themselves together." He let that sit......"I don't think a woman like that wants the last thing she hears to be us shouting over her."

He turned to Dorn, gentler now.

"It was your choice. It still is. Not Solya's, not the sword's. Yours. You knew her. You're the one who should decide how she goes. Whatever you choose, she won't be unmade. We have her now. All of her. She goes forward from here no matter what happens to the rest of tonight. "The choice is yours....let her linger until she's no longer Mirana, or grant her mercy while she still is."

He picked the drum back up, quiet, steady. A heartbeat under the argument. An invitation to bring it back down.

Orvyr looks over to Toil and says in common "Do you just like to listen to yourself talk?"

He turns back just in time to see Soyla throw the concoction into the fire. Why? Does she not know what is about to happen? Orvyr is about to go up to her and say something, but the others are already saying what needs to be said. He says quietly, maybe to Toil, maybe to himself. "Why? There was no reason for that? Why would she condemn Mirana to that fate." Orvyr watches as the others keep talking. 

Toil offers a low chuckle to Orvyr before telling him a short story, "I once spent time in a town in a forest that had forgotten how to make noise. The people there could not rely upon their ears to warn them for predators, or to hunt, or even to communicate amongst themselves. There I learned how to speak with hands, a language that needs no voice and one common among those who are afflicted with deafness. When I left there I had learned not to take my own voice for granted, I also left with the knowledge needed to preach even without my voice..." Looking over to Solya and the others, his eyes wide with satiation. "She makes her actions based on her beliefs, she did exactly as she wants and I will not fault her for that. But as happens often when people pursue their wants, they are not excused the wants of others to judge them nor should they be. It is a complicated matter but all is happening, action and reaction based on what each individual desires. If you watch you will learn more about them than you would have otherwise... What is it that you desire from this situation?"

Dorn watches in silent shock as the lethwyn root is destroyed in the fire.  His mouth opens, as though he's about to say something, before the heated conversation starts.  His attention shifts, and he loses interest in the talking quickly as his eyes settle on Mirana.  His face slacks.  It's clear he is distressed, knowing what is coming next.  

Mirana's eyes shift.  She looks over toward him with a shift of her eyes.  Knowing.  All he has left is a downcast look, his eyes focusing on the ground, as he slips closer to her and wraps his arms around her.  

"That is an impossible decision."  He murmurs.  There is a mixture of tired resolve, fear, worry, and somehow, compassion, on his face.  He studies the ground for a long time.  "I don't have the stones to do it myself.  I'm afraid.  Or the...I just can't.  Is there any other way to ease the pain?  She deserves a better death than what the gods have left her with."  

Toil watches, waits, observes who might step up first to offer the administration of a blow that might end suffering, he is curious of how close to death this Mirana actually is and wracks his brains for if he has seen this level of corruption previously. 

Orvyr, with a sad look on his face, steps forward to Dorn, putting a hand on his shoulder. As compassionately as he can, Orvyr says"You should go. Remember Mirana, carry her name. We will handle what comes next." He will attempt to usher Dorn back to the roadkeepers, supporting him as much he can. Orvyr will nod at the roadkeeper "We will give her whatever mercy we can. Safe travels."

He turns back to the fire, all compassion leaving him. He goes and stand before Soyla, looking down to her. "Are you going to use your sword? Or would you prefer my axe. A quick, heavy blow will ensure she doesn't suffer. Or are your convictions so shallow you will not accept this responsibility." He looks to Miranda. To Soyla, he adds "Or you can wait with your false compassion and fight the monster she becomes."

Rory stands to his full height, arms crossed, and watches the exchange, curious to see if Solya will take the axe and do what must be done.  Now, in a much more painful but hopefully swift way. 

"Ending suffering by ending the life of the sufferer is not what you promise it to be. It is not peace. It is not freedom. It is the slow breaking of the world. The twisting of what gives meaning. Of what life means. Life is all we have. And yet you claim it will be peaceful to take it away when you choose." Solya smiles sadly. "But you are wrong. That is not peace. That is how you make things... Quieter." She gets to her feet. "I am not going to take an innocent life. I will offer this--I will walk myself with Mirana, if no one else wishes to. I will go with her on her pilgrimage, until the end that is destined for her."

She turns to look at each of them in turn. "Shame on you for exploiting the grief and vulnerability of these pilgrims to try and take control of what is not yours to control. Pushing to take a life, to allay your own discomfort with someone else's suffering, instead of accompanying them in it. Shame on you."

Solya then turns to Dorn. "You say she deserves a better death. She does. She deserves the death that the Holy Tetrad will provide for her. She does not deserve to die at the hands of strangers... or of friends."

From the edge of the shadows, Aubrik steps back into the firelight, his orcish frame only just visible to those without the ability to see in the dark.

"You talk with a lot of pride, Solya, but you don't know a thing. You don't understand the Lethwyn Vigil at all if you think it spreads the Quiet."

"Lethwyn is a sacred herb of Release. The brew I made is for the dying, the mortally wounded, or those carrying a rot that can’t be cured—like what’s inside Mirana right now. It doesn't steal life. The only things it quiets are the pain, the fear, and the panic so a person can let go while they still know who they are. It’s the last choice someone gets to make for themself before their body becomes a danger to the living."

He steps closer to stand now in the brighter light cast by the fire.

"That’s the choice you just stole from her. Instead, you’re forcing your own twisted ideas on her, claiming the Holy Tetrad wants her to suffer. You’re condemning her to lose her mind, lose who she is, and turn into a Hollowed. You're turning her into a monster that will turn around and tear into the next innocent soul, just like the one with the green scarf did."

The cold, hard expression remains etched onto his face from earlier.

"And your great mercy is to watch it happen? To keep her company while she rots, because you already threw away her only way out? You've got a lot of nerve trying to make us feel ashamed for wanting to save her from that horror."

He shakes his head, the finality in his tone absolute.

“You twist it to sound noble, but that’s just cruel, Solya.”

Toil, now alone on the edge of the pilgrimage since Orvyr ignored his story to go and join the disagreement, walks amongst the vigil once more, breathing in the smell of candle smoke and greeting those who he has not yet met, with a smile and a small bow. He makes his way gleefully to the front and places a gentle hand on Mirana and Dorn as the roadkeeper embraces his friend. 

He looks down to Mirana her eyes open and  and asks, "with the discovery of these strangers you have been given options, despite the disagreement they have amongst themselves, despite the destruction of the brew to release you softly into that long goodnight. Everything is still possible. What is it that you desire Mirana?"

Rory stands there with arms crossed as a fellow team member of his ? chastises ? the crew for not siding with a pilgrim who is a stranger in becoming a hollowed... his jaw drops open, incredulous for a moment.  How is this possible?  he thinks, surprised by this turn of events.  He is surprised that this becomes the first test of their crew's cohesiveness.  Rory's nostrils are flaring as he becomes more and more angry at the absurdity of the situation.  

"Perhaps you have forgotten why we are here, Solya.  Why all of us are here."  Rory has a look at the cart, eyes open wide and amazed that so soon after departure that the mission has slipped from everyone's memory.  He looks to Aubrik and says "Kind of you to offer this to the pilgrim, to ease her suffering and passage, Aubrik, and I agree with you.  But we best be getting on now.  I can't understand how this has derailed us."

He stands up in front of Solya, meeting her eye and in flat refusal of her high and mighty judgment of him.  He starts looking at the rest of their crew, gathered, and speaks to all of them.  "Y'all talking about killin'?  Hmm?  Y'all experts?  Y'all know about killin'?  Well, I'd like to hear about it."  He pauses, looking at all of them.  "There's the way it ought to be, and the way it is.  Solya here is a crusader.  Now I've got no fight with anyone who does what they're told.  But when we don't, the machine breaks down.  And when the machine breaks down, we break down.  And I'm not gonna allow that.  In any of you."

He turns back to Solya, hands hanging loose at his side, an easy posture.  "You wanna kick holy ass.  I get it.  Well, here I am, all by my lonesome.  And.. there ain't going to be anybody who's gonna know.    Take me out.     Kill me.      Protect your hollowed friend.  Is that what you're about?  Wanting folks to become hollowed?"  He looks at the others, shrugging his shoulders, incredulous.  "Or maybe you should get along on your way and walk with Mirana.  At some point, when she's gnawing on your arm, or when you are frantically cutting off said arm to prevent the sickness from taking hold in you after you've put your blade through her head in self-defense, at some point you will realize the error of this decision.  All I know is that I don't want to be there when that moment happens.  And it will happen.  Solya, I don't know that I can trust you to be at my side when the real sh&t goes down.  And it will, much more than this.  If I'm havin' to check over my shoulder to determine your sensibilities at every step... I don't want you walkin' with us.  But maybe that's just me.  I know how to form an effective crew, and what makes a good team.  And this here sh%t isn't it."  Rory crosses his arms, waiting to hear other thoughts.  

“Stop.” Harper didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. He’d been quiet so long that the single word turned heads. “All of you. Just… stop.”

He looked around the fire  first at Rory, then Solya, and lastly falling on Aubrik, the whole crew tangled up in each other.

“Toil asked her something.” He nodded toward Mirana, toward Toil’s hand still resting on her. “He asked her what she wants. It’s the first time tonight anybody’s actually asked her instead of deciding for her. And the second he did it, you all started talking again.” His jaw tightened. “Over her. Like she isn’t sitting right there hearing every word of it.”

He set the drum aside and lowered himself closer to her, bringing his voice down with him, soft now, just for her even as the others could still hear it.

”She’s slow because she’s weak, not because she’s gone. Give her the room.” He looked at Mirana, patient, unhurried, like there was nowhere else in the world he needed to be. “Take your time. Nobody here’s going to do anything until you tell us what you want. You’ve got the floor. Whatever’s left of this night is yours.”

And he waited with his drum quiet, journal shut and everyone else’s argument left hanging in the smoke.