[IC] Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

[Tatterdemalion]

Constance makes the penitent knight wait. Perhaps not as long as she could have, for fear of losing her, but now that she has control of the moment again, she is loath to lose it carelessly. Her pale fingers drift in the ice-cold water.

“I do not play with the dead,” she intones, looking deep into the lights flickering on the water, pinpricks in the shadow. “And you are dead already, Sir Coilleghille. When you meet that axe, you will not get back up and gayly offer to meet it again in a year.”

She pauses. Her fingers break the surface of the water, and she lets them lie invitingly on the brim, instead. “If you meet that axe.”

She turns, and in that wan light her dress is a thing of scales ready to be shed. “You never asked for my help, Sir Coilleghille. Would you do so now? The dead can be cheated of their due, after all.”

[Thanqol]

"If I cheat the axe," said Robena quietly, "Will I no longer be dead, and will you smile and laugh and revel in the miracle of my resurrection?"

[Tatterdemalion]

“I will be yours,” Constance says. “We will forget knights and swords and violences. I will bring you down to the stones and the waters and we will lay down the wizard’s sword with the other offerings. You will not die. I will not let you die. But there will be things you must shed, to be mine.”

This was not the plan. To give her a true choice. To lay out a road they both could walk.

“Name and title and sword, my bear. Cross and blood and chalice, my heart. They are the weights around your neck. If you cling to them, they will bring you to the end: a sinner who meets her fate. Your faith and your martyr need your guilt, your destruction. If you choose life, you will need to become a new thing. A champion of the old ways, shameless and free. And deathless I will keep us, far from famine and far from the King, until Adam’s kin fade from Britain and we all awake again.”

Humanity demands you be punished, Robena. That is the weight, the calculation: why do you hide from me, Adam? Why do you cover yourself, Eve? Because of what you have done, you will labor, you will struggle, and you will know pain, and you will die. But the land and the blood and the wheel are older than the garden, and there are stranger apples off Britain’s shores.

“Cast them all off and take my hand, Robena. If you do not, you will die, and there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

[Anarion]

Tristan

Sir Hector gives you a long, thoughtful look. She's very seriously thinking about your question. Isn't that freeing? Perhaps she hasn't considered it before, being wrapped in a responsibility she believed she had. Perhaps she simply wants to give you the respect of taking in what you're saying and not responding instantly as though your words offered nothing new.

After a long moment, though, she says "no."

It is a soft, quiet no. The sort of no that is at once tentative and yet utterly certain.

It then is followed then by a firmer one. "No. It is not freeing, not for me. I can see what you mean. Almost like looking at a distant field." For a moment her face is wistful before it falls. "But no. I wanted greatness of a sort. I wanted to use everything that I learned, everything I trained for. Instead I am not chosen. To wish for responsibility and not to receive it is a special kind of agony."

She goes silent and looks to you to respond. In all the time you've been in the castle, you've never heard her that poetic. You might have called her thoughtful and even insightful, but not poetic. This is an odd glimpse beyond the veil, and she does not know what you'll do with it. You could deny her in this moment, perhaps; judge everything she believes wrong and broken and she would have no rejoinder to offer. You could offer her support and comfort, perhaps more than she has ever received. Or perhaps...perhaps this is a moment for you to decide what you came to this castle to do, Tristan.

[Thanqol]

In the ancient stories, was He not offered the same choice? To leave the world of pain and vice and betrayal and heed the call of blood? To escape the X and the days spent in agony as each drop fell from His heart into the waiting chalice? Compared to that suffering a swift blow to the neck seemed a mercy, but still her heart recoiled from the inevitability of it the moment she saw there was another path.

A hungry light filled her eyes, and she took Constance by the hand. Her blood, so hot, so base, so human spoke to her as it did to Him. Her heart pounded and the passion seemed like it would overwhelm her as it had so many times before.

And then, at last, she understood.

"I crave life," she said. "I crave it as I crave drink. I crave it as I crave battle. I crave it as I crave glory and praise and riches. I thought that my vices were individual things, a collection, an array of seven. I thought that because I could stand tall upon the field I was not a coward but the rage and battle lust felt to me then the exact same way as I felt when I craved your offer, the same feeling of passion that had me strike down the cursed King."

For a moment the grip of her fingers was so hard, so trembling. She thought of battling the demons of her horse, and though the demons were no longer garbed in a tonne of muscle they were far more fearsome for all of it.

"It is all one vice, Constance. One craving. My flesh hungers and my spirit is silent, and so hunger is my master. If I take your offer, unreconstructed, I shall become a faerie indeed but one from the worst of stories. Craving made immortal, grasping hands in an eternal garden, thief of children, shameless and free. I am not a flawed knight; true, but for one damnable mistake. I am a dragon caged in flesh no less than Lady Sandsfern, and the devil at the crossroads revealed the end of that path as a lesson to me. And here I stand upon a second crossroads, and this time the question of wishes is put to me alone."

Her hand slipped away from Constance's as easily as air, when a moment before it had been holding with the terrified and terrifying strength of a fearful giant.

"In that world you would be a maiden trapped in the talons of a dragon. Though you did not answer my question, you did so by omission: in that world you would not be happy. So I tell you, faerie-devil, Constance, one who I love too much to crave, I tell you of the one wish I do have: That you somehow find happiness."

She looked away into a light, gleaming and distance. "Whatever that happiness is, I shall fight for it. I shall slay dragons for it, even if the dragon I must slay is within myself. A knight can do no less."

[Count Numbers]

Sir Hector's grievance splits him down the middle as sure as an axe; At once, he does not understand not taking pride and pleasure in all the good you can do. On the other, he cannot imagine how it must feel to be stopped from doing the good that you are capable of.

What was he here to do?

He had been here to play his part in someone else's legacy. In this, he and Hector were the same. Where they differed is that Tristan holds no resentment for a lesser part. Doesn't he? He looks inside himself and, no, finds only contentment there.

"You speak as though already dead, Sir Hector." Tristan teases, smiling. "As if you have been robbed of the only part you could ever play. But you have lost only a chance - not the skills, the training, or the will. What if there is another? If someone stumbles, who else stands ready to replace them?"

Not empty words. How much of this was Tristan expecting to deal with, when he agreed to fight alongside Robena and Sandsfern that night? So sure he knew the real interpretation of a second-hand prophecy about the Questing Beast?

"I don't really know what to do now." Tristan admits. "But we live in interesting times. I couldn't have predicted any of this, a year ago. What sense is there predicting a year hence? Or five, or ten?" And, again, the most sincere and reassuring smile he is capable of, because it is how he really feels. "You're ready to answer when you are called, no matter how great the call. How much better that, than to be called before you are ready?"

Ask Tristan if he feels like he is ready to answer when he is called, and for the first time he might say 'yes'. He feels prepared, now, in a way that another thousand-thousand archery drills would have left him wanting. He had only ever thought about needing the skills to prepare him for anything - thinking exclusively in terms of what he lacked. Sir Hector asks him instead to ask; What task is worthy of his skills? It's the first time he has been forced to consider what he is ready for, and not just what he isn't. It's... a pleasant change of perspective.

He hopes things are going well with Constance, despite having no idea what that could even mean.

[Anarion]

All

It is, as it always is, the unlikeliest chance that things should be as they are. That you should be here. That Hector should have smiled at Tristan and held onto a ray of hope of things never done. That Constance may have smiled in a secret night too dark by her direction for anyone to see it. That Robena may have gone to bed and perhaps, just perhaps, smiled when she reflected on her own choice.

The final day of hunts does not greet you merrily, but with a growl. Sleet-thick winds strike at the castle stones and batter the windows. The clouds are gray and menacing, the sun a distant glow behind them, little more than a hint that it exists. The trees creek and crack, the snow crackles, and there is no sign of life or movement, though the scouts nevertheless went out before danw to find the boar trail.

And yet...the full downpour holds itself in abeyance. Or is held, perhaps? Who could say what confluence of powers is at war in the heavens, after all?

Robena

You are met at dawn, such as it is, by Sir Hector. Though she has been loathe to speak with you to date, she stands before your room politely while you ready yourself. She already wears her own hunting gear: a long fur cape over her armor, a greatbow slung over her back and a great boar-spear with its high hilt held in one hand. She has prepared a sharpened boar spear for your use as well, held cautiously away from you in her other hand. For today is the boar hunt. The boar stands as the symbol of endurance and ferocious power. It has always been the pinnacle of the hunt. Not cunning or villainous, not fast, never lithe. But powerful, dangerous, and fighting to the last. The spear that Hector presents you is unadorned, but of the highest quality, with a good firm grip wrapped in leather and a point that does not show a single flaw upon it. This is a fine compliment, and one that you would not know what you have done to deserve. It is, after all, a favor to Tristan, not to you.

How do you ready yourself for the final hunt on this harsh day?

Constance, Tristan
You are permitted, if you wish it, to sleep in. The castle is focused on Robena's last hunt, and for the early morning there is nothing else to be done. It is dark, gray, and entirely unlike a day anyone would wish to rise to meet. But you can wake, if you wish, and bathe or chat. Or you can wait, and go to see the lady Sauvage when she calls upon you mid-morning. She will not be joining the hunt at all this day, not even from a distance, and wishes instead to see you.

This is a fell thing, for she has doffed most of her humanity on this last day. Her dress is a somber blueish gray, and her skin has faded to match. Her mouth is pursed, and her hands look almost as stone perched on the gilded sides of her throne. Her doom and with it the last remnants of her existence, is coming to an end. Perhaps the weather is a reflection of her mood. Or one that combats her?

Regardless, she turns with the barest of motions, not to Constance, but to Tristan first. "Most unexpected" she says, her face nearly still save for her lips blue with cold. "What...do you think of the knights I have gathered here?"

Is that, perhaps, the smallest of smiles at the edge of her lips? What an unlikely chance.

[Thanqol]

On the dawn of this, the final day of her life?

She does not know enough latin to talk to god. She has no friends who could keep up through days of drink. None of her kisses have lingered. No liege lord will regret her passage, no small folk will feel her loss. She has passed through the world like a passing storm and now she's to fly away into Okeanos and vanish forever.

She's not complex enough to be a true person, she decides. A true person has roots. Friends, connections, community. A stability in hearth and heart, loves that take years to build and don't flash out like a thunderbolt from clear air. She's more like an animal, an illiterate bear knight who has lived her whole life in moments. And so she has resolved to spend this final morning with those she understands. She spends it with the dogs, patting and playing and casting sticks so far even the swiftest of them cannot catch them before they hit the earth. She spends the final morning with her bastard of a horse, brushing his mane and tail and indulging his endless appetite. She spends an hour of the final morning sitting quietly and patiently enough to convince a cat to grace her with a brief sniff on the hand and brush against her legs.

The kindest thing about the animals is that they can form friendships in the brief time given to a wanderer or a condemned woman. And so Robena spends her last morning with them. Perhaps she was not to be a knight for Britain, a knight for maidens, a knight for God. But perhaps she can be a knight for beasts.

[Count Numbers]

Constance had returned seeming... better for lack of a better word, which told Tristan his watch that night would be unneeded, unwanted. He'd taken that as a reason to retire early.

The day is dark, and gray, but it is a day, and Tristan is alive to meet it. There is good food in the kitchen for breakfast, warm fireplaces and libraries. Tristan is too anxious to read by half, but he's got a lot of thoughts and he's out of practice with his poetic forms. He could talk to Liana about polishing them if he were to give them an audience, but for now it's just to get his thoughts on the page.

For an hour he sits and stares at a blank page, composing and recomposing in his head. It saves crossing out the endless mistakes, heaps of crumpled balls thrown in the fireplace. It would be a crime to waste the paper. The quill does not dip in ink until, finally, he gets it.

Here at winter's end
The future lies in ambush
I rise to meet it.

There's no sense in scolding himself that it should not have taken that long. Such things take as long as they take. What is important is that he is content with it - feels grateful to have finished it just before he is summoned.

"What...do you think of the knights I have gathered here?"

The Lady's question takes Tristan by surprise, and he bows in deference, using the long moment to collect his thoughts. Again he's flipping a mindset on a dime - he's still felt like he has so much to learn about them that he's not made any conclusions.

"I like them," Tristan offers, lamely. "They're kind. I must admit, I wish I understood them better. Mostly I wonder... Where will they go, after this? Do you know?" He worries for Harold. He is intrigued by Hector. And he is curious, to say the least, for the still mysterious Liliana.

He glances to Constance, whose thoughts are just as mysterious to him, but takes solace in her countenance - far better than the one she bore here, not long ago.

[Tatterdemalion]

Constance Nim is the other side of the wheel, rising (or perhaps descending) towards mortality as the Lady Sauvage withdraws from it. For the first time in days, there is color in her cheeks, freshly washed and scrubbed until they shone, and rather than gliding stately along, as unapproachable as a snow-capped Caledonian mountain, she... walks. She moves as you or I might, simply, as a woman. A smile is not far from her lips, and if you have the eyes to see, it can be glimpsed hiding in the quirk of her lips or the tightening of lines around her eyes. More than one choice was made last night, and so, perhaps, Constance will continue on this road, and dwindle, and become nothing less or more than a priestess.

What of the knights? She's been so withdrawn, her heart locked away, that she knows them best as partners in Tristan's japes; as a Greek chorus offering judgment on her and her schemes; as people whose hurts and needs she has not addressed as she should. But she will have long days, in the summer, in the waiting, perhaps with Robena, perhaps with Apricot alone, and time enough to remember how to care; time enough to plant crops in the soil and water them through the cracked-earth days of the dog star, time enough to relearn gentleness and vulnerability and how to be firm enough to be a shelter and how to be soft enough to be held.

The worst is over. Now the future stretches out in front of her in yellow and gold and red, and all that remains is to see whether her knight walks away alive in the face of the numinous, or whether Constance will bury her bones in British earth-- but however her story ends, there will be a place for Constance. The ice has broken; the river runs.

"A good question," she says, quietly, not as a gnomic pronouncement but as an acknowledgement. Leave it to Tristan to ask it.

[Anarion]

Tristan and Constance

"I do not" that is definitely a smile. On that cold face and those empty blue lips, it is a smile. "The people gathered here are liminal in their nature. Each of them not in their expected role. So they play the castellan, the warrior, and the maiden instead."

She looks up then, a terrible motion slow as the crone, and gazes out the window. At the first flakes of snow. "When our pageant is done, it will no longer be safe here."

She doesn't look down, her gaze still to the sky, but you see again that slow smile on that ashen face. Almost sardonic in its guise. "That is not to say that it will be safe anywhere else. This place will simply cease to be more than a castle in the woods. Subject to all that entails. All who remain may decide then what to do with it."

And lastly she turns to Constance, her gaze fixed upon you, her eyes focused but cold, her arms resting upon her small throne as a statue to honor a past king. The contrast is high between her fading and your life. In truth, much of her next question is already answered by this moment, but she asks it anyway, as she must. "Lady Constance, I brought you here to benefit from your judgment. How stands your mind?"

Robena
You are peripherally aware that servants are moving about. The horses and dogs are made ready, Hector checks her equipment again, the grooms check the harness and saddle with care and love. The hunt will not be ruined by the betrayal of an old strap or a rusted hilt.

Your time with the beasts, however, is undisturbed. The servants are distant, as is Sir Hector who respects you enough to allow you this time. Apricot, briefly, is compliant and enjoys being brushed. Not tempted by nearby sugar nor apples, he takes a rare moment to accept your ministrations. The cat brushes you and you feel for a moment as though the whole weight of the world has passed you by, and then it slips away and hops upon a wall to fix you with its gaze and you judge that it, at least, thinks you might be worthwhile to it in the future.

Presently, the time has passed and all is ready to set out. Sir Hector calls to you gently and you can see in her, despite her criticism before, an understanding that few others here have shared. Of power and of frustration both.

You ride out then in the cold and the gray for the boar. It is the final test in this great hunt. A boar is strength itself and so it will test the strength of knights. And this boar will be great indeed, one of the strongest of its kin, a trial even for the greatest of knights.

Tell us, Robena, how it appears before you and how you and your companions hunt it.

[Thanqol]

She hunts the boar as she might hunt a man.

In the moment of realizing that this whole tale makes a dark and terrible sense. Her first taste of combat was against a monstrous bear, and she has since faced trials of dragon, fox, and deer. And none of the sacred, wicked, enchanted creatures she faced ever seemed entirely animal. The intelligence that had gleamed in each eye, the inveterate deceptions of the fox, the pride of the dragon, the rage of the bear, the passive fatalism of the deer...

Had they all been knights, once?

She feels the fur of her bearskin rustle against her back.

It was a dark thought. But, in this dark age, to be a knight was a dark business. The world from here to Jerusalem rotated around the dark decisions of those with strength of arms. In the absence of Roman law things fell to strength alone. The cities of stone had overgrown and sunk and returned to the jungle. Palaces were squat and warlike things. Even in the shadow of Jerusalem strength was the only measure of justice, strength the only measure of wisdom. And here in England it was strength again the only law, the strength of Uther, the strength of Robena, the strength and struggle of beasts.

Unless the Devil herself was to wait upon her at the coming crossroads then she would never know. This could have all been her imagination, trying to affix meaning onto the lives of the beasts who alone remained to her. But she did not think it so. She thought of knights carrying lion-painted shields. She thought of knights wearing horse-crested helms. She thought of knights collecting the pagan signs of their destined animals all about them, how they came to seem more and more like the beasts they idolized. She thought of a continent of beasts, squatting in their lairs of stone, feasting and fighting and fucking and calling themselves noble.

She is riding fast now, galloping towards that coming crossroads. She is not slowing down. She does not need to scent spoor or trace lines of broken trees. All the craft of the hunt she puts aside and for the first time in a long time her horse's hooves start to fly. She does not need to track this creature. She knows where it will be. It will be where the worst of knights will be, on the border of life and death - on the precipice of Hell itself.

As she rides she reaches up and tears the clasp of her bearskin cloak. That magnificent, accursed hide catches the wind and blows free right as she gallops through the crossroads, and for the first time in her life she feels the wind on her shoulders as she rides. It is not a boar spear she carries now, it is a lance. She will face this final challenge not as a bear, not as a hunter, not as a liminal part-human spirit creature. She will face it as a human.

For the first time her armour shines beneath the sun.

[Tatterdemalion]

“Robena Coilleghille must face death,” Constance says without hesitation. “She must be confronted with it; she must give herself over to it. If you pardoned her now, she would never know if she would be brave until the very end.”

She takes a breath. Her heart is an ember in her chest. How it burns! Like a bonfire on the solstice.

“But I do not believe she should die. If I held that axe, I would nick her neck, and let that hot blood spattered on the stone be enough. I would leave her a scar to remember her penitence by, one for her fingers to trace should she be tempted to folly again. I do not know if her doom can be turned aside, here in her garden, but— that is my judgment on her.”

[Count Numbers]

If Tristan is shocked by this reveal, this explanation for Constance's brightened mood, he keeps it from his face. It is not his place to ask if this is too much, or too little - it is his place to trust that Constance has made the correct decision, and to support her if she needs it. To stand aside if she doesn't. So he stands aside.

A good hunter knows when it is time to watch and to wait.

[Anarion]

Robena

The miracle is that there is a sun. You're busy, there's not time to think about that, but on a day where the clouds were thick and the snow and sleet constantly felt moments away, now there is sunlight. There is a rightness to the world, that you should ride forth on shining armor to face the boar. Apricot's hooves are the wind, the braying of the dogs the only guidepost you need.

You may remark that in your ride, Sir Hector keeps up with you. She is not so shining or so grand, but she is with you through this and that too is something special.

The boar then is a great thing. Dark, its shaggy fur nearly black, its back full of thick, course bristles that come up on the arch to your head mounted atop your horse. It's tusks are long and sharp, and its legs corded with muscle. In its eyes, you see, not exactly what you'd expect. Not fury, no. There is a weariness and almost a relief when you come upon it in the glade and it sets to charge you. And pride too, and a certain fierce competition that says that you will given nothing this day unless you earn it.

Sir Hector is at your disposal, and the two of you both have mounts, shields, and boar spears for your use. It will be an even match, and one worthy of epics should either of you ever care to relate the details to a poet.

[Tell us how you take the boar and roll as appropriate for this final labor.]

Constance and Tristan
Now there is a smile from the lady, and the sun is out. The clouds are not broken mind you, but there are gaps in them and the sun is shining in little beams into the room. You might have the thought cross your mind that being a cat in such a room as this would be a truly sublime pleasure, for you could simply roll yourself into that sunbeam and stretch out to your utmost comfort.

The lady's voice is lighter then. "You have a decision then. Good, that's good. I feared that you might still need another night to determine your feelings. But if you are certain. If...if you are certain then I think we may move to judgment upon the hunter's return. I do not know yet what her judgment will be. Your thoughts weigh greatly, both of yours Lady Constance and Sir Tristan. But there is still a hunt to finish and then we shall see the doom. Thank you." And here you can see already that her grip on the world is more ephemeral than real, and it is a great effort for her to wave a hand and thus let you know that you are free to leave her presence.

Perhaps the two of you would care to walk the hallways and discourse on what is to be done after all this that you may be properly prepared for Robena's return?

[Tatterdemalion]

There have been many surprising things that have happened at this castle since their arrival, but perhaps the most surprising of all is how, once they have left the presence of that ephemeral queen, Constance Nim turns to her companion and seizes him fast, pulls him close, and for that moment she is flesh and blood and shaking ever so slightly, so unlike a mountain.

“Thank you, Tristan.” The words are as raw as a rabbit pulling its foot free from a snare, but have just as much life to them. “I owe you and your jests… I owe you. If you would have any favor from me, name it and it will be yours, if I can provide.” The sort of offer that is only extended because the recipient is trusted. Even Constance does not know whether Tristan’s reply will be light-hearted in turn, or as serious as the tilling of the earth.

[Thanqol]

So how, then, does she fight the boar?

She does not. She dispatches it.

Were you expecting a tale of strength and heroism and red in tooth and claw struggle? Fool, you have learned nothing from this tale. If you wanted to know that Robena was strong you could have observed that in her size and muscles from the first page of this story.

So perhaps your problem, then, is the same as hers. You hunger for the blood and the sweat and the push and pull of spear and flesh. You hunger for the clatter of dice, in which case you will be satisfied to hear of her twelve. Do you recall the blow she landed on King Pellinore's kneeling neck? Do you recall its strength and skill? Do you celebrate it? Would you say that, but for the moral technicalities surrounding it, that is a tale worthy of telling about a knight?

You ask her, this girl who has spent this last year struggling with death, atonement, and knighthood how she kills a pig? Shame on you. Shame on those like you. Shame on her for being like you. Shame on her no longer.

This is not her final trial. She will not make the mistake of considering it so.

[Count Numbers]

Tristan, in a panic, vacillates between the jovial reflection and the seriousness this offer demands. Had Constance drawn a sword he would feel less ambushed. Why all these questions, today, that he is so ill prepared to handle?

"Normally I would ask you be happy, be free of doubt, but it looks like I have no need to ask." Tristan is left, then, with a much more private question. "If we are speaking in the strictest of confidences - In your personal judgement, do you think I should court Sir Mort, or Sir Liana?"

Tristan stands firm, and holds a steady gaze. This should not be mistaken for unabashed confidence - it's the aspect of the fawn that's heard the snapping twig, but has not yet made the commitment to bolt. Gauging its ambusher.

[Anarion]

Robena

The boar is dispatched. Rather than focus on violence, perhaps it is a moment for thanks. The hunt is many things, after all. For knights, it may be a matter of valor, or perhaps a way to display a mixture of youthful impetuousness and undeniable skill mixed together. But before that, it was a matter of nourishment. It is cold, the ground full of snow, and the threatened storm cannot be put off forever. A large boar brought to the castle will feed all the inhabitants for several days, and salted or smoked can be made to last much longer still. This, at its heart is the source of any valor that may attach to it, which perhaps distinguishes the act from the axe upon Pellinore's neck. That here, your prowess will let people eat amidst the cold, while Pellinore's death served some more abstract purpose that holds less meaning now.

Hector is workmanlike in helping the squires prepare the boar for travel. On the ride back she speaks little, looking mostly to the weather, the horizon, and the cleanliness of her gear. But before you reach the castle and your presentation of the final day's earnings to its lord, she offers you a nod. "You have my blessing, whatever may come of it" she says.

And then you are returning, and here you are met by the lady herself, dressed in her finest armor and skirts, covering an ethereal body that is far from human. She has spoken little to you in all your time here, mostly a distant figure even on the hunts where she rode along. But now she is arraigned to greet you and ride with you to the castle chapel, where you realize as you see her arrayed as she is that your judgment is prepared.

What do you say in this moment, if anything?

Tristan, Constance
There is quite the question in the air for you. Answer it, and then array yourselves as you see fit for Robena's formal return. For lady Sauvage has determined that the time for judgment is now, and it seems that the heavens themselves will not stand in her way.

[Thanqol]

God. The inevitability of it.

The part of her that wore the bear skin rages. Thrashes. Cries. Begs. Why not draw your sword and dare them to try and take you? Why not run? Why not resort to banditry? What foul magic is contained within the word knight to make you give up the truths of the heart, of the blood? What makes you dare every instinct? This path does not even have the promise of love or redemption or glory at its end. It is an unknown, awful burden - no, a curse. A faerie curse from the living dead. Why consider this a matter of honour? Why accept the premise and let a deathless monster strike you down rather than spending your year learning a way to slay ghosts? Don't you want to taste again, to sing again, to be beautiful and strong beneath the sun? Why should you not be a goddess? Why should you not be a beast, when there is so much joy in savagery?

Eve no doubt asked herself the same questions when she stood outside the Garden. Nothing stopped her from returning. She had not become any more or less capable of violence. Predators still roamed the garden, the lion and the serpent, beasts still below divine judgement. The apple had not corrupted Eve, it had simply made her aware of the blood.

And she was aware now.

She has no words, and yet she must find them anyway. She wants to face her death silently, stoically, like the ox before the hammer. She cannot be permitted that either.

"The ideal of chivalry has faded," said Robena Coilleghille. "The land is blighted. The fields are fallow. Warriors use the word 'knight' until its meaning drips towards 'bandit'. And I am as much responsible for that as anyone.

"I wish I could cast the blame away, I wish that I could cast the blame at the King, or even at my Countess. I wish I could let the salve of loyalty soothe the flame of every other vice. But I have stood in many lands, before many kings. I have seen many examples, brilliant and wretched. Always my soul had the knowledge of good and evil, and so I learned to suppress it. Alcohol, obedience and pride - three devils enough to drink the Grail dry. My soul desiccated in the drought.

"But then there came a wildfire; a spark set by the devil that set alight that fading forest. For this, I thank the devil. I burned while there was still some part of me left to burn. Five more years and I might not even have felt shame when I struck King Pellinore from behind 'neath the flag of truce. Certainly, my mistress did not. It was not she who was called to face judgement here. At first I thought this a terrible injustice, but my heart knew that to be false. She was being treated as an animal. Returned to the Garden. The world resigned to her slaughter and base impulses. An animal she had become already.

"In being offered judgement, even if the judgement was to end in death, I was being offered a greater courtesy by far. I was recognized as someone who had the knowledge of good and evil, even if I had done great evil. So I am grateful, too, to King Pellinore and her mercy. She did not condemn me as a mere beast in that moment. She condemned me as a sinner. And so, I approach you lords and ladies as a sinner. While I have stained the title of knight, I have striven this past year to be at least a virtuous sinner."

And with this, at last, she kneels.