Dark Jack

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, and Yanin – Bor Manor, Borstown

“Not yet,” Caleb replied when Yanin asked whether he intended to return to Drigall, “nor could you stop me if that had been my intent. Feevesha sacrificed herself to bring me here, and I will not waste the body she gave me by letting it turn to dust without doing anything worthwhile. I will return willingly to exile eventually, but not yet.”
The fallen, vaguely Melenian-like thalk seemed to pause at this, clearly had something more on his mind, but allowed himself to be distracted by Yanin asking about the spirit in Freagon's sword.
“A mundane,” he declared after just a moment's hesitation. “It feels... odd. Undead, yet not. Very powerful.”

With that out of the way, Caleb seemed to return to his previous question: “May I simply walk out of here? Leave this building, leave this... is this a town?” He glanced out the window next to him as if only now becoming aware that there was a world outside these walls. When he looked back, his eyes, sharp, wide and attentive, shifted rapidly from Freagon to Yanin, to Irah, to Freagon and back to Yanin. “You say you will not kill me if I do not cause undue harm and that you do not wish to use me as a slave or a tool. If so, if I tried to leave, would you stop me?”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, and Yanin – Bor Manor, Borstown

Caleb kept staring warily at Freagon until Irah started getting closer, at which point his eyes started shifting between the two, though his stance seemed to relax a little as the deigan spoke, seemingly somewhat mollified by her words and demeanor. Freagon's stance relaxed the rest of the way, too, as he sheathed his dagger – he had not intended to use it, after all, he merely wanted to show them that the blade was silver so they knew he could have thrown it rather than a coin, had he really wanted to – and stepped further into the room, heading for the west corner or the room and thus away from the angel and toward the bed.
Divines, he thought bitterly, looking down at the still-bloodied sword in his hand. Their sharp senses were really bothersome under the best of circumstances, and had turned out quite problematic today in particular. It was one thing that Caleb had mentioned that there was something different about him – in truth he expected to feel the faint familiar tingle of one of the mages magically reading his soul any moment now – but chances were that the others were not going to respond well to being told that there was a spirit in his sword. It did not bode well for their prospect as future allies.

Arriving at the side of the bed, Freagon proceeded to reach out and wipe his blade on a relatively unsullied part of the otherwise ruined quilt, finally cleaning his sword so that he might put it away; he did not think he was going to need it anymore. But even as he did so, he clenched his teeth and had to stop himself from sighing audibly at the internal admonition he levied at himself: yes, news of the sword was likely going to be a point of conflict, but he had not exactly been at his most pleasant either. The whole debacle over him throwing the coin, and likely him just kicking down the door earlier as well... he knew that these people probably disliked him at this point, which – annoying though it was that people could not just be rational about such things – probably made them less inclined to keep working with him. He could have handled things differently: he could have apologized as Irah had demanded; he could have abstained from justifying him injuring the angel by pointing out that he could have killed it; he could have spent a few more seconds communicating with the others rather than acting on his own initiative without consulting them. He could, but... stuff like this was why he almost always worked alone. Why people did not like him.
Even now, as Irah poured her heart out trying to make peace with their divine quarry, all Freagon could think about was how the thalk was probably re-accumulating power with each word she spoke. His every instinct told him to cut things short; that the only way to negate the threat of this creature was by slaying it before it regained its strength. His fingers itched to put a dagger in its face, to sever its neck with his sword, to impale it and destroy its heart; anything to send its spirit back where it came from, where it was not a threat to anyone. Part of him insisted that he knew better, that these amateurs were going to get themselves killed unless he acted on his own to protect them. But he knew that they would not understand, let alone agree with him.
No one understood, which was why no one liked him, and most people hated him. He was not right; he was defective and broken. He had come to accept this decades ago, and had resolved to walk a lonely path through this life... until he met Jaelnec. The boy had changed things. For the sake of a future that might be, he had to find a way to make this work. It was not going to be easy, but Freagon had never shied away from a challenge before.

“Do not offer up your energy so willingly for my sake, and certainly not your life,” Caleb replied to Irah over in the corner, just as Freagon returned the now-clean Roct to its scabbard. “I may be Fallen, but I am still mostly a thalk; as long as I do not move, I can siphon nigh-limitless divine energy from the Neverrealm. And truth be told, I do not even want to be here.” Caleb cocked his head. “But if what you say is true... may I leave?”
Freagon kept listening in silence, and went to search for the couple of rodlin he had thrown from the floor.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, and Yanin – Bor Manor, Borstown

Caleb shot Lhirin an incredulous look when he asked it why it appeared to be frightened. “Why? Because I am outnumbered and cornered, and now I have even lost what little power I had managed to accumulate by staying here.”
“Besides...” He pointed at Irah. “She is a summoner, and that man –” He moved his hand to first point at Freagon, only to then also point west, toward the bedroom next door. “– and someone in there, I have never sensed anything like them. Not to mention that his sword –” Again he pointed at Freagon. “– has a spirit in it. Destroy me if you want, but please do not trap me like that again.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

“How many ghouls did you create? In the future, it would best if no more were released – that, as a rule, won't be tolerated –, but for now, I am just trying to confirm the fates of everyone who was supposed to be in here, though I suspect I have already deduced.”
“Five. But...” Caleb answered Yanin's question. There was a brief pulse of divine energy in the air that Freagon, Irah and Lhirin would all feel, but it vanished as instantly as it began and lasted for but a fraction of a second. Immediately after, the thalk raised his hand and pointed to the east and a little toward the floor. “I sense a mundane in that direction, inside the building. I sensed it earlier, too. It did not attack, so I ignored it. I figured the wraiths and ghouls would find it sooner or later.”

Later, after Freagon had thrown his second rodlin and Yanin and Irah both had chastised him for it, Caleb used the time they spoke to get back on his feet, though he still seemed a little dazed.
Freagon merely listened to the words directed at him in silence, the visor of his helmet even more expressionless than the face behind it. Meanwhile his left hand moved at his waist, depositing the last two coins he had originally retrieved from his coinpurse back where they came from. His body-language did not change in the slightest, though he did lower his sword a bit further, dropping into a somewhat more passive stance.
“If I wanted to assault it,” he grumbled impatiently, “it would be dead.” As his left hand moved away from his coinpurse, Freagon snatched up the hilt of the dagger he had sheathed there and deftly brandished it so they could see, presenting its silver blade.
“Besides,” he added a second later, a dangerous coldness creeping into his voice, “it did try to kill us. Fair is fair. The fact that I made it move was an unexpected bonus.”
He very deliberately did not utter anything that could be interpreted as an apology.

“I am... fine,” Caleb hesitantly uttered as he awkwardly resumed the his stance from before, albeit seeming even more huddled now, as if trying his hardest to physically shrink away into the corner. His voice was trembling. He stared at Freagon with wide, brightly glowing eyes. He glanced at Irah for a second, questioningly, before returning to fix on the nightwalker. “I understand. I can... appreciate the candor.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

“I concur with her; as long as I can remain reasonably confident you have caused no undue harm to anyone in these lands, there is no reason to detain or send you back,” Yanin said, which made Caleb tilt his head curiously and shift his glowing eyes to look in the direction of his voice.
“Undue?” he repeated, sounding somewhat confused. “Some men came before you, a couple with silver swords. They attacked me, so I killed them. And I summoned frentits into their bodies. In the other dead, too. I figured that since Feevesha had apparently already created wraiths, it would suit her plans to reinforce them with some ghouls. You decide whether that is undue.”

The thalk's gaze followed Yanin as he revealed himself, staring at him stiffly and coldly from his place huddled in the corner. He watched him very attentively and overtly, making no attempt at disguising his own continued wariness.
“I am Sir Yanin Glade,” the human knight stated, simply. “Here's to hoping the day ends better than it began.”
Again Caleb cocked his head, and though his face was not all that well-suited to making expressions or showing emotions, his shoulders sagged a little more, his knees bent a little, and his face turned to the floor at Yanin's feet. The fallen angel just stared at the bloodstained floor in silence.

“Would you happen to know if any of the things in the room - other than the furniture - are not Feveesha's?”
Caleb raised his head again to look at Yanin, then slowly, in a manner that seemed almost lethargic, swept his gaze back and forth across the room, scanning it without moving from the spot.
“Aside from the furniture, and the things you brought here,” he said after several seconds' worth of looking and contemplating, “were likely hers. I cannot be sure. I was not familiar with all of her possessions, and some of them...” He raised a hand – revealed as the long sleeve fell away to be quite large, with long fingers that were each tipped with a hooked claw, and clad in the same red skin as his face – and placed it palm-inward on his chest. “...may also be inside my body.”

Abruptly, with barely a movement for anyone to detect or react to, a flash of silver zipped through the air once again, originating from Freagon's left hand. A second rodlin was finally thrown, only this time it hit Caleb directly in the center of his forehead with an audible impact; so hard, in fact, that the thalk stumbled backward and crashed back-first into the wall behind him.
As the large coin hit the floor and rolled off somewhere, a drop of blood ran down Caleb's nose before dripping off the tip. Only one drop, though; the injury had healed long before a second drop of blood could escape.
“Not an illusion,” Freagon asserted dispassionately. “Had to be sure.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

Freagon met Irah's gaze both times she looked at him, but did not say anything. As far as he was concerned, things were going surprisingly well. Just the fact that the divine had decreased the concentration of divine energy was a victory from his perspective, and a necessary one at that; had that not happened, he would have started aggressively searching for and trying to destroy the divine by now. She was still talking an awful lot in his opinion, but it seemed as though things were less urgent now, which made it easier to tolerate.
Despite his satisfaction with how successful their efforts to pacify the divine seemed to be, Freagon kept his sword in hand. It was going well, but the divine seemed paranoid, angry... vengeful. He had a feeling that one wrong word could still set it off and necessitate battle, and without knowing the full context it was difficult to guess what might trigger its ire.

When Irah mentioned how they owed Feevesha's memory to fulfill her last wishes, the archangel's eyes hardened, its fingers curled into fists and its upper lip withdrew just slightly to show a hint of teeth. It was a clear expression of anger, to the point where the nightwalker raised his sword just a little and leaned forward a bit, putting his weight on his front foot, ready to rush to action. But then, when she went on to talk about how it would be an affront to Feevesha's life to return Caleb now, its eyes went wide, its mouth fell open and its expression turned to surprise.
Caleb held out his hands in front of him, palms upturned and fingers unfurled, and lowered his head to stare at them. It seemed transfixed by the sight, to the point where it seemed questionable whether it was even listening to what Irah was saying anymore.

Only once Irah finished speaking did the angel let his hands fall back down, where they hang limply by his sides. He raised his gaze to look at Irah, staring at her intently, almost as if trying to look into her very soul... only for his lips to part and show teeth again, but this time in a smile rather than a scowl.
And then he was gone. In the blink of an eye the archangel vanished, and with it both the strange haze that had hung over the room and the last vestiges of divine energy in the air also faded. Suddenly the room looked quite different from before, with the trail of blood that had lead to the door now being revealed to continue inside. There was blood all over the floor – a highly worrying amount of blood – going back and forth across the room several times, from the table to the bed and back again, and finally to the middle of the room, where a thin leather-bound book lay in a puddle of blood. By the bed – which was also lightly bloodstained and unmade – was an open backpack lying on its side, with various travel supplies scattered across the floor around it. By the table to their left a couple of chairs now seemed to have been knocked over, and on top of the table itself were a scattering of papers and writing utensils. These, too, were smeared with bloody handprints.
Despite all the blood, there were no bodies to be seen anywhere.

And tugged into the far corner to their left, the southeastern corner of the room, behind the table and relatively near the window, stood a figure that had not been there a moment ago. It was a tall, broad figure – taller than even Yanin – wrapped in a loose dark-gray garment not unlike a monk's robe, with sleeves so long that they hid the hands and a hood that almost hid its face, but not quite.
What took Freagon aback slightly was exactly the face. He had seen plenty of thalks – and this was indeed a thalk – but he had never seen one with a face like this one. Rather than the normal visage resembling that of a human skull, this one had a lower half that extended into something like a short animalistic muzzle, albeit still without lips and with the dagger-like teeth of a thalk, and each of its glowing green eyes was split by a vertical pupil.
Freagon's eye narrowed. Is it... trying to look more like a Melenian?
“Very well,” the creature said, and though its appearance was different it still spoke in Caleb's voice, and still in True Words. “I hope we will not regret this, Deo'irah, but here I am, in the flesh I was given. No more illusions. At your mercy.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

The archangel's eyes widened in surprise when Irah spoke the Melenian summoner's name, only to immediately narrow suspiciously. If these people were indeed strangers to this place and just happened to be nearby, how would they know her name? Surely they would not have had time to hear and memorize information irrelevant to their goal if they were truly just here to help and look for wounded. If saving lives was what they were her for, one would think they would have rushed to the rescue as soon as they knew that they were at stake. They knew more than they logically should by the explanation they had given, it figured.
But that was not all: Irah revealed that she knew even more, which further called into question the truth of what the situation really was. Feevesha had revealed the fact that she was familiar with summoning magic because she wanted to chase down these bandits, she claimed? If this was true, it would make much more sense for these people to have been among those Feevesha had told than them having heard about it after the fact. At best they could have simply stood by while these witch-hunters tried to kill Feevesha, at worst they were aligned with the murderers. Irah did seem to react very strongly and negatively when she mentioned the witch-hunters, but emotions could be faked. And the iriao she had brought here? Either the witch-hunters were indeed hypocrites, or she had simply kept it secret somehow. Being possessed by a divine was hardly obvious to anyone without keen magical senses, after all.

But even as it became more and more guarded during this thought process, it then recalled the conversations it had overheard before they entered the room, before they would have known it was listening. In among their strategic considerations, they had mentioned wanting to pursue bandits themselves and expressed some urgency in doing so, which seemed to suggest that part was true, at least. And they had talked about the possibility and importance of saving anyone in the room... and Irah had expressed both a desire to resolve things with words and a preference for things not to escalate to the point of killing each other.
Its stance relaxed somewhat, and the lightning crawling along its arms waned and disappeared. It was still odd that they knew what they did, but there had been enough time from it sensing the iriao approaching the exterior of this place for them to be told. It would not have expected them to receive such details in a moment of urgency, but stranger things had happened. It was willing to believe that this woman, at least, did not mean to harm it.

“None,” it said in response to Irah's question, its voice lowered to a much more normal speaking volume now and its tone softer. “I once served the Lord That Glitters, but now I am Fallen. Feevesha is... was...” It stopped itself and shook its head. “Feevesha called me 'Caleb'. You can do the same, if you need to.”
Its eyes narrowed once again. “These bandits are the same that you mean to pursue?”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

Freagon looked and listened. He examined the archangel posturing at him and Irah. He scanned the room visually back and forth, even peeked behind the open door into the corner that would otherwise be hidden when standing in the doorway through the crack between it and the door frame. He looked as much and as hard as he could without moving from the spot or otherwise making what he was doing too obvious.
Much to his annoyance he did not see anything that might suggest where their quarry actually was, or he would have simply thrown a dagger at it and been done with it. He still had three rodlin remaining in his left hand that he could throw to check, but doing so would be overt enough to potentially prompt the divine to act. It had not exactly reacted well to him throwing the first coin, after all – at least he assumed that was why it had reiterated its command for them to stop – , so he would much prefer to spend an action with a potentially hostile response confirming where the divine was, rather than where it was not. The obvious thing to do would be to throw a coin at the archangel, which was obviously an illusion; Freagon had enough experience with archangels to know that this was not one. He was confident that throwing the coin would not end well, and a strong suspicion that wherever the real divine was, it was not there, but likely as far from that spot as possible. All it would accomplish was ensure that they knew that the divine was not there, and that the divine knew that they knew, which would escalate things.
With how dangerous the divine energy in the air was, it was easy to forget that divine taint was not the only threat of thalks. All of the dense energy filling the air here was a weapon for the creature to wield, fuel for its magic and nourishment for its strength.

Instead of throwing coins, Freagon busied himself with – as casually, idly and accidentally as he could manage to make it look – hold his sword so that its blade rested within the wall of fire meant to stop them from entering. He immediately noticed that the flames were not reacting to the obstruction, but seemed to flow exactly as they had before, seemingly passing through the metal rather than flowing around it. More importantly, the blood that still stained the blade did not react to the fire; there was no smoke, no sizzling, no signs of the blood being cooked. The flames were just for show, it seemed, and could be walked through safely.
He clenched his jaw inside the helmet and refocused his attention on the archangel. He knew he could advance and attack; now he just needed to know where to advance toward, and where to strike.

During all of his looking, Freagon also listened to the conversation taking place, taking in every word spoken and putting it aside for later consideration. He did not even flinch when the divine accused them of having an angel among them, nor did he react in the least when Irah – in Fermian, though that did not stop him from understanding – more-or-less confessed that she was the one who had brought it. From what she was saying, and the fact that there was no one among them that resembled an angel, a wraith or a ghoul, he guessed that Irah had let the angel possess her. He also guessed that the hostile divine had just banished that angel.
Indiscernible behind the visor of his helmet, this did make him furrow his brow a little. The first thing he wondered was how long Irah had been possessed by this angel of hers, as he was fairly confident that she had not summoned it in his presence, at least, so it must have been before they all met here. Then he wondered what kind of angel it had been, only for his thoughts to turn to how she had seemed to call upon Reina's favor to heal Jaelnec earlier. What were the chances that she was an elementalist, a summoner and a Favored One of Reina? Not high, he would wager. It was much more likely that the prayer had been for show, and it was actually her angel doing the healing. If that was true, there were only several kinds of angel capable of that kind of magic, all of which were greater divines. The thalk – which he still suspected this of being – was only a lesser divine. It must have taken a significant chunk of its power to get rid of Irah's angel, which meant that doing so had been very important to it. Why? Because it was afraid of another angel being present and able to see through its illusions?
It was possible. Likely, even. But its reaction to seeing Irah and its choice of words made him hesitant to assume that was the only reason. “Angel slaves,” it had said, and it had gotten furious. It had also called them “villains,” whatever that meant.
Was all of that part of its deception? It could be.

In the next room over, Jordan and Nabi would find that hiding there and closing the door behind them did indeed mean that they were not enveloped in divine energy. They were spared the accumulation of divine taint in there and were, at least relatively speaking, quite safe in there.
The archangel seemed entirely taken aback by suddenly hearing Jordan's voice from over there, and for just an instant panic flashed across its face before it regained its composure. Freagon saw, and pondered what that meant. His first thought was that the real body of the divine might be over there, with them... but he quickly dismissed that idea just from the fact that the archangel was reacting to things that could only be seen, and all the divine energy was definitely coming from this room, not the other one. The divine was here, no doubt about it. Why then?
It was not too hard to guess, he figured: its entire strategy seemed to be based on simply distracting and delaying them with its theatrics and illusions for as long as it could while the divine taint did its cruel work on them. Someone speaking from a place not exposed to that energy meant that no amount of stalling was going to secure its victory, at least not completely. It meant that it had to change its plans... which he figured might mean that it would go on the offensive.
But curiously it did not. It simply listened, seeming surprised and confused. He also noticed that while the visual of the fire in front of him and the woman and child by the bed were still there, the woman's sobbing had gone silent, the fire was no longer crackling and he did not feel any heat coming off it anymore. It's distracted. Good. That means it'll make mistakes and its illusion will crack.

Out by the entry to the hallway, Jaelnec flinched at the feeling of divine taint starting to seep into him, though he did not react with the surprise or evasive action Madara had, though he could easily sympathize as to why she would react that way. It was far from the first time he had felt divine taint, however – in fact he had felt it as recently as just moments ago, when Irah had healed him – , but one never quite got used to how it felt, let alone the grim awareness of what would happen if you accumulated too much. If anything, he was quite impressed with how swiftly Madara had reacted and how quickly she had regained her composure.
Back in the room, the archangel seemed less surprised to hear Madara speak – she was within its domain, after all – but attentive nevertheless. It actually seemed to physically shrink a little when it was asked who it expected to draw in with the sound of a sobbing woman, only for the image of the woman and child by the bed to instantly wink out of existence.
Freagon frowned. Too bad. Less illusions means it can concentrate better on what is left.
He also noticed, quite concerningly, that the golden sword that had been hanging threateningly over the child did not vanish along with them. It remained suspended in mid-air where it was, though it slowly seemed to change its alignment until its tip was pointed straight at him. He resisted the impulse to throw a coin at the sword to check whether it was real. Things were happening, it seemed.

What really seemed to coax a reaction out of the creature was Madara's final question: “If it is not suffering and death you yearn for, what is it that you seek in staying here?”
The archangel blinked several times rapidly, its mouth opening and closing without sound for for a second, before its shoulders slumped. “I... I...”
Freagon blinked and tightened the grip on his sword as he instantly noticed that something was odd. He – as well as Irah, Lhirin, Madara and Jaelnec – felt the sensation of divine taint accumulation suddenly diminish to a mere fraction of what it had been before; still present, but no longer an immediate threat. The wall of fire and the hovering sword both also faded away, and a faint shimmer, like a haze, seemed to hang over the entirety of the bedroom with the divine in it.
“I am supposed to do something,” the archangel said emphatically, a hint of desperation in its voice. “I am here for a reason. I must be. But she is gone, so she cannot tell me what to do. I wanted to...” It faltered. “I do not know why I am here.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

Inside his helmet, mostly hidden from the others behind its visor, Freagon closed his eye and turned his attention inward while the others spoke. He felt the slow, steady and heavy beats of his heart in his chest, heard his pulse resonating in his skull, and started counting them. He imagined the thalk in the room ahead, its form pulsing in rhythm with his heart, and imagined how every beat pumped not only blood through his own veins, but also yet more divine energy out of their quarry. Felt his heart ticking time away.
Uncertainties, variables, details... it was pointless to even discuss it in the first place, as far as Freagon was concerned. They would not know anything for certain until they opened the door and saw for themselves, and if they had to plan a contingency for every possible more or less expected thing that could meet them in there they would be talking until late into the night. Sure, the it might not be a thalk at all, despite Irah's suspicions of such; there might be hostages they did not know about that they had to try to save; the Melenian might still be alive and in need of aid; and what awaited them on the other side of the door was almost certainly a trap of some kind. They did not know, though, nor did they know a million other things that could alter how they should respond to the situation. His philosophy was simple in terms of such concerns: plan for what you know, improvise for you do not.
The one thing the others discussed that even the nightwalker knight conceded to himself had some merit was the part about thalks having a proclivity for deception – they were Angels of Deceit, after all – and the desire to have a way to tell reality from illusion. Frustratingly this was discussed while yet more heartbeats went by, and essentially concluded in “There may or may not be illusions, but even if there are we have no way of dispelling them or seeing through them.”
Freagon actually rolled his eye at this, difficult though it would be for anyone to see it. It was to be expected of mages to seek magical solutions to every problem, and the fact that Yanin did the same suggested that he was far from accustomed to dealing with illusions either. Without a word, Freagon reached his left hand down to his right thigh, swiftly undid his pursestring and pulled out four silver coins.

Then, finally, people started moving. Slowly and cautiously, which was somewhat called for, but moving nonetheless. Everyone went to take their places in the hallway, with Yanin and Freagon taking up places on either side of the door they knew the divine awaited beyond. The one-eyed knight's attention quickly shifted from his heartbeat to his skin, as even now, just standing outside the room, he could already feel a faint prickling in his skin. The door was not a perfect seal, and though it was not as intense as it would likely be inside, everyone but Yanin would faintly feel the warm, vaguely uncomfortable tingling sensation of divine energy in the air as they walked past the door.
Freagon clenched his jaw. Another hourglass had been turned, another price for the time they took had been claimed. Even without opening the door, they were already slowly accumulating divine taint.

Down the hall, about twelve meters from the door Freagon and Yanin flanked, Jordan slowly and cautiously opened the second door, only to find a nice and tidy bedroom beyond. Clean wooden floorboards, walls with wood paneling and nearly three meters to a wooden ceiling. On the right side of the room from his perspective – the west end of the room – stood a neatly made bed with a white woolen blanket folded at its foot and a soft-looking pillow sitting at the head of the bed on top of a nice, soft mattress. Next to the bed was the westmost upstairs window they had seen from outside, through which bountiful sunlight fell into the room in all its radiant glory.
Opening the door further and checking the left – or eastern – side of the room, toward where it would join with the room with the divine in it, he would find a wooden table, about two meters long, with six chairs around it; two on either side and one at either end. Beyond those was a wall.
Aside from these things and a couple of wall-mounted candleholders with unlit candles, the room appeared empty and still.

Yanin was prepared to repeat the process of slowly and safely opening their door, and seemed to await a signal. Though Yanin did not feel it, Freagon was acutely conscious of the prickling on his skin, of the sand running through the hourglass.
Plan for what you know, improvise for what you do not.
Ignoring Yanin's desire for caution and taking the queue to take the lead, Freagon simply stepped in front of the door, turned the handle with the pommel of his sword, and kicked the door open with his boot, all in quick succession.
“Stop!” a deep, powerful, authoritative and masculine voice immediately boomed from within, immediately recognizable to Irah, Lhirin and Nabi in particular as True Words since they heard it not as Rodorian, but as their respective native languages. Along with the voice came an invisible veritable flood of divine energy washing past and through the now-open doorway, past Freagon and into the hallway. The faint prickling instantly because a painful twinge not just for Freagon or those in the immediate vicinity of the door, but for everyone in the hallway except Yanin.

Immediately on the other side of the door, Freagon was met by flames; a crackling orange, smokeless, chest-height wall of fire that drew a semicircle on the floor just inside the room, radiating light and heat... though not as much heat as one would expect from such large flames. It felt hot, certainly, but not painfully so, and the floorboards below them did not appear charred.
To his right, in the western end of the room, Freagon found (though he had not seen it and could not know it) that this room was built and furnished exactly like the bedroom Jordan had just witnessed, with the only exception being that the window was farther from the bed. The bed in this room was also not made and, more importantly, was currently occupied. A human-looking child, a girl of maybe five or six years of age by the looks of it, was lying motionless on top of the blankets with closed eyes. Behind the bed with her back against the wall, a human woman with a notable familial resemblance to the child was kneeling, holding one of the little girl's hands in her own with tears streaming down her face, sobbing desperately.
Hovering above the bed, centered directly over the chest of the little girl, hang a large, impressive golden sword suspended in mid-air. It was poised with its tip aimed downward, clearly ready to plunge downward at any second to impale the child and likely kill the mother as well.
And finally, at the foot of the bed, there was an angel. It looked like a human man, young, handsome and clean-shaven with bronze skin and long, flowing locks of platinum hair. He wore a suit of impressive golden plate armor and looked to stand well over two meters tall, with a bulk beneath the armor that suggested a deeply intimidating musculature. Even more noticeable than its relatively human and mundane features were the wings on his back, however; three pairs of large bird-like wings, currently partially folded, with feathers the color of his hair. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with divines would be able to tell that this was obviously not a thalk; this was an archangel, and a rather flamboyant one at that.
Fingers of golden lightning were crawling up and down the archangel's arms, moving all the way from the shoulders to the tips of his fingers. It was all very impressive.
Freagon turned his head and looked at the left – east – side of the room, and found that aside from the same set of table and chairs as the bedroom Jordan had seen, it was conspicuously empty.

Without altering his stance but simply maintaining a posture that was not overtly aggressive, but ready to react, Freagon wiggled the fingers on his left hand before flicking his wrist. The silver glint of a single rodlin darted through the flames and across the room, aimed at the hip of the child in the bed. As expected he then heard the sound of the coin hitting the wall behind the “hostages”.
“I said stop!” the angel commanded again, his voice thundering even louder than before. He held up a bidding hand toward the doorway, and the lightning around the outstretched arm seemed to intensify. “Not one more step, villain!”
Ignoring the angel, feeling confident enough to look away, Freagon turned his head toward Irah. “Talk.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown

Turning at hearing someone calling his name, Jaelnec paused in following his master to see what Jordan wanted, only for the young human to slide one of his iron truncheons toward the nightwalker. He followed the weapon with his eyes as it made its way across the floor, filling the air with a relatively subdued sound of metal rubbing on stone, before raising his gaze to meet Jordan's.
“Thanks!” he called back with a smile, only to then look down at his hands – the right one occupied by his sword, the left by the iron truncheon he had retrieved from the armory when instructed to do so by Freagon – and felt quite conflicted. On one hand he had far more training in swordsmanship than he did with any other kind of weapon, his sword had longer reach than the bludgeon and would generally allow for a broader variety of uses in combat. On the other the truncheon was relatively pure iron whereas his sword was mid-grade steel, which made the truncheon much more effective at countering spiritual opponents and disrupting magical effects.
In the end he decided to err on the side of caution – and on the side of not spurning Jordan's offer – by sheathing his sword and picking up the second truncheon to wield in his right hand. He figured that even if it turned out that Irah had been right in her suspicion earlier and they were dealing with a fully summoned divine, meaning that it was now physical rather than just spiritual and that disrupting its energy was no longer a viable way to stop it, another piece of iron would still be useful. Unlike frentits thalks were magic-users, after all, and having an extra thing to block offensive magic with or even just to throw at the enemy might be useful. If he needed his sword it would not take long to simply discard one or both truncheons and drawing the blade.

Pausing to retrieve the truncheon also meant that Jaelnec was facing toward the entrance of the manor hall when Madara entered, and he found himself momentarily distracted by her approach. He was not sure why she had even come given that she had essentially been a spectator so far and simply stayed back to let others fight... though the same could be said about him, of course. In fact the argument could be made that he had been even worse than useless, having been practically incapacitated by a bright light almost immediately and been reduced from the one guarding the non-combatants to a helpless burden. Irah had even said a prayer to heal his eyes, thus inflicting him and herself with divine taint just to make him vaguely useful again. A small, almost negligible amount of taint, granted, but even small amounts added up with how long it took divine taint to fade. He had been a drain on their limited resources while providing no benefit to their situation.
But what really gave Jaelnec pause was the way Madara moved. He had not really paid much attention to her previously aside from identifying her as a woman – she was a bit old for him, after all, and there was just something a bit... off about her due to her palanter-blood – but the way she walked somehow managed to push through his mental filters. There was no denying that she was an attractive woman, and though her charm was of a quite different nature than the agelessly ever-young and innocent-seeming Irah, looking at her now, Jaelnec could not help but to feel something stirring in his youthful, hormonal blood.
He wondered who she was, why she was here, where she had come from and all manner of other things. At the moment he did not even know her name, and the lack of familiarity was yet another reason that he was much more interested in Irah at the moment. He knew her name and he knew at least some of her abilities as an elementalist and a Favored One (or so he thought) and suspected that she was a necromancer... and on top of that he had already shared a moment of brief and platonic intimacy with her.
Of course none of this ranked very high on his list of priorities and were categorized in his head more as fanciful daydreaming than actual concerns he had. It was far from the first time he had felt attraction, after all, but he and Freagon always moved on and left everyone else behind. A disillusioned part of Jaelnec already expected Irah, Madara and Nabi – and everyone else, for that matter – to be left behind this time, too, once Freagon had gotten what he was here after, whatever that might be. Nothing but a fantasy. A hopeless dream. The legacy of the last Knight of the Will did not have time for romance.

---

Upstairs Freagon did as had been requested and accompanied Lhirin, occasionally and habitually turning Roct in his hand to switch which edge was lower and hopefully minimize the amount of blood dripping from its still-wet blade. It was because he had been told to accompany the deigan man and was specifically paying attention to him that Freagon noticed him holding up a hand and showing first five, then two fingers, which made the knight cock his head curiously and narrow his eye behind the visor of his helmet. He followed Lhirin's gaze and direction he had been showing his fingers, and found that Irah was the only one in the area that seemed poised and attentive to read this gesture. That made sense, the two seemed to know each other.
But then just a little later, when they had started congregating on the hallway leading toward the room with the divine, he noticed Lhirin making another, much subtler series of hand-gestures. It was quite covert, his hand remaining at his side rather than raising; Freagon would not have noticed had he not seen the gesture before and been asked to attend Lhirin specifically. He had no idea what the purpose of the gestures were – whether they were the visual component of casting a spell, an attempt to communicate with someone, or just a nervous tic – but they did not seem random. And since he suspected Irah to be the one Lhirin had communicated with silently before, he also caught her making deliberate eye-contact with her companion a while later and shaking her head; a gesture that could easily be interpreted as natural and insignificant on its own, but which added another instance of wordless communication between them to Freagon's list.
Freagon was not pleased. Worse, he was getting impatient with these two. He had no idea what it was that they felt the need to communicate about in secret like this – whether it had something to do with Irah's unusual ability to detect and analyze divines from afar or something else – and he did not care. If there was something important enough to need to talk about now, it was important enough to convey to everyone involved, not just each other. And if they truly had information that was sensitive enough for it to be dangerous to them if the rest of the group knew... well, that was bad, too. A hazard and a burden.
His mood was getting worse, and his opinion of the deigan pair was deteriorating fast. If secrecy was truly this paramount to them even in the midst of a situation with lives potentially at stake, Freagon had to seriously reconsider whether he could use them.

He listened to Lhirin's input and nodded his head, indifferent to the obvious conclusions he was sharing but appreciative of his brevity. Then he listened to Irah and nodded his head again, likewise satisfied with her conclusions but annoyed with her wordiness, particularly since most of what she said were things he already knew, and he had to remind himself that not everyone were as experienced with the extraordinary as him. Even so he remained painfully aware of time passing with each uttered word, knowing that every second they spent talking about this thalk would give it more divine energy to work with and make it even more dangerous. With creatures like this, time was the absolute worst thing they could give it.
Yanin's words were briefer and more practical, which Freagon appreciated. He also referenced Freagon with the appropriate honorific, which he also appreciated.
“The boy can fight,” Freagon replied when Jaelnec's viability as a combatant was called into question, “but I'd prefer to avoid it.” Which was why Jaelnec had instructions to watch from a safe distance. The page had never participated in a real fight before, but he had sparred with Freagon and studied the knight fighting countless times.

The rest were more-or-less just musings on their options and what to expect, which Freagon listened to attentively more as a way to learn about the people speaking than what they were speaking about. It was interesting. But as much as he loathed spending more precious time talking, he figured he had better add his own observations and opinions to the mix.
“The Melenian is the last person here as far as we know,” he reminded everyone, not to convey new information but simply to establish the basis for the conclusions that followed. “The sobbing does not sound Melenian. And if it is fully summoned, that only leaves one person to be sacrificed for that to happen.”
Though not a practitioner of magic himself, Freagon was quite familiar with most of the basic mechanics of pretty much all schools of magic either from experience or from what he had learned to be able to know what to expect and how to deal with it. The only price exacted for summoning divine spirits into wraiths and ghouls was magical energy, meaning it could be done as long as that energy was available. A full summoning, however, required a sacrifice proportional to the divine summoned; specifically, such a summoning always required life. Someone had to die and their bodies serve as the material for the divine to construct its vessel from. With a lesser divine such as a thalk a single sapient life should suffice, but whoever served as sacrifice would not only be killed in the process, but even their remains would be consumed in the process.
Add to that the clumps of bloody fur on the landing and the bloody pawprints leading to the door, and he figured the conclusion to draw was obvious.
“The Melenian is dead. This is a trap.” To him those matters were not debatable, they were certainties. “It's not going to move. I'll kill it.”