[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/NRzeHzt.png[/IMG]
[h3]Guest bedroom, Remdal estate, Zerul City[/h3]
What a week... and what a day. It felt surreal to be in an actual proper bedroom again after so long sleeping in the wilderness or in whatever was available. It had been a nice change to be able to sleep at the guard outpost at the border, to have a bunk to lie on and a roof over their head, but this was something else entirely. He could see the first rays of sunlight hitting the top of neighboring buildings through the window and reflexively reached for the brim of his hat, grasping air since his hat was sitting across the room along with the rest of his equipment and clothes. The bed felt warm soft under his body, and the room inexplicably smelled nice. The luxuries of the wealthy... such stark contrast to conditions living on the road.
So much had happened, but now it felt like they were closer to the answers he had set out for than ever. He would have to see what Aemoten and the others wanted to do about the bearers of the Withering – whether they were to make haste to Mount Zerul to protect the ones who went on their own or help the weak inflicted in the city get there, too – but it was probably a safe bet that they would be heading to Mount Zerul soon. Mount Zerul, where the Withering released its grip on its victims. Where they might finally find a cure, or perhaps a way to end the plague for good.
But as much as Jaelnec wanted to feel optimistic about the way things were turning out – it was seeming as though they could possibly manage to do something that people had failed to do for a decade, after all – he could not help but feel somewhat grim about things. About the misfortune they had had, and how it had affected especially Thaler... but also about Roct. He did not know whether he could trust her, or if talking to her was even remotely safe, but he [I]wanted[/I] to trust her.
And, more than anything else, he wanted to hear her story. About why she claimed that Freagon had been downright evil, at least at times, and how the claim that Freagon was the grandson of Felgon Dragonslayer, who lived a thousand years ago, made any sense.

With a reluctant grunt the nightwalker pushed himself to the edge of the spacious bed, moved the curtain and threw his legs off it, shivering momentarily as his naked feet made contact with the cool stone floor. He hesitated once again, reminding himself of Aemoten's admonitions against having anything to do with the entity inhabiting his sword. The argument against inviting foreign entities into ones mind had been made that much more convincing by Angora's predicament, but even so... he had to know.
Standing with determination, Jaelnec went to his pile of equipment and, before he could change his mind, seized the hilt of his sword. Immediately he felt the gentle warmth from within the weapon seeping into him, trying to calm his worries, and knew that he had already invited Roct into his mind without even trying.
“[I]You feel healthier today,[/I]” the female voice remarked inside his head, sounding pleasantly surprised. “[I]Properly fed and rested for once, if a little colder than would be ideal. Are... are you naked?[/I]”
“I wouldn't have thought that would faze you,” he said with genuine surprise. “It's not like dragons normally wear clothes.”
“[I]I may have been hatched as a dragon, but I never lived as one and don't really identify as one. The only experience I have with physical creatures is what I've felt through others, which has been almost exclusively Felgon, Telagon, Freagon and you, all of whom have preferred to be clothed.[/I]”
“Sorry. Should I get dressed?”
“[I]Eventually, but it's not like your nudity bothers me; I can't see you anyway. You seem to think that you have ample privacy at the moment, though, so it can wait. You want to talk about something in particular, don't you?[/I]”
Jaelnec looked at the heavy wooden door to the bedroom, closed shut and bolted. “I thought you couldn't see anything in there. How do you know that we're in private?”
“[I]You're speaking out loud when last we spoke you only thought at me. You wouldn't do that if there was a chance of anyone else hearing it.[/I]”
Satisfied with that answer, Jaelnec nevertheless found himself hesitating to speak of the things he wanted to talk about. “You're... sure that it's safe? Talking with you like this, I mean. Having you in my head.”
“[I]I'd certainly hope so. Let me remind you again: Felgon, Telagon and Freagon all wielded me as well, and though Freagon made a point to shut me out, I spoke with Felgon regularly and many times a day with Telagon... not to mention the other things I did for Telagon. If Telagon was fine after spending decades with me, using me to fight and being my friend, interacting with me should be quite safe.[/I]”
“See, let's start with that,” he said eagerly, standing with the sword in hand, still in its scabbard and with the belt dangling from it, and started pacing back and forth. “What you're saying doesn't make sense. Felgon Dragonslayer died a thousand years ago; there is no way his son could be Freagon's father.”
He felt Roct hesitate uncomfortably. “[I]You picked up on that, did you? But it shouldn't surprise you too much. You're not stupid.[/I]”
Jaelnec frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“[I]You were his apprentice for ten years, since you were but a child. I'm sure you noticed that something was off about your master.[/I]”
He lowered his gaze and swallowed, feeling an icy finger running down his spine. “I... think I noticed. He didn't age.”
“[I]Good, so you did notice. I have no idea how or why since he never told me, but after a certain point about a thousand years ago, Freagon Nightmaregaze stopped aging, though there is a huge span of time there that I don't know anything about. There was a battle at that time, the most intense one Freagon has ever been in, and I got the sense that he had been severely wounded. After that he left me somewhere, alone and in the dark, until about fifty years ago, when he returned to reclaim me. I was surprised, obviously; at that point I had been convinced that he was dead and that I was going to spend the rest of eternity alone for a long time, but he was alive.[/I]”
Jaelnec sat down on his bed, suddenly dizzy at the thought of his master being even more extraordinary than he had thought. “Freagon was a thousand years old... that doesn't make sense.”
“[I]Doesn't it? Didn't it strike you as odd that a Knight of the Will was roaming about centuries after the knighthood had gone extinct? Surely he dropped other hints as well; being unnaturally old isn't something easy to keep from someone you spend night and day with for a decade.[/I]”
He shook his head. He would need to think about that one, though he did feel part of himself agree with Roct even now: he had always known that there was something off about his master, though he had never truly understood what it was. “Okay, but... what was wrong with him? What did he do? You said that he was evil...”
“[I]He was,[/I]” she said, her voice more aggressive and resolute than he had ever heard it before. “[I]Freagon Nightmaregaze was a hero at times, don't get me wrong, but at other times he was unquestionably a villain. He kept himself isolated most of the time, so for most part I don't actually know what he did... but there were several times when his control either slipped, or he intentionally let me experience what he was doing. And it was horrible.[/I]”
The squire's mouth went dry. “What -”
“[I]Your nightmares are wrong.[/I]”
Raising an eyebrow in surprise, Jaelnec skeptically let her continue. “[I]I know this not only because I witnessed what happened through Freagon's eyes, but because you've allowed me access to both your dreams and your memories, and they don't match. May I show you?[/I]”
“Show me?”
“[I]You already experienced one of my memories, it seems, though unintentionally so; you relived my hatching and, consequently, my death. Dragons have perfect memory, so I can recall anything I've ever experienced in detail and show it to you. I can do the same with your memories, though those won't be as accurate or detailed.[/I]”
He licked his lips. “Okay... so show me, then.”
Though she did not have a body, Jaelnec still got the impression that Roct nodded at him. “[I]Okay. First, your nightmares, colored by what Freagon told you...[/I]”

Jaelnec gasped, unprepared for just how vivid the experience of being shown something by Roct would be. Suddenly he was back in his ten-year-old body, tiny, weak and terrified, kneeling over the corpses of his family in a huge pool of blood as the fire roared outside. He was staring at the man who had haunted him so many times, a large man in chainmail armor, a blood-drenched sword in hand and a twisted, sadistic grin on his ugly face. Over his armor he wore a tabard with the crest of the Crusader's Guild, marking him as one of the monsters who had slain his entire village.
“[I]Now,[/I]” he heard Roct's voice, sending ripples through the scene before him, “[I]what you [/I]actually[I] remember.[/I]”
Before his eyes most of the details of the scene seemed to fade into featureless gray mush, a blank canvas onto which something else could be projected. Some completely irrelevant details stood out much clearer because of this; a piece of furniture here, puzzlingly undisturbed even when it felt as though the world should be ending, a small wooden toy there, a floorboard with a particularly interesting pattern on it... The sense of being small and weak also seemed much fainter, obliterated by the crushing sense of sorrow and fear that gripped him as he cried over his slain parents and sister, lying in a puddle of blood that was magnitudes smaller than it had been in his nightmares.
And then the man... The adult Jaelnec shook his head with a sinking feeling in his chest, though the child Jaelnec felt only fear and confusion. As with everything else in the memory most details were blurred and forgotten, but some things stood out as very noticeably different from what he had seen just before. The man's sword dripped with blood, yes, but his right sleeve was also soaked in it, up to the point where it had been torn, likely by an unusually sharp instrument. His face was not ugly, but rather plain, if somewhat contorted in pain. He was smiling widely, indeed, but there was no sadism or evil in that smile on his tear-streaked face; it was a smile of horror-tinged relief. The grimace of a man who had just found a survivor at the scene of a massacre.
And on his chest was not the crest of the Crusader's Guild, but the crown of a Wenalic soldier.

As abruptly as it had begun the experience ended, and Jaelnec found himself sitting on his bed, crying silently with fear and sorrow both old and new. He clutched his chest with his left hand, the implications of what he had just seen physically painful to him.
“[I]Yes, you already suspect what I'm going to tell you. You deserve to know...[/I]”
“Shut up,” he whimpered, gritting his teeth at the sheer intensity of the emotions surging through him. “Shut up... please... shut up...”
“[I]Your family and hometown weren't killed by the Crusader's Guild; in fact they were never there. The man you saw back then had seen the smoke and rushed in to search for survivors.[/I]”
“Please... don't...”
“[I]Freagon was the one who killed them.[/I]”
“No he didn't!” he growled, clutching the sword so hard that it hurt and showing his teeth in a furious scowl, desperate to vent the rage building inside of him. “Of course he didn't! He saved me! He [I]saved[/I] me!”
“[I]Freagon had hung around your village for a couple of weeks at that point and had spoken a lot with your father. He wanted to make you his apprentice, but your father refused; said he wanted a different, nicer life for you, and that he didn't trust Freagon. But Freagon was determined. So that day, when you left the village -[/I]”
He threw the sword across the room, cutting off Roct mid-sentence and sending the belt and everything attached to it crashing into the wall before clattering to the floor. It was fortunate that Zerulic houses were mostly stone rather than wood, or everyone would have certainly heard.

He threw himself back on the bed, burying his face in his hands as he tried to make sense of what he was feeling. He wanted nothing more than to reject what Roct had told him – Freagon had been his master and caretaker for half his life, after all, and he had regarded him almost like a second father – but he felt deeply aware that nothing Roct had shown him had been a lie. That man had undeniably been either a soldier or a guardsman of Wenal, maybe even a knight, and Freagon had definitely killed him. The crusaders had never been there.
Freagon had lied to him.
And now he was dead, beyond answering for his questions.
“Damn you,” he murmured, unsure if he was addressing Roct, Freagon or himself. “Damn you...”
He found that suddenly, he regretted that he would never have the chance to kill Freagon himself.