[hr][hr][center][h1]A   J O U R N E Y   O F   R E C O V E R Y[/h1][/center][hr][hr]
[i]The knight searches the ruins of his castle, gauntlets stained with ash and dust. The fire still smolders beneath the desolate wreckage. There is nothing to find among the silk scraps and glass shards. The liege lord is dead.

The knight curls in on himself like dog that’s been kicked in the ribs. The rubble still burns but the spark in his heart has gone out. He wants to cry but can’t trust his voice to sound human. In the mirror of a rain puddle, all he sees is the steel scowl of a visor, and behind it – a darkness as empty and bitter as the guilt he’s left to drown in.

Longsword in hand, the knight kneels where the stairs to the castle once were. The wind blows the smoke away. The rain comes and goes. He can’t bring himself to move without a destination, to act without purpose. He waits for someone to give his life the worth it once had and knows deep down that nobody will come.

When a pair of keen eyes spot the hunched figure, they mistake it for an empty suit of armor. It doesn’t speak when they ask it a question. It no longer believes there is a person inside.[/i]

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Liraeth could tell that something here was wrong long before he reached his destination. As he had journeyed further along the road that cut through the ancient and foreboding forest that surrounded the castle, a sense of quiet unease settled over him. The forest was quiet, it did not teem with the life of living world, the insects and birds were silent. The shadows between the gnarled tree trunks were too long, their depths too dark. A sharp metallic scent in the air, like ozone after a lightning strike. It was faint, and would perhaps go unnoticed by those who lacked the gift, this sense of the unnatural. But to a mage like Liraeth, these were the tell-tale signs of dark magic.

He checked the wards set about his person, and drew his travelling cloak tighter about himself.

The cloak was a strange patchworked thing of many colours, with a deep hood that kept the rain that fell steadily from the grey sky above off of Liraeth. The face that peered out from underneath was narrow and fine featured, with smooth skin pale as porcelain, save for a band a freckles that ran across the bridge of his nose. His hair was likewise pale, it tumbled down to his shoulders in waves of silver blonde curls, parted in the middle to reveal a pair of startling mismatched blue-green eyes, lively and inquisitive.

He was only of average height, and his build was slender, but in his hand was a staff of pale wood, shod at either end with rings of copper and iron, silver and gold. And with it, he excluded a subtle aura of power, for it was more than just a walking stick, this was the staff of a wizard.

It had been a long journey from the seat on the Conclave to this far flung castle and the dark forest surrounding it. He had gone by travelling door at first, then by carriage and wagon, and latterly upon foot for these final miles up the mossy stone road beneath the cover the gnarled and ancient trees. But he was sure now, that he was nearing his destination. 

It was then that he began to smell the smoke.

The castle emerged out the sheets of rain, commanding a rocky hilltop that rose above the canopy. But no call went up from its watchtowers, and no figures stalked its battlements waiting for travellers on the road below. For it was not a castle anymore, but a smouldering ruin, the final fires of its destruction still being extinguished by the rain. Its towers crumbled, its great keep cracked and broken like the discarded shell of some great and terrible being.

This did not bode well.

It took Liraeth another hour until he stood before the gates of the castle bailey, torn asunder and hanging off of their hinges. Despite the stench of ash and smoke, he could still smell it, still feel it, that lingering stain of dark magic. If anything it felt stronger to him here than in forest. 

"What happened here..." He murmured to himself, as he checked his wards for a third time. 

With a deep breathe he concentrated his will and power into his staff, so that it filled with a light, gentle at first, becoming brighter and brighter, to banish away the gloom of this place and whatever dark things might still lurk here. With grim determination, he walked beneath the bent and twisted remains of the portcullis and entered the central courtyard of the castle. 

The inside was worse than the outside suggested. He passed by what might have been the stables, burnt to a mess blackened charred timbers that had collapsed in on itself. He could smell death in here, over the ash, over the smoke. 

A flight of steps led up pile of rubble that had once been the front entrance to the main keep. Liraeth turned towards it, seeking the heart of whatever happened here, when the sight of the armoured body made him pause.

At first he had thought they were a victim of this disaster, a corpse in armour, so still were they sat hunched upon the ruined staircase. But in the stillness of the courtyard he could see the rise and fall of their armoured shoulders, the mist that their breath made in the cold wet air. 

Whoever they were, they were alive, sat amongst all the devastation and destruction that filled this accursed place. They might be the only person to have witnessed whatever terrible thing happened here. Slowly, Liraeth lowered his staff and let the harsh bright light it was emitting fade into a soft moonlit glow instead. He did not want to frighten this knight, who knew what he had already been through.

"Greetings friend, are you a survivor of this? Can you tell me what happened?"