A shallow grey cloud blanketed the sky through out the day in hightown, a unsettled hushness and lack of sunlight that gloomed the area. Soft rain occasionally pelted the old leaves as winter whispers across New Haven....
Standing iddly near by, at the porch looking out from the high-town tavern, was a
short woman with lengthen white hair. A familiar concerned gaze on her features as she pans her sights around the area as if seeking someone...
Aleena has spent most the day brewing more apple cider, preparing her teaching material for the School at the Farming Community, and making occasional visits to several cabins.
Her mind revisited many moments in the last few nights that made her quiet and stoic for a while. One of those moments was seeing Katesh breaking down among over three dozen people, holding her head and ears, begging for relief from the screaming and talking.... She felt a deep ache seeing her this way, it hurt to see her friend like this. She revisited the memory of swooping her away as she collapsed and embrace her away from torment. Pouring what she had inside to nuture her, a deep voice in her that said to 'give her love'.... Since then, Aleena has been occasionally paid a visit to Katesh at her cabin, to quietly nurse any daily care should she needed it. Just to be sure her friend did not neglect herself due to her very sudden mourning..... She then circled the area and made her morning prayers to Inil despite the gloomy weather. But even afterwards, there was this stillness that bothered her. She wasn't sure if it came from within or floating over New Haven? She yearned to hear what others would share with her? What they felt or was it just her?
Even more so, who she really seeked was Myrddin.
She wondered, did he not return in over the last two days? Did he settle out there beyond the wilderness with Rothe? If not, where did he go?...
Her heart fell for a moment fearing the worst.
She tried so hard to pacify and ameliate the fears and woes in Myrddin for many weeks now; such as panics from these 'ancients', these horrid Fae-like beings who punish others with the justification that they are 'balance'. Killing others before his eyes in overwhelming power...
It gave Myrddin countless nightmares to match that of Matrim. Loosing his family as well to the grips of death made it severely worst....
It was strange how those two very different people shared the same plagues, the same horrors, the similar fate of nearly no shards and close to enduring death....
Yet both reacted differently to their circumstances.
One sacrificed in battle for the sake of banishing darkness, the other sacrificed in another way,...by many, deemed foolish and even a sign of betrayal or madness.
But Aleena had to ponder about this for a bit. she knew Myrddin better. Sleeping over the events....retold over and over.
She was stoic but calmly mulled over it through out the nights..
Was it really true? Was it TRULY an act of betrayal? Or something more? She wondered.
People aren't always so simple as she learned over decades of years....
Many here cried out to finish him immediately, threatening him, and even chasing him out....
The same words giving to poor Tiro or Rothe, the same things told to Thorniir....
The only difference was, he actually CHOOSE to wear the shackles of the Drow. A shocking act that allow himself to become a greyloc and joined the side of the enemy. It was an act never seen before in New Haven.
Anger, shock and threats were shouted in the air. But all Aleena could ask is Why. WHY.
And what was his reason? To be Experimented on for the Cure?
It was just too strange. It didn't make sense. Was it a ruse because he was standing infront of other Greylocs such as Rothe and Thorniir? The two are potential stool-pigeons to their Drow Masters should they reveal his plan against their will.... Or was it all entirely true? Did he really hope to die by some mad experimentation? Or did he just....give up? Hoping to die by the hands of his own people? She prayed that wouldn't happen.
Which ever the case, Myrddin's view was disturbing. He saw New Haven in choatic shade, so dark that he thought the town was desperate enough to do such a thing? It was very demoralizing thinking. Who in their town would maliciously kill an innocent person for the sake of information on curing the curse? Were we THAT desperate??? Did he really believe anyone would do that to him? Zyvien won't, nor did she agreed to such a thing....nor did anyone else to this strange plan?
So, where did Myrddin get such an idea?
She recounts the depression in his eyes as he explained himself two nights ago infront of everyone, that he was done. He lost his family and sinking in to the despair of having no kin, his tie and desire to live was gone. She knew his history with the ancients, brewing nightmares of killing him every night....
Breaking him down everyday... She recognize the gloom behind his eyes. t was evident then, that her friend was seeking a deathwish, and she sensed it with great pain. And rather than dying by the knife of a petty thief, or stepping out to the deepest
part of the pier, he took it in his own hands in a strange plan of his own making. A desperate wish to succeed in something before being cut down by the Drow or others....
Should others have seen it as a way to gain intelligence from the dark elves at the cost of his own life, others may have been less aggressive. But with the other two greylocs near by, he probably couldn't say that outloud.....? Maybe. But if he did, and that was his TRUE intent, it would have been a noble act. An unnecessary, extremely reckless, overly sacrificial and unacceptable act indeed. But still,...a selfless act none the less. A view not many would agree with her,...
All she could confirm without a doubt, was that Myrddin wanted to take death in his own hands.
It was not an act of betrayal.
It was an act of hoping to commit martyr versus suicide.
His gaze matched that of Matrim, the same helplessness, the same drive towards death, but with different actions and different circumstances. One of them slightly more acceptable by town versus the other. Neither were in her eyes...both fell from the crushing weight of loosing faith.
Their decisions driven by sadness, woe, and desperation....
And this was why she stood at the tavern porch. Awaiting for Myrddin to appear, to speak to him and try to convey and ravel the madness that made him do this?
After all, Myrddin is simply following the same footsteps as his leader, Mama Kym, didn't he?
Did she not too convert into a Norrat in order to find secrets behind the Blood Fae at the sacrafice of her body?
Was he not doing the same thing but with the Drow?
To walk among the shadows so that we may learn from it and fight against it at the risk of himself? A high sacrifice possibly not worth persuing, but truely? Myrddin was just followed the same actions to the people he looked up to...
Although one key difference was that Mama Kym became a Norrat hiddenly while Myrddin did not....at least hidden for a while.
A breeze suddenly sways against her skirt and cloak and she huddle her cloak around her curvy figure resisting it. A biting force that was nibbing at her skin like these memories. She realized that even if she shared it, no one would believe her. Not many knew Myrddin that well...and many would chaulk it up as just extremely 'positive' or naive thinking....
But in her heart, some of this felt very much true. It takes time to listen and convey such things?
And the older Aleena got, the more she realize the youth are very easy to condemn, not willing to brew the true hidden possible, -possible- meaning there. She could be terribly wrong. Just a naive Priestess of Inil, seeing the 'good' when there isn't one.
But at a grander scheme of things, from a gaze further than that of Myrddin, this was all a sign of a deeper plague at hand. One that has repeated several times...
Individuals loosing faith.
When they fall too close to the edge or loosing the last threads of their shards, or what they are, decisions start to go poorly.
When Fae easily ask for Shards or Blood without batting an eyelash or a tear...
When death swings easily without truth....
When desperation becomes the WORST motivation....
There is an undertone of mental and spiritual breakdown.... Myrddin lost faith, and gave in to desperation...
A theme lurking every now and then across their realm.
She wondered too, if passing the Stone to the BloodFae was also an act of desperation just like Myrddin? Although it's evident did prevent the apocalyptic catastrophe of the Forest Fae battling the Blood Fae, saving hundreds of people, it felt it only continue the same status as they did before...
Aleena was certain, that when this so-called Parlay meeting happens in the next few months with the infamous drow matriarch, Veldris, they will only consider peace with New Haven with the condition of letting them have more greyloc slaves from their own town in sacrifice.
The bloodfae may have disappeared but the Drow are still attaining new greylocs from
New Haven without her.
It was then she realized, the dark elves were capable of turning Myrddin in to a greyloc even WITHOUT the Fae present or that stone? Did they gain back the stone somehow?!
Her eyes drew wide. Standing up suddenly.
".....they don't need the Blood Fae anymore...or the Fae lied!"
Perhaps Myrddin DID give incidentally information they did not realize!
Did we too made a great foolish mistake?
" Oh my Eldest! What have we done!"