What was the point of life if eternal death was like sleep?

  That was Eldric's first thought as consciousness returned to him. It wasn't a quick return; his eyes felt unnaturally heavy, and sensation spread through his body like acid through every nerve.

  “Hey~,” came a light, lilting voice. “I think this big guy's alive…” Eldric felt something press into his cheek. He tried to open his eyes with a groan. “Hey~ You alive in there?”

  “Easy, Little Fox,” said a deeper, older voice. “If he's alive, he's going to be in a world of hurt. Looks like his body has been dragged through hellfire…” The words trailed off. When the voice returned, it was closer, a whisper of something near awe. “Damn, he really is alive…”

  “Careful, you two, just because he is alive does not mean he is our ally… for all we know, he caused all of this.” The third voice was also feminine, but it was careful and concise.

  It took everything in Eldric to force his eyes open even a little bit.

  His vision was flooded by a pair of lavender eyes, and the edges of his vision were blanketed by a curtain of shimmering white threads that took him a moment to realize was hair. The eyes pulled back a bit as a wide, almost teasing grin revealed small fangs on the young woman's face.

  “Well, Old Man Har,” she hummed, her purple-tipped white ears twitching atop her head as she glanced right, “looks like this wasn't a wasted trip after all~.” A moment later, her long, fluffy tail, white with those same purple streaks, swept around, brushing Eldric's shoulder.

  Then, as Eldric tried to roll onto his side, she stood and stepped away.

  “Easy, kid, looks like you've been badly burned…” The older voice hesitated; they were still out of Eldric's sight. “Though your clothes and armor…”

  “Yes, I noticed that as well,” said the third voice. “His body is burned, but his clothes hold none of the same markings. It's like the fire came from within…” There was an edge to her tone now.

  Eldric heard the exchange only dimly. Gritting his teeth, he groaned as he got his feet under him. He managed to stand, hunched and unsteady.

  “Oh~,” the foxkin woman said, throwing her knee-length white hair over her shoulder. “Aren't you a tall one, like a tree after a forest fire…” She giggled as an older man finally came into view. He was tall, not quite as tall as Eldric, but definitely older. His sharp green eyes raked over him, a frown marring his bearded face.

  Eldric glanced between them, his eyes barely managing to stay open as he took the pair in. They were obviously not Sorrowcursed; they didn’t have the signs.

  "Who—" He managed to croak out, that lone word raspy and causing his burned and cracked lips to bleed.

  "Harlan," the man grumbled and pointed to himself and then to the foxkin next to him. "This is Nia.” Finally, he turned and pointed toward the third and final speaker, a black-haired dark elf with ruby red eyes. “The warlock is Vestara. We are from the Firmhaven guild. You don't have to answer right now, kid, but if you can nod, tell me: do you know what happened? Cinderholt is gone…” Harlan whispered the last part as he swept his arm around him.

  Hunched and clutching his arm, Eldric turned slightly and frowned. All that remained of the village and monastery were the foundations of the buildings and the cobblestone roads. Everything else had just simply… gone. He could see the remains of the monastery's foundations beneath his feet and around him, his memories here…

  "Sorrow—" He managed and groaned in pain as the intake of breath in his lungs felt like he was breathing fire. "—scribe." He managed to finish, flashes of the glowing blue eyes and the pale script haunting him with each breath.

  Harlan cursed immediately. Nia's tail dropped to the ground, nearly lifeless, as her eyes widened and her ears sat flat on her head.

  “So, he came all the way out here just to deal with Ashen zealots…” Vestara cut in, her eyes narrowed as she strode closer to them. Her arms crossed over her black leather vest. Her eyes flicked from Eldric to her two companions. “I checked the east side; he seems to be the only survivor.” She sighed and closed her eyes in thought. “The Scribe doesn’t usually leave anyone to write his tragedies. I suppose we are lucky.”

  "He can barely talk, Vestara," Harlan took a step forward and put up a placating hand toward the dark elf. "Interrogations can wait until he's healed a bit."

  Vestara waved away Harlan’s hand, then shook her head. “Fine. But first chance we get, I’ll hear every detail of what happened here.” With a pointed glare at Eldric, she turned and stalked off toward a distant wagon that Eldric had assumed they brought with them.

  Harlan sighed and shook his head before putting his attention back on Eldric. "Sorry, kid, your rescue party isn't exactly cohesive… Come on, let's get you over to the wagon. I'll put some bandages on." He paused and seemed to take in the sight of Eldric's burned body. "I guess… all of you."

  Eldric took a step forward and nearly toppled, but the foxkin woman was pressed against him in a moment, her small, lithe frame supporting him like a crutch. "Sure, ya can~," she agreed as she supported his weight. "Come on, I'll carry you…" She said, her grin widened, displaying her small fangs. "I can't wait to tell everyone back in Firmhaven how I carried a tree."

  Eldric frowned and tried to pull away and walk himself, but her grip on his arm kept her against him.

  “My name—Eldric…” He rasped, finally giving up and letting her support more of his weight.

  Her big lavender eyes gleamed when she looked up at him. "Mmm, no… I think I'll just call you E~," she said as she began to lead him out of the ruins of the monastery.

  Harlan drew close, his hand outstretched toward Nia. "You got him, Little Fox? He's a big—" Harlan was cut off as her long, fluffy tail came up and smacked him in the face. He gave a growl of annoyance and swatted the appendage away with a snort. "You could just say you had it."

  Nia giggled and stumbled a bit as they stepped over the remains of the foundation, which made her small laugh turn full-on. "Got it~," she said when she finally stopped stumbling and laughing.

  Feeling his own weakness—a bit more than he cared to admit—his arm tightened around Nia's shoulders, and she smirked. "That's it, lean on me, E~," she said as they approached the wagon. Vestara was half-sitting on one of the large wooden wheels as they neared.

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  "It's about time," the dark elf drawled. "Got a present for you, Holy Boy." She turned and reached into the wagon, pulling out two items that gave Eldric pause.

  The first was an ornate but broken sword.

  The second was a thick, metal-plated book.

  “Looking at what’s left of your clothing, I assume you're one of those Ashen paladins. If I'm correct, then by right, these are yours." Her voice cracked, hands lowering just a bit as her expression ghosted somber. "Outside of this, nothing is left of Cinderholt."

  His eyes widened, and he tried to pull away from Nia, his free arm reaching toward the items. He immediately recognized the sword as having belonged to Elder Tolsten. He remembered the moment the blade had been broken clean in half by the Sorrowscribe, and the book—it was the Ashen Testament.

  A copy survived.

  Vestara offered them without ceremony, and he took them with shaking hands. As soon as the weight settled into his hands, he felt the heaviness of what he held like a crushing burden. He dropped to the charred ground as waves of emotion crashed over him. He stared at the burnished bronze cover of the book.

  "Sacrifice…" he whispered, the opening mantra of his Order's tenets.

  "Suffering…"

  His body coiled around the pair of items as he rocked. He felt a small hand touch his shoulder, but he didn't react as he wrestled with the overwhelming emotions.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, and he shuddered as the cool air felt like an arctic wind against his burned skin.

  He had survived, even when he had sacrificed everything, even when he had been supposed to die.

  Rebirth.

  The word landed inside of him like a gavel. His shaking slowed as he grappled with the idea that perhaps Eldric had died with Cinderholt.

  "Th—" His vocal cords scraped together like a pair of grinding stones, and he closed his eyes. "Thank you," he managed.

  Vestara's black, perfectly shaped brow rose before she looked away from him and pushed away from the wagon. "Don't thank me yet." Her lip curled a bit. "Giving you a broken sword and a little book doesn't mean you're getting out of interrogation. I still plan to make you tell me why an entire town has been flattened like a damned wheat field."

  The dark elf moved up toward the front of the wagon and sat in the chair.

  Eldric looked at the relics in his hands; that's what they were now… relics of the life that he had known. Nia drifted into view as he looked back toward where the monastery had once been. Vestara was right, Cinderholt had been flattened… but something else struck him at that moment.

  Where were the fires, or the bodies?

  Even if it had been a week since then, there should have been more evidence of what had happened. Yet the cobblestone paths looked overgrown with weeds, and the ruins of the buildings were not smoldering…

  Eldric swallowed the lump in his throat as Harlan approached, seemingly finished with his search as well.

  "Little Fox, help him into the wagon." Harlan's gaze flicked from Nia over to Vestara. "Have you learned anything through your pacts, elf?"

  "Only that the Scribe was here," Vestara spoke up, her black-painted lips frowning. "Everything else…" She paused and looked to the side as if she were listening to a whisper that only she could hear. "was… consecrated.”

  That made Harlan's brow raise as the party's eyes all fell on Eldric. A long silence passed, and Eldric exhaled a heavy breath.

  What could he say at this moment?

  They were obviously suspicious, and yet he found that he had no guilt for those final moments when he had let go of everything that was Eldric and had just become the Lord of Ashes' vessel.

  He had done as the tenets commanded, what Tolsten had predicted. Eldric had died with unwavering faith.

  Finally, he managed to say, "Ask…" He laid his head back awkwardly against the wagon. "I'll answer… what I can."

  "How tall are you?" Nia immediately said, and both Vestara and Harlan groaned, Harlan going so far as to cover his face with his gauntlet-covered hand.

  “Focus, Nia,” Harlan breathed as he got into the wagon next to Vestara. Eldric noted that it was the first time he had heard the older man use the foxkin’s name since introducing her. “What matters isn’t how tall he is, but what happened here and why he is the only survivor.”

  “Well, sure~,” Nia agreed, nodding as her tail flicked around behind her, “but maybe E~ is alive because he’s so tall.”

  Eldric almost thought the young woman was serious, until he saw the grin slowly spreading across her face as she looked at the other two.

  “Six…” Eldric said, turning his gaze toward her. “foot five.”

  “Amazing,” Vestara said, her voice dripping venom. “Truly world changing information, are you happy, Nia?” The elf warlock snapped the reins, and the pair of horses set off.

  Before Nia could respond to Vestara, Harlan cut in, turning on the wagon bench and meeting Eldric’s half-lidded gaze. “Get the bandages out of my bag, Little Fox. He needs to be wrapped up tighter than a trip to the embalmers with those burns.”

  The foxkin nodded and pushed back her knee-length white hair before rummaging through a worn patchwork backpack and pulling out several rolls of bandages. "You're such a mother, Old Man Har—who the heck carries this many rolls of bandages?"

  "And you're such a child, Nia—how many rolls have I wrapped around you because a little scratch put you—" he quoted, "‘inches from death’?"

  Nia gasped like he had just told a horrible secret, and she threw a roll of bandages at the back of Harlan's head. "I was stabbed, you grizzled old jerk!"

  Vestara laughed, a haughty but reserved sound that made Nia glare at the pair on the front of the wagon. She huffed, her tail slapping the floor of the wagon as she grabbed a different roll of bandages and crawled closer to Eldric. "This is gonna hurt a bit… especially taking off your clothes," she explained, her voice just loud enough for Eldric to hear.

  He should have felt something by that quiet whisper. Here was an impossibly pretty woman inches from his face, but Eldric only felt an echo of emotion, and he couldn’t even identify it.

  He blinked and, with effort, sat up a bit. Setting aside the broken sword and the book, he began to work at the buckles of his armor on each side of his torso. He winced from the effort, each motion punctuated by a hiss of pain.

  His chest plate fell away, revealing the worn and tattered tunic beneath. Eldric glanced at the armor; its surface was beaten and scratched, showing signs of rust around the edges. Another reminder that made him wonder when the events of Cinderholt had happened.

  He pulled at his tunic and gave a cry of pain as the shirt clung to his burnt skin, the fabric having seemingly melded with the raw flesh. He didn’t relent. He pulled it away, causing patches of blistered skin to erupt in fresh gouts of blood.

  "Gods, kid, you're making it way worse," Harlan said, looking back at Eldric with a mixture of panic and worry.

  Yes, it hurt, but to Eldric, this was nothing compared to that final moment. Standing before the Sorrowscribe and just… letting go had been the worst pain he had ever felt; the heat had been unbearable.

  Eldric said nothing in response but looked over to Nia and held out a hand to take the roll of bandages from her. He would do it himself.

  Or at least he intended to, but the foxkin frowned and narrowed her eyes a bit as she pulled the bandages further away from his grasp. She didn’t protest verbally, but her ears fell a bit, and her tail drooped. She shook her head and scooted closer to him.

  Silently, she began to wrap his outstretched arm—the arm he intended to take the bandage from her with.

  Trees passed as the wagon carried on; the banter had died as the three adventurers took turns looking at the horrible burns that covered his entire body.

  "I'll say it again," Harlan said somberly. "How the hell are you alive?"

  "Because…" Eldric began, the words falling out unbidden. "The Lord of Ash and Rebirth…" he coughed violently, the seizing of his lungs causing waves of fresh pain through his body. "—still has a use for me."

  Nia’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly, but she said nothing as she coiled the bandage around his chest in silence.

  "Ashborn zealots…" Vestara growled, her ponytail swaying with the shake of her head. "I’ve met a hundred paladins, and every one of those pretentious fools would call your order insane…" She paused and glanced back at Eldric. "I’m a warlock and think your Lord of Ash is…" Her words died in her throat as Harlan elbowed her.

  "It’s not our concern what god he believes in, Ves. Cinderholt is what matters, the lives lost and what to do about the Scribe."

  “Maybe it should be…” Nia whispered, her voice betraying an edge of concern as her eyes studied his body. “His burns—they’re already healing.”

  Chapter 2 End