Chapter 41: DD2 Chapter 035 – Loss

The flight out of Rhelea was easily one of the most surreal experiences in Eliza’s life. The whole day had been a mad, life-affirming clusterfuck of an ordeal, and what better way to end it than by flying away from her home while it died. She was in the esteemed company of a literal Sovereign Dragon and an Inquisitor of legend, and no matter how hard she pinched herself, she couldn’t wake up. If Barlow could see her now, the little man would be sick with jealousy. She had witnessed more than enough momentous events in the past twelve hours to write dozens of new songs that would keep her stomach full for years to come.

Assuming of course, that she ever sang again.

That put a real dampener on her mood, but ultimately not a very large one. Her voice for Riyoul’s life—it was a fair trade, one she’d happily make a thousand times again. She tried not to think about what the rogue had said in his final moments, how he’d spent his morning carving up Melite and Pirria because of her. Eliza hoped that he’d been lying, fishing for answers, or at the very least exaggerating about the nature of their deaths, but even if he hadn’t, she wouldn’t change a thing.

The monster was dead, and she was free.

Standing on a surprisingly stable platform of soaring masonry, Eliza, Typh, and Xanthia quickly left the shifting ruin in the square where the Monster was entombed within. As they flew higher into the sky and her view of the city expanded, Eliza could once again see the pulsating rivers of black ichor that ran through Rhelea’s streets. No doubt that foul fluid was now finding its way through the gaps in the mountain of cracked stonework to the Monster that struggled to break free. Soon it would escape, and when it did the violence Eliza had fled only hours ago would resume again for all of those still trapped within Rhelea’s walls.

But not for her. For the first time in over a decade, she was well and truly safe.

He’s dead, and I’m not. I won.

Eliza couldn’t help but grin, she felt a giggle bubble up from inside of her, but it died in her throat, her voice gone. She hoped that it would return, for a bard who couldn’t sing could hardly work alone. She’d be forced to join a band, an insufferable set of circumstances she had no desire to endure, and yet the thought of it didn't scare her. 

Nothing did.

She grinned some more and her body shook with not-quite-laughter as she peered out over the sides of her ‘vehicle’ at the city hundreds of feet below. She saw entire streets aflame, more destroyed buildings than she could count, scattered pockets of valiant resistance, and people fleeing in terror, but when Eliza looked up over her shoulder, her eyes were drawn to the dragon staring off into the horizon and Inquisitor Xanthia staring holes into the back of her head.

With a soft grunt the steel-ranked legend slumped forwards, and moving on instinct, Eliza rushed to catch her. The bard was very nearly crushed by the surprisingly heavy weight of the bookish-looking woman, and it wasn’t until the dragon moved to help her that she could breathe again.

“What’s wrong with her?” Eliza managed to ask by spending a trickle of her stamina and drumming her fingers on an intact fragment of the Inquisitor's runeplate.

“Blood loss, stamina depletion, skill expiry? Take your pick,” Typh answered casually.

“Can you help her?”

“I can… but you won’t like it.”

“I don’t like being crushed to death. Do it.”

The dragon that pretended to be a human adjusted her stance, and more of Xanthia’s oppressive weight fell onto Eliza’s shoulders. Before the bard could complain, the Inquisitor gasped a deep breath, and some of the colour that had been draining from her cheeks returned to her face. The woman stood up straight, relieving Eliza of her burden, and the bard was amazed by how much better the Inquisitor already looked. Between the torn armour plates and ripped cloth, pale new skin could be seen where before there was just ominous red. 

The bard was just about to thank Typh for whatever it was she had just done, when the dragon stumbled. Red stains spread across her dress, and the small woman fell to her knees, coughing up a large volume of blood which she then spat over the side of their hurtling stone platform. The crimson globule was quickly whipped away by the onrushing winds, and then the chunk of stone they were all—mostly—standing on started to wobble precipitously.

“Try not to fall off. Things are about to get a little bumpy,” the dragon grinned up at her through red-stained teeth.

“Gods… what a way to wake up,” the Inquisitor grumbled, squatting down to join Typh closer to the stone, which she then gripped hard enough to cause spidering cracks to spread through the masonry.

Eliza felt calm. The wind rushed against her face, and the surface she stood on was anything but steady, yet she felt no fear. There was nothing to hold onto besides the platform itself, and while Xanthia and Typh clearly had the right idea about getting low, she felt no compunction to join them. Standing straight, the bard raised her arms out to the side, and enjoyed the thrill of flight. Her black hair streamed out behind her, while the cold winds whistled between her splayed fingers, soothing her aching joints. She struggled to keep her balance with every juddering jolt that ran through the masonry whenever an updraft or strong gust affected their decaying, parabolic arc.

She wanted to laugh, and she felt them come one after the other, only to dissipate into nothingness long before they could reach her lips. Still, stifled laughter or not, she was enjoying herself.

“The bard’s cracked,” the Inquisitor mumbled upon seeing Eliza’s manic grin.

“They all are. Who sees the potential for ultimate power lying in front of them and chooses to be a musician instead?” the dragon commented disparagingly.

“Fuck off,” Eliza tapped.

“Ballsy too. I like her,” Xanthia said.

“You can have her. I’m still half-tempted to eat the damn woman,” Typh replied.

That certainly should have scared her. A flesh-eating dragon larger than most houses had expressed her desire to eat her, and while it was by no means appealing, the familiar fear that had followed her around for so long still hadn’t made an appearance.

Frowning, the bard lowered her arms, and leaned out over the side of the unsteady platform. She had never been a fan of heights, but then it was also a fear that she had rarely been exposed to. Streets blurred past beneath her, then stout walls, and finally untouched snow. She felt no urge to jump, but with Riyoul dead that was hardly surprising. What was a surprise was that the thought of falling didn’t evoke even a whisper of anxiety. 

She was fearless.

“Get down!” 

A strong hand grabbed her, and pulled her away from the edge of the platform. A small body that smelled strongly of sweat and blood leaned over hers, and a heartbeat later the rock struck the ground.

‘A little bumpy’ didn’t begin to cover the severity of the impact. The large chunk of worked stone they had ridden out of Rhelea crashed into the side of a hill without slowing down in the slightest. Even with Xanthia’s body on top of hers, shielding her from the worst of the collision, she was still thrown by the landing. However, when she climbed to her feet minutes later to find Creation spinning before her eyes, she was struck not by the realisation of how close she had just come to death, but by how she was now standing further away from Rhelea than she had since Riyoul had put a violent stop to her adventuring career.

She could go anywhere she wanted. Sure, there was the beginnings of a large campsite being built nearby, and a long hike to a neighbouring city was significantly less appealing in the middle of a harsh winter. But there was no longer anything tying her to Rhelea beyond familiarity, and from seeing how much the city had changed for the worse in the past few weeks, she wasn’t sure it even had that.

While the bard thought long and hard about what she wanted to do next, the dragon marched halfway over to her in the knee deep snow, looked her dead in the eyes and asked, “Do you want to get a drink?”

Eliza shrugged in acceptance, and that was that.

***

It couldn’t have been more than six hours since the Monster had first appeared in the market square, and yet already, thousands of people had congregated around a large hill to the west of the city. Lines of well-trodden snow showed the various routes Rhelea’s displaced citizens had taken to arrive at this location, and the snaking trails of panicked people yet to arrive were easy to see in the distance. Their meandering paths led from each of the city’s four major exits, with some navigating all the way from the east gate and presumably crossing the Pollum River just to get to the shelter being built around the hill.

Amongst all the chaos that had swept through Rhelea, the fact that a large number of merchants had seemingly managed to get their goods out intact was of no surprise to Eliza. She had long since come to accept that if there was one class with a truly reliable foresight skill, it would be a mercantile one, albeit with its scope strictly limited to their future profits. The quantity of wagons piled high with rolls of canvas, grains, and other building supplies astounded her, but it was also very confusing. Where were the silks, wines, and expensive linens? It was like all cheap materials required to keep thousands alive had been stockpiled outside of the city ahead of time.

As the bard followed in the wake of the dragon who walked side by side with the Inquisitor, Eliza was amazed by what she saw. Large tents were being raised everywhere, with mages forming earthen walls out from under the snow to reinforce canvas walls, and to create free-standing structures on their own. Builder-tagged craftsmen erected shelters far faster than she would have thought possible. Healers saw to the injured in a wide tent that served as a makeshift hospital, while porridge from massive vats was being handed out to the hungry by innkeepers and chefs, who were clearly using their class skills to chase away the cold and stretch out the limited supply of food.

The efficient calm with which people were being taken care of was such a stark contrast to the panic and disorder she had witnessed inside Rhelea during her own desperate flight. However, it was not all sunshine and ambrosia. The healers were having an easy go of it because so very few of the injured had made it out of the city. Eliza had seen the dead littering the streets, and amongst the survivors who’d seen it too, their despair was palpable. Thousands of people were just milling about aimlessly in the cold with glazed over expressions, while a small minority of classers busied themselves with their vital work. Still, the organisation it must have required should have taken days, not hours to set up, and far more money than any one person had a right to possess.

There were other, noticeably segregated attempts at organisation, the minor, unlanded nobles who typically stayed confined to the wealthiest parts of Rhelea, now stood out in the open far away from the burgeoning construction efforts. She saw more than a few regal faces flanked by their household staff and soldiers, while their own tents were being raised, and near them, merchants fiercely protected their own goods with hired mercenaries, but all of these attempts paled in comparison to the efforts Eliza could see extending out from the top of the hill.

For all of the bard's awe, Typh was utterly unfazed by it all, and she quickly marched past every outstanding example of human resilience without so much as batting an eyelid. While the campsite was growing at an astounding pace, it had only been six hours, and was still quite small. In a matter of minutes they had made their way to the centre, where a single large tent loomed over the others. Eliza had expected the adventurers standing guard outside to bar them entry, but when Typh approached, they merely bowed their heads, and let the dragon past.

Entering the tent, Eliza was surprised to see well-made, albeit modest furniture in a style she didn’t recognise, but found eerily familiar. She’d half expected to see Lord Traylan and his manservant glowering over a tactical map of the city, but instead she saw a different set of faces altogether. She remembered then, where she had seen the furniture before, for the tent was filled with the contents of Arilla Foundling’s—the Dragonrider’s—apartment.

The dragon stopped short, freezing only a few feet inside the tent with the opening still ajar, letting the warm air inside escape out into the icy cold. Typh looked scared to approach any closer, more fearful of the quiet warrior sitting on the edge of the bed where a child slumbered, than she had ever been to face the Monster in the square.

“You brought the armchair…” Typh trailed off, prompting a low chuckle from the warrior.

“It is exceedingly comfortable… Did everything go okay? I saw you fall,” Arilla asked.

“I’m fine, although it did hold me up. How were things on your end?”

“Bad enough to make me want to drink. The merchants smell blood in the water and keep trying to renegotiate,” the warrior spat, “and if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re already running out of gold. Though, we should discuss that further after you’ve shut the door.”

“Right, of course.”

Despite her words the dragon hesitated for several long seconds before finally taking another step. Typh moved forwards, allowing Eliza and Xanthia to actually enter the tent, closing the canvas door behind them so that the small iron brazier could resume heating the room.

There was an awkwardness in the air between the dragon and her rider that was obvious even for Eliza to see. She may not have had any personal experience with romance beyond a few youthful attempts to awaken that sleeping part of her, but as a bard she knew frustrated lovers when she saw them. Eliza knew that it wasn’t her place to say or do anything, but she was feeling reckless, and more importantly, she had been promised a drink.

Eliza coughed, and when heads turned to look at her, she mimed taking a sip. The dragon’s eyes widened with understanding, and she quickly went over to the large table in the centre of the tent. She then expertly poured wine from a cask into three pewter cups which she handed out to those gathered.

They took their seats. Typh then sat in the noteworthy armchair, and Xanthia took what looked like a dining chair for herself, while Eliza elected to stand. The surrealness of her situation was slowly starting to sink in as the bard watched mutely while a conversation formed.

“I told you so,” Typh said, without any hint of triumph in her voice, just a bone deep weariness that Eliza’s ears had no trouble picking out.

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“You did,” Xanthia conceded.

“Typh, we don’t really have time for ‘I told you so’s,” Arilla interjected.

“I feel like I should be allowed just one,” the dragon complained.

“You’ve already had it. Now can we move on to the part where you tell me just what that thing was as you clearly know so much,” the Inquisitor asked.

“You’re going to need a stiffer drink,” Arilla warned.

“I’m a big girl. I crossed blades with it for hours. I can handle hearing about whatever kind of eldritch horror that actually was,” Xanthia said.

“I want to know as well.”

“Bloody fuck! What exactly was that?!” Arilla swore.

“It's the bard, she’s using a skill to talk,” Typh explained.

“It’s Eliza the Bard, and I can speak for myself.”

“Can we get to my question? People have died by the thousands, they still are—” the Inquisitor began.

“Tens of thousands. And it will be closer to a hundred before we’re done,” Typh said solemnly.

There was a long pause. No one knew what to say to that, Eliza herself wanted to disbelieve, to protest, but having already seen so much death, it was so damn plausible. The bard silently stared into her wine cup while she really thought about what that meant, and then shivering, she drank deep.

“This is going to be another Traylra, isn’t it?” Xanthia sighed.

“If we’re so lucky,” Arilla grumbled.

“Arilla’s right, if we don’t kill it soon it will cross into silver, and then we’ll never stop it,” Typh warned.

“Define soon,” Xanthia asked. “I can get a sizable army here by mid-spring.”

“Days,” the dragon said. “Maybe weeks. It all depends on how well those trapped inside Rhelea can hide.”

“I’m—I’m going to need that drink…” the Inquisitor sighed.

“Don’t worry, we have a plan,” Arilla said, and both the warrior and the dragon shared an uneasy smile at that. The Dragonrider then rose from her seat and went to refresh Xanthia’s and Eliza’s cup with what looked—and eventually tasted—like a very cheap bottle of skill-enhanced whisky.

The three women kept talking amongst themselves while Eliza watched and listened. The dragon explained how events would unfold with a chilling level of detail that filled the bard's stomach with dread. The Inquisitor asked a lot of questions, and each horrible query had a worse answer, but even as they talked about the potential downfall of the country, Eliza could tell they were dancing around one very important issue.

She had very little to contribute to the conversation. Talking, or tapping out her speech, was far more labour-intensive than she would have liked. She also had no resources to pull upon besides from the goodwill of Rhelea’s bardic community, and she had no idea how many of its members still lived. But she supposed that was why it was important she was there in the tent, everyone else besides her had a legend. They’d seen the dead in Rhelea and on some level had accepted it as necessary. Neither Typh nor Xanthia’s gazes had even glanced at the broken people waiting outside, and Arilla was content to rest in her tent rather than to rush about and actually help.

She knew they cared, that their actions had saved lives, but someone needed to hold them to account, even if it was just one tired old bard asking an uncomfortable question, she knew they had the answer to.

“If everything goes right, if every ‘if’ and ‘maybe’ falls your way, just how many of us actually live through this plan of yours?”

***

Tears streamed from her eyes while Eliza vomited into the snow. On her hands and knees, she wrung-out her already empty stomach, and dry-heaved on top of the mess she had just made. People looked at her with disgust, those in a fit state to do so hurried past and shielded the eyes of their children from the bard’s very public intoxication.

Not even bothering to get up to her feet, she leaned back, resting on her knees and washed her mouth out with the whisky she had swiped from the Dragonrider’s tent. She drank deep, consciously seeking the oblivion that alcohol would usually bring, but while it turned her stomach, her mind felt as clear as crystal glass.

She fucking hated it.

Eliza looked around at the camp—no, that word felt hollow, the tent city—and didn’t know whether to scream or cry some more. She had known the answer to her question was going to be bad, but she hadn’t comprehended the scale of the loss. How could she have known that it would have all been calculated out like it was a simple maths problem, rather than the end of so many families—the end of Rhelea. She was a bard, not a tactician, and she could never have imagined that so much death could ever have been deemed as acceptable. In that moment when Typh answered her, Eliza had wanted for nothing more than for the Inquisitor, hero of countless stories, to leap out of her chair and take a stand, to declare the cost too high and somehow save them from the dragon’s inhuman plan. 

But she hadn’t, the woman had fucking nodded and accepted it.

Well, Eliza wouldn’t.

The bard felt her resolve harden as she rose to her feet. A fiery anger started to burn in her chest, and urged on by her class, she knew exactly what to do next. Eliza had a very limited skill-set, but she knew people intimately, maybe not on an individual level, but she had already proven to herself that she could move a crowd to act—to violence if she desired it. 

Far too many of Rhelea’s citizens were broken from their flight, traumatised by the losses they had already suffered. She knew that lacking the will to stand up straight, let alone face the tentacled horrors, they would not survive what the dragon had planned for them. In that tent they had all recognised the value of the city’s classers, but Eliza didn’t think they truly understood them, not like she did. 

The bard made her way through well-trodden snow, down to the edge of the campgrounds, where the occasional adventurer patrol could be seen watching the border for monsters, natural, or otherwise. She had left the whisky bottle behind for some other unfortunate soul who needed it more, and when anticipatory energy pulsed through her veins with every step, she knew that she had grown past the need for liquid courage. 

Eliza found a good spot, a flat-ish rock well-lit by the green moon and yellow stars, with good views of Rhelea smouldering on the horizon. She sat down on the cold stone and placed her trusty instrument against her cheek. For the first time since Riyoul had died, she felt the notes of a song move through her, and it was so much louder than it had ever been while the rogue was alive. Eliza’s class was insistent, the music begging to be released, and accepting her class’s instructions, her bow moved while her fingers danced along the neck of her violin.

She lost herself in the melody and rhythm that flowed through her. Each note stirred her soul, easing the passing of the city that had once been her home. She channeled her despair and her loss, through her skills, and out into the surrounding air. The strings of her violin vibrated not just with sound, but with the power of the system screaming through her.

A small crowd started to form, drawn in by her unbound aura, and the song that resonated with their shared pain. Sad eyes watched her as they shed bitter tears, and the gathered faces were gradually made somewhat more resolute for having taken a moment to grieve. Soon another instrument played, another bard, Antion, if she had to guess from his tendency to butcher the low notes. A small part of her felt annoyed at the intrusion of what was supposed to be her song, but that thought quickly left her after the third musician joined in. 

Many more bards flocked to Eliza by the hillside, and in a short space of time she lost count of the different instruments and voices all playing her song. The small crowd had continued to grow, drawing its audience from almost the entirety of the tent city until it was something massive. The music was so loud, and the air was filled with so many different skills and talents, that just breathing was like inhaling the evocative music. Eliza had never felt anything like it. All those bards pushing their pain out through their skills, overlapping their auras and combining their effects had given rise to a sound so pure that it forced her to feel the near-physical sorrow in the air. It twisted her heart so hard that her grief was practically wrung out of it.

When the song was done, Eliza felt lighter than she had in years, decades even. Her mind raced without getting snagged on her usual outcroppings of guilt, or self-recrimination. She looked around at her peers, and couldn’t help but smile. Not a dry eye was in sight, yet their faces grinned back at her with something akin to respect. The euphoria of leading a musical phenomenon that was already so much larger than herself, was a feeling that she didn’t want to give up. Fortunately, she was a bard, and she had many more songs to give.

Their shared audience was completely silent, their collective breath held in anticipation. Eliza recognised the enormity of the moment, of her ability to push her will on the hundreds, if not thousands of people waiting for her next note. She could crush their souls with grief, just as easily as she could stoke the flames of their rage. There was a great power in music, no matter what the dragon thought, and right now with the orchestra at her back, Eliza was the most powerful bard in Creation.

The old her would be scared, fearful that this would only make her more useful to Riyoul, or worse a threat, but the old Eliza was as dead as her tormentor. Whoever she was now, whoever she chose to become, she would be free, and right now she had an audience to play for. When Eliza brought her bow back to the strings of her violin, a hundred more bards followed suit. 

Rhelea was a truly exceptional place. It was a city like no other, the only settlement in all of Creation where even the humblest of professions were blessed with system granted stats and skills that made them more than their unclassed contemporaries.

The Monster in the square had caught them when they weren’t prepared, it had killed thousands with surprise and malice, but when she looked at the grinning faces of her peers who surrounded her she knew then and there that the people of Rhelea would get their revenge.

It was only a matter of time.

Still smiling, she took a deep breath and began to play a very different song, not one of grief, but of righteous, undeniable anger. The fire that burned in her chest, raced out along her bow and transcended into sound. A hundred other bards joined their rage to hers, and together they sang a song that a city could march to war on. 

When she looked past her peers and saw the looks of vengeful determination spread across the faces of their thousands strong audience, it was all she could do to stifle her still silent laughs.

Gods help them, but they would make that Monster know fear before it died.

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