Heart of Oak

Roderick slowly came to his senses. His body ached and his mind was foggy. The world around him was brightly lit and resembled that of an inter-city carriage station that he frequented. Everything was clean and made of a ghostly white marble. His gaze migrated downward to where and what he sat on. It resembled a wooden bench with wrought iron armrests and legs but instead was made of the same ghostly white marble that everything else was made of. He stood up, slowly to not rack his head with a headache. He looked around the area. Beyond the immediate vicinity was a thick wall of opaque mists like a low fog in the early mornings of the month of First Spring.

Roderick then realized he was alone. He saw no other person near him and even after calling out, heard nothing in return. Rather than being freaked out, loneliness crept up instead. He looked down at his hands. They were his, gloved in damaged leather. His shield and ax were not with him nor were his friends. His eyes grew heavy with grief. The fog of forgetfulness was slowly lifting from his mind and the last instances of his conscious self were riddled with the onset of cold shivers and the warm red liquid pooling on the floor below him. He could see it like a drunk would see eight copies of the man in front of him. All the outlines were blurry and the picture itself was layered offset to itself eight times over.

He slowly and deliberately placed a hand over his chest. There was no wound. He put the other hand on his shoulder and there was no wound there either. His mind was quiet, reluctant to even consider the scene he’d just recalled to mind.

The air around him lacked any warmth to it. From one end of the carriage station was a brighter light, similar to a sun that had just crested the horizon in the morning. It hurt to look at it directly. He sat back down on the bench, resting his elbow on his knees and his chin on his hands. Then there was a jingle. He looked down and reached for the metallic necklace that rested on his neck. He lifted up the pendant and stared at its design. It was familiar to him, like an heirloom he’d gotten from his family. It put a soft smile on his lips. It looked like an open book with an infinity loop across the two pages.

He let the pendant fall back down and rest upon his chest. He took a deep breath through his nose. He smelled nothing. The air wasn’t stale or fresh. He sat in silence, left alone with his thoughts.

Then he heard a soft-spoken and friendly feminine voice. He snapped his head up and looked side-to-side. Standing at the edge of the road was a tall human woman dressed in loose and casual flowing robes made of silk. She was thin and looked delicate, like a porcelain doll made from the image of an artist’s muse. Her blue eyes complimented her fair and unblemished skin. Her silvery hair was trimmed short, and parted in the front, a more masculine look that he’d seen in some female adventurers.

He didn’t hear what she said, only heard the sound of her voice. He asked her, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

She started walking towards him not in a threatening way but rather as if she was approaching a saddened friend. “How are you feeling?”

Roderick placed a hand upon his arm and squeezed it. He felt like himself but a lingering emotion of regret hung in his mind. He spoke slowly, “I feel like me, I just know I’m forgetting something.”

The woman gestured to the bench, “May I have a seat, traveler?”

Roderick nodded, “I welcome the company.”

She was still smiling with a genuine cheery demeanor. She placed a reassuring hand on Roderick’s knee. “Do you know where you are?”

Roderick lowered his head and looked at the smooth ground. “The carriage station in Anslo. I used to take the carriage from here to a couple of the walled cities in the Basar territory.”

Her hand slowly slid off his knee as she leaned back on the bench. “Familiar places like this are always nice. It has a calming effect on those who are moving on. Although, I will say, you adventurer types have some of the weirdest places to find as calming.” She didn’t say it with any malice but just as a ‘fact of the situation’.

A single tear rolled down his cheek. A memory flickered before him. He saw the gaunt and tortured face of his younger sister. “I see these moments of my life and there’s a lot of fog to them. I can’t remember the scenes but the emotions are strong.”

The woman’s smile slowly faded as she folded her lower lip beneath the upper. “I don’t relish in being the bearer of bad news, Roderick,” she said with a bit of a quiver in her voice. “You’re recalling the most important memories of your life. When you die, your spirit leaves the body behind and takes the most important memories with it, to use them as a sort of identifier like a name tag. This keeps your spirit from fading away and dissipating out of existence. The stronger the emotions attached to those memories, the longer your soul lasts.”

Roderick lifted his head and looked at the woman directly. His eyes were watering and shaking from trying to hold back his sadness. “Tell me, what will become of my sister?”

The woman took a deep breath. She wanted to comfort and reassure him, he could see it in her expression. “In here, time is irrelevant. Everything has already happened but also nothing has happened either. Your mind, the spirit’s mind technically, stopped counting the seconds the moment your brain died.”

Roderick slowly turned his head side-to-side, “I don’t want to know everything, I just want to know what happens or has happened to her.”

The woman’s expression grew more sorrowful, “I’m sorry Roderick. Without you there at the helm, the warband never stayed together and the money stopped going to your family. Your sister’s cancer became too much for her.”

Roderick slumped back onto the bench and stared at the roof of the carriage station. There was a slow and deep sigh that escaped his lips. “I’m sorry, Mirvelle. I tried, I really did.”

The woman watched him in silence for a few minutes, letting him process his emotions. She then broke the silence, “I see you have the pendant for Syna, the goddess of the life cycle.”

Roderick picked it up and clenched a fist around it. “I have prayed every night ever since I left home twelve years ago. I prayed for the cancer to go away, I prayed for the money necessary to treat it, I prayed for a miracle.”

The woman placed a hand on her heart. “And I heard your prayers, Roderick.”

It took a moment for it to sink in and he did a double take, trying to connect the dots. “You’re Syna?!” He sounded very surprised.

The woman smiled, “I am. Remember what I told you earlier about emotions?”

Roderick nodded, “I do, but I don’t follow.”

”Your sister’s suffering, it’s part of the balance of the cycle. She has emotions that far surpass most living creatures. She may not be long for the mortal realm, but in the bliss of eternal paradise, she’ll long outlive most other spirits,” Syna explained. “It’s not the answer you seek but her suffering is not in vain.”

Again, his expression turned sorrowful and he hung his head, slowing his breathing. “I just wanted her to live, to be able to leave the bed for more than a few hours a week.”

”And that’s a noble wish, but her role in this world does not allow her that luxury,” she said in a hushed tone.

”Luxury?” Roderick snapped upright, audibly offended by the notion. “How is living a luxury? She deserves the opportunity to live, more than any of these highway robbers and gnollish slavers. How can you justify to me that those shit-for-brain scum deserve their lives more than she does?”

”Because her illness drove you to do great things. Without her, you would’ve been a farmhand living an unremarkable life. You wouldn’t have given a million people the opportunity to live. You wouldn’t have saved an entire culture from extinction if she was not bedridden.” Syna’s words explained the logic behind it all but it still felt like a dagger to the lungs. “That is her role in life, to motivate you to do great things, to undo the wrongs thousands of other people neglected to take care of. Be satisfied with the life you lived and the good you have done up to this point.”

Tears welled up and overflowed, flowing down his face like tiny waterfalls. “It seemed like so much needless suffering.” His breathing became erratic, gasping for air between sobs. “I thought the gods had abandoned her, that my pleas fell on deaf ears.”

Syna opened her arms and embraced the crying man in her arms. Her skin was cold to the touch but the comfort from the gesture was immense. “I heard every prayer from you, just the same as I hear any prayer from anyone across the entire world. I feel your pains in each word that you mutter, the emotions that drive you.”

Roderick gave way to the emotions welling up inside and broke down into tears, crying aloud. “I failed, I failed, I failed…” he repeated between each gasp of breath.

Syna gently rested her hand on the back of his head, pulling him into her loving embrace. “You haven’t failed, my dear. Failure is when you willingly give up and surrender in the face of adversity. Roderick, you are one of the bravest souls I’ve seen from Rykensvik. Your efforts, your dedication, and your motivation don’t go unnoticed. I see it and my heart beats for you.”

Roderick’s crying calmed a little and his breathing slowed but was still strained. He clamped his eyes shut, letting the overwhelming emotion leave him.

“I cherish every prayer that is made and I hold those who ask for help close to my heart. But like so many others, I cannot answer your prayer in the way you want it answered. I can only tell you to wake up and keep living.”

Suddenly, he felt a rush of cold air flow into his lungs. He jolted upright and coughed violently into his calloused hands. His head was racked with the pain of multiple migraines. He stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. The floor below him was made of a gray slate-like stone and was cold to the touch, much like the stale musty air he was breathing in. His ears rang for several minutes. He felt multiple touches on his body and saw arms wrapped around his torso. He smiled through the tears and hugged all the arms that encased him.

He tugged on the string of memory of the conversation he was having with Syna but much like waking up from a dream, every detail rapidly slipped from his mind. The moments he spent dead and talking to the goddess were nothing more than a memory of emotions instead of a tangible scene that could be readily recalled. Regardless, he was filled with relief and joy. The pedant felt warm against his chest, hidden beneath his clothes. He quietly mouthed, “Thank you, Syna.”

His eyes met his companions’. Sedel, Dmahdi, and Firish were leaning over him, checking his wounds. A few feet next to him on a cot were the orange tasaki and the raccoon-kin, sharing a moment of passion. He decided to give them some privacy and looked back towards Sedel and Dmahdi. His strength slowly returned to him and he spoke up, “How am I alive?”

Firish gestured to a previously unnoticed dwarf in clerical robes, holding a very familiar holy symbol in her hands. “You can thank Nefirra. She’s a Priestess of Syna and damn good at resurrection magic it seems.”

The dwarven priestess was this small petite woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She was darker skinned, like polished obsidian which was unusually dark when compared to most other dwarves he’d met. She had long black hair that was put into a braided ponytail with scalp-tight cornrows on the rest of her head. She bowed her head respectfully and said, “I’m glad Syna blessed us twice this day.”

Roderick nodded his head, “Indeed she has.” He then looked to Dmahdi and Sedel, “Did we win?”

Both of them smiled widely. Sedel then flaunted Dmahdi’s muscles by lifting and flexing the orc’s arm. “Turns out Dmahdi is both durable and a heavy hitter with her fists. That gnoll didn’t know what was coming.”

Dmahdi’s grin showed her teeth with devilish glee and she flexed her other arm. “Socked that bastard right in the snoot, broke his jaw too.”

Roderick joined them in their mini-celebration, “I’m glad to hear it.”

Firish popped back into view, “The rest of the gnolls fled shortly after, so this mining city is dwarven once again.”

He nodded, “That’s good.” He then looked towards Finnegan and Roshka, “I think we all should go home and get ourselves some rest.”

Sedel followed his gaze to the two kin. “Finnegan fell right after you did. I think we all could use the break. If we have to fight another gnollish clan chief, we either need more people or we need to get some better equipment.”

Firish placed a hand on Sedel’s shoulder, “The dwarves here are going to reunite with the larger kingdom and should be fine for a while. This isn’t my home, I was dragged here as a tiny mouse. Mind if I join you?” She asked Roderick.

Roderick held out his hand for a handshake without a second thought. “Welcome to the Green Thorn Warband, Firish.”

After a day spent resting and recovering, the warband reconvened in the city square with their new companion, Firish Ghousse, and with the newly elected city governor. The dwarven male had a foot-long beard and despite being under slavery, still sported a rounder frame. He smiled with newfound enthusiasm and gratitude. “We all owe you a debt, travelers.”

Roderick leaned on a crude wood crutch, “I’m just glad we could see the job done. It got dicey towards the end.”

”And believe me, I too am very thankful to see you all make it out alive.” He said, “If there is anything I or this city can do for you, we’ll give it our best.”

Roderick looked over his shoulder at his battered companions, “A ride home to Rykensvik would be nice.” He then remembered something. “Actually, I have another request, governor.”

The dwarf clasped his hands together, “What is it?”

”We came here on a request of Jodi and Kathanac Donard. We came looking for their parents and extended family.”

The dwarf’s expression soured. “The Donards died off about twenty years ago. I’m sorry. I knew them personally and they were a very good family. Sadly, I don’t have a proper grave for them.”

Roderick let out a sigh, “I’m sorry we couldn’t be here sooner.”

The dwarf shook his head, “Don’t fret, you’re here now and did us all a favor. They live in the great beyond and while their corpses may have been food for the forges at the time, I know they smile upon you all.”

For a moment, everyone present was quiet and processing the news. Their journey may have been a few years too late but in the end, they still achieved a very noble goal.

The dwarf then spoke up after stroking his beard for a time. “As for a ride home, we don’t have any teleporting magic like the elven kingdoms do but if the port city of Belmont is still standing, we can get enough materials to get you a makeshift raft home.”

The idea of a half-rotted and ramshackle wooden ship was more than just concerning, it was morbidly horrifying. Roshka protested it, “Pardon me, but we arrived not too far from that port city. It’s in ruins and rotting, there’s no good lumber there.”

The governor paused to think about it. “There’s a lot of resources here that the gnolls have gathered with the help of our labor. I can have a ship made but it’ll take a while. What about the ship you arrived on?”

”Paid off and gone, I’m afraid. Stayed just long enough to see us here. Can’t exactly afford to keep even a schooner in port for a week or however long it was going to take us.” Roderick explained.

The dwarf blinked in dismay several times. “Let me get this straight, you all came here as a one-way trip?”

Sedel chimed in, “We were hoping to find a still-living city to purchase transport from. Wasn’t exactly the smartest plan but none of us have a personal ship and crew.”

The dwarf nodded. “There’s a smaller fishing village not too far south of Belmont. The gnolls sacked it a few decades ago before I got taken as a slave, but I bet there’s still a seafaring vessel in the drydock. It’s not a schooner but a deep-sea fishing trawler can get you across the ocean. I’ll rally a few others to take you down there. I know some folks want to leave the continent, so Rykensvik might be a good place to have a fresh start.”