Elegy for a Star Ch. 041-050

Miri retreated into the background, shoving Tess' consciousness forward. She saw what Tess saw, felt the pain that Tess felt, and held onto the part of Tess' mind that would numb that pain a bit. "There you go," Miri whispered fondly, "Good girl."

Chapter 44 - The White Tower

Tess, Gwendolyn, Joyona and Mairaela entered the white tower through its large, open front doors. Tess felt a wave of tingling air pass over her body as she stepped through and a feeling of security and safety washed over her. It was pleasant, especially given the shape she was in right now.

The floors were marbled and given a checkered white-and-black pattern. The walls were carved, white with veins of black and gray throughout. The air was cool here. It was relaxing upon Tess' skin, though she felt embarrassed that she was dripping swamp water and blood all over the floor. It seemed enormously disrespectful considering how neat and tidy the place was.

In the center was a statue: a winged man, armored and helmeted, holding a great spear into the air. He bore a halo of light and had a champion's face, looking to the sky. On the pedestal were words that Tess didn't recognize. Court-tongue, no doubt.

Tess angled her eyes upward. There was a spiral staircase the entire way up. "What the fuck is the point of a tower like this?" She insisted, wishing to the gods that she wouldn't have to climb that, "It's empty except for stairs to the top."

"Ascending," Gwendolyn replied, beginning her march to the stairs.

"Joyona," Tess knocked a knuckle against the giant woman's armor, regretting the pain to her knuckle immediately, "Mind if I hitch a ride on your shoulder again?"

"You need to walk this one," Joyona replied.

The group started to venture up the stairs, and though she was rather fit, it wasn't too long before Tess began to fall behind the legitimate warriors. Mairaela kept with her though, keeping an arm looped through Tess'. Tess was grateful for the company.

"Tess?" Mairaela said, bumping Tess' hip with her own, "Can we talk?"

"Not much else to do here," Tess grunted, "What do you want to talk about?"

"We're almost to the end," Mairaela said softly, "You haven't proven what you said you'd prove."

Tess had forgotten. She was basically walking up to her execution. Every step was another thread wrapped into the noose. "Yeah," she replied. What else was she going to say, "I'm going to give it a try once we're up there."

"Can you stop and look at me for a second?" Mairaela asked, holding Tess' arm.

Tess paused and looked at her. The Fey had a teary look in her eyes. Her hands were shaking a bit. "Are you lying to us?" She asked.

A thousand questions rushed through Tess' mind, but she replied hastily, "No."

Mairaela searched Tess' eyes, her gaze flitting back and forth between them. They stood face-to-face for some time before, eventually, Mairaela said, "Okay."

They climbed the stairs in silence after that. Gwendolyn and Joyona were out of sight, but Tess could still hear the rattle of Joyona's armor and, occasionally, Gwendolyn would call out to Tess and Mairaela to check on them. Almost to the top, Mairaela spoke softly, "I'm going to defend you. When we get back, I mean. I'm going to convince them that you're good."

Tess paused in her place, and Mairaela passed her on the stairs. She wanted to say something, but "thank you" didn't quite feel like enough. Mairaela seemed content to move on, anyway, so Tess simply followed in her footsteps.

At the top of the stairs, Tess looked around at the room that opened up to her. Joyona stood in front of a pedestal. A beam of light was shooting out of it and into the sky above. Mairaela and Gwendolyn were waiting for Tess at the top of the stairs. Gwendolyn wiped some sweat from her brow and shot Tess a proud smile, "Good to see you survived. A lot of stairs, huh?"

Tess nodded her head. She just had to smile when Gwendolyn was smiling. For some reason, seeing her typically serious face upturned into happiness always brought Tess extreme joy. Mairaela clapped Tess on the ass, much to her shock, and chuckled, "Now for the best part, or so I hear."

Rubbing her stinging rump, Tess approached the pedestal with the others, standing beside Joyona. The giantess looked into the light, her own eyes glowing white.

"Is she okay?" Tess asked with some concern on her face.

"Yeah," Gwendolyn said with a big grin, "Look into the light. You'll see."

Tess did as she was told, though she had to bring up a hand, peering underneath it at the blinding rays. Eventually, the light grew and grew until, even when she closed her eyes, she could see it through her eyelids. Eventually, the intensity seemed to dim, and when Tess opened her eyes again, she was standing atop a marble floor, but the room was infinitely large, with no walls or ceiling in sight. The pedestal, too, was gone.

"Tess."

Tess whipped around, only to find Miri standing behind her. Her body relaxed a bit and she cocked her head, "How are you here? I thought you can't manifest in the Void."

"We're in your head," Miri replied, "Whenever you cut away a piece of the Black Sun, you meet the old god you freed. He awakens a piece of your soul. It's... empowering. Sometimes they'll give some sort of artifact. Other times they advance your gift. Often it's both. They are usually grateful. But it depends on the god."

"You've done this before?" Tess asked.

Miri nods, "It was a long time ago."

Tess was curious, but looked forward instead, "Where is the old god?"

"His name is Arkaid. He's not coming this time. He had been free since the first Void Exercise was conducted, but... not anymore. He's back with the Black Sun."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"I-..." Miri started, pausing.

"What did you do?" Tess asked. Even Tess felt like her words were harsher than she meant them to be.

Miri frowned, "I did my best."

Tess' heart sank. The room crumbled away and Tess was back beside the pedestal. Its light was gone. Miri was gone.

"What was that?" Gwendolyn asked.

Mairaela looked confused, "Was that all? I don't feel anything. There was no... nothing. No god. No... advancement. No awakening."

Joyona looked contemplative.

"Something isn't right," Gwendolyn replied, "But we don't have time to figure it out. We need to get out of here. Maybe Philomena will know."

Ahead of them, just beyond the pedestal, a portal was shimmering. It wasn't there before looking into the light, but it stood there now. Starlight was just beyond it, nestled upon a blanket of a midnight blue sky.

Each of them, one by one, stepped through the rippling surface of the portal and, one by one, they reemerged in the Void Chamber back at Kravana Hall. Except, this time, the black, chaotic, spherical void was gone.

Guards were present. Twice as many as there'd been when the group initially departed. Weapons were drawn, readied against them. Without their Gifts, they were mortal. Furthermore, they were weaponless, armorless. They had no choice but to put their hands into the air and await instruction.

Philomena filed into the room behind a man with salt-and-pepper hair, a short beard and dark, thick eyebrows. He was dressed finely, and given that Philomena looked subservient to him, he must've been someone of importance.

"Ladies," Philomena started, "This is Lord Brandt, Dean of the College." The Dean looked between the four women present. "We have some questions to ask you."

The party each nodded their understanding, eyes flitting around to the weapons drawn upon them.

"First and second," Brandt said, his voice as rough as gravel, "Where is the Void and what did you do to it?"

Chapter 45 - Probation

The inquiry lasted several days. A step-by-step retelling of the events from each of the party members. Miri coached Tess through it. Tess wouldn't be surprised if Miri also had a gift in lying, because her explanations for the most awkward events were rather reasonable. Oddly enough, Philomena's attempts to scry their whereabouts or activities never worked. Apparently this happened from time to time, but it was rare. Either there was something that blocked it, or Tess and the others were exceptionally lucky. They hadn't been too lucky in the past, as far as Tess could remember, so she predicted it was the former.

Unfortunately, Tess did need to tell them about her repeated sexual experiences with Mairaela and the brief moment with Gwendolyn. Luckily the question as to what she fucked Mairaela with never came up, so that secret remained, for which Tess was grateful.

In the end, all of their stories must have matched up, because the questioning stopped. They had the routine experience, up until there's a memory gap in the swamp. Then they experienced no advancement at the end; no visit from a god. Tess had expected to be dragged away to a cell at any moment. The instant that anyone in their party brought up the possibility that she was a Dark Wyrden, it was over for her. Apparently, that never happened. Brandt and his questioners made their own rationale for the events, but Tess and the others were deemed careless, but not malicious.

They were given a week of probation and extra duty.

Probation meant they couldn't conduct training and were prohibited from many rooms in Kravana. The library was one of them, which was disappointing because Tess wanted to visit Scirocca. In fact, they weren't allowed to go near the upper-class dormitories. Even worse, Gwendolyn's fancy room was taken from her, too, as a part of the punishment. They were relegated to the barracks, a place for the Kravana guardsmen, not even members of the Corps that traverse the Black Sun.

Tess was just happy to be alive, but the dishonor was hitting Gwendolyn hard. She hardly spoke on the first day of their extra duty, which had been sweeping and mopping the halls. She was no better the day after. On the second day, much to Tess' enjoyment, they were to feed and brush the Sevarran drakes. Throwing the torn shreds of raw meat into the air for the drakes--eight feet of scales, muscle and powerful wings--was actually fun, Tess thought. Mairaela was enjoying it too. She made friends with a drake named Ifa, who nuzzled her for a moment. Tess couldn't get any of them to be quite so fond of her, but it was sweet to see Mairaela so happy.

Joyona just handled it like any other mission. She handled most of the brushing, since scraping over those scales took a lot of muscle. Plus, with the drakes being so tall, it was difficult to reach their necks without them being cooperative. There was a moment when Tess was about to get pinched between two fighting drakes and Joyona managed to pull her out of it.

There was even a Napori Gryphon, a beautiful, white-chested and gold-winged bird-lion. It mostly just watched Tess with a cocked head, but whenever she'd get close to its enclosure, it would squawk, snap and strike at her with its talons. Tess kept her distance after that. Still, it was quite the sight to behold.

Still, she felt that the Sevarran drakes were much more passive and well-trained. It wasn't much of a surprise, given that Sevarra makes a great deal of their money by trading their high-class drakes. Apparently the mountains surrounding Sevarra were once full of drake nests. Now they were all brought together under camps, trained from birth and selected for breeding depending on certain traits. The thought made Tess sad, so she focused instead on the happiness of the drakes in front of her.

Even still, despite all of these curiosities and opportunities to learn, Gwendolyn did not seem very pleased with her current lot in life.

The third and fourth days were not so enjoyable. One of them, the four were split up and Tess got stuck delivering food to guardsmen at their posts. The guardsmen were happy to see her and were grateful to receive their food, which was nice, but somewhere between their catcalls as she walked away, having to lug heavy objects back and forth, and spending so much time on the freezing parapets of this high-altitude castle Tess was reason enough to find plenty of distaste for the task. Still, apparently Joyona had to clean the disgusting state of the prison walls. Tess couldn't imagine what could've been smeared all over them.

On their fifth day, they were to pack crates of goods and deliver them to the Ritual Circle. Apparently they were being sent down to Hastenburgh and brought to a ship at Oar's Rest. Tess got to meet Timo, captain of The Bowman, and his first mate Merrill, an ash dwarf. Tess specifically liked Merrill, whose eyes lit up like a stoked flame whenever she took a puff of her cigar. They spoke of Syln Caelora, the capital of the Winter Court, and adventures of bribing merfolk to be allowed past their islands.

Captain Timo even spoke of meeting Ondrasaith, one-third of the Cysefin Clutch, known to many as She Who Swam Beyond the Stars. It is said that she is old enough to know the previous goddess of the sea, before the current god--Nyx--came into power. She swam the oceans in the moon of Proteus and dove into the magic-churning guts of stars. Timo grinned a golden smile when asked and said, "And it's all true."

Merrill talked about being a miner in the city of dragons for two decades before a legendary pirate named Mika Weller saved her from that dangerous, inescapable fate. She spoke of Mika like a bandit hero for all the things he did for her.

It was all so inspiring. Sometimes it was hard to remember that there was a world outside of the College and Corps; outside of Tess' little world. For a moment, she wished that she could explore it, but had to remind herself that she was tied to the Black Sun and that she needed to find answers there. "Maybe someday," she thought, "Maybe Gwen, Mairaela, Joyona and I can travel together. Once all of this is over."

Nothing special happened the day after, but on their last day of extra duty, Tess met Aster. Aster was a fire spirit, sent from the Twilight Court, the realm of the Archfey and the afterlife that all good Fey awaited at their life's end. The Twilight Court was inexplicable to anyone that had never been there, but Aster tried anyway. The little ball of fire danced around, his little stick legs poking out of his flaming body, with two dark specks for eyes. He didn't get much across, just a lot of gibberish about emotions moving you, time working like a spiral staircase, and your true form showing through the facade. It sounded magical and honestly? Quite scary.

By the end of it all, Tess hoped that she would have more experiences like that in the College and Corps, or else she was going to have to find a way to get back on extra duty. Sure, a great deal of it was awful, but those moments to hear of the outside world were incredible.

"We could go there," Miri urged her, "Travel the world."

"But everyone we know is here," Tess replied, "And the Black Sun-..."

"Is dangerous. Is not going anywhere. Is not worth the answers we may get from it," Miri responded.

"I'm not leaving," Tess insisted, "Not unless we all are."

Chapter 46 - Maupoissant

Now that their probation was over, the team was going to be assigned to a handler. The handler was responsible for picking missions, briefing them, and sending the crew into the areas of the Black Sun that needed immediate pruning. When they read their assignments, even Joyona's face blanched at the name of their officer: Maupoissant.

"Why is this a bad thing?" Tess asked.

"It's the brigade commander. Command Akosua Maupoissant," Gwendolyn replied with a dismal tone.

Tess was confused, "But wouldn't that mean we have more opportunities and access to things?"

Joyona shook her head, "Not with Commander Maupoissant. She'll tear us apart and spit the pieces down the mountain." Joyona sounded more scared than she had in the Void. Tess smirked at the idea that Joyona was more scared of encountering people than encountering monsters.

Mairaela let out a sigh, "They're probably doing this to us on purpose."

Tess frowned. Things had been so sad since they came back. Tess was just happy to be alive, but perhaps this isn't the start that the others expected to have in the Corps.

As they sat in their briefing room, waiting for the commander to arrive, everyone appeared antsy. Restlessly shaking feet, knuckles rapping on the table, and a few instances of deep breathing and sighing created the symphony of stress that they all experienced during the wait.

When the door did open, Tess' three allies jumped to their feet. Tess followed after, stumbling as she rose, but trying to mimic her friends.

The person that entered was young, Tess realized. How they described Commander Maupoissant Tess expected an old witch. This woman must've been around Joyona's age. Her hair was big, black and curly, surrounding her head but not covering her right ear. She was a little taller than Tess, but not as tall as Gwendolyn, but her build was just about as slender as the Dame's. Her skin was the color of a honeyed almond, but it was her eyes that drew Tess to her. Maupoissant's eyes were the bluest eyes that Tess had ever seen. They practically glowed with their ice-blue hue.

"You can rest," she said, and everyone took a seat once more. "My name is Captain Kofi Maupoissant," she explained, "And I have been assigned to be your handler."

Captain Kofi? She must be a relative. Everyone around her looked relieved and Kofi must have noticed.

"Glad that you weren't assigned to my mother?" She asked, giving a laugh, "Me too. She was my 'handler' for my first sixteen years. They don't subject people to that torture anymore. She no longer does that work."

Tess smiled. So far, she liked Captain Kofi Maupoissant.

"Okay, so I received the debrief from your Void Exercise. Not that I needed it. Everyone seems to know about it by now," Kofi gave a sigh, "Which is a problem. The worse our reputation, the worse the jobs we are offered by the Corps. So, we're starting a little behind the curve."

"I'm signing everyone up for classes in the College," Kofi explained, much to the dismay of Tess' team. They didn't speak out against the order, but they didn't look all that happy with it. "You're not going to miss out on any training, but you are going to miss out on some sleep," Kofi explained, "The classes you're in are going to be in addition to your typical duties. They're only six week courses, but doing this extra time will put you in a better light to the Corps."

Gwendolyn nodded her head. It seems she came around to the idea.

"Do any of you know how jobs are handed out here?" Kofi asked.

Mairaela spoke up, "The Corps assigns them according to the abilities of each team."

"Yes, but," Maupoissant responded, "There's some math to it. It's a points-based system, and you earn points from past missions, from successful training and-..."

"College courses," Tess interrupted. Immediately she knew how rude she'd been and she insisted, "Oh, gods, I'm sorry, Captain."

"No, that's right," Kofi waved away Tess' concern, "So we're putting in the extra work. Training and courses. We'll get some assignments under our belt and you'll be on your way to the inner layers of the Black Sun before you know it."

"So, Dame Gwendolyn, you'll be taking Aura Basics with Soveliss. That will help you improve your abilities the most," the Captain explained, and Gwendolyn nodded. "Joyona, you'll have a Denizens class with Cira. Learn well, since that knowledge could mean the survival or defeat of your entire team." She looked to Mairaela and explained, "For you, Miss Aulidwulf, I give a choice: Corps Combatives, Mind and Body Meditation or Advancement Theory."

Mairaela considered the options and then answered, "Advancement Theory, Captain."

Kofi wrote the decision down, nodded, and replied, "That will be with Scirocca in the library."