Mystara: Dirge of Tomorrow Part I Humility Rewritten

Writer’s note: I liked so little the story I first wrote that I wanted to revisit it and rewrite it to my original intentions. In the process I have adhered more to canon issues raised by Alex. I intend to follow this up with Part II by the end of the evening.

Part 1: Humility

A story of how Aramil Korellin came to know Lady Erela Ravyn

His finger pressed firmly in place where he had stopped, Aramil peered up from the tome to the small class gathered behind desks in front of him. Some of the students scribbled down hasty notes, dabbing their quills in and out of their wells of ink as quick as their hands could master—others were lost gawking at the play of light below the stained glass windows lining the northern wall of the room. Of one thing Aramil was certain—that none of them seemed as enthusiastic as he would have been at their age.

“Their age,” he thought.

He wasn’t too much older than a few of them in the room. He often forgot how time seemed to have dragged while caught up in the nonsense of state politics. He pushed the thought aside and released the pressure off his finger, following the next line and putting it to memory. Pulling his eyes off the tome he took a step away from the polished podium at the front of the room. With both hands he rubbed down the length of his torso, patting out the air caught beneath his robes and leaned against the northern wall next to a stained glass window depicting the death of the Immortal Halav.

“To many at the time, Halav became a martyr when he died at the hands of a gnoll’ish blade.” He paused, taking a moment to look at the dramatized scene of Halav being struck down as he impaled his own bronzed blade onto the gnoll horde’s champion. “His death symbolized those of the kingdom who would not sit idle as danger loomed on their doorstep, but instead chose action.”

Aramil shrugged, holding his hands out helplessly as he began walking the length of the glass-covered wall, casting his shadow over the desk of each student in-turn. “But not everyone was content in believing he was a figure of such divine empowerment and sacrifice—as a matter of fact, many thought him nothing more than a pompous warmonger.” He closed his hands, pacing back up to the front of the room, then jutted a robbed arm out underneath the window depicting the event. “As I would hope many of you know from previous education, or the act of living in these areas, what happened next.”

A few students, mainly the ones Aramil had come to rely on, raised their hands in the air—the quill of one young woman flicking out of her grip at the snap of action. With a polite smile and a nod Aramil motioned for her to speak.

The woman squirmed in her seat contentedly and leaned over to pick up her quill from the floor, squeezing a brief look of supremacy through her eyes and lips as she poised herself to answer the question, “Petra returned him to the living Sir Korrelin, to bring a hero back to the people he died to protect.”

Aramil furrowed his brows and tilted his head and strode up to the podium, slapping closed the book from which he was reading and presenting it in front of the class with one hand. “Yes Janis, but there was more to the story than that—Libri de Testis tells us of the real story after the fall of Halav. It tells us of two friends, stricken by Halav’s death, and disoriented among a land ripe still with the aftershocks of the great battle. It is within these pages that the Immortals themselves lay, and with that, more questions.” He leaned back up, breaking eye contact with Janis and crossing his arms over his chest, scratching his beard in idle thought. Raising an index finger against the side of his head and tapping thoughtlessly a coy smile spread across his face.

The tome tight in his grip Aramil moved forward and set the text down gently on the forward most students’ table, bringing up a small plume of dust between the pages of the aged text. A red ribbon marking the page firmly between his fingers, he glanced up to the class, his smile widening, “Who here has heard the story of ‘Marilenev’s Whore?’”

Janis promptly dropped her quill. The rest of the students acted in kind—yanking their attention off outlining the grain of the wood on their desks with a finger to gawking at the coy looking professor’s use of language in a liturgical institution. Janis fumbled for her quill on the floor, using the opportunity to twist around and look at a variety of mixed reactions throughout the hall. She looked up to find Aramil’s gaze focused solely on a lone hand in the back row that rose past the silence of the young scholars.

Unfamiliar to the face, Aramil sidestepped into the column between two rows of desks and walked slowly down the isle, committing the woman’s expression to memory. A rogue hair had slipped over her face as she watched Aramil walk closer, which was soon brushed aside with a finger, tucked cautiously behind the tip of her pointed ear. Her face spoke of the timeless charisma that could only take place when a man and elf had fallen in love. Stopping just short of her desk, she lowered her hand and pushed a few books back into her tote before meeting Aramil’s coy smile with an unwelcoming gaze. Her eyes spoke every bit as strongly as the words that escaped her mouth.

“Well? Do you want to hear it?” She questioned.

“You have read Libri de Testis before?”

She retorted, “I would assume any here faithful to the pantheon in the Church of Karameikos wouldn’t overlook reading such an important text.”

“Indeed.” Aramil smiled, taking an extra second between conversation to examine this woman who he had never seen in his class before.

Her eyes brimmed with practiced patience and fathomless depth—a reflection of two perfectly cut sapphires in the moonlight. He couldn’t help but admire her half-elven features—the slight sharpness of the chin, a slight tint of blue to her mixed complexion. Nothing about her clothes spoke of the faith at which she adhered as so many of the other students had grown accustoming to donning through their classes. He idly wondered after peeling his eyes from hers the books she had so consciously slid back into her tote.

“Figures who are key to our pantheon play a pivotal role, no doubt—but it was in a prostitute’s faith that saved our Immortals that day, not heroics alone,” he finally responded.

The other students in the class leaned over, each whispering in the other’s ear—the hall filled with hushed murmurs similar to wind passing over a window. Aramil raised a hand, gathering the student’s attention. He stepped away from the half-elven student who had raised her hand and worked his way back down the brightly lit wall of windows, propping a few open to allow some air to pass in as he took his place back at the podium.

Taking only a moment to try and decipher the half-elven woman’s newest glare, he wasted no time in beginning the story, “When Halav had fought in the last great battle to keep the Traladar of this land free from their gnoll’ish invaders, he was mortally wounded and lay on the battlefield near death. Once the fog had cleared, Libri de Testis tells us that once Petra and Zirchev found him—he lay lifeless under the body of the gnoll champion. At the sight of their friend, bloodied and battered, Petra and Zirchev wept openly and took Halav’s body off the field toward the village of Marilenev.”

He paused, scanning the room and waiting for a few students to finish taking their notes. Quills scratched on thick sheets of parchment, trying to keep up. Only the patient look of the woman in the back met his eyes before he stepped forward and took hold of the book once again, flipping back to where he had marked the page.

“Petra and Zirchev were well known, but were considered in league with a man who threatened the sovereignity of many of the lords of the time. Taxed after the battle, both Petra and Zirchev knew the only place they could find peace among the still-fighting armies of human and gnoll was within the small trading village of Marilenev. They came with Halav’s lifeless body to the house of a prostitute named Miroslava, who lived just on the outskirts of the village. Miroslava took them into their home and gave them every comfort she could afford, despite warnings of her Lord who had earlier proclaimed death to any citizen found harboring the host of Halav.”

“When a patrol happened by to question why she had burned her candles so late into the night, Miroslava quickly rushed the three into a space below the floor of her home, keeping them from view of the Lord’s patrol. After the guardsmen had left, Petra and Zirchev emerged from the crawlspace below the house and asked her, ‘Why would a prostitute help those who bring death in our aide by her Lord?’”

“Miroslava spent little time in thought and smiled meekly at the two, bending over to help them lift body of Halav from the crawlspace, ‘I have faith in that Halav will come back to us, to rule this land and inherit this village. I ask only that when you come to claim it, that you spare this house, and those who dwell inside.’ Petra, moved by the faith of the prostitute’s words, knelt before her fallen friend and sobbed quietly by his side. Minutes later Petra stood and hugged the woman, ‘That will be granted, for your love has shown me just how precious Halav is to us all.’”

“Miroslava stayed by Petra’s side the whole night, praying silently to the quiet chanting of Petra’s healing words. By morning the body of Halav stirred and began to move—within hours he had the strength to sit up on his own and leave the house. Having heard the story of Miroslava’s faith and gracious nature, Halav swore his oath that no harm would come to her, and left the village to return to what remained of his troops.”

Aramil paused, taking a moment of silence to let the story sink into the heads of his students. Mindlessly stroking his beard he waited only a moment before he began to pace the room, “Those of us who have come to place our faith in Halav, Petra, or Zirchev, are reminded in this story that simply because there are those in society who do acts which are not pious, they are not any less of a templar than the man or woman holding the sword. Miroslava’s faith was unwavering, yet every bit as strong as Petra or Zirchev—perhaps even more faithful.”

The students sat in silence, reflecting over his words in the story they had just heard. Content for the lesson, and eager to leave on a thoughtful moment in the lecture, Aramil strode back up the front to his podium, sliding out from his hand and wedging it under his arm. When he looked up, his eyes met with the woman’s once more—she then broke the silence, somehow he knew it would be her.

He shifted his feet and glanced to the back to see the half-elven woman’s features flushed. Making eye contact she swallowed deep, furrowing her eyebrows as she broke eye contact and looked down into a book which had sat out of sight in her lap, “You preach us pious and unwavering faith Sir Korrelin? Yet, have these students not read stories of your fall from Halav’s grace? How you neglected to hold on to the same piety which even made a prostitute beloved in the eyes of the Immortals?”

Each student froze, their pained expressions looking up to Aramil as if suddenly having thought to ask the same question. The birds outside could not be heard, and nary a student shifted in their seat—the room began to feel more like his tomb than a lecture hall.

His tongue felt like a damp piece of papyrus being rubbed between two stones. As quickly as he could manage he broke eye contact from the woman and pulled free the book from underneath his arm, rubbing his thumbs softly over the golden letters of Libri de Testis.

“Did she really just ask that? Am I actually going to answer that?”

Having swallowed his pride long ago Aramil nodded his head between his sunken shoulders and mentally prepared a response. Coughing into a hand he straightened his back and looked out past the students till he found eye contact with the dark-auburn haired woman once again. Aramil furrowed an eyebrow for the question to come and set a foot forward, shifting weight to his left foot. “Where were you during the invasion?”

She sat up straight in her chair, caught off guard by the question, “Which invas—“

“The invasion of Karameikos.” Aramil answered.

She lifted the book off her lap and closed it over the desk. He could clearly see then the golden “J.C.” engraved on the spine just before her blue robes draped over when she crossed her arms over her chest, accepting the game. “I was in Darokin, studying.”

Aramil took a step forward, “What do you remember of the invasion?”

She blinked, curious but compelled to answer, “I remember arriving in Threshold during the liberation—when thousands had gathered to travel back home after the displacement.”

Unconsciously, his eyes narrowed, “Thousands died to make that liberation possible. Only fifty knights survived the entire invasion.”

She snatched the book from the table and tipped it in the air at him before setting it back in her pack, “Oh, I know, and we have all read—you were in Mirros, saving our very King. Both Falconwell and Zulanov wrote much about you during that time.”

Aramil took another step forward, half ignoring the answer, “What do you know of hardship?”

She hesitated.

“I returned and found my country a former shadow of what it had been. I returned to find my countrymen beaten and abused—at the doorstep of defeat.”

She opened her mouth to speak, Aramil didn’t give her the chance, “I saw first hand the slaughter of Kelvin—the towns and armies slain by the Black Wraith’s command. My countrymen where not concerned with me, or what I could do, but struggling just to survive.”

She closed her mouth, and instead fixed him with the trapped glare of a cornered scholar hot in debate. Aramil continued, taking another step forward till he was at the front of her desk, and leaned into her face, “I had the chance to bring an end to the invasion, and I let my hatred swing the sword—not the laws of our people, or Halav.” He leaned back, turning his back to the woman and stepping back up to the podium in a resolute manner.

“I fell from Halav’s grace because I let my emotions swing in my stead. I don’t pretend to be as pious as any Imortal—or the prostitute that saved them. I seek forgiveness for my actions still to this day.” Aramil shifted his gaze, to the half-elven woman’s bag, “Do not read the words of others and assume that you understand who I am, or what I stand for. Believe the words from my mouth—and try to learn from the mistakes that I have already made.”

The wind picked up outside the classroom, stirring dust along the floor where some of the windows had been cracked open. Aramil eyed each student in-turn, giving them an equally icy stare until in the last seat his eyes fell on the questioning woman, and the tears brimming around her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

His heart sank. Around him everyone stood up and left the room one-by-one in silence until just he and woman stood face to face. Each tear that rolled down her cheek he could feel a similar tug on his heart.

“Why should I care? Why should I apologize?”

She met his eyes. He could smell now her presence in the air—a hint of lavender that had followed behind her step.

He swallowed, “Did I go too far?”

Her lips parted, leaving a bitter tone in his ear as she spoke, “My name is Erela Ravyn, Sir Korrelin.” After a pause she added, “you didn’t know who I was.”

Aramil blinked at the reflection in her voice, “I have little doubt I have the need for similar introduction, you seem to have read to some extent on me already.”

She smiled painfully and tilted her head in agreement, “Indeed I have—you don’t resemble either Zulanov’s or Falconwell’s descriptions either. I wonder why you haven’t written of yourself and your adventurers, just as many of your compatriots have.”

“Not all stories deserve to be told—I am not an interesting man,” he replied.

She sniffed and wiped her face dry with the tip of her shirt, looking him in the eye with a fiery gaze and raising her eyebrow just as he had before, “Not everyone would agree with that.”

She took a step and passed him, walking for the door, the scent of saltwater and lavender flowing in her wake, “I don’t agree with that.”