Of fire and ghostly tendrils

Fire melts ice into water and water finally evaporates and floats away as mist.

The fire warms again. I can smell the ash and the soot. The red wind screams through me, flickers and almost ignites my pillow as I awake. Was it all a dream? No, Malice is real and she knows. Moreover, she showed me. Cinders and hellfire! However, we are alive. Sweet Sunniva smiles again. O joy.  A week out from Norsca the tight, tight grip around my neck and all of our necks finally lets go. Oh, how good it is to feel the fire flowing again. Things have been so dark and bleak but now the slightest flicker of the wick puts me in a fiercely good mood again. The team spirit is rising like hot smoke and we have good strong winds taking us south and away from Norsca and away from Malice. 

A growing concern among us is however the tablets. I fear what they represent exactly and if they will help unleash some untold chaos once the final pieces are in place. Discussions around the topic are futile though as the others are mindless obedient sheep and feel that we are under obligation to fulfill our mission. We are to return them to Salzemund and Charlotte at once.  

I fear our other mission and obligation to Malice is more important.

The voyage back is for the most part uneventful. Wary sailors are still reluctant to trust me and sweet Sunniva feels it is safest that I stay below. Safe for whom I wonder. The fire in me burns bright and I long all hours of the day to let the flames cleanse my surroundings.

Norland

Land! The Empire is spotted on the horizon on day 11. At last. It will feel good to set foot on dry land again. I dare say a few more days trapped down below and I might have turned the ship into a traditional Norscan floating funeral pyre.

We all disembark quickly and I unconsciously realize my whole body is literally glowing and smoldering as we step on hard land again. I let a few sparks and tongues of flame and smoke fill the surroundings. The first steps on Empire soil will be marked black with soot. We made it!

Johanna is quickly back in charge and decision is of course to involve the whole witchhunter guild in our business. I do not trust them. Why should anyone. Not that burning at the stake is a bad way to go, but they are to impulsive and one tracked for me. Always with the conspiracies. Will they allow the completion of our mission? Not that I mind, but a mere 4-5 days ago we were hell-bent on going directly to Charlotte. Now we are jeopardizing everything to involve these fundamentalists. There is a lot of doubt in the group regarding this. I sense it. It permeates through like the smell of bonfire on wet clothes.  Rough sketches are made and we spend some days gathering supplies and important components and mending armor and such in the small town of Heilagdorf.

A horse and carriage is acquired to ease the burden of transporting the heavy tablets. With the river frozen, we will be taking the winter road to Salzemund. Travelling again feels good though.

Every night I awake almost lighting the surroundings on fire. Malice still stirs. I fear she will come after us.

Luftberg

What a dump. With few travelers around our arrival is noticed by the whole town. We are hardly inconspicuous. The damned tablets are packed separately in big wooden craters. Johanna is wary of snoopy strangers and after she runs into an old acquaintance, she learns that brigands and bandits roam the countryside. Wisely, we hire a few more seasoned guardsmen to protect our quarry.

The journey is cold and hard but thankfully uneventful and takes us through Zeedorf and Stavern before the gates of Old Salzemund are reached.

Salzenmund

It warms the fire in my heart to be home again but I cannot help feel that we are taking the chill from Norsca and untold evils with us into it. Johanna reaches out at once with her kind at the witch hunter’s guild and the decision is somewhat surprising that we are to go through with the delivery and handover.

Of course, they have kept an eye on Charlotte and her accomplices, the scholar and the queer wizard, and nothing of yet is amiss. Very well. Our payment of 320 GC is paid in full and Charlotte who seems very excited to receive the last pieces. Our mission is over and we all long to regain our strength and fall back into a normal rhythm again.

I for one need to pour all my energy into mastering more of the red wind. I have felt it become stronger and it surges through me more willingly than before. Tweaking the wind, I am now able to become light as a feather and to create a subtle but scorching fire around me. Fanning the hot wind form this with my will I can now literally fly. I tremble with sparks and wisps of smoke every time I embark and for each day, this exercise becomes more and more natural. I requires considerable inner strength but my confidence in the red wind is absolute.

I join sweet Sunniva and Johanna on most daily excursions however. Sweet Sunniva seems more and more interested in the workings of the hunters and their inclination towards questioning and poking around in other people’s business. 

A soul's reckoning

Knowledge is all good and well but it always comes at a cost, as i well know, and one day at a visit to a Shallya temple I am somewhat ambushed into some sort of spiritual healing.

Both Johanna and sweet Sunniva have tarnished souls. Undoubtable from their pasts and our latest trip to that chaos land of Norsca.

Reluctantly I too let the priest try to soothe my spirit. This was however folly. I am at once drawn back to my dreadful encounter with Malice and relive the horrors revealed to me then. My soul however is not and cannot be dark as it is unquestionably a pure burning flame wanting only to be unleashed. I do not know exactly what the priest thinks she saw but she gave me a strange look.

Research

After this encounter, however, I grow wary and I decide to pour most of my time into old tomes. I start to look specifically for any information regarding Malice and the Fimir of the Norscan Swamp.

I find that the Fimir have been at wreckers point 100s of years ago and are probably able to come there by way of magical portals. From Malice’s swamp no doubt.

Disturbingly I also uncover stories of a siege of Salzemund laid down some 200 yrs ago by a Norscan warlord. It lasted 2 years and from what I could gather, he was probably looking for an artifact of sorts or a famous hidden and lost library belonging to an arch mage. Frustratingly no further information to the whereabouts of any are revealed. The wizard in question is though probably not of the strong wind of Aqshy but of the flat celestial breeze.

Sweet Sunniva and Johanna look into Ottmar and Charlotte. Piet sends money and messages back to his ship. The elf and his boy have not been seen for days now and I am told they left for the forest. I later learn that they uncovered terrible things.

Pouring though city ledgers and receipts it seems like Charlotte has sold off all her real estate in the last five years and sold it all to the Buchberg family. Who they are and what they want no one knows. It started 5 yrs ago. She sold 1-2 properties per year. She is into a lot of money. Yet no one in Salzemund really knows of other as she keeps a very low profile. This is a little disconcerting.

The library

Sweet Sunniva easily seduces some stupid student into showing her the secret library within the library at the city college. This library only contains illegal or banned books pertaining the undead and maybe also some of its foul arts.  

The following evening sweet Sunniva and I go back to look more at these books. Sweet Sunniva trusts in me to find the clues as I trust in her to deal with annoying people. The guard in front suspects nothing once sweet Sunniva lays her charms upon him. He lets us in after closing hours. An old scholar is in the secret library and almost catches us both but sweet Sunniva uses her charms again and he is none the wiser when he finally leaves. 

Lures and whispers

I spot a secret entrance to the library through my keen study of the walls while we wait for the old geezer to leave. Once inside the secret room there. are countless books on the undead. Time is short but sweet Sunniva learned a little from the stupid young scholar and this makes the search easier. There are stories about vampire witch hunters, Pallidus of course but also references towards a big ritual involving the tablets that will invoke immortality. Most disturbing. My keen senses of the winds also uncover a foul tome oozing with the wind of the dead.

Part of me is thrilled to uncover such a tome as this might mean that other tomes are about. Oh I long to find some tomes discussing the more intricate weaving of fire. Just thinking about it I almost ignite and undoubtedly would have torched the place down books and all with us in it. Sweet Sunniva stops me of course in time and we decide to get going, bringing the unholy tomes and the dead wind grimoire to Johanna. She will have something to say about, of that I am sure. I wonder though if reading the grimoire perhaps can be beneficial since it discusses the use of Dhar in a most uncanny way. I am sure I could master this easily and with it turn our enemies into charred remains. Using their own magic against them, wielding chaos to thwart chaos almost sounds fun. However, sweet Sunniva is probably right, we should let Johanna decide.

Ghostly chains

I later learn that meanwhile the elf and his boy is confronted in the forest concerning abundant whispers of Fimir being present at Wreckers point. They are surely there looking for us. Story would have it that they are yelling “Oathbreaker” and this gives me chills. Clear indication that Malice looking for us.

The witch hunters keep the grimoire of course and intend to destroy it.  Fools. I have no patience for ignorant beings. The fire rages through me and I can sense it flickering at my very fingertips when sweet Sunniva calms it again. A new path has been chosen for my sister. She is now to study the ways of investigating and this she will learn some of this from the Witch hunters. It is madness to learn from them but I can never win with sweet Sunniva. She is I and I am she; we are the same but in two parts. Without her, I would be all rage and fire. Impulse control is not my forte but as long as she is near all is calm,  I need her, and I want her to be happy.

The real Charlotte?

All the rumours and tomes and ledgers of evidence finally culminate in showing that Charlotte sold everything off and maybe was sick. Some evidence points to her being dead. Who is this person then? Impostor? Inquiry in her hometown confirms this. Blast and fireballs! We have been fooled. A lowly servant a little too fond of drink spills the whole story. Including gossip he tells all how Charlotte inherited everything from her father and then died of some mysterious disease. Buchbergers are involved somehow. Sinister involvement no doubt.

Piet and the elf’s boy try to infiltrate the summerhouse of Charlotte but meet a low guarded mansion and no more clues but confirmation that Charlotte is indeed dead. Now things move swiftly like wildfire at last.

The fire burns bright in me too and we race upon the request of the witch hunters to arrest the impostor and her crew with an entourage of commissioned guards.

A disappointing lack of confrontation

I relish in the opportunity to call on the winds and literally fly with fire and fury ready to burn anyone in our way to the ground but disappointingly, Charlotte’s city mansion is empty. The cowards have fled. Scarce are the clues to their whereabouts. The huge tablets form some sort of foul magical mural that perhaps serves as a navigational map of sorts. The wind is clearly chaotic but still I suspect a faint celestial current. Not surprisingly, as these fools are useless - except as pathfinders and confusionists.

It is too a weary matter for even me to figure out the arcane ramblings written on the walls and floors. As one of the suspects is of the celestial sort, we summon the celestial college high wizard to be of assistance. It is frustrating.

My inner fire is in turmoil.  We must wait again for clues. It is useless! We might as well set fire to the whole damned thing. Maybe that would have drawn their attention. Smoking them out so they can be dealt with properly.  Sweet Sunniva assures me that a different path is better though.