Elegy for a Star

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.”