Epilogue: Shouldering the World-- A Vagrant’s Story Begins
Where do Dark-stained souls go when they die?
The mantle of Master of Lea Monde passed to a new bearer, and in the process many new souls felt the touch of the Dark. All --excepting one, of course-- were sent into the arms of an incomplete death.
Before, the spell songs etched into every wall of the City would trap them within its bounds, forever confined on this side of Oblivion. Insane and vicious, those rotted souls’ very presence served to entice more of the Dark into the Wellspring, their hatred and pain feeding it.
But Lea Monde burned. Already in ruins before the blaze, the fire-gutted corpse could no longer be called even a shell of its former self. Unfortunately, those wretched souls once stuck within it were not allowed the freedom brought by destruction, though their cage was now gone. So where do they all go now?
And what will happen to the survivors? That handful of people who survived the fires and earthquakes that leveled the old City yet bear the Dark’s taint. What will happen to them when they die?
Ashley knows.
A living bridge between the world of the Dark and the world of Mankind; successor to pure power, Ashley Riot knows. The logic of Life, the meaning of Death, and the Fate of those forever trapped in between-------
It was late on a rainy evening, precisely one week after the extremist religious cult “Mullenkamp” staged an attack on the estate of Duke Bardorba. In the trading city of The Graylands, at his secondary residence, a lone visitor begged an audience with the recuperating Duke. It was hardly an appropriate hour for any visitor, let alone one requesting personal audience with Duke Aldous Byron Bardorba on his sickbed. Were this visitor anyone other than who he was, the Chamberlain would have told him politely, but coldly, to call again at a more suitable time of day, and have him shown out.
However, this visitor showed the credentials of a VKP agent. This was not someone the Chamberlain had the power to admit or dismiss, he had to ask the Duke himself.
Thus it was that the visitor --Ashley Riot-- gained entrance to the Duke’s bedchambers.
Looking back, all the servants mentioned how the entire evening had been somewhat odd, an air of vague abnormality suffusing everything. Usually, the Duke was long asleep by that hour. Yet that night he made no move to dim his candles, sitting up the whole evening as if he were waiting for someone he’d long expected to come.
Upon showing Agent Riot in, the Chamberlain did as the Duke ordered, having every servant within and nearby the Duke’s private apartments, including himself, withdraw. Predictably, of what then happened between the two men there was not a single witness.
Four and a half hours later, the Chamberlain returned to the rooms to inquire after the situation. Suspicious at the complete lack of sound from within, he entered without waiting for permission. Ashley was nowhere to be seen. The Duke’s body, hours dead, lay serenely upon his bed, looking more at peace than he had in years.
The VKP’s reaction to the Duke’s demise was swift. Their spies within the residence had barely finished reporting the death before the Coroner’s Squad was knocking on the door. Scant minutes later, the Duke’s apartments were cordoned off and the autopsy begun. No signs were found of either external injury nor poisons. Given that he had been ill for an extensive period of time, the logical conclusion was that he’d finally succumbed to it.
Answer enough, as far as the public would be concerned. Yet there remained the matter of Ashley’s presence at the time and, unbeknownst to most, his mission. The Riskbreaker may have found it necessary to assassinate the Duke and, to avoid later troublesome investigations, made the murder look like a natural death. Ashley’s position as the last man to see the Duke alive was evidence enough of that possibility.
Were this incident truly an extension of his mission concerning the Mullenkamp attack a week prior, then it had been Ashley’s judgment that, for the peace and safety of Valendia, its most revered National Hero needed to die. To do so for such reasons was well within his rights as a Riskbreaker, so of course he would face no charges. In fact, the VKP would throw all its might into a coverup, even going so far as to brainwash any possible witnesses.
Thus, the entire residence was shut down and sealed off, the VKP fully expecting a report from Ashley inside the hour, informing them of a situation along the lines of their supposition.
Twelve hours later, there was no report. There was no Ashley either, VKP Headquarters realizing it could no longer locate its foremost agent. In that instant, the VKP’s attitude towards the situation made a sudden about-face. Ashley had gone AWOL. It had become more likely that the Duke’s assassination was not for reasons of national security, but for Ashley’s own personal reasons. Given that, the now former-Riskbreaker’s license to kill was rendered null and void. His actions were no longer considered the erasure of a national threat, but the premeditated murder of a high noble and renowned public figure. The VKP immediately assembled and deployed a search-and-capture team.
Twenty-four hours after the Duke’s demise an official, public announcement labeled Ashley Riot the foremost suspect in the most foul murder of the beloved Duke Aldous Byron Bardorba.
Yet, counter to the expectations of the VKP’s top brass, the dragnet they believed had been set up with lightning speed failed to capture even the slightest trace of Ashley‘s whereabouts. It was almost as if he’d vanished from the Duke’s bedchambers in a puff of smoke.
The entire search yielded only one lead, and a tiny one at that. A sentry mentioned that while on routine patrol duty the night of the murder, he came across Inquisitor Callo Merlose, Ashley’s assigned partner in the Mullenkamp investigation, loitering on the outskirts of the Duke’s residence near the time of the murder. Prior to that sighting, Inquisitor Merlose’s last report had come a week earlier, mentioning the decision to pursue the cult to Lea Monde. It was possible that she had been an accomplice to Ashley's crime.
Unfortunately even that small lead came to a rapid dead end, for after that single sighting she too disappeared just as thoroughly as Ashley had……
A steady, cold rain pelted the cobblestones. Ashley stood at the mouth of a dim alleyway, quietly watching the Duke’s bedchamber window. He stood patiently, waiting. Sydney Losstarot had borrowed his face and his name for one last visit to the Duke, and he would be returning shortly.
And return he did; in soul, anyway. His body had turned to black ash a little while before. With him came the Duke, their deaths intertwined, as decreed by their unique compact with the Dark.
Lea Monde was gone. Its rune-carved walls destroyed, they could no longer bind the Dark-cursed dead. Instead, as one they flowed into a new vessel--- Ashley himself. Accepting an uncountable number of souls, an uncountable number of lost dreams, Ashley provided a peaceful haven for every last, condemned one.
He’d come to terms with being Master of the Dark and his duty, as he saw it, was not to rule, but to stabilize. Unlimited power had been granted him not to use as he pleased, but to enable him to smooth out the wrinkles where the world of the Dark collided with Reality.
As Master of the Dark, Ashley knows. The path the survivors of Lea Monde will take is as plain as day to him. Callo, Tieger, Neesa, even young Joshua; any road they choose will inevitably lead to him. If not in life, then of a certainty in death. Their flight to paradise could go no other way.
Under the black leather trench coat, his destiny inked fine lines across his back. Shouldering the burdens implicit in that contract, Ashley turned away from the now-bustling residence and began to walk. The rain-drenched alley ran ahead of him, the beginning of an endless path into a place of eternal twilight, a place unfathomable to the mortal mind; the seam where Reality and Magic melt together.
And so begins the story of the wanderer---- the vagrant.