Indecision, Doubt

Paige Altern and Anton Clearheart met up with Lief Starchaser and Korah Fairheart at their usual, late-night meeting place. It was a rough, sandy clearing at the top of a bluff that was encircled my round stones placed surface to surface beside each other. Though they nor anyone else had taken claim to it, it was left unmolested nonetheless. In its center there was a hearth and Korah lit that hearth that five, not four, usually gathered around. They shared a scant meal of salted meat and robust cheeses mostly, yet without any conversation as was usual and also didn't stay up too late, though they usually would have.

It had been a long day, and while nobody had said so, it was a common understanding that there needed to be no conversation to leave by. Nobody knew why A'Rann Adams had returned and Leif Starchaser knew him not at all, but had knew men very much like him. It wasn't just the brief time—less than an hour of daylight, really—that Leif judged the man, but by what he wrote. He wasn't a brute, but an intellectual. One that was esteemed in some way by Drakkhar.

That in itself was odd, and not only to Leif.

Alana Darkheart was extremely nocturnal and spent many nights honing her connection with the spirit that had so driven her every action as long as she could remember, not unlike the way that Leif had taught many of the others in The White Guard, she had taken the opportunity to do so as well, yet less often. In the end she isolated herself from the others, or tried to. It wasn't always possible, she sometimes lamented. She battled with her nomadic tendencies and thought it likely someday that she would leave the Guard completely and never look back lest she start to form roots in the dunes and rock of the Oasis and the Hallowed Dunes that surrounded it on all sides—that simply could not happen.

She thought herself alone in this, but was not.

While not near enough for her to know Stothek Stromsten, who had royal blood that, prior to the Empires rise, had been a great leading force on Aenim, shortly after the Stasis had ended—the man, one of light for a surety—felt a connection and draw to the dark woman that he simply couldn't deny. He felt that time coming again and often knew, not thought, that if Alana left, he would do so as well, and likely--at least at first--by the same road. He wanted desperately to help her, and knew ways he could do so should she ever trust him to do so. The Guard wasn't for him and through heavy morning meditation, knew his family—maybe even his true blood, his ancestors—called for him to take up arms against The Empire. He thought Alana Darkheart had a similar duty that bound her and he made oath to both his blood and the light of the Lifestream itself, to do his best to bring her and append her to his calling.

Not all of the White Guard were so hopeful, of course.

Knight-General Adam Jenners, who had taken to enjoying the rest of the day as bid his Lord and Commander that he had sworn a blood oath to long ago, would serve until unable. He could see the tides of change nearing, but knew in a way he could not describe that he would pass the reigns of the Guard to someone—one who he had appeared to him—when duly necessary. Oasis would not fall, and neither would The White Guard, nor Drakkhars Pariah's Army--and he felt the time coming and thought perhaps what passed between he and Drakkhar that night was an omen like that of a kiss from a succubus—or perhaps a Warlock, even—of some end coming near. A'Rann Adams was no defector, he truly thought, but the Knight-General was indeed as pragmatic as they came and could only do his duty, for that really was all the man had left. And while that was so, he was stung by a sense developed only by the many years he had lived, felt suspicion of the highest order and of the worst kind. He didn't know what he was suspicious of, exactly.

Everything else had gone, he knew that well enough though he loathed to admit it—to himself or to anybody else. All his thoughts and concentration centered on the man who should've been treated as prisoner, no matter his writing nor his history with the White Guard, but was not.