Seyashen, clad in his lighter colored robes, sat with his back propped on the easternmost side of the Bone College's fountain, looking over a letter he had received the day before in the clear early morning light. Iaden, invisible to all but his cousin, went through his sword drills as though he were still a Turathi footsoldier. As many mornings as he had done so, his ability to single handedly wield a sword obviously intended for two never ceased to amaze- and terrify- his still-living cousin. To keep the terror factor to a minimum, Iaden made sure to be just out of Seyashen's normal field of vision.
"It's a sweet gesture," Seyashen said, continuing a conversation that had been sputtering along prior to the letter's unsealing. "It's just completely incorrect. It's not her fault; she couldn't have known."
"You walked into the woman's house, with flowers that you said were for her. She even sent for you because of the sound of your voice alone, and you sat in her bedroom with her," Iaden pointed out, hefting his sword above his head in different directions, as though he were parrying strikes intended for his majestically horned head. "Her husband, when he was living, certainly suspected that you might have some sort of... something... going on. Something that hadn't been quite ended by his snatching her away from her village."
"The something that young Master Illance thought I had going on was blackmail," Seyashen corrected. "He believed that Abethann had gotten me by some demon, and that I had returned to demand inheritance from him... some such idiocy."
"But that was after you actually told him part of the poor woman's problem," Iaden noted. The sword, heavy and powerful, roared down behind Seyashen before being brought back up- first to practice parrying a strike intended for the left side of his midsection, then to slide up the pretend assailant's blade in the effort to force said blade back against the assailant's own body. "Before that, you were considered a failed suitor, to be consoled for your loss and sent away. Act the part; let the flower woman do what she said she would. If nothing else, it'll mean that she has to muster the strength to leave the house and walk down to the burial grounds every day, and that'll do her good."
"Her ancestors just barely managed to make sure that her daughter didn't get hurt or drowned just a week or so ago," Seyashen sighed. "It would be idiot to believe that those children didn't tell tales, and that their parents aren't looking for some way to quietly take revenge. Unless she could manage to safely get those flowers to the lover I did have, she might as well save her strength for her family, who needs her."
"What lover do you have?" Iaden asked, pausing an offensive forward sweep in the middle.
" 'Did', I said," Seyashen corrected. "You saw her. The woman by the river."
"Why didn't you tell me the whole story when I made that joke?" Iaden frowned. "We should find her. She said she wasn't dead."
"Eiko was different," Seyashen sighed. "She had an extraplanar being's definition of everything. She could have been saying that she wasn't dead because I remembered her, or that she couldn't die because she is pure psionic force, which exists as long as conscious thought itself does, something like that."
"Great, that'll make it easier," Iaden smirked, sheathing his sword behind himself. "Living or dead, a woman who says she is the power of thought itself is going to be easy to hear tell of."
"That's not what she says," Seyashen chuckled wearily. "Even if it were, she might still be hard to track. As... ahem... unique as Semnemac is, I never heard of him before I came to this city."
Iaden snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. "You weren't going to hear anything over the clanking of your guilt-chains in your ears, out on that mudflat that Dragonborn had you living on. If Mi'ishaen and her pack of pageant prancers hadn't accidentally brought the place crashing down in flame about your ears, you'd still be there. Now, where did you see Eiko last?"
"It's been thirteen years or so," Seyashen sighed. "I don't know that she's still with her tribe, or that her tribe is still in the same place as it was when I-"
"I can work with a general idea of the area, if that's all you have," Iaden pointed out.
"She hasn't just moved physically," Seyashen countered. "She was an attractive woman, extraplanar sensitivities and abilities or not. Attractive women, especially the daughters of tribal leaders, don't have the luxury of holding candles for lovers thirteen years gone."
"She's definitely 'holding a candle' for you," Iaden shrugged. "If she weren't, she wouldn't have shown up in the Axis."
"You showed up in the Axis," Seyashen argued. "What's more, I left in the night. I never told her- never said goodbye- just left. She could be very angry with me."
"I showed up in the Axis because I followed your sister, who showed up in Avernus specifically to lead me to you, and through you, to my own sister," Iaden said in a leaden tone. "Living or dead, Eiko showed up in the Axis and took you where you didn't know you had to go. If she's angry that she did that and didn't even get a 'thank you,' that's anger righteously leveled. We ought to find and thank her."
Seyashen sat with that thought for a while, allowing himself to see the world as he naturally saw it; a few shades lingering outside doors, standing behind relatives, tracing their steps over the cobbled stones, walking between and through the living people who could not see them at all.
"I treated Eiko's affection as though it were due me, as if I deserved it," Seyashen admitted. He put Daiirdra's letter aside and opened the second letter. "It's best for me to leave her be, as I had to let my father be, after so many nights of calling an effigy of his spirit to me for my own comfort."
"First of all, it's idiot of you to confess that to me," Iaden retorted as he rolled his eyes. "Second, if she decided you were worth her love, then you were; true and pure love is always a gift, and the giver decides the worthiness of its recipient. The concept of 'deserving' love- that love is something that someone has to earn, or pay for somehow- is entirely bullshit. If that idea is written in some one of your daft old books, then point me it out, so that I can destroy it. Any way, this isn't about your comfort, or even your redemption; it's about her closure. I can either bring you to her, or bring her a message from you, and she can judge your sins against her, herself."
"It's too late," Seyashen reasoned. "She could have married; could have children and a life by now-"
"Seyashen, you weak little sparkly smoke breather!" Iaden finally hollered. "Your native language isn't Common; it's 'Coward'! Even if the woman had married a lord, and were filthy rich with ten children, you still owe her closure to the relationship you either had or still have; you can't talk your way out of that."
"Did your father ever bully you in the effort to get you to do anything positive?" Seyashen demanded. "Did that ever actually work?"
"Yes, he did. My mother too. And so did your parents, probably," Iaden snorted. "Perhaps we're rougher and meaner for it, but it worked. Stop getting upset about the paper, ink, and seal of the message, and take the damn message."
"Well, I have a message for you," Seyashen huffed. "You're a death knight, a commanding officer of the ranks of the departed. Even now, you could go out to the graveyard, summon every departed soul in a sixty mile radius, and tell them to take up arms against anyone against which you directed your emnity. That's why you can come and go as you please, whether I call and send you or no, enacting whatever you see as justice upon whomever sparks your ire. If you're so insistent on finding Eiko, you don't need my permission."
Iaden raised an eyebrow. "You mean to tell me I'm supposed to go, find her, come back, and then ask you what you're going to do? As opposed to going to find her either with you in tow, or with a message for her and instructions on how to send it so that she receives it properly? I know I'm dead, but that doesn't mean I like wasting my time."
And for a moment, the cousins just looked at each other.
"Were you ever interested in a girl, when you were alive?"
Iaden shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't think like that."
"Ah," Seyashen said lightly, looking back down at the letter in his hand.
"And not like that either," Iaden groaned, frustrated. "I wasn't interested in anyone; I didn't have time for it. I had my mother and sister to take care of, my father to make proud. That was always enough for me."
"Speaking of your sister, her beloved is inviting us to visit," Seyashen noted. "So before we go... wherever it is we wind up going... we can return to Suzail and-"
"For what?" Iaden snorted. "More delaying tactics. Let's just get started in looking for Eiko."
Seyashen looked up at the incorporeal image of his cousin. "It's not a delaying tactic; this is a request. And I agree with it; I think it would do your sister good to see us."
"She's not going to see me," Iaden frowned. "When you brought me to her before, she didn't even believe I was there."
"She did by the end," Seyashen argued. "This isn't a delaying tactic; your sister spent a very dangerous time in jail and could use some family concern. A reason not to rush toward destruction quite so quickly."
"I can't do anything about that," Iaden growled, turning his back on Seyashen.
"You can, and you did," Seyashen urged.
Iaden gave a snort of disgust. "You sent me to make sure she was alright, but when I followed your instructions to get into her Axis, she... nearly leaped to... to join me... and I almost didn't-"
"But you did, and this Ceubel Silveredge pas-Naja is very grateful to you for it," Seyashen soothed. "Here, she's written directly to you, since she knows I can read it to you just as much as she reads my correspondence to your sister. Who, by the way, she is teaching to read."
"Mama should have taught her," Iaden grumbled. "All the useless wizarding she did, just to choke on some other sparkle bitch's jealousy; no time to teach either of us any of her book smarts."
Seyashen nodded, understanding very well his cousin's attitude. "Well, she's learning to read now, from someone who seems quite intent on spending as much time as it takes. Do you want to hear this?"
Iaden breathed deeply, trying to sigh the guilt out of his shadowy self. "I hear the letter, then you pack your things."
"Agreed. Ready?"
Iaden gave a small toss of his head. "I'm listening."
" 'Most precious elder brother Eeyadhen, I pray ye receive my utmost thanks for your dreadful counsel to your sister, wherever in the Shadow Plane ye are. It is my sincere belief that without your insistence, your much bereaved sister would happily have remained by your side, eternally absented from mine. I know that as her love for ye is vast, undaunted by time and physical separation, yours must likewise be; yet, ye chose not to welcome her into so early an induction to the Plane of Shadow, or to guide her to some place of honor in the hells, but instead to urge her return to the Material Plane, and to my trembling arms, which on their own had not so strong a claim upon her.
Oh merciful and honored brother! If I could fall down before ye, and cry ye the river of my gratitude, be certain I would do it; if I were certain where in Shar or Asmodeus's domains ye did cast your shadow, I would do my utmost to there appear, that I might personally set down within it whatever offerings ye demanded me, even unto the cutting or burning of some part of my body. I have done more for less, yet there is no offering, however rich, that could bless your spirit so excellently as ye with your sister's continued companionship have blessed your pitiful handmaiden.
I beg ye, esteemed and powerful brother, that ye might allow me to make ye a shrine, as is the custom of the Shadar-kai, and that I might, for the unspeakable blessing of this second chance to love your sister that ye have to me given, at that shrine offer ye such delicacies as ye would have, in life, enjoyed. I swear ye that ye shall be the honored ancestor of our house, when once it is made; that we shall forever shape the world by our deeds in your name, and in the name of your mother, and in the name of your father, whose daring and skillful child your sister has not once failed to be. Even should ye choose to refuse my offerings, I swear ye that I shall cherish ye in my heart, shall learn all of ye that your sister will teach me, and that any boy child we shall have shall bear some shadow of your name, that it may strike like bright lightning in the Material Plane, and resound like roaring thunder in that of Shadow.
Your eternal servant writes ye directly in dread hope that Master Seyashen shall read it in your hearing. The lawful rigor of Asmodeus, and the gentle guidance of the Raven Queen be with ye, and with your mother, and with your father, whithersoever ye goeth. I pray these blessings upon ye with a heart full to bursting with emotion; I pray ye pardon it.
Ceubel Silveredge pas-Naja'
Well. That's... well. Alright. That... is... an absolutely frightful mispelling of your name; looks like she uses Elven phonics to write what she hears. And she wasn't joking about being emotional. I don't think I've ever read such impassioned words outside of a prayer book, or a lover's poetry collection."
"All that came out of that skinny Shadar-kai that likes to skulk around behind Isha?" Iaden asked very quietly.
"Yes," Seyashen replied. "It came from a very much in love, very grateful young woman. Seems like that's your focus, making sure that people who love each other don't lose each other. You can tell me why that is whenever you want; I have the rest of my life- and probably, my unlife- to wait. For now, I'll go get my things together. I don't know much about Shadar-kai customs, but Miye might; she might be able to shed some light on what an ancestor shrine dedicated to you might look like. For my part, I wonder how much more command it would give you in the Material Plane, seeing as you're already more powerful than most undead beings."
"So what you're saying is, I should let the little wisp go ahead and build the shrine so that you can study how much stronger it makes me," Iaden said gruffly, but only half seriously.
"Just call me evil and be done; self-centered thinking like that runs in the family too," Seyashen laughed as he finally arose from his place by the fountain. "Except for you- maybe it skipped you."
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