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[Arahim]

---

Arahim sat cross legged and unmoving in a soft, rumpled sea of bedclothes and pillows just hours after dawn. The bed had not been made in days and had taken on a sort of fluid state of careful disarray whether it had been slept in or not. It seemed a curious, unique thing given to fits of mood that sometimes echoed, sometimes reflected that of its sole occupant.

Right now a thick quilt lay pushed up against the wooden headboard like a grey cresting wave waiting to break. The white sheets beneath were twisted and bunched at wild intervals where a knee or elbow had found rough purchase, and to each side of him, close to his knees, a throw pillow, and damp towel.

By this afternoon, it would not look so. The very act of climbing to the rug on the floor would alter the scene, and likely a return to his room under new light would only enhance the changes however slight.

And he would notice them, he always did.

After today, they would be glaring.

[Arahim]

---

His hair hung in thick, sodden shocks obscuring his face and clinging to his bare shoulders. A hint of citrus wove through the strands. A clean scent, though not exotic, that was a welcomed change from that of oiled leather, and mail. It was faint enough to be pleasant without being insistent. Impossible to be detected at any but the most intimate proximity.

It suited.

Arahim's gaze ran across his arms and hands, which he had in his lap, taking in the tracery of white scars that marred his flesh. Recounting slowly each by memory, he wondered how it was that every cut drew his eye to the next, and the next after that, in exactly the same pattern everytime, until he reached the small thin lines on his fingers, then began again on the other arm until his mind was stilled. Until the shallow rise and fall of his breath fell into line with the rhythm of his heart beating.

When it did, he felt for a time his home as it was before the panicked stillness that had seized it in recent months held sway.

The gentle sound of lapping laughter echoing down a hallway as small feet flew toe over toe to discover some new thing or other, or the evening smells of a cooked dinner large enough for sharing and leftovers both.

Life and light once suffused every crevasse and empty space here.

But only for a time, a brief space of time at that, then the pain returned, and reminded him why he did what he did every morning.

Arahim focused on that.

[Arahim]

---

Al'lyria placed the plain porcelain box in his hand when she had heard his promise. She deemed it a gift -- not one he wanted, rather one he needed.

What he had unwittingly done to himself could not now be undone. Anymore than they could pull down the Winter constellation he chose as the pattern to his creation, and its power as well.

She could do only this, and he would not thank her for it.

"There will be those who will wonder where lies the magic in this thing. And those who do know, will wonder if the price is worth it."

Arahim repeated his promise to her, and nodded his thanks, though it was plain he did not fully understand it.

Al'lyria took him at his word, as she always did, and bade him farewell.

[Arahim]

---

Somewhere outside, a short burst of birdsong alighted upon the cool Autumn air, and rode the early quiet, note by note, into the dreams of those who still lay in sleep.

A pause in the melody...

...then an answer.

An echo.

A duet in the distance.

Scattered, so that those who had risen to face their day were welcomed with a chorus that rolled like windswept drifts of untouched snow. Eddies and swirling funnels, trilling and twittering so as to be recognizable, but wholly unique.

Variations on a theme.

Arahim knew the choir to be the calls of yellow breasted robins, so common to the trees of Ashencrosse, welcoming in the new. Joining their joyous voices to the gentle play, and rustle of falling leaves.

Proclaiming themselves, while doing honor to the season.

Shafts of sunlight slanted through the two windows at the side of his bed in front of him. The warm spillage crawled by inches across the wall behind him, and to the floor. The solid surfaces touched became mutable -- became, more than what they truly were, as splashed with bright color from the living world past the glass, wood and stone strove in time with the Morning as if not quite real until the pure light from on high laid bare their natures in hues of bronze and gold.

Shadows tittered in secret while the Day chased them to and fro. Here they scratched at a bedpost, or slunk furtively beneath a large armoire, or scrawled their spidery missives in cryptic hand amongst corners and in sputtering streaks across the ceiling. They climbed and clung tenacious along the angles of the room like smoky ivy.

The ebb and flow sent ripples across the dark red and black rug in front of the hearth, whose fires had died long hours ago. The billowing sails of a nightborne fleet gliding through blood crimson waters rough with constant winds and swells.

Time slowed, and no one thing escaped Arahim's notice. He allowed his eyes to follow the drama wherever it made display, no matter how tiny, or subtle. Each thing born and sustained by its opposite.

Quietly, he remained a constant at its center, accepting his place.

A sharp, slow pain lanced through his palm.

Reclaiming his attention.

[Arahim]

---

It slid in with a slick ease of passage, tearing apart the wet skin just below his thumb. A small slit, the barbed filament slowed to an eventual stop once the head was embedded in the soft, yielding meat now jeweled with spots of blood of varying intensity.

It settled.

Stopped.

Adjusted to fill the gash, and find comfort.

And rhythm in the warmth inside.

The pause was maddening, and as the pain was asymmetrical, growing steadily, gradually, from a pinch, to an itch, to burning, Arahim was unable to section the sensation off and ignore it. Sucking a shuddering breath in through ground teeth, he hissed out, and held on.

[Arahim]

---

The legs of the wood-white spider twitched once in reactive spasm as if in discomfort, or with surprise. An audible click, and the appendages applauded shifting his two handed grasp, further cutting his fingers along a ridge of small, raised thorns. One of several that adorned its body.

The shock sent fire racing through paths just under his skin.

Ropey streams of crimson webbed his forearms nearly to his elbows.

Dripping dark stains on white sheets.

Pooling in blots on the inside of his thighs.

The wet warmth starkly contrasting to the usual, and perpetual feeling of cold held by his cursed flesh.

Arahim had never just held the carved fetish for so long a time. He made no move to lift it from his lap, or place it in his hair, binding it from his eyes. His vision was oddly unobstructed as it was. He allowed it to just be. He allowed himself to just be.

Still it writhed.

It twisted its body, if by fractions only.

It clutched its eight spiky legs closed slowly, then opened with the same deliberate pace. Anything to grind against his touch, forcing him to fight for its gift, and in that regard, his own sense of peace.

As was its way, gradually the pain subsided. Only the many marks and bloody patterns remained.

On himself and on his bed.

The room in riotous life, awash in Morning, embraced him and sang out that there was more here to remember than what was left behind.

And with that, Arahim rose to clean himself up. The spider charm, once again, simply a comfortable weight in his hand.

[Arahim]

---

Arahim took his parting from his companions at the mouth of Deceit where the frost-winds of Dagger Isle cut through stone crevasse and into the crooked valley that fed to the dungeon's gaping entrance. Moaning in dreadful voice, the air carried along stinging flecks of snow, and the forgetful, ever changing song of the sea where at the shores of these forlorn lands, past the mountains' shade, it crashed, and coursed with grinding, shifting ice.

Corvus, speaking but little, swathed from head to feet in heavy black, was at this place given possession of the small group's prize for which they had plumbed the dark undead depths. From the lady knight Eclyse, who by her will they were led, did he receive this, and bidden to carry it to the Hall.

The lady Genevieve, and the halfling girl Sunny Snowdowns bore silent witness, but had great wonder at what magic such a relic might hold, or what it portended for Ashencrosse, and the Countess' designs.

No such sway held Arahim in thrall, so here he made his farewells, passing strange as it must seemed to all, though his departure was not without courtesy; for he wished them all well, and spoke plainly his want to see the Shrine of Honesty, and how his path had once led him thus.

Truly, his guarded thoughts desired to see the ancient lamp they had retrieved unhooded and ablaze, as any would who by travail of hand and body had won such a thing, but this would not be so. The light it spilled would likely not guide his steps in the coming months, so these first few he took ought not be cast in shadow no matter the purity of the illumination.

Tugging his cloak tight, pulling low his hood against the breath of everlasting Winter, he set a trail by memory for himself to the Shrine across the blinding white for so long as his legs would bear him, and for as long as his resolve held firm. There...so many beginnings were born for him some few years ago. They would need to be put right, and seen through if he were to continue in his plans, and if his intuition proved sound, and failed him not.

[Arahim]

---

He stayed near to the roots of the mountains that divided the island into two parts -- ever was the rocky wall to his right. As things went, the plan was of mixed fortunes doled out in equal portion.

The winds were for the most part blocked by the peaks, and sheer face of towering, clustered stone and sent howling high above him, but touched him little. And yet because of such chaos, and bluster on the roof of the sky, Arahim met with many deep drifts that had tumbled from the cliffs and tall places, and collected in mounds he could not circumvent without adding perilous time to his journey. So hoping to speed, heedless to the freezing soak he would likely accumulate, he plowed through powdery hills of detritus snows some which came as high as his chest. The like which threatened to engulf him should his footing fail.

When such going crawled, or he began to founder, the point of his shield, unslung and held with both hands, was made into a makeshift shovel to be spiked into the treacherous ground. In this, Arahim used it both to clear some semblance of path, and to gain purchase to pull himself forth.

In some time did his passing go more to his liking, and with better speed. For when he had reached the far side of the island, and came about the northernmost range, the winds found him again, and blew unfettered with strength undimmed.

Though the air bit into him sorely where his skin was exposed, there were no dunes of fallen frost that were not swept away, and the track he took was even, and bare, but without impediment.

[Arahim]

---

When he had reached the mouth of the pass, Night had blossomed silent and full. Cold flowers of silver burst upon a slick field of black streaked blue and purple where the high expanses bowed low, and touched the sea. Folding a dying Day into shade and darkness unbroken.

Where once were bright brands of fire, and wintry wisps of smoke, now curtains of ash, and white embers.

A thin crust of ice ran like skin over the tightly packed snow beneath; breaking it took Arahim to mid-calf. The going was steady, if awkward. The long walk dour, and lonely.

He rued speaking so little of his purpose to the Lady Eclyse and his friends, wishing now for the sound of another's voice at the very least. Wearied as he was with the unchanging crunch and squeak of his own plodding footfalls.

Then of a sudden, with the Shrine in his sight, and the summits above having given way to a vast, but jagged slice of sky, all became shining crystal. Heaven's mirror bound to the earth, and an argent music like the tinkling of tiny bells uncounted that rose up and twined about him like some growing but untouchable thing.

Glimmers and sparks at his feet and crown, he was at once rooted in strength to the bones of the earth, and borne aloft on stands of ghostly opal.

The snows like swift glass tears.

The Night air a cloak of feathered wings.

Yet for all of this, there was no sundering. His spirit remained undivided.

And at the call of the horned moon, a shadow streamed forth towards the stony Shrine like the tremulous fingers of an outstretched hand so near its want and desire.

His journey at an end, time was distant.