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This story begins the way so many do, with a man walking. Every play needs its actors, and its actors need their motivation, don't they? Here, then, is ours: the man was called Anders. He had been a prisoner, but now that he had left it behind him, that prison had become a hard stone in his chest. A curse. Anders sought a cure for this curse, though he had no idea that was what he was doing.
He thought he sought peace in new places and new experiences, new sunrises and new drinks and new arms to hold him, but none of these things lightened that stone. It sank heavier and heavier into his chest with every passing day. And with every passing day, he turned away from the knowledge, the fear, that magic wouldn't be able to fix him.
So Anders began to concoct stories for who he was and who he had been, each one another plank in the tall fence that separated him from the simple country boy who had been torn away from his family all those years ago. Sometimes he was an adventurer, or a guild member, but most often he made it up on the spot. Where was the fun in playing the same part day after day after day, when that was what he was trying to escape in the first place?
In this way, he made his way from one end of the countryside to another. There are many stories we could tell of those days -stories about the pirate queen Isabela, or the mage collective attempting to initiate him into their ranks, for example- but we shall instead focus on a later tale, on what happened in the Black Marsh.
If you made a crucial mistake and asked Anders, he would have told you that the exact details of how he arrived in the marsh didn't matter. "The beginning is never as interesting as the middle and the end," he would have told you with a wink. The truth of the matter is that his old jailers had caught up to him, and this time he knew that their goal was a much more permanent kind.
And so Anders walked, then ran, through the marsh and through the ruins of a long abandoned village, up and up and up the overgrown patches of cobblestone that made up the only remaining road. Ordinarily it might have given him pause, but he was far more concerned with the all too immediate threats of swords and those who carried them than potential ghostly threats that may never come to pass. He already had one curse; why not start a collection?
Where the road ended, there sat a keep. At one time, it must have been very impressive indeed, but that time had passed out of living memory. Turrets had crumbled, pennants ripped away from poles, and the beautiful metalwork along the gate had eroded to the point where the only way you would have known they had ever been there at all was the rust stains left behind on the walls.
Standing before all of that slow, measured digestion of the self was a man. He wasn't a particularly tall man, nor the broadest, nor yet dressed handsomely in silks or furs. The only things that marked him out at all was his stiff, silent bearing and the faded blue colors he wore, complete with a hood whose face obscuring lower portion was pulled up over his nose.
He stood and he watched as Anders skidded to a halt before him. There was a distinct crack as the man tilted his head to look past Anders and down the path, towards the not-too-distant sounds of shouting and clanking armor. "You are hunted," the man said without any particular inflection, as if he were commenting on the weather.
Anders gaped, hands on his knees between big, greedy gulps of air. "Am I?" He managed after several seconds. "I hadn't noticed. Daily stroll! Good for the digestion!"
The man watched him for a time, then he said, "I am called Kristoff. And who are you, to trespass on these grounds?"
"What? Really? Trespassing in an abandoned keep in an abandoned village?" The man did not respond, nor did he when Anders said, "I'm a prince, of course! Can't you tell?" Anders lifted his arms and let them fall with a grin. "Don't I just… exude a royal bearing from my very pores?"
The man still did not respond, but somehow still managed to give off the impression of supreme skepticism.
"Well," Anders laughed breathlessly, "perhaps not my pores. It has been a long and eventful journey, and I'm in need of a bath. Or several baths. But poor hygiene does not eliminate the truth!"
"And what is your truth, man called Anders?" Kristoff asked, startling Anders enough that he floundered for a moment.
"My truth? My one and only?" Anders shifted from foot to foot, but something quiet in his chest told him not to risk looking behind him. So he didn't. "I don't know if you're aware, but people tend to wrack up more than a few in their lifetimes. Some more than others."
Kristoff simply stood there, as motionless as the ancients of our ancients had thought the stars to be.
"I- Well- How about a truth, then? One of several."
Kristoff waited patiently, as if he had been standing in this spot for eons, watching as nations rose and fell around him until this precise moment.
"The truth is… I am in danger, as you very helpfully pointed out. It's not too safe being a man called Anders, in these parts. There's only the one of me, you see, and they want to make sure there's one less than that."
Kristoff finally lifted his gaze beyond Anders to look back down the trail. "They are coming," he said, with a simple finality that proved it to be nothing but fact. "Tell me your truth, before it is taken from you."
Anders stared and he shifted and he opened his mouth to scream at this man called Kristoff, before at last he said, "I am under a curse. I have been traveling to try to lift it from between my ribs; now please will you let me pass?"
Kristoff looked at him and he looked at him, and then he stepped aside, allowing a grateful Anders to run past him and into the keep.
Anders turned the corner as soon as he was past the main gate and half sat, half collapsed onto a crumbling staircase built into the wall. He buried his face in his hands and he wept out of fear and shocked relief. But no sooner had he begun to shudder his way through one sob and into the other than he heard Kristoff speak again.
"I am called Kristoff. Who are you, to trespass on these grounds?"
A woman answered him, one whose voice he recognized as belonging to Ser Rylock. He knew Ser Rylock well, and wished he didn't. She explained in no uncertain terms that she and her hunters had business with Anders, and she would see it done.
"And what is your truth, woman called Rylock?"
"My truth?" Anders heard her scoff as he took a step backwards up the stairs, then another. "My truth is that you are harboring a dangerous fugitive, and I will have him. Now." Several other voices that he knew in ways he wished he didn't spoke up in support of this idea, which was answered in silence at first, then with two heavy steps that crunched through the old cobbles.
"If you will not give it to me freely, allow me to tell it to you," Kristoff said in that same calm, measured tone which he had used to tell Anders that his murderers were coming. Rylock began to speak again, but Kristoff cut her off. "You are a cruel, vicious woman, with stone nestled where your heart should be. You know death intimately, in the way of one who introduces new dance partners to a guest, one after the other. And this hour, this minute, Ser Rylock, it is your turn to dance."
Ser Rylock and those others began to protest, and then they stopped. Anders closed his eyes, and he did his best not to listen to the screams punctuated by crunching smacks of wet meat that sounded startlingly similar to an egg being dropped onto the floor.
Anders couldn't quite manage to stop the sickening feeling of dread in his chest, but neither could he find it in himself to feel completely sorry for them. They deserved what happened to them, he tried to tell himself, but a sour taste like vomit clung to his tongue. Even if they did, and he fully believed that, that didn't mean that either he or this Kristoff had any right to give it to them.
…All the same, there was now going to be at least a brief respite from that particular fear, and he owed it to Kristoff to repay the favor.
Anders remained on those stairs until his breath returned and his tears dried, and then he remained there for even longer. There was more than a bit of fear of his new host, but even more curiosity. Who was this Kristoff, really, and what did he want? What could he possibly gain from angering those who held the leashes of Anders' hunters?
Anders had always been a man prone to indulging his whims, and so when Kristoff walked to the base of the stairs before stopping, Anders had questions prepared. "Tell me," Anders said to his host, "what is this place, and why do you remain here when everything around you is dead and gone?"
"There is a curse, as well as a bargain," Kristoff told him. "Both keep me bound to this place long after all other life has fled, in much the same way as your own troubles keep your feet moving after anyone else would have fallen." Kristoff then lifted a hand sheathed in blue and silver armor and pointed. Further within the keep sprouted a tall tower covered with thorny vines. Anders looked upon it.
"Well there's your problem. Any half decent gardener could get that straightened out for you in a few days. A week, tops. And then what would be left for your curse to cling onto?" said the man with the curse clinging to his heart.
Kristoff looked at him without speaking for a long time. Long enough that Anders gave a little laugh and broke the quiet himself, because silence was always the first link of a heavy chain. "Tell me, what is the worst that could happen if I climb that tower and open that door?"
Kristoff didn't answer him and didn't answer him, until finally, he did. "You would discover what is inside, and turn away."
Anders stared long after Kristoff plodded away on a circuit of the keep, until he became determined to get into that tower. Both to repay Kristoff's kindness, as well as to indulge his own curiosity. He hunted throughout the grounds until he came across a collapsed ruin that looked to have once been a gardener's shed. Inside, he found a pair of rusted shears that still opened and closed well enough for his purposes, and he set off for the tower.
The tower's only door was entirely obscured with branches as thick or thicker around than his own arm, each one bristling with sharp thorns. Anders balked. They had looked much less intimidating from far away. More like the gentle, winding vines that had climbed Kinloch Hold and flowered in the spring. These branches had flowers, too, but they were far out of reach and were so red they almost looked stained with blood.
"Well," said Anders. "Fuck."
He looked at the rusty garden shears in his hand and back to the branches, and he felt rather underdressed for the dance that was about to commence. "I do think it is customary to offer your name before declaring war." He looked at the vines, but his admittedly rather limited horticultural knowledge gleaned from both classes and punishments at Kinloch (though they were often the same thing, when it came down to it) did not extend to magical roses. A shame.
Not knowing what else to do, he saluted the vines with the shears. "I'll forgive you for not giving yours, but my name is Anders, previously, uh." He wavered. That name was several lifetimes and even more countries away, and it stuck to his tongue like rancid butter. "Wulfrun." He blinked away a sudden burning in his eyes and moved to begin his work. "But we'll keep that just between us, yeah? The name is dead, just like everything else around here."
Anders opened the shears with a rasp of rusty metal on metal that sounded like an old man's shriek and closed them around the nearest branch. It didn't even dent it. Even after applying all of his weight and more than a little of the magic that nestled next to the curse behind his ribs, there was little change, save for dislodging rose petals that drifted down around him. He ignored these, and bent to his work.
It was only when he finally sat back to rest that he noticed wherever the petals had landed, they had seemingly melted, turning into a liquid startlingly similar to fresh blood. Suddenly afraid, Anders touched a wet spot on the back of his neck that he had dismissed as sweat. His hand came back coated in scarlet and brown, where it had dried at the edges, and he shivered. However, he didn't feel weak or lightheaded the way that he knew from experience would have meant he was actually experiencing blood loss, and so Anders eventually shrugged this peculiarity off as the tax for interacting with strange curses and stranger people.
"I am a prince, after all, and princes must become accustomed to occasional discomfort, such as raining blood!" He said aloud as if trying to convince himself, and gave a laugh that sounded too loud and echoed strangely. He quickly returned to his work, and stopped only when the shears finally snapped and flung a viciously sharp length of metal end over end into the ground just beside his foot.
All of a sudden, it was much harder to think of lies or jokes or anything that wasn't a wheezing, fearful laugh. He spent some time standing there attempting to think of some of those things before he decided to return to exploring the keep, instead.
He eventually found a place within the keep that was warm and dry enough to sleep in for later that evening, though it wasn't until more than an hour later that his explorations brought him to the kitchens. Most of the knives and various tools were rusted to the point of unusability, but the fireplace and trammel hook still looked serviceable. There were several barrels of salted meat left behind that worked well enough when combined with his own travel rations, and soon enough Anders was eating like… perhaps not a prince, but a reasonably fortunate wanderer.
Not long into his meal, Kristoff appeared in the doorway. He loomed there for a few moments, the sun behind his back turning him into a strange silhouette that appeared to almost be shaped differently than he was in the light. Then he moved into the room, and the illusion was broken.
"I was just wondering where my savior had gotten to!" Anders gave a smile that was only the slightest bit wobbly, and fixed him a small plate out of what he'd intended to be his second portion. Kristoff took it with a nod. He then proceeded to stand there without touching his meal for long enough that it was impossible not to notice that Kristoff did not appear to eat anything.
Anders pointed this out, with much waving around of his fork, to which Kristoff stared at him without blinking or responding. Anders gave that nervous laugh again, a quick, overly loud burst of air exhaled with each HA! and turned his gaze back down to his own plate. "You're not the best conversationalist are you, Kristoff? That's all right though," he added with a lopsided smile, "because I am!"
"I told you that I was called Kristoff. I never said that it was my name."
"Oh?" Anders cocked a brow at both the deflection and what was said instead, and leaned one arm on his knee to better fix this man called Kristoff with an appraising eye. "And what is your name, then? You don't look much like a Greigor, at least, so that's… one name down, thousands upon thousands left to go."
Again, Kristoff did not answer him.
When Anders looked away with a sigh, the shadows he saw that Kristoff threw up on the wall behind him made him swallow hard. He then frowned down at his plate and set it aside. He was no longer hungry. "What is it you really want, here? Is it freedom from that tower, or the curse and bargain you mentioned? People to return here?" Even if the people who were still alive after whatever caused them to leave in the first place came back, what was the guarantee that they would accept whatever it was that Kristoff was? Or, he thought slowly, possibly what he had become.
The man called Kristoff looked at him steadily. "Have you ever felt lonely, Anders?" he asked, by way of answering.
Anders frowned and opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say and closed it again as the man continued, "Not the wistful pangs that come from a few hours or days without company, but a gnawing, ravenous need. The sort that, if it were a physical hunger, would have begun to devour your own body in search of any sort of nourishment. But it isn't. Instead, that sort of starvation of the mind that feeds on the mind, itself. Desperation feeds on desperation. Tell me, have you ever wanted to free yourself? Have you ever been so lonely and so trapped by circumstance that you would be willing to do almost anything to achieve it?"
Anders' frown deepened, and he shuffled uncomfortably at the question. "I-" He opened and closed his mouth again, reminded of Kinloch Hold and a year of being buried deep in its bowels with only a cat for company. "...No. I haven't ever been caged that way. I'm a prince, remember? When I wanted to feel the sun, I only had to extend my hand and I received it."
The name who wasn't Kristoff paused for a time before he spoke again. "How?" He asked. "How did you receive the sun?"
Anders thought of that cat, and he thought of the rare occasions when Karl managed to sneak down to see him with illicit food and even more illicit kisses. Of smiles and laughter that the dungeons of Kinloch Hold may have never heard before, until they were snuffed out, too. "The golden rays were given to me on a silver plate. When I picked them up, they warmed my hands and my heart until I thought it would burst from happiness."
"What then? What did you do with this gift?"
Anders' smile had too many teeth, and his cheeks hurt already. "I ate it."
He passed the night fitfully, his dreams filled with chains and darkness and days upon days filled with the same crushing despair that he had recognized in what few answers Kristoff had given him. Waking up felt like arising from quicksand, being a slow and frustrating thing with every inch pulled away from it costing far more than it gave back. And even after he had, it lingered in disgusting ways that dogged his steps.
Afterwards, Anders spent several hours wandering the grounds. If asked, he would have said he was searching for another way to attack the vines, but in reality he was restless and unsure. He was no longer certain if he could or should free Kristoff, or what his host even was. A demon, an old god of some kind? Or the personification of a curse, maybe?
All of these possible answers filled him with fear, of course, but every time he considered leaving, the thought came to him of the way Kristoff had asked him about loneliness, of how he had never tried to stop Anders from leaving even though it was plainly within his power to do so and of the open sadness in his usually toneless voice when he said that Anders would turn away from what was in that tower. And the thought of leaving without finding a cure for the sadness in those eyes became more and more disquieting.
Later that day, he plucked up one of the swords from a fallen templar and lifted it against the vines. It scratched their thick outer bark but no more, until finally Anders fell back, winded and out of patience. "What good would it even do, to get in there?" he wondered aloud, and gave a start when he was unexpectedly answered by Kristoff's voice at his back.
"Perhaps none. Perhaps it would even make things worse. Harder, more frustrating. More difficult to forgive."
"More difficult to forgive what?" Anders asked him, rearranging his hand on the hilt of the sword whose point he had allowed to drift down to touch the grass until now. "What is inside that is so terrible, Kristoff?"
Kristoff had no answers for him at first. In fact, it wasn't until more than an hour had gone by and Anders had again started hacking at the branches before Kristoff broke the silence by saying, "The difficulties aren't intended for you."
Anders looked at him sharply before his gaze softened. "Are they meant for you, then?"
There was no answer to be had, but that was no longer surprising.
That night, Anders found that the many questions and decisions weighing on his heart made it impossible to fly to the evening lands to dream. So he wandered the grounds, and there he found Kristoff looking up at the stars. When so little could be seen of his face, it was all the more remarkable to see a thousand, thousand stars reflected in his eyes.
"Hello," he could have said, or "you don't eat, but you sure seem eager to devour beauty," but instead he found himself saying, "You are always asking for the truth, but you don't often give it yourself. Why is that?" He asked, and Kristoff looked back at him. Anders jumped when he saw that although Kristoff's gaze had shifted away from the stars they startlingly remained in his eyes, a blanket quilted with a thrill of brilliance.
"It is not only my story to tell," Kristoff told him. "I have never outright lied to you and I shall not, but… I will not tell tales that do not belong only to myself."
Anders frowned down at his feet, troubled. For reasons he couldn't have adequately explained even to himself, he found himself saying slowly, "I have lied to you, though. Several times over. Do you still have trust in your heart for me?"
Kristoff made a small, thoughtful noise, but when Anders looked at him again, his eyes held as little expression as ever. "I have observed that the people of this land often lie, but not necessarily for malicious purposes. Is that the case for you? Or have you lied because of a hidden viciousness that spreads poison through your veins like ice water?"
Anders gave a small laugh despite himself. "I- No. I don't think so, anyway. I have my hatreds and faults the same as everyone does, but… That is not why I have lied to you. I have lied because of an old fear, one has nestled between my ribs like a heavy stone or a spider grown fat on the blood I have shed in my past."
"And what, then, is your truth, man called Anders?" Kristoff asked him again, and again Anders found himself faltering.
Again, he turned away.
The next day, he did not attempt to enter the tower. Instead, he left the keep to wander the abandoned village. Kristoff hung back instead of following him as had been his usual habit, and so Anders wandered alone. A thought occurred to him while he traveled the empty, crumbling buildings and grounds that were filled with blackened growths, one that he knew would trouble him until he was given or took his answers.
Upon returning, Anders almost immediately asked Kristoff if he had been responsible for what had happened to both the village and the keep's residents. He didn't know if he would have changed his mind regardless of the answer he was given, and that very uncertainty weighed on him and made his heart feel all the heavier until Kristoff shook his head.
"My curse has indeed spread throughout the keep, but… no. The people had already fled from this place because of an evil woman known as the baroness. She was struck down in time by a brave man who risked everything he had on the slimmest chance that he could bring hope and light shining in this place once again. He was rewarded for his selflessness by being felled in his turn. I…" Kristoff shook his head. "The curse and the bargain I spoke of sprouted in this place soon afterwards, but they have only harmed myself. No one else suffers because of me."
Anders stared and he stared, and the weight on his heart shivered for just a moment, for just long enough that he gasped around the sudden and unexpected sweetness of the new air he breathed. Air that struck him with what he realized was hope.
And then it was gone again, but this time he knew that it could be achieved. That if it could happen once, it could and would happen again.
On the next day, Anders tried again. This time he attempted to use his magic to burn away the branches. A fire hotter than any man or beast had ever been able to achieve through natural means screamed towards the sky, touching on every branch along the way, but when at last the purple stars faded away from his vision afterwards the branches were still there.
"No!" Anders cried out disbelievingly, and for a third time his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, growing thick and heavy with words left unsaid. "Please," he gasped to himself, to the world, to no one at all. "Please don't do this. I may not know much, but I know that at least one of us deserves to see some goodness, some kindness, returned their way." He squeezed his eyes shut tight. "I- I may not believe in anything anymore, even and especially myself, but… He doesn't deserve a curse. Not the way I have been fixed to face my own. No one does. I- I didn't deserve that, either."
He bent his face down as he clutched at the damp grass. When he opened his eyes again and looked upon the tower, somehow he wasn't surprised to see the vines part before him, shifting out of his way with a heavy groan. He stood and he watched the plant curl in on itself like a massive hand fighting off pain. Deep red flower petals fluttered down to alight on his cheeks, looking almost black in the setting sun.
Anders couldn't help giving a laugh that scraped him raw on it's way out. "I know," he said, reaching out to smooth a hand down weathered stone that still bore the marks of its restraints. He could sympathize. "What are we, without the chains to tell us who we are?"
After, he climbed the tower stairs that had held together this long and hopefully would for at least one day more.
When he finally reached the bedroom at the top of the tower, Anders opened the door and he looked upon the dead man on the bed, and he knew that it, he, was Kristoff. He couldn't find it in himself to be surprised, despite the pounding in his ears that drowned out the sound of his own hitched breathing. He'd failed, long before he'd known there was even anything at stake. "I'm sorry," Anders gasped after what felt like a lifetime. "I'm so sorry."
He started forward with the vague idea of covering Kristoff's face or saying a prayer, but stopped when he realized that the streams of light illuminating Kristoff weren't coming from a window. He lifted his head and looked upon an armored figure, or rather… the shape of one. An outline sketched out in blues and searing whites, with a voice that thundered through the confined space. "Greetings, Anders. It is…" The spirit, if that was what they were, paused as if for thought before continuing, "good to finally look upon you in person."
Anders gave this all due consideration, and then he stuttered out a curse that shook the same way his usual nervous laughter did. Then he asked, "Are you a ghost?"
The armored spirit shook his head slowly. "I am a spirit of Justice. In the moments before his death, Kristoff called out for comfort. For someone, something, to be with him at the end. I answered. Through me, the dying Kristoff could once more see the world, and extend our hand towards those in need of succor or retribution." Justice closed and opened his hand. "...But it has been many years since he last kept pace beside me. Somewhere along the way, our wanderings through this keep became mine. And I was alone."
Anders took a step forward. The words of comfort and empathy he wanted to say instead came out as, "And the vines? Why keep everyone out?"
Justice looked at him with eyes that blazed so white it left behind spots in his vision when he shook his head to clear it. "The veil between this world and my own is thin, in this place. The roses that had already grown here took shape and will according to my own. Only those worthy would look upon Kristoff. Or at least… such was the intention. In truth, I suppose I wanted to grant him the peace he seemed to have rarely found in life. It is a strange thing for a spirit to desire, but Kristoff's desires had already begun to alter my purpose by then."
"And what is your purpose now?"
Kristoff… no, Justice, frowned at him with a face that was truly his, and Anders could not bear to look away. "To burn away injustice of all kinds, including the small. The curses that many would not ever notice, and to… provide what measure of peace I can."
Anders' heart, still heavy with a curse that had lightened perhaps but that had not left entirely, reached out a hand towards Justice. "I don't know what peace anyone has ever managed to find with me, but I want to try, with you. Maybe we'll find something close to it."
The spirit of Justice looked at his hand, and then he grasped Anders' wrist tightly, in the way of warriors. After that, the world began to burn away blue at the edges as Anders smiled. "Join with me, instead of Kristoff. You did what you could to ease his way, but he is gone. You never need to be alone again, and neither do I."
When his vision cleared, the spirit of Justice had disappeared from the room. Anders almost began to panic, until he heard and felt another presence in his mind in the same way you can feel someone standing beside you in a dark room. "We will find our truth together."
They both smiled, and in this way the pair of them left this story, but began many more.
The End