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The battle had ended weeks ago. The fires had been put out, the dead had been buried, and the living had moved on. Only Ronan and Ventari remained, their sanctuary destroyed. They took what little comfort they could in each other. The tree, at least, had survived. But they were alone. Alone with each other, with the tree… and with the ghost.
Ronan had not known her well, when she was alive. Ventari had met her once or twice before she came to them, but although she had passed by their sanctuary before, she and Ronan had never so much as spoken a word to each other. Even then, she’d had a countenance as though she bore the fate of the world on her shoulders. When she returned, skin burnt by the desert sun and sable hair streaked with grit and sand, the spark of life in her eyes had been dimmed to almost nothing.
Almost.
She’d marched into their camp, bow strung across her back and wolf obedient at her side, and only to Ventari had she bowed her head in greeting. “You told me once that the only true peace to be found is within oneself,” she had said. “And I find myself much in need of it. Might I stay here, for a while, as I search?” Ventari had regarded her sadly, and given his blessing.
She was a reclusive soul, leaving the sanctuary for days at a time only to slip back in unnoticed with a bounty of meat and furs. Over time, Ronan learned fragments of her story. She’d been a refugee from the Charr Invasion of Ascalon, fleeing one hopeless war only to be dragged head-first into another. And then another, and another, and another. It was no wonder the poor woman was so quiet, Ronan thought. His one war had cost him everything… and she’d fought in five. Now what little remained of Ascalon had been destroyed by its own king, and the ranger had nothing left but her mentor’s signet ring. Quite frankly, he had no idea how she’d gone on.
“Cantha, Elona… those weren’t my wars,” she’d said once, when he asked. “I was a witness more than anything else, really. Even here, in Kryta, I was just carrying on the Shining Blade’s fight. Avenging the Chosen. But after the North… it wears on you. You know this. That’s why I sought out the Prophet. She gave me a promise, a hope to hold on to when all else fails. It was she who told me to come here, Ronan.” He couldn’t look away from the fervor in her gaze. “I won’t stop until I see that promise through.”
Maybe it was that sheer, desperate willpower that had kept her here. The ghost had first appeared at dusk, a mere two nights after she was buried - her bow on her back and her wolf at her side, just like always. She showed no signs of the wound that had killed her, even though the scar on her bottom lip remained. She’d seemed confused when she first appeared, rambling about saving evacuees and hearing her father’s voice, but as the night bore on her spirit seemed to settle. By the following dawn, she was back to her usual, reclusive self, seemingly content to wait for the hope she’d been given all those years ago to bear fruit.
Ronan would catch sight of her wandering nearby, some nights. The forest would go silent, and the backs of the leaves would be lit by her faint blue glow. Sometimes he caught her fiddling with the crystal vial pendant she wore around her neck, or the signet ring, or the string of her bow. But then she would just stare off into the horizon again. She was always gone by morning, and rarely spoke, but at least she seemed at peace now, even if it had come far too late. He hoped, whatever she was waiting for, it wouldn’t be in vain.
Over a century had passed before she first felt the flow of magic shift. She looked up from where she sat among the great tree’s roots, idly polishing the wood of her bow - as much as she could, anyway, when the bow was just as much made of ghost as she was - and watched as the first flowers came into bloom. She’d known, even before her death, that the seedling was beyond compare, but never in all the decades she’d been haunting this place had she predicted that it had a soul of its own. It was even more precious than she had realized.
She could feel the way its magic seeped down into the soil even as it slumbered, twisting through its roots and gently wrapping around the bones that had long lay buried there. For a jarring moment, she even felt it creeping through what remained of her own ribcage, and shuddered at the sensation.
Time passed, and slowly, the great tree’s flowers opened, and closed, and bore fruit. She watched with fascination as instead of seeds, the fruit grew… people . An entire race was soon to be born, their wooden bones and layered, leafy flesh patterned after the bodies beneath their mother’s roots. She could scarcely believe her senses. Why, there were even bodies patterned in the shape of wolves!
But the longer she waited, the more she began to wonder. She had thought, when she had died, that the Prophet’s words - beyond the end of your own lifetime - had meant that somehow, it was her ghostly self that would see the promise though. But as she sat there, watching the great tree and its children grow, she could feel it calling her. It had called her dear wolf, too - one day, he disappeared into one of the pods that held the sleeping verdant hounds and just… never came out.
Althea’s ghost had been impassive when they found her, all those decades ago. Turai Ossa had waited centuries for a mortal to open the Hall of Ascension, and she herself had done nothing since the day she died. Perhaps… Perhaps she wasn’t meant to sit and wait for that promised future to come. Perhaps she was meant to live again… and bring it about herself. Swallowing her apprehension, she reached out, and found the pod, the nascent form that called to her… and with the lightest touch she slipped inside, and let her world go dark.
When her fernhound had started her off on this merry fool’s chase, Rhoana hadn’t known exactly what she had expected to come from it. But she certainly hadn’t expected him to find a corpse .
What was left of one, anyway, which wasn’t much. Of the actual body, only fragments of rotted bone remained, roughly mapping out a humanoid figure about the size of her own. The bones were wrapped in scraps of what seemed to be a funerary shroud, and bits of metal buckles and fastens indicated the remains of leather armour. In context with the vaguely canine bones at the corpse’s side, Rhoana could only guess that this body belonged to a human ranger who had fallen centuries ago. She knew from her Dream that the Pale Mother’s seed had been planted on the remains of a human village… but it was far more disturbing to discover the evidence first-hand.
Rhoana was supposed to be gathering supplies before setting out into Caledon. She certainly wasn’t supposed to be watching Scout dig up centuries-old corpses. What in the name of Tyria was even happening right now.
Scout snuffled at the crumbling bones and whined, confused and desperate, before backing away and pressing his body against her side. She held his head against her chest as she soothed him, wondering just what it was about the corpse that had him so distraught. It wasn’t as though the hound had never seen a body before - he’d killed in her defence before, within the Dream, and he likely would again. But there was something about this one that upset him… this body had clearly been laid to rest with care. Maybe it was something to do with how they’d died. Resolving herself, Rhoana shifted closer to try to get a better look. A glint of light caught her eye, and when she focused on it, she found a length of rusted, delicate chain wrapped behind where the neck must have been, its ends disappearing below a fold of still-intact cloth. The Pale Tree’s own roots gently cradled the corpse, as though She had known the body was there and took great effort not to disturb its eternal rest. Folding back the cloth revealed a crystal pendant, and between the scraps of what must have been the finger bones, an ancient-looking ring.
Something deep inside Rhoana felt suddenly ill, and she realized with slowly dawning - Horror? Dread? - that she’d seen these items before. Gently lifting the pendant from the body and wiping away the grime revealed it as a crystal vial filled with gently glowing water, just like the one in her Dream. The ring, too, was a faded version of the signet her slumbering spirit had been drawn to. Just who was this fallen ranger? Why had Rhoana Dreamt so strongly of the personal effects of a human who had been dead for centuries?
And why hadn’t Caithe mentioned seeing them, as she had with the Dragon? Were these smaller, fractured details somehow beyond the Firstborn’s ability to perceive?
“I promise,” she whispered to the corpse as she held the trinkets close to her chest, “I’ll find out who you are.” It was a strange oath to give to a body that had been dead for longer than your race had been alive, but the words felt right.
Setting the trinkets aside, she placed the cloth back the way she’d found it and gently worked to return the body to rest with the displaced soil. There was no point in further disturbing the grave. When her task was done, she led Scout away to find a stream, intent on restoring the pendant and ring as well as she could. For having been buried underground for so long, they were in remarkably good condition. After a moment of hesitance, she slipped the pendant chain around her neck, letting the crystal rest against her chest and slipping the ring over the ridge of her finger. Until she could find the ranger’s story, she would honour her promise this way instead. Like this, she would never be able to forget.