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Roundtable Hold is rotting.
In his current state, when he’s not lost in a waking dream, Rogier has little else to do besides watch it crawl towards its end. The world itself is different, a new Tarnished growing closer to the throne each day. There is little reason for anyone to pretend that it’ll be them who changes the world by playing hero, a cynical part of him notes. Voices grow less frequent, conversations beyond basic pleasantries a rarity. He sees cobwebs and dust begin to pile up in the cracks. Ofnir never was big on brotherhood, and the lack of camaraderie is showing its colors now.
Nepheli wished him goodbye before she departed, single bag of belongings tied protectively at her hip. Her stalwart voice came out slightly ragged when she spoke and Rogier got the impression that this was not a leave of choice. He tried to offer comforts and words of assurance, and she seemed to appreciate the effort, if nothing else.
Fia did not visit him, but he can feel the absence of her presence. Ethereal as she was, he doesn’t find it surprising that she would vanish without a trace. The Lands Between never seemed to be her final destination.
Darian leaves, too. Deathroot must be weeded; certainly it is more noble of a quest than sitting idly by. Rogier tells himself that he appreciates him being gone. It saves him from the chastisement and the pitying stares he would have received. Not to say that he didn’t check to see if his leave was brief. In the days when his mobility was better Rogier would twist his chair, risking a fall, to get a better vantage point into the central chamber. Each time, it was silent and empty, but he thought maybe one more look would change it. His sense of time is nebulous, and for all he knows, Darian has been away for weeks. He is content, he thinks, to pass in solitude. This is how it was always going to end.
His company now are the brambles within his blood and the insects that profligate in it. He feels them even now, writhing in him like he was raw meat. And the stench. The smell of deathblight is unmistakable, once you’ve known it. It differs from the typical sickly sweetness of a corpse, more reminiscent of earth, but with a note of something sharp and salty that he cannot place. Fish baking in the hot sun, sea brine mixed with mud. He never held any love for the sea; his family home was far into the marshes, and the ocean always seemed to be a dense, dark place with little comfort. But sometimes he retreats into an envisioned past, spent under endless blue skies and shorelines. He knows that it is a peaceful land, free of conflict and obligation. He smells brine, but it comes as a great comfort, and he feels a kind hand on his shoulder, speaking in a foreign, sweet tongue–
Thump.
His head jerks up as he is rattled from the dream, unsure of the cause at first until he hears it. Something heavy scrapes across the wooden floor, slow in its movement. There is a slight rhythm to it; a long drag, then a pause, then another long drag, like a great thing struggling to move under its own weight. Curiosity strikes him more than fear as he leans in closer to hear the noise gradually approaching the door. It likely poses no threat to him, he reasons. A hunter wouldn’t be so graceless and loud, nor would they go after a man half-dead already. Beasts cannot enter the Hold either, kept at bay by old wards. Most likely someone is wounded and seeking aid.
He watches the door with complete focus. It’s the first new thing in a long time and he welcomes the opportunity to see something different. Rogier does not know how long it takes before the specter is standing in the archway, a hunched shape that lists heavily to the right, catching the flickering chandelier light against its metallic surface. It walks with a pronounced limp, favoring its left side. He cannot see most of it through the thick white blotch of a cataract in the center of its vision, but it looks to be human.
Politeness must come first. He smiles disarmingly, inclining his head in a cordial nod. “Forgive me if my judgment is incorrect, but I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is Rogier. A sorcerer, should it interest you. Do you need any–“
The rest of his words die on his tongue as the stranger doesn’t pause to listen for even a moment. Perhaps his voice is quieter than he realizes. Perhaps they simply don’t care about pleasantries. He instead chooses to let them come to him, observing them more closely now as they advance. He feels his stomach drop into the floor at the sight of slash of silver across gold, the outline of a figure being tenderly held. Something black is carved across it, like a fissure.
It is an illusion, surely. He has no reason to have come back to this place and especially no cause to see Rogier. Darian was never vindictive and wouldn’t have sought vengeance, but their parting had always been final. Nothing else needed to be said or done. A tangled cluster of thoughts race through his head; perhaps this is the flash of memories the graceless are said to see before they die. He never believed in the idea, but he doesn’t resist when it comes close enough to touch him, looming over him with a long shadow. He’s certainly a worthy candidate for death.
The terse silence is broken when Darian, or the specter imitating him, trips. Actually trips. Falls to his knees as his foot catches in the corner of Rogier's quilt, landing loudly as the wood groans under the bulk of his armor. The tug yanks the blanket from his lap to pool at his ankles, and Rogier instinctively averts his gaze from the mess of his lower half. He expects Darian to stand straight up and apologize for his carelessness, obsessed as he is with his standard of perfection; and yet, to Rogier, he doesn’t seem to register that he’s even fallen. Instead, he stays still for several seconds, face planted against the floor, before he carelessly lifts himself up to sit on his haunches, reaching to about mid-thigh height right next to him. He doesn’t say a word about the thorns, either. The rank smell of deathblight feels stronger now, as if the Hold itself radiates plague.
Something is deeply, deeply wrong here, he thinks, as Darian’s cheek comes to rest by his knee, hands slowly creeping around his legs to embrace him loosely at the hip. Rogier wonders if he’s drunk. He’d be a liar if he said he didn’t welcome the idea of reconciliation, but this feels like a stranger. Did something happen to bring about such a wanton display of emotion? Darian is many things, but openly physical has never been one of them. Rogier had always enjoyed the rarer moments of contact, when they could embrace and exist together, but it was always behind closed doors, and always with a little hesitation. He would never have dared to lay upon him where they could be seen.
His head is heavy and limp as it settles onto the top of Rogier’s left knee. Like a corpse.
There’s something prickling to life in his legs.
A sense of panic hits him as the fetid odor becomes so thick he can taste it, and he moves a shaky hand to the helmet’s crest, pulling it just slightly upwards to get a better view of the faceplate. It smiles serenely, as always. A long, thin briar protrudes from the helmet’s right eyehole, already snaking down to poke a hole in the thick tan fabric of his trousers. Rogier lets out a low moan as he jerks back, letting Darian’s face fall back down hard against him. He tries to rationalize it as a horrible dream, even as he can feel something newly siphoning away at what little strength he still possesses, like the parasite within him has gained further teeth. Fear turns to despair. How long has Darian been gone for? Has he been rotting, suffering, while Rogier dallied and moped and felt so sorry for himself? The guilt hurts almost as much as the physical agony of something slowly slithering up into his ribcage. If he’d been better, he could have fixed it, or at the very least allowed for him to die a proper death.
Darian had wept his fear to him, once. That death would kill his faith and he would become one of the foul things that openly chose to defy the Order and return again. Dying scared him, but undeath shook him to his bones. Rogier had been quick to assure him that, if reanimation was truly brought on by a lack of faith, then he had nothing to be concerned about. Fat lot of good that’s done him.
He can’t register any pain in his legs but he can feel it everywhere else, radiating up through the nerves of his chest and neck in waves. The thing wearing Darian’s armor, because he can't bear to call it Darian, still clings loosely to his knees, though it doesn’t need to; the black thornbush sprouting from its chest is already anchored into the one threading through Rogier’s calves, knitting them together like horrible macrame. Insects flit around the pair. He’s so tired. Sleep might quell the pain. It wouldn’t be so bad to keep dreaming again.
Dimly, Rogier wonders how they will be found, if at all. If they’ll be dust by then, or if they’ll still be recognizable. It’s not as though it matters. He lays his hands in his lap, closing his eyes and sighing with resignation. Beneath him, Darian’s corpse lets out a shuddering gasp of air as if to respond. It goes limp, hands dropping to the floor even as it stays suspended.
—
“It’s fascinating.” A menagerie of grinning skeletal faces stare up at him as Rogier leans in close to the largest root cluster, resisting the urge to brush his hands across the rough surface. The protruding whorls across it almost resemble eyes, he notes with a twinge of unease. “Erdroots cannot lie so far above the ground, much less the ones used for burial, but these bones have clearly been in the sun for some time. Look at the bleaching on the forehead here.”
D doesn’t respond immediately, occupied with slicing through the densest section of root growth in search of its bulb. He grunts as his sword pierces true.
“It’s not their natural place. They’ve been called to wake by the Mariner.”
He hums. “The mobile ones, yes. But look at these bulbs. The bones are anchored far too deep for movement to be possible.”
The roots interlock through most of the bodies, binding them like rope. They pass through eye sockets and ribs, looping through the spine and across the mandible. It makes his skin prickle to think about.
“I don’t see your point.” D’s voice is edged as he reaches into the cluster of tangled roots, up to his elbow in dried plant and organic matter.
“I’ll reframe it. If they aren’t even moving, then why are they here? What drives these bodies up from below when they lack the ability to fight? Do they feed the roots? And how do such clusters even form?” His voice comes out as a quiet murmur.
D finally tears the wretched bulb free with a loud snap, wrapping it in sacred cloth so as to keep its foulness from spreading. His body language is tight as he places it in his pouch, looking firmly at Rogier.
“Do not let yourself be a smart fool, Rogier,” he warns. “This is not a place for scholarship.”
He sighs, but relents, stepping away from the mound. It’s no use quarreling again; arguing with D is like trying to debate a stone column. He’ll return at a later date, he decides. Perhaps it’s a curiosity he’ll have to learn the answer to another day.