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“Excuse me, sir.”
The man who approaches is as neutral as his tone; his drab attire and muddy boots mark him as a ranger, as does the curve of the bow at his back. The only curiosity is the sword at his hip; it is too fine a blade for a mere ranger’s weapon and looks instead like the hard-earned treasure of a seasoned warrior.
He is also, Barok notes, not from here. His dark hair and brown eyes seem to be the characteristics of one from a far off land, indeed, the likes of whom are rarely seen in the Bailey.
“Would you happen to be the Keeper of the Bailey?”
Barok scoffs. “That is not the title of the one who guards the sacrosanct Reaper’s Flame, nor is he one to be named lightly.”
His voice is rough, his words curt. Barok finds little use in socializing with the citizens of the village; they often seek his counsel, and all hold their own preconceptions about what it means to be a cleric of the Reaper. Necromancer, they call him, or a warlock who has sold his soul in exchange for power. They do not see the weight of the responsibility one bears upon committing oneself to the Order of the Reaper.
“So you are not he?”
“I am he who lives in the Keep that overlooks the Bailey, who has pledged his life in service of the Reaper.” Barok sips at his wine, careful to keep his mask of indifference firmly in place. “I am not someone who can help you.”
Disappointment darkens the man’s brow, on the edge of despair. Odd for a ranger to keep his thoughts so poorly concealed; the man’s countenance is an open tome that Barok finds he can read easily.
No one approaches him without cause: a sad tale of loss, a mad wish for longevity, a fear of mortality they hope he might ease. Many hunger for the power over Life and Death; and many leave with broken hearts or angry spirits when they realize that a cleric of the Reaper does not wield such power but wards it. The Death God does not play favorites, and even the strength of the Reaper’s Flame cannot alter the fated course of a person’s life.
Barok knows this more keenly than anyone.
“Might I pay for your next drink, Master Cleric?” the man asks. He is persistent, Barok notes. Most give up after his first curt reply. “You need not answer a single question if you do not care to. Just… allow me to make up for any inconvenience I might have caused.”
Barok turns his gaze upon the man for a more thorough inspection. “From whence have you come?”
“The Far East.” He replies without hesitation, despite the negative reaction this would garner from so many this far north.
“You are a long way from home.”
“My name is Naruhodou,” he supplies, though Barok has not asked. “And I am on a quest to save the soul of a dear friend.”
Indeed. There is always some such motivation.
“I am not in the business of saving souls,” Barok says shortly. “But if you wish to spend your gold on the likes of me, I shall not protest.”
Naruhodou smiles, and it holds all the warmth of the golden glow of a summer’s eve. Barok wonders that one so filled with life should be so keen to seek Death.
“Of course, Master Cleric,” he says. He sounds more hopeful than he has any right to. “Another… ale, is it?”
Barok’s nose curls. “Red wine.”
The man nods, unperturbed. “I shall return as swiftly as possible.” Only now does he hesitate, uncertainty passing over his expression for the space of a breath. “And… thank you, my Lord.”
“Do not thank me,” Barok says, more to his wine than to anyone else. “Not until you know what it is the Reaper has in store.”
***
The trouble, of course, is that, upon hearing his tale, Barok knows exactly where the man’s journey will take him. One way or another, his heart’s desire is held within the Keep of the Bailey, in the very heart of the tower where the Reaper’s Flame resides.
“And so, you see,” Naruhodou says, cradling his second ale in his grasp, “I do not—I cannot—believe that my friend is dead. I believe that his soul remains in this world.” His free hand curls protectively around the hilt of the fine blade at his belt. “And I believe that I can find him.”
Barok nods slowly but says nothing. He knows what the man would ask of him, but he will await the question all the same.
“Do you think, Master Cleric, that the Reaper might see fit to aid my quest?” Once spoken, the question seems to open the door for further justification to come tumbling out. “It’s only, you see—I heard about the Keeper of the Bailey in my travels, and the Reaper’s Flame Undying, and I thought that perhaps—well, if the God of Death’s power truly is made manifest here in the province of the Bailey, I thought perhaps someone of the Order of the Reaper might be able to help me seek his counsel.”
“The Reaper holds the answer to your question,” Barok says stiffly, seeing the hope in the man’s eyes and knowing it will only be dashed by his next words. “But the price the Reaper demands for such information beyond our ken is often too steep for any mortal to pay.”
“I would pay it gladly,” Naruhodou counters without hesitation.
Barok smiles, and it does not reach his eyes. “Do not be so quick to agree to terms you do not yet understand, my learned friend.”
“With all due respect, Master Cleric, will you help me, or should I seek my answers elsewhere?”
Barok takes in the man’s earnest expression, his hard-set jaw and dark, shining eyes. “You should seek your answers elsewhere,” he says. “I will be of little help to you. I am but a lowly servant of the Reaper, beholden to the Keep. I believe that the High Cleric of our Order may hold the key to the truth that you seek.”
“The High Cleric?”
Barok nods. “Mael Stronghart knows more of the heart of the God of Death than I should ever hope to. If anyone can help you, he can.”
“Mael Stronghart,” Naruhodou repeats. The name sounds hushed, awed, and just a bit ominous as it passes through his lips. “Thank you, sir.”
He would not thank him, Barok thinks, if he could see to the heart of the secrets Barok is so desperate to keep.
***
The proprietor of the Flame’s Keep has long been known as one of the most isolating roles that a cleric of the Death God might fulfill. The Keep, alone upon the stark cliffs that look down upon the verdant valley of the Bailey, is the stuff of nightmares and ghostly stories. Its jutting turrets and pointed rooftops reach toward the sky like desperate claws; shadows creep over the face of it even in the daylight, giving it an aura of perpetual gloom, broken only by the spectral white light of the Reaper’s Flame, its glow visible for miles through the windows of the highest tower.
His sole purpose for the past five years has been to wander these empty halls and keep alight the holy Flame. His sole company has been the shadows; the people of the nearby village at once revere his power and fear his approach.
But now, there is the Apprentice.
He does not know why the High Cleric saw fit to assign him an Apprentice. He feels in turns that it must have been to torture him with the ache of familiarity or to soothe him with the balm of companionship.
The Apprentice has no name—none that he can recall—and does not deign to ask questions of Barok’s life outside the Order. The strength of his presence is the thing that Barok finds draws him to the younger man. The Apprentice moves with the confidence and grace of a warrior, but he radiates sheer power. Though whatever amnesiac hex he has fallen under weems to quell too his memories of how to wield his powers effectively, the crackle of it is evident in the very air around him. The sensation of it leaves no doubt in Barok’s mind that his Apprentice’s power is no god-given gift resulting from a pact, as Barok’s magical abilities are. This man is surely mageborn, with power to wield all his own.
Mageborns are rare, unique gems found among those clerics and warlocks who barter away their souls for power. Barok has had the honor to know two such men in his life before now. The first was his late brother, Klint, who had earned distinction within the Order for the power and conviction with which he wielded. Like a flame set to dry tinder, Klint had blazed so brightly that the fire consumed itself too quickly.
The second is a man whose name Barok has not allowed himself to speak aloud for five years.
***
The Apprentice watches, quiet and keen, as Barok prepares for his ritual. The mask he wears—the evidence of his curse—obscures some of the details of his face, but it cannot hide the bright eyes that follow Barok’s every move.
The silence hangs heavily in the room, long enough that Barok thinks that he may be able to begin the ritual without having to address the tension in the air between them. The Apprentice, however, is not so inclined.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. His tone holds neither sympathy nor accusation.
“What do you mean?”
Barok completes the circle around the offering he has arranged deliberately on the stone floor beneath the Flame; the magic snaps into place with a hum that he cannot hear so much as feel, a frisson across his skin. Above their heads, the Flame shudders in response. The Reaper’s Flame shall burn strong for another cycle of the moon.
“You know what I mean,” the Apprentice replies. His words are forceful without being harsh; such a balance of strength and poise, this man. “Something has happened. Why will you not speak of it?”
“And what indication have you that anything of import has occurred, pray tell?”
“You won’t look at me, for one thing.”
In an act driven by sheer desire to avoid further conversation, Barok lifts himself from his knees and turns to face the Apprentice. His gaze flickers over the intricate details of the mask—the threads of magic that weave together unseen to sustain his curse—before he meets the other’s eyes defiantly.
“Pray forgive the discourtesy, Apprentice.” There is no hint of change in his flat expression. “I did not realize that my gaze meant so much to you.”
“It’s not-it’s not that,” the younger man snaps too quickly. If there is any flush to his face at the words, the mask does him the kindness of concealing it.
Barok makes an ambiguous sound of understanding. When he makes a move to leave, however, the Apprentice catches his arm. He turns on the man out of sheer surprise; they’ve had so little cause to touch that he’s taken aback by the sensation of the other man’s hand on him, as galvanizing as the feel of the spell that had sent shivers across his skin moments ago.
“I don’t know what more I can do.” The Apprentice’s voice is terse but earnest. “I can hardly swear loyalty when I’ve no name to give you. But I’d like to think that I’ve earned more trust than this these past months.”
Barok’s eyes don’t leave the place where the Apprentice’s gloved hand lingers on his arm.
“You, Apprentice, are not the one whom I have difficulty trusting.”
***
The dark of night shrouds the world outside of the Keep in its black ether. Barok’s busy mind long outlasts the final vestiges of the sun’s light, and sleep seems a distant thing to him.
“You know who he is.”
Perhaps the spectre that wears his brother’s face is a product of his own disturbed mind, his guilty conscience brought to bear. Perhaps his own soul is doomed, and the Reaper has seen fit to punish him with these visions in the dark until he meets his own demise.
Perhaps he has died already, his every step carrying him deeper into his damnation.
He closes his eyes, his grip tightening on his chalice. He had poured it for the sheer comfort of a familiar gesture; he scarcely dares to drink from it.
“I don’t,” he says quietly. He whispers only to the night and the quietly crackling flames of the fireplace, he tells himself; he knows it is not true.
“You do,” the revenant says. There is little accusation in its tone, but Barok hears the judgement all the same.
“He may be the kin of the only man who haunts my nightmares more than you do. He may be that man himself, reborn, come to seek his vengeance upon my soul. Or he may be wholly unconnected, an accursed soul who has been brought here by the Reaper for reasons unrelated to our past. My past,” he corrects himself quickly. Surely, were he whole of mind, he would be more certain he is the only one here.
When he opens his eyes, he can still see his brother. The vision of Klint that sits before him has the pallor of death, but his eyes are as piercing a blue as they ever were in life.
“Do not play the fool with me, brother. You know as well as I that Genshin Asougi had a son. You know it is he whom the ranger seeks.”
“If I knew anything at all,” Barok asks wearily, “would I not have risen to be something more than the deplorable soul you see before you?”
The spectre makes a frustrated noise; he has dissipated by the time Barok dares to look again.
“I know who he is.” This time he addresses no one other than the crackling fire; it sputters but gives no other response. “He is my greatest shame and my greatest fear given breath.”
He ponders throwing his chalice into the fire, the rush of flames, the shattering glass; he sits, indecisive, for so long, that the flames fade into little more than glowing embers before he finally decides to set his glass aside and make his way to his bed.
***
“The men of the Bailey call you a necromancer.”
The words are tinged with indignation, and if this is what he has saved for Barok, he can only imagine the displeasure the Apprentice had unleashed on the townsman in the face of this perceived slight.
“The men of the Bailey have called me much worse.”
The words do not seem to have the calming effect intended. The Apprentice stands with his arms crossed, anger darkening his expression.
“The Reaper of the Bailey has chosen to bestow his powers upon you. And yet you care so little for yourself, it’s as though the mark of the Death God hardly matters.”
“The words of men do not matter,” Barok says neutrally. “And what I care about are your studies. How do you expect to learn to wield your powers once more when you cannot commit yourself to even the most basic of ritual spellcasting?”
His Apprentice glowers but does not argue.
***
Barok has little cause to stray further from the Keep than the tavern in the village where he goes on occasion to indulge in the red wine that reminds him of Klint’s favorite vintage. It has been so long, in fact, since he ventured father that the very light in the world outside the village feels harsh. The air seems to grate on his skin anywhere his dark robes do not protect him, and he feels that he is watched wherever he goes.
It is a worthwhile price, though, for the store of knowledge at Death’s Tomb. The library at the Reaper’s temple far surpasses anything that Barok has access to at the Keep, and knowledge is what he needs most right now.
What his Apprentice needs most.
He has little to go on but the marks and the mask that adorn his Apprentice’s face. Still, he is determined to find some sort of answer—and some sort of counter curse, if one should exist.
Cursed objects are rare, and it takes a strong practitioner of magic to create one. Rarer still is the skill that it takes to imbue the thing with enduring power; his Apprentice’s mask has kept him from speaking his name—from knowing his own mind—for the past six months that he has resided within the Keep. Such a feat is nearly impossible for a man-made object.
He fears to think that his Apprentice has been hexed by something divine, but there is no clearer direction for his research than this.
He starts with the symbols, the markings that adorn the man’s forehead like the jewels of a crown. This search turns up little; similar markings have been used before, but they are not runes, and they hold no meaning outside the intent of the practitioner who creates them.
When he returns to the library the next day, he focuses his search on masks, and this proves somewhat more fruitful. There is a tradition of masks in the worship of several of the Pantheon, including the Reaper. The funerary mask, of course, is a long-standing tradition with which they honor the dead. But it’s not until he delves deep into the history of the ritual that he finds lore about masks for the living as well as the dead.
The Death God, according to the crumbling pages of the tome he now consults, had gifted masks to those chosen among his earliest worshippers, the founders of the Order of the Reaper, to repay those who had bolstered them through the power of their worship. To one follower, he gifted the Mask of Restoration, imbued with the power to heal quickly from any wound inflicted by mortal means. To one, he gifted the Mask of Evocation, which granted the wearer dominion over nearby spirits—the roots, no doubt, of the association of the clerics of the Death God with the dealings of necromancy.
The third mask he finds mention of is the most disturbing of them: rather than granting the wearer a powerful boon, the Mask of Obliteration has the power to erase a person from existence, starting with their own memories.
Even at the time of the writing of this historical text, none of these masks had been seen for centuries. Curious, Barok thinks, that the Order of the Reaper did not take more care to protect such precious and powerful items.
Unless, of course, they had, and it was a secret so closely guarded that none but the highest in the Order were privy to the knowledge.
It suddenly seems no coincidence that it was the highest of their Order who had brought this masked man to Barok in the first place.
***
“Have you tried true love’s kiss? That always breaks curses in the stories.”
Barok had once been quite good at ignoring the apparition’s jibes; these days, despite his ongoing fear that the spectre lives only in his mind, Barok finds himself answering more often than not.
“I very much doubt that I am his true love.” He wonders if the young man might be his, on those occasions when he can scarcely ignore the racing of his heart, the hitch in his breath when his Apprentice draws near. But he shall never speak this aloud to anyone, not even to the vision wearing his brother’s face.
“I meant the ranger,” Klint responds, one eyebrow raised. “But interesting to know that that’s where your mind went, brother.”
Barok shakes his head, but Klint’s image persists at the edge of his vision. He hasn’t the time for such distraction; the knowledge that the accursed mask may very well be siphoning the life from his Apprentice has lit a fire of urgency in Barok’s chest.
It gives him a sense of purpose like none he has had in the past five years.
And if his research holds true, this ritual must take place tonight, the night where only the shadow of the moon hangs visible in the sky, just as the ritual to keep alive the Reaper’s Flame. If not tonight, he will not have another chance until the end of the next cycle of the moon—and he’s not sure what will happen to his Apprentice in the meantime. Or to him, for that matter, now that he works to undo the thing that the High Cleric himself may have set in motion.
Perhaps there is another accursed mask of legend out there awaiting him.
“If you’re not going to help,” Barok murmurs, “kindly leave me to it.”
“Did you need help, Master?”
The sound of his Apprentice’s voice startles him, and Barok turns to face him. The young man is watching him from the doorway, concern and curiosity vying for control of his expression.
Klint, of course, is nowhere to be seen.
***
“You’re sure this will work?”
Ryuunosuke hangs back near the doorway as Barok has instructed, but he looks as though every inch of him longs to rush forward to interfere. His hands hang, useless, at his sides, his fists clenching and unclenching for lack of substantive activity. His eyes are fixed on the Apprentice.
On Kazuma.
Neither of them has spoken the name to the man, in agreement that they shall wait until the ritual has been completed—or the attempt fails. But the light in Ryuunosuke’s eyes when they first fell on the Apprentice leaves little room for doubt in Barok’s mind as to the identity of the man before him.
Kazuma Asougi.
Son of the man Barok had hated. Son of the man Barok is beginning to fear he had forsaken in his darkest hour. For if it were truly so clear that Genshin Asougi was a murderer—as clear as it had been in Barok’s mind then—what cause would there be to make this attempt to erase his son’s identity?
“I am not,” Barok says earnestly. “Though I would do nothing I thought could hasten the process or cause harm.”
He looks not at the ranger but at his Apprentice as he says it. Kazuma nods solemnly, then, to Barok’s surprise, smiles.
“I trust you.” The words tug painfully at Barok’s heart.
“You soon shall not, I’m afraid,” he says, so softly he’s sure it does not reach even the ranger’s keen ears.
The spell is a complex one, but at the heart of it is the very conjuration that Barok does on the darkest night each month to replenish the Flame and keep it burning strong in its isolated tower. For that is the basis of his plan: If the power of the Reaper has created this curse of living death, then the power of the Reaper should be able to unmake it.
“Are you ready?” he asks. Kazuma nods again. It hurts, his smile; he looks so like Genshin, even with the mask on, that Barok is sure he must have noticed before, denying their similarity only by the power of his own broken heart.
He uses a cantrip to etch a circle in light around their feet as he prepares for the spell. Chalk usually suffices for his monthly incantations, but he will take no chances here.
Kazuma is watching him as the magic of the circle glows to life at their feet. They stand, toe to toe, surrounded by the soft thrum of power.
Barok breathes deeply. The Reaper’s Flame over their heads burns just a bit brighter this night, he thinks.
He hopes it is a positive omen; he fears it cannot be.
Barok holds out his book of prayers and rites, his holy symbol, and begins to read.
It is not flame that fills the space within the circle, but shadow. Thick, dark clouds, ether from beyond the edges of the tangible realms. He sees stars in the blackness, or souls; he sees forever into the depths, and nothing that is not Kazuma.
His Apprentice begins to speak with him… but, no. It is not Kazuma’s voice, though it is his tongue that forms the words. It is Klint’s voice—or Genshin’s. It is the voice of the Death God themself.
Fear chokes Barok until his words come out in a strangled rasp, but still he speaks. He repeats the incantation until he no longer needs the tome in his hand to remind him of the words; and still he speaks, looking into the depths of the eyes behind the mask.
They are not the keen, dark eyes he knows. Kazuma’s eyes are filled with the white hot flame of the Reaper.
Barok has no sense of how much time has passed outside the circle, but knows when the ritual is complete. His voice fails, while Kazuma’s voice rises. And then, of a sudden, they both fall silent, as though both voices have been burned away in the blaze of white flame.
The circle breaks, though Barok did not break it, and Kazuma falls to his knees.
“Kazuma!” The ranger moves forward without thinking, kneeling at his friend’s side. Everything in Barok’s body tells him to do the same, but he holds back.
Kazuma takes a shaky breath, almost a laugh, and he covers the hand Ryuunosuke lies on his arm with his own. Ryuunosuke grips back with a sort of desperation Barok can keenly understand.
“Hello again… my friend.”
When Kazuma looks up to meet Ryuunosuke’s gaze, his face is his own. The Mask of Obliteration lies on the floor before him, cleft in two.
He has succeeded, and yet there is an ache in Barok’s chest, a wound freshly opened. His success means the return of things to the way they once were, and indeed, here is Kazuma, reunited with his partner.
And with his success here tonight, Barok’s life, too, shall return to the way it had been.
***
He walks the halls of the Keep alone.
This is not new for Barok; he had done it for years. It should be no different now than it had been before. It should be no more difficult.
The Keep had never felt so stonily silent then as it seems now, in his Apprentice’s absence.
From the shadows of the passage behind him, he hears, “Are you happy now, brother?”
***
For the first time since Stronghart had escorted Kazuma to the home of his new mentor, the Keep of the Bailey has an unexpected guest.
So unexpected is he that Barok simply stares at the ranger for a heartbeat too long before he comes back to his senses and invites the man inside. Soon, they are both observing each other warily over their respective cups of tea when Ryuunosuke finally finds it within himself to break the awkward silence.
“So… Klint.”
Barok tilts his head curiously, his eyes narrowed; he manages to avoid letting his gaze dart around the room to see if the name has summoned the revenant of his departed kin, but it’s a close thing.
“You’ve gotten farther with your research than I’d have expected for a ranger.”
Ryuunosuke seems to be looking anywhere but at him. “I uncovered many tales about your brother. M-my condolences, by the way. It must have been incredibly painful for you.” Barok says nothing. Ryuunosuke swallows, then continues, “I’m also given to understand that he and Kazuma’s father were partners, after a fashion. Powerful mageborn, the pair of them, and part of the same party. They were quite legendary, the adventurers who were clearing the wretched and corrupt from the Bailey.
“But all the tales seem to end… here.”
Ryuunosuke pauses as though to invite further comment. Barok gives him none, simply meeting the man’s gaze while he listens to the sound of blood rushing through his ears like the torrential rain of a summer storm.
He knows this story, of course; part of him has hoped to never hear it again.
“Genshin Asougi was last seen in the nearby village, on his way to the Keep,” Ryuunosuke continues. “But no one seems to know what happened once he arrived… if he ever did.”
He killed Klint, Barok. Do you really think the Order should suffer him to live?
“He did,” Barok answers, his voice hollow, his mind half-absorbed by memories that he has spent years striving not to examine too closely. “He came to see the Keeper of the time, but the High Cleric caught word of it. He was after the Reaper’s Flame, to harness its power for his own use. But he had killed a number of the Order by then, had killed his own party member. The High Cleric sent a number of us to detain him, in the name of the Reaper, for the crimes committed against us.”
“The High Cleric,” Ryuunosuke repeats. His voice is soft, but his eyes are sharp, and Barok realizes in that moment that Ryuunosuke sees more than he lets on. He feels suddenly, horrifically vulnerable under the man’s gaze. “Would that be High Cleric Stronghart?”
Barok nods. “He ascended to the highest seat in our order when the last High Cleric was killed.”
“By Genshin Asougi.”
He can feel each heartbeat painfully, the rush of blood like ice in his veins as he sees the events again in his mind’s eyes. “That is what I believed at the time.”
And he had, all those years ago. He had believed with all his heart that the mage he had so respected, the wondrous practitioner from a far off land, had killed his brother, had betrayed them both. He’d been scarcely more than an Acolyte at the time, but Stronghart had allowed him to be a part of the group that set out to capture Genshin.
No. Stronghart had not simply allowed him to… he had insisted, hadn’t he?
“I don’t believe that,” Ryuunosuke says quietly, kindly, as though he can see the way Barok’s heart aches with each breath. “And I don’t think you do, either. Not anymore.”
Barok wants to say that he is a cleric who knows not what he believes, that he will be of little use to Ryuunosuke or his partner now.
He wants to say this, but something in Ryuunosuke’s dark eyes stops him.
“You went to Death’s Tomb when you were trying to discover the key to breaking Kazuma’s curse,” Ryuunosuke says. It’s not a question.
Barok stills, his eyes wide, though he dares not look at the man. Of course, he is right to suspect Barok; he is, after all, one of the Order. “Please do not mistake my search for knowledge as anything more sinister than it was,” he begins, but Ryuunosuke waves a hand.
“It is you who misunderstand me, Master Cleric. After what I have seen you do for us—for Kazuma—I do not believe you to be the enemy. But I do suspect that you uncovered more than just the origin of his curse on your journey. Did you not?”
Barok dares to look up at Ryuunosuke; the other man’s eyes are blazing in a way that he has never seen—
But no. He has seen this. He has seen Klint’s eyes alight with this sort of faith. Klint’s, and Genshin’s.
He nods slowly, and Ryuunosuke smiles, satisfied.
“Please, my Lord. I have asked much of you already, I know, but if you would indulge me. Might I request that you tell me all that you know of your High Cleric?”
***
The next time that he sees Kazuma is the first time that he sees the man fully for who he is: Genshin Asougi’s son, with the sword of his clan at his hip and the mageborn power of his line so strong that Barok can taste the metallic tang of it on his tongue.
“Lord van Zieks,” he says, with a nod of acknowledgement. His expression is sharp, but a smile tugs at his mouth.
“Master Asougi.” Barok’s mouth has gone dry. He had not expected to see the man again, and here he is, gracing the entrance hall of the Keep of the Bailey scarcely a month after his great departure. “I… have not been addressed by that name in some time.”
“Clerics of the Reaper renounce their family name,” Kazuma acknowledges. “And yet it haunts you still, does it not, my Lord? As mine haunts me.”
“I did not expect to see you returned to these halls so soon,” Barok says, carefully ignoring the remark. He is yet unsure whether the son of the Asougi clan has appeared before him ready to embrace him or to smite him where he stands.
“Didn’t you?” Kazuma asks. He steps into the entryway uninvited, just as he had when he had made the Keep his home. “You’ve yet to fulfill your bargain to me, Master Cleric.”
Barok’s brow furrows, and Kazuma meets his gaze steadily, wholly assured.
“Did you not commit to teaching me how to wield my powers?”
“I—” The words die in his throat; he had, of course, but that had been a different Barok, in a different lifetime, when each of their identities had remained secret to each other. “Surely you do not wish to learn from… me?”
“The cleric of the Reaper’s Order so powerful that the men of the village say he’s tethered his brother’s spirit to this plane out of sheer will? I can think of no one more suitable to teach me for the task at hand.”
Barok gives him a discerning look, but there is nothing to Kazuma’s confident look that betrays his larger meaning. Still, Barok has enough of the pieces of this puzzle to be concerned for the larger picture.
“The task at hand?”
Kazuma smiles; it is utterly joyless.
“I’m going to find out what happened to my father, and I will do everything I must to clear his name. But I need to be ready for what I’ll face. Who I’ll face.”
Barok swallows, waits, does not dare speak.
“I could use a cleric on my side, when the time comes.” Kazuma sounds so casual for the heaviness of his words. He seeks to overturn half of the Bailey with this quest, Barok realizes; whatever he must do to uncover the extent of what Mael Stronghart has done. “And I could surely use your guidance in the meantime.”
“I…”
“Will you help me, Lord van Zieks?”
Kazuma extends his hand, for Barok to take or turn away.
His Order, or his Apprentice: He has made this choice once already, and it is not Kazuma whom he doubts.
Barok is the one who had failed to rise to the challenge ten years ago. Barok is the one who does not deserve this second chance being given to him.
Barok cannot trust that he will not fail this test a second time.
“Usually my hands are tied in regards to what I may divulge to you.” Klint’s voice so near his ear startles him, and he cannot help but seek out the spectre. He’s there, just near Barok’s right shoulder. He looks more solid than he ever has before; Barok almost believes he might reach out and touch his brother’s shoulder. “But in this case, you already know what you must do.”
The cleric of the Reaper’s Order so powerful that the men of the village say he’s tethered his brother’s spirit to this plane out of sheer will.
Barok looks back to Kazuma’s gloved hand; the other man has not waivered, despite Barok’s own turmoil.
“Lord van Zieks?”
“Take his hand, you dolt.”
Barok meets Kazuma’s gaze, lets the shining confidence in the other man’s eyes become his own for this moment in which he has none. He raises his hand, clasps Kazuma’s in his own. There’s a softness now to Kazuma’s smile that soothes Barok’s fear, if only a little.
“I shall stand with you, Master Asougi, until Death parts us.”