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Interlude: A Pale Shadow
🕑 Added 2025-09-12 16:00:25 +0000 UTCOn some days, Doris wasn’t sure getting out of bed was worth it. Those days had been far too frequent for comfort in the last three years, though one could argue that even in the two years before that, such days had been a common occurrence. While in bed, cocooned in a comfortable wrapper of bedding and fur, she quietly wondered just what the Gods had been thinking of when they brought the Travellers into their world. Fighting against the Empire had been one thing, even leading the rebellion against the noble’s tyrannic rule had been manageable but somehow, nothing in her experience had been able to prepare her, or her people, for the shitshow brought about by them.
There had to have been a good reason for their action but Doris, for the live of her, wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it might have been. Sure, she had happily accepted a few of their number into her group, realising that outsiders wouldn’t have the almost reflexive respect and awe regarding nobles, nor the loyalty towards the Empire of Men instilled in the people of Aletoma from birth. Such people, even without any extraordinary skills, were useful, but once it became known that Travellers could, for one reason or another, return from the dead and were growing rapidly in power? Granted, the growth in power was primarily due to the risks they could take thanks to their strange, deathless nature, but it still meant they were a force to be reckoned with, despite their low numbers.
Recruiting a few of them had been a coup and a half, even if they hadn’t been all that powerful, nor had they been overly motivated to grow that power. Which, in hindsight, might have been a good thing, given what another of the Travellers had wrought.
She still remembered the brief time that weird elf had been in their care, just stopping by for a few days before continuing on her way, alongside her equally strange companions. A few of the rebel leaders had decided to poke and prod the strange elf into helping them, though their plans had gone out of the window when the elf had shown just what she was capable of and how far she was willing to go. The rebellion sought to liberate the people, wanted to guide them in shedding the yoke of their noble lords, not send them into the ground. They certainly didn’t want to see such massive atrocities like the Madness of Hatterion.
She had seen the reports, quietly collated from the few survivors. A night filled with insanity and bloodshed, delivered by a magical mist, so very similar to some of the spells that insane elf had conjured up. It didn’t take a genius to see the connection between the capture and execution of one of the elf’s companions and the insanity striking the city in the aftermath.
But even the Madness of Hatterion had only been the first step; what came after, just a few months later, drove home that those without connections to the world were dangerous.
It had started with a strange, cold rain, escalating into severe storms, covering the world in ice, acid and ash. It had been absolutely devastating, to the point that the rebels had banded together with the nobles, both sides burying their hatred in a need to survive. Then, to add a cherry on top of that cowpie, the Travellers had disappeared all of a sudden, leaving the roles they had managed to fill empty, while the world around them was plunged into winter.
Harvests had been lost almost immediately, the acid rain, alongside the sudden frost and mountains of ash burying or destroying the crops in the fields, leading to food shortages, even if numerous people hadn’t been around to need food.
Thanks to some divine revelations, it became known that the source of the strange weather was to the south, on Arbotoma. Not that the people of Aletoma could do all that much about it, not with the Desert, the Mountains of Death and the dense jungles separating the humans of Aletoma and the Elves of Arbotoma. The only way to get there had been by ship but the Naga apparently rejected the idea of sailing there, and were unwilling to do so, even to this day, years later. Nobody truly knew what had happened, other than some sort of cataclysmic catastrophe, described by various priests and clerics in strange, oftentimes contradictory images.
However, one of the images she had seen, a mural painted in the hideout of a cult they had raided, had caused her blood to run cold. Even without that mural, she had been annoyed at the entire operation. Humanity had been pushed far by the sudden change in weather and the devastation that followed, far enough that she and the rest of her rebels joined forces with those they had fought against. Only to have cults spring up, dedicated to the very forces that had pushed them to the brink. Maybe they were hoping to appease these forces, or they thought that by worshipping them, they would gain a position at the top of the heap, once everything was over. Not that there would be a heap, as far as she could see, just a massive pile of ice and ashes, burying the bones of countless fallen.
That mural had been painted in one of their chambers, hidden underground and concealed with some strange magic until they managed to break those spells. It depicted a strange scene, a large tower glinting in the moonlight, with a dragon rising from below, wrapping around the tower as it did. On top of the tower, close to the dragon and obviously aligned with it, were a few figures. The massive dragon in the centre was one thing. Intimidating, sure, scary, of course, but ultimately, it was simply a force far beyond her and her people. There were such beings in the world, and if one was unable to accept that, one could only await a short, unpleasant slide into madness. Similarly, the tower might simply be there to give scale to the dragon, to drive home its intimidating size and might, or it might have some other meaning.
But the problem wasn’t the dragon. The problem was those three figures near it. They were obviously close to the dragon, taking up almost intimate positions in its vicinity, but what really shook her was that she recognised three of those figures. Wolf and Raven, she could have accepted and likely ignored; it wasn’t as if the animals had some incredibly distinct features giving away their identity. If not for the third image, she might have considered certain similarities as a coincidence, her mind taking generic images and memories and overlapping them with what she wanted to see.
But that third image, the one the other small figures were centred around, was one she recognised. Half of it was wrought in shadow, the other half painted as a pale, elven figure, the light blue skin giving her an appearance far too similar to a corpse, was far too distinct to be anyone but that Traveller. The similarities were striking beyond belief; the skin had the same tone, the hair was dotted with the same glinting lights and shone luxuriously, their eyes had the same expression, even if those in the image shone with a kaleidoscope of light. And, above all, the face was identical, if not for the expression of murderous disdain depicted in the mural, though that was an expression she could easily imagine on the elf she had met.
The Pale Lady, some of the cultists had called her, the herald of change and destruction, moving in the shadow of the dragon to reshape the world. Or, in some cases, she was seen as the shadow of the dragon, given life, shape and form, roaming the world where the one who cast it could not.
The connection caused Doris to ask herself many questions and gave her more than one sleepless night as she tried to figure out just what had happened there. How had a seemingly normal, if exceedingly powerful, Traveller turned into that?
And why was their world subjected to the horrific suffering they now had to endure? Why was the elven continent a smouldering wasteland, with monsters roaming around everywhere? Where had their seemingly endless forests gone? More importantly, what had happened to the elves?
Some of them had escaped their doomed homeland, some had already been outside of it, but they were now a broken people. She had only read a few reports, but some of the elves seemed to age rapidly, and Tani, the dryad, had withered the day before the strange rain started to fall. Something had completely and utterly changed their world, and somehow, the Traveller Morgana had been the cause of it. Or maybe the Pale Lady, as these weirdos liked to call her. Which made her wonder, had the Traveller already been the Pale Lady, using some sort of magic to conceal her nature, or had the Traveller become the Pale Lady?
Regardless, she had people to take care of, people who needed her. Or they might all fall in the dragon’s shadow, as it made its way north, despite the various natural barriers protecting Aletoma.
Comments
Jiokuy
Lore for the Ages!! Very Cool!
