A Thorn in the Heartwood.
Moonbeams filtered into the chamber, and motes of some strange confetti, as though the Midnight were in celebration of some union unknown to the beholder. Yet the feeling, the vibration, which permeated in abundance, was of inchoate sullen repose. As though dark secrets drifted here, and yet remained stilled by time, hanging rather more like musical notes killed at the moment of birth, almost outlined. Nothing but gaps between the spaces which no hope could fill, and no embrace could warm. She shivered. To touch such should revile, not excite, but there was ever a thrill in the illicit and a passion which ignited for her: it was not a choice.
Her breath caught, she was ensnared, by the visuals lying before her as she walked the dark stone corridors of Redemption's Demise, an ancient thought-hold of the Barren. A place where even dreams would not dare die. Why would a dream die in a place where rebirth was unimaginable? Impossible! A choking grasp around the throat of inevitability. Folly! A dream knows better than to die in such place. But it was not this stark and chilling dankness nor the motes of sadness suspended in moonbeams which caught her gaze and held her rapt.
It was the Gate. No sigils nor wards, and stonework simple but solid beneath a mantle unadorned with the splendour of fine craft. It was an unimpressive door. So why did it hold her so enthralled, so bound in the grasp of its mundane and moribund dereliction? It could collapse, this arched portal, this aged nameless wood, forbidding ingress or egress beneath. What then could truth tell of the Other Side? It was not door. The door was a construct. It was the mechanism. The centre. It cannot hold. But this centred mechanism had so far held. The key was in her possession and she had long sought this door. When an eye opens it cannot ever be closed. Not truly. It can be blinded, it can grow stale with the cataracts of the malign or disuse, and it can be sewn closed by shadow-stitch. Naevera would keep her eye open, and she would see within and without and return ere the iris expunged.
She frowned. Something was off. The chamber was only seemingly fifty yards wide, the vaulted roof was a shadowed night-scape, appearing so much like diamond studded skies, it was hard to discern. Something was in here with her. She could hear it breathing. An echo. Perhaps something of the Primordial. She could pay it no mind, must not be daunted by parlous journey. Her passion was not brief, her heart was hale. But her mind!! Her mind insisted. Hungered. Her soul ached. Ached for this. What lies in the distant blind spot. Grope for it, seize it, throttle it, know it, have it. Own it. Become it. Let it become you! Her eyes went dark with lust and she moved like quicksilver, darkness to darkness, alabaster and ebony, a Shadow Dancer. She was at the door with the key in hand when the moonbeam cried out in dismay and was shattered, it was ear piercing. A hand gripped hers, and she snapped her head around to her right.
' You are sure this is what you want?' He had come to say. Those were his words. His bald head was patterned, carven with strange sigils which seemed almost to move, or pulse and glow and shift with their own baleful version of life. The opaque disc of eclipse painted his face, but his skin was pallid, almost corpse-grey. His breeches were simple, his boots of leather. His scabbard worn slung across his back at the waist. His hands were strong, large, his grip firm as the foundations of Elsewhere and that gave her pause. She pulled back her hand and he relinquished his hold, his pale eldritch eyes a blue glow beneath a brow of warning. Furrowed.
'Scharad.' She spat with disdain, the Veil Warden was a man of secrets and hidden knowledge, and she trusted him not. ' What are you doing here?'
' You know it is rude to answer a question with a question, yes?' He admonished emotionlessly.
' Get fucked.' She glowered. ' I have sought this bloody gate for an age it seems, and you will not stop me passing through.'
' You are so confident that what you hold there is the key, and that I am here to stop you exploring beyond would it were?' He smiled. She hated him. She hated that smile. Secrets and smiles. Bastard.
' This is the fucking key, and I don't care why you are here! I must know what lies beyond. Be gone, Veil Warden, ward your veil.' She could feel the seething within her, and the source around here was vast. So much shadow. So many pools of black. The midnight was ready and there for her. But Scharad was not unmanned. And Scharad was perhaps a man with his own measures and means.
' Your tongue is crass, and not to my liking Naevere, but I am here to give warning, not to hinder you, and I am here out of love, not forbiddance. I am here not as a Veil Warden.' He went tight-lipped. Then why in blazes was he here? Liar, her mind screamed. They felt like a hot barb pricking into her clutching palm.
' Warn me? Like I am some novice Dancer with no knowledge, some doe eyed girl without power? I need no warning...' She caught his gaze and felt horror. The wellspring in his eyes was sorrow! Pain. She was killing him inside or something was. She quite enjoyed it. Veil Wardens. She despised this man. Know it alls.
' Not to warn you then. To ask the question. Life consists of the burning up of questions, does it not? Do you know what you are getting into? Are you sure that key will take where you really want to go, and what do you expect to find?'
She turned the wicked and spiked key of bone and sinew and thorned vine. It was macabre, but it was right and she knew it. ' It was in the well, beneath the seals.' She confessed. 'It is the key.' She smiled with defiant relish. ' And yes, Scharad, I know what lies on the other side. This is a Charnel gate and this is the Door of Night.'
He caught his breath and held it, and exhaled slowly. Taking her in and he seemed deeply troubled.
'What?' She demanded. ' Out with it, or leave! I have been patient long enough and there is little of patience left in me.'
' Clearly.' He muttered.
' What is on the other side, then pray tell?'
' Whatever the key decides.' He said, and there it was. She had not expected it.
' What? What do you mean? The key decides? It is not of sentience!' She scoffed.
' I did not say it was.' He smiled again. Sly bastard. He could shove that smile where the sun doesn't shine. ' Where it leads is different for us all.'
' How the fuck would you know that?' She raged, snapping suddenly, seizing the key and preparing to slide it into the mechanism. Thrice-fold seals would soon come undone. For her.
' Because it was I who placed it in the well.' He said with pleading terror behind his azure gaze. So intense. It would break her heart, but it was almost fun to watch him suffer. It was a little late in the day for him to care now.
She stopped as though thunderstruck her mind making up the distance across the constellations between them. He'd been through the door... A Veil Warden. Through the door. No....
' Yes, Naevera, I have seen the Void beyond.' He sounded so sad. So burdened.
' Why are you warning me, Scharad, why do you care, what is in this for you? Let me be!' She cried in despair, fists balled up, feeling shadow come to her.
' Nothing.' He said after interminable silence that hung suspended like the weight of a century f judgement. ' Nothing. I simply suppose I rather like you. Am fond. Forget it, childe. You see and do not see, and now must see for yourself and I can see that!' He laughed and it was cosmic music from another age. Another time. Innocence forgotten.
' Don't play with me, Veil Warden, you bore me. Your order has a thousand riddles to exhange for one grain of wisdom and a nugget of truth. No one is making that deal. Speak plain.'
' Whatever you see, you can't unsee it. You will come back changed. If you come back at all. It would...' His voice caught. She scowled. Pathetic! Some stupid attempt to stop her with allusions of some danger unknown. She was made for the unknown!
' It would what? Forget it, Scharad, I am undeterred. I walk through the Door of Night and you cannot stop me!' And with that the Shadow Dancer slid home the key, and turned the lock, amidst an exhalation of mechanics. Metal on metal, transmutations abound, wood became rippling, shimmering darkness, and she was gone without a single glance behind.
Scharad had an outstretched hand in her wake, too slow by far. He stared into the abyss. Horror on his face. A single tear rolled down his cold, painted cheek.
' It would kill you, Naevera.' He whispered. ' And I ... I don't want you to die.' The door reformed. Scharad was left suspended in a moonbeam, with a thousandfold thoughts and midnight in his mind.