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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paka" data-source="post: 960212" data-attributes="member: 100">The Ballad of Karhoun EsbenStory Post #12The Shadow Cathedral, the Lady of the Black Oak and the Witch-Eyed Twin The cathedral smelled of musky incense.  The entryway was a stonework chronicle of father’s steps towards the Shadow.  Father’s three weapons were stored there, atop the brothers’ tombs, one weapon per tomb.  Lord Vildar Highfather Esben, Grandmaster of the Holy Order of the Southern Pelurian, had his dagger shined on a pedestal built into the wall with a bas-relief that displayed his first kinslaying, his youngest brother with a quiet dagger to the spine.  The relief behind the bow was a representation of father killing his second brother with an arrow to the throat, shot from a rooftop.  The carving behind the sword celebrated him killing his last brother in a duel on a rainy day.  The doors into the church showed father bowing to Izrador at the end of the Third Age, a born again man of Shadow.Inside no sun shined, the stained glass glowed by candlelight.  The inner areas of prayer and meditation were open only to Legates but the pulpit area was enough for me.Unaros said his prayers in the deeper regions of the Cathedral while Boots and Suk headed into town, where the Orcs ruled.  The Esben family held the fortress but the greater portions of the town’s guarding went to the Orcs.Before leaving Suk and I divvied up some of the things found on the Oruk.  Oddly, there was a braid of hair and a bag of tea.  Oruk took the hair, smelling it and guessing it for a Dwarven braid and I took the tea.After the divvying up the dead Oruk’s belongings, I visited the black oak; the Lady was hidden and so I knocked gently on her tree three times.  A door opened in a shadow of the bough and out she walked.  Up close she was so beautiful it hurt to look directly at her.  I offered answers to all of her questions but I don’t remember anything we said.  I was too smitten, like a stupid boy, I was.All I recall of our conversation is that her name is Elayle.I offered her the oak leaf; told her that I found it on the road.  She took it in both of her hands and kissed it gently, her lip-print still on the leaf when she gave it back.  With a smile she returned it to me.As I walked away I told myself that I would see her again but at the same time tried to remind myself that she was not only Fey, but also a Shadow-turned Fey planted to ward my father’s cathedral from insurgent harm.  Telling myself this, I put the Dryad’s leaf in a cloth close to my heart.  Maybe there is some good in her.On our to wash up to dinner we met Kylie, with her mis-matched witching eyes of green and gray.  She was squire’s uniform, in father’s order, the Holy Order of the Southern Pelurian, an order of knights errant sworn to Izrador himself.  Little Kylie had grown into an austere beauty and if the squire’s garb was any indication, would be a woman to be reckoned with before too long.  She was bringing a cart full of insurgent’s heads to father from Sir Durgen, Warden of the Sea Tower, and High Captain of the Esben Fleet.  “What is this, little sister, you are a squire now?” I asked.She responded proudly, “I am squire to Sir Durgen the Silent and I am on important business,” she said with a shake of her red braid towards the mule drawn cart, “bringing father this month’s heads.  I hear you are on your way to the Bluff from Theros Obsidia, how was your trip here?”I shook my bald head, “Whitecliff was terrible.  We ran into Gnomish rebels and we met the Manticore.”She was excited by word of the Manticore and for a moment was a little girl again, “Really?  Is he as grand as they say?  Durgen will want to speak with you about that, he has been trying to procure the Manticore for his hunt for the pirates.”“I am in no rush to be close to the Manticore again, none at all.  He was a terrible beast, killed a Goblin and ate two Orc before I could blink.  If Durgen wishes to speak about the Manticore, he can speak with Unaros.  The Legate did most of the talking with the Manticore, I merely kept my head down and made sure I didn’t get eaten.”She laughed at that and I told her that I would want to speak to Sir Durgen soon, possibly to procure a ship across the Pellurian to the Bluff.  She commented on my shaven head, a sign of humility.I responded, “We are a conquered people, Kylie.  It does me well to remember that.”While walking away she said over her shoulder, “We aren’t conquered, father converted,” and with that she took her mule draw cart filled with insurgent’s heads to father for inspection. I didn’t ask about her brother, Kale, thinking that father might’ve killed him and it might be a sore subject.  But once she was out of earshot I asked Val, “Valanicia, what happened to Kale?”Val sniffed, “Kale ran to the insurgents.  Father has offered the Shadow’s highest blessings on any who bring his head to Port Esben.  Kylie has been working twice as hard at being a particularly vicious knight in the Holy Order of the Southern Pelurian to impress father ever since he left.  Some say he went west to the Dwarves and others say he went east to the Elves but the none know the truth of it.”I asked, “She called him Durgen the Silent, I always knew him as the Brave, why is he now the silent?”She shrugged, “Noone knows, a few years ago he cut his own tongue out with his dagger.  Father says it is because Durgen is a man of action and not words but as always in Port Esben, none know the truth.”“Sister I have one more question for you, if you may, before I go to dinner.”She nodded.“What happened to the Legate, the one strung up to the walls with the Heretic sign hung around his neck?”She barked a laugh, “That is one story everyone knows the truth of.  He told father that the Shadow was within everyone and Legates weren’t the only path to Izrador.  Father choked him to death.  The Legate took out his morningstar too, hit father several respectable blows but it seemed to do nothing.”“When did this happen?” I asked. “Last week at dinner,” she said, as matter of factly.I excused myself from my sister’s presence and went to my room to wash and prepare for my first Esben family dinner in over ten years.</blockquote>

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