The Crimson Echo Season Four

[Inspectre]

Interlude I: Of Embers Extinguished in Blood

Theme Music

Ileosa strides through the twisting corridors of Castle Korvosa, making her way up from the treasure vaults down in the basement towards the royal bedroom. Dimly, she is aware that she must be dreaming, reliving the events of that awful night when her world was turned upside down. But the rush of emotions from that night quickly wash away any rational objections to being here again.

The surge of confidence which she had felt upon first leaving the secret treasure vault that had contained the strange crown she now wore was gone, replaced by a growing unease as she walked through a castle gone mad. Servants ran back and forth through the halls with a panicked urgency with seemingly no actual destination in mind, save to flee. Several crashed into her as they hustled away, nearly knocking her over as they staggered and kept moving, either not recognizing her or not caring in their haste to get away from the castle. Ileosa already knew through her linked pendant that her husband, King Eodred Arabasti the 2nd, was dead but nothing could have prepared her for this level of chaos. Desperate to return to her husband's side so that she could honor his last request to bring the crown now on her head back to him, Ileosa hurried onward, not stopping to reprimand the careless servants nor attempt to bring them back in control of themselves . . . and she wasn't entirely sure they would have listened to her anyway.

Another sense of deja vu washes over Ileosa as she nears the top of the castle and comes to stand in front of the large window looking out over Korvosa. She would sometimes come to this window at night to look out over the entire city and marvel at all the little warm lights glowing across the city, each one coming from a streetlamp or the window of a home. It was comforting to look out at all those countless tiny markers of lives lived beyond the gilded cage that kept Ileosa apart from them, and idly speculate on what sort of details made up their relatively peaceful lives.

But there was no comfort forthcoming from that window now, for the peaceful scene of Korvosa at night had been transformed into a scene of horror. Korvosa was burning. The countless warm lights spread out over the city had been replaced with the dancing light of fires burning in the streets, and even from so far away Ileosa could still hear the cries echoing out over the city - "The King is dead! Down with the Whore Queen!" She had stood transfixed before that window, gazing helplessly out at the devastation before her for an unknown amount of time before Sabrina had found her, her bodyguard's armor stained with the blood of the dozen men - Lamm's men - she had slaughtered outside Eodred's bedroom while she was away in the treasure vault.

Sabrina does not appear this time, stepping out of an adjourning hallway - instead it is Eodred himself, impossibly alive again albeit with his face now heavily scarred and missing his right eye. Ileosa ran to him all the same, arms outstretched in relief to embrace him - perhaps this was not such a terrible dream after all! Ileosa's hopes of such are immediately dashed, however, when Eodred raises a hand as if in greeting - only to bring it crashing down in a hard, open-handed slab to Ileosa's face! Ileosa crumbles from the blow, her left cheek stinging in pain as she blinked and gasped, more from the shock than the actual pain. Eodred had at the start of their marriage been coldly indifferent to her, but he had never raised a hand against her. And while even before his sickness he had been a bit feeble with age, he could always have had other people inflict pain on her if that is what he had desired.

"Why!?"

Ileosa cries out, looking up at her former husband in pained confusion. The king merely offers his hand down to her, helping to pull her back up onto her feet.

"A sovereign does not beg or plead."

Eodred intones. And then he hits her again, another stinging slap to her other cheek that again sends her crashing to the floor.

"A sovereign commands and is obeyed."

Both cheeks stinging now, Ileosa blinks away the tears coming unbidden to her eyes as she glares up at Eodred now, as the former king offers her his hand again.

"Stop it!"

"Make me stop."

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Again Eodred drags her back up to her feet and again pulls a hand back to slap her for a third time, but this time Ileosa is ready. Twisting her wrist of his grip, she raises both arms up in front of her face, blocking Eodred's blow with her forearms. He was strong, impossibly strong, as the impact sent numbing shockwaves trembling up and down her forearms, and Ileosa is sent stumbling backward away from him - but she keeps her footing and remains upright. The two monarchs, past and present, stand glaring at each other for a moment, and then Eodred seems to nod his head ever so slightly in satisfaction. He turns away from her, gesturing to the window overlooking a burning Korvosa.

"Your people are dying. Even now, their bonds fray and splinter, their fealty melting away before the flames of rebellion. Without a firm hand to lead them, they will shatter completely."

"No! We stopped Lamm! He-

"Was merely a symptom of a broken society. Without a strong arm to guide them, the people will elect another to take his place. Your city will continue to burn, until all that remains is ash and sorrow.

“I will not let that happen! I will do whatever I have to, in order to save this city and its people! To keep them safe from Lamm and whoever would try to follow in his footsteps! I will pay whatever price I must!"

"This is not something that can be solved by money or tears. Without a strong will to command them, the people will inevitably seek to follow their own self-destructive desires, to the doom of all.”

“I said that I would pay whatever price I must! If I have to shed my own blood, down to the last drop to save them then I shall do it! Just tell me what I must do!”

Here, Eodred seems to lose his patience a bit, as he slams his fist into the stone sill of the window, cracking it. Ileosa flinches at the crack of stone, her cheeks starting to sting again in sympathy.

"I told you before, a sovereign commands, she does not beg and plead! Blood and fear is the only thing that will hold the chaos back, and that is not a price that you yourself can pay."

Ileosa loses her own temper here, grabbing Eodred by the shoulder and spinning him around to face her directly.

"Then how am I to save the city, if not through my own tears, sweat, and blood!? I have no army I can employ to enforce my will upon the people! They will only do whatever I can convince them to do for themselves! And given the lack of respect most have for me, I cannot even manage that much most of the time! If you think you have all the answers, then tell me what they are! What am I supposed to do!?"

Eodred simply gazes intently at her for a moment, but just as she is about to look away, no longer able to meet that intense one-eyed stare, he speaks again, as if explaining the simplest concept to a child.

"A sovereign commands. If you do not have those who will obey, then find them."

Ileosa considers the straightforward instruction for a moment, pondering the implications, and then shakes her head. She turns to look back out the window at the burning city with a mounting sense of hopelessness as she is trapped between what she wishes to be and what the city needs her to be.

"I do not want others to bleed and shed blood on my behalf! If there is such a price to be paid in order for my city to be safe, then let me pay it alone! I do not wish to be that kind of sovereign, that forces others to obey at the point of a sword!

And here Eodred gives a rasping, mocking laugh.

"You do not have a choice. Either you will find others who will obey your will, or you will watch as your city splits apart and consumes itself in the fires of civil war. A sovereign commands, she does not beg or plead. If you cannot do even that much, then throw your crown away for someone worthy to take it up in your place, and return to the filth from whence you came, street rat."

That final insult brought the unpleasant memories of Ileosa’s true childhood flooding back to the forefront of her mind. Of scraping by through begging for food, of hungry and cold nights on the streets of Westcrown in Cheliax, and countless days spent huddled out of sight for fear that being seen would mean enslavement or worse. And then memories of that insult being used by her mentor Andaisin during moments of particular cruelty, promising to return her to the streets from whence she came if she could not be molded into a proper lady after all.

Gritting her teeth, Ileosa forced those bad memories away with more recent ones. The eventual warmth Eodred showed, at least in private, after their heart-to-heart conversation in the garden. Sabrina’s strength and ever-present concern over her wellbeing. And her friends, who had fought through Lamm and other untold horrors to save her time and again. Together, surely they could accomplish a miracle and save this city without having to break it!

“I will find a way to save this city, even from itself! I will stitch its disparate pieces together with the desire for the common good! There must be other people in this city that do not wish to see this city burn! I will find them all, and together we will –“

Again, the voice interrupts her a final time, but this time it is merely a fading echo for as she turns to glare at Eodred she finds that he is gone.

“Fool. A sovereign commands, for a sovereign stands alone.”

A moment later, the progression of events continued as they had in the past, as a blood-stained Sabrina charges in from the adjourning hall. Her bodyguard rushes over to her, checking her for injuries while scolding her for running off by herself again, a familiar refrain that manages to chase away some of the chill left by the false Eodred.

Then at her orders, the bodyguard escorts her back to the royal bedroom. They have to step over the bodies littering the hallway, but this time Ileosa does not struggle to keep her stomach from roiling, nor stop to check whether any of them are still alive.

Then they reach the royal bedroom, where she finds Eodred in his bed, thin arms folded on his chest as if merely asleep. While Sabrina had dealt with all the would-be assassins, someone else – whether a missed member of Lamm’s men or a vengeful servent – had come into the room and scattered a dozen dead stirges onto the bed around him. The Stirge King was what some had called Eodred, sucking the life out of the city with spendthrift policies so that he could hoard all the wealth for himself. It had never occurred to them, nor the one responsible for this, that Eodred’s spendthrift policies were to recover the treasury after his beloved mother Domina’s economic policies had led to a great boom in the city’s fortunes – but had left the crown dangerously far in debt to various other noble houses.

Tears coming back to her eyes at the disrespectful sight, Ileosa repeated history as she went over to the bed and knelt down, carefully brushed the desiccated bodies of the striges aside and untangling their claws from Eodred’s hair.

“I will save this city, beloved. I swear it!”

Queen Ileosa promised Eodred’s corpse, replaying her conversation with the imposter over and over in her mind with newfound determination to prove him wrong. She would do whatever she had to in order to save Korvosa, pay any price. And woe be to whoever dared to place themselves in Lamm’s shoes next!


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In her private quarters below decks on the Direption, now a full day out from Korvosa, Andaisin languidly watches a small spider scuttle its way down from its web in a dark corner and start across a beam in her general direction. Apparently, it was having little luck in catching prey with its web, and so was now going out on a hunt. Andaisin watched it until it made it about halfway to her before she grew bored and decided to solve its hunger for it – reaching under her dress to brush her fingers across her symbol of Urgathoa, she unleashed the slightest wave of the negative energy her patron granted her. Immediately the spider curled up and rolled off the side of the beam, falling to the floor without a sound. One vermin down, at least.

But this small rebalancing of the scales between life and death didn’t even move her to a smile. A reckoning of her own was coming due, although it would be yet weeks or even months before she actually arrived back in Egorian. To have a final interrogation by Her Imperial Magestrix and her torturers as to what exactly she had been up to in Cheliax’s wayward colony-turned-trading partner, and why she thought a filthy heretic was worthy of representing the mighty empire as its ambassador. There would be no acceptable answers to give that would not end with her being burned alive as a heretic, assuming she was even permitted to do more than mewl, moan, and scream as the torturers took care of the preliminaries prior to that final blaze of dishonor.

But at least it would be a private affair, as Her Imperial Magestrix would not wish to appear a fool who did not properly vet her ambassadors to the people of Cheliax. Staying in Korvosa would have meant much the same fate in the end, but the preamble would be even more torturous and degrading, as she would no doubt have been paraded in front of the masses by her treacherous protégé. Come see the wicked Urgathoite, the disgraced ambassador who conspired to murder your king! Pay no attention to the street rat whore she raised to become your queen! The low-brow filth of Korvosa deserved their new low-born sovereign, and Andaisin’s only regret was that she would not get to watch them march hand-in-hand to the ruin they all so richly deserved!

The faintest squeak of a loose board outside her dingy quarters on this floating vermin nest stirred Andaisin from her latest daydream of that eventual day of ruin for that damnable city and its disgusting denizens. While not fully aware of her situation, the crew did know that she was an ambassador being called back to Egorian, and thus was not likely long for this world. She had left the door to her quarters unlocked in the hope that one dark night one of the crewmen would attempt to take advantage of the situation . . . and much like the spider in its web, give her one last good meal to slake her thirst for death before the end. But to Andaisin’s surprise, the door swung open a moment later to reveal not a drunken sailor not long for this world, but an unexpected old acquaintance.

“You!”

Andaisin hissed, swinging herself up off the bed and onto her feet as she lunged at the figure of her own patron, the liaison to the dissatisfied nobles who had approached her with the idea of replacing Eodred sooner than planned. Those promises of greater wealth and power than she had ever dreamed were all but ashes now, and as she closed in Andaisin intended to repay this provocator in kind and in full as she breathed the words to her deadliest spell. It was Andaisin’s second surprise of the night when this seemingly pompous mouthpiece nobody sidestepped her outstretched hand, drove their fingers into her throat, and then spun a leg around up into the side of her head, sending her crumbling back onto her narrow cot wheezing for breath.

“Is that any way to greet a friend, Lady Andaisin? I thought you at least would know better than to bite at the hand that fed you, unlike certain other members of your inner circle who have already reaped the whirlwind.”

Recovering her breath enough for another spell, Andaisin wheezes through the words as she stretches out her hand again, this time filling the doorway and hallway outside her quarters with summoned hellfire. She does not see her patron-turned-assailant emerge from the flames, but a moment later there is a hard blow to the back of her head and a vice grip around the wrist of her outstretched hand. Her arm is twisted painfully behind her back as another hand on the back of her neck forces her face down into the ratty blanket of her bed.

“If you think continuing to attack me is going to result in a fast death for you, I’m afraid you are gravely mistaken. If you attempt to cast one more spell in my presence, I will simply beat you into bloody unconsciousness, and leave you to the tender mercies of Cheliax’s witch-hunters!”

Her patron hissed into her ear, and then relented their grip on the back of Andaisin’s neck by a few inches.

“Or, you can sit here and listen to my alternate proposal like a reasonable human being. Nod if you understand!”

Andaisin briefly considered simply releasing her negative energy aura to its fullest extent, but after the previous two displays she wasn’t entirely sure that her patron didn’t possess a counter to that as well. So after a moment to consider her non-existent options, Andaisin reluctantly nodded and was hauled back up into a sitting position. Her former patron sat next to her on the bed, head held close to hers as if they were lovers sharing a private conversation – but Andaisin’s arm was kept twisted behind her back.

“Now then. I have come to offer you an alternative choice to the one put to you by our new queen – a third choice if you will. I will not insult your intelligence by claiming that this new offer will advance your station, nor even restore it to what it was before – you’ve managed to screw that up beyond repair I’m afraid. No, in all likelihood at the end of this you will still be dead – but you won’t be going into the arms of your Goddess alone. Before that inevitable moment comes, I am offering you a chance at revenge – against your treacherous protégé, against the interlopers who turned her against you, against the common filth of Korvosa who rejected you simply because of your Goddess. Is that something that might interest you?”

Andaisin’s nod was much quicker this time, and given with a bloody grin as her renewed patron released her arm.

“Good. Now then, we will speak on this matter at length once we’ve arrived back in port. I imagine that the current crew will object to our new destination, however. Would you mind convincing them to join our cause? I understand that you have a bit of a specialty in that area of expertise.”

Her bloody grin only growing wider, Andaisin rose from her bed and strode out into the hallway, where the first sailors were finally arriving to investigate the noise from her aborted rebellion against her patron. It did not take long for the screams to start.