Chương 87: Last Hearth

Falko and most of the group led Vera toward the guildhall, though one of the men stayed behind to figure out what to do with the Slag Sentinel. Vera didn't have any useful advice to offer him, so she smiled, wished him luck, and kept walking.

"So none of the others are around at all?" she asked as they crossed the courtyard.

"Not a single one? What, are all of them on vacation? I heard from a fairly reliable source that they aren't exactly busy holding the line against the Silence." When she'd asked if anyone was home, Falko had apologized and said there was no one around to properly receive her. She'd taken that to mean the guild members were all elsewhere for one reason or another. She was still trying to decide whether that should surprise her or not. On one hand, this was just their guildhall.

It wasn't like any of them actually lived here. Her own home was practically a quarter of the continent away, so it made sense that the others wouldn't be loitering around the place on a regular basis. On the other hand, this was their headquarters. The seat of the organization they'd built and led. And it was one of the first places she'd bet any of them would have thought to check if they were in her situation. So it cut both ways, really.

She had come here knowing there was a real risk she wouldn't find anyone she was looking for, or that the people she found wouldn't be who she wanted them to be. Because of this, part of her was relieved at the possibility of pushing those reunions further down the road. Kicking them over to future Vera to deal with, so to speak. She'd always been good at that. But maybe that part was losing out to the one that had quietly hoped to find someone familiar.

Someone who could help ground at least a small piece of her old life in this new world.

"I'm afraid I can't speak to where the other members are," Falko said with a carefully neutral expression.

"But it's not entirely true that none of them are here. Mistress Sylven has been keeping residence at the Hearth for the past year."

"Syl?" Vera slowed slightly. A blend of anticipation and wariness shifted in her chest, but she pushed both aside.

"She's here?" Falko glanced at her.

"Yes."

"Great. Take me to her." Syl and Vera had never been the closest, but they still counted as friends.

"That's…" He paused.

"I can't promise she'll be able to meet with you right now. I sent Shirva ahead to check, but Mistress Sylven has been in seclusion for the Quieting Walk. We're not permitted to disturb her."

"The Quieting Walk?" Vera frowned faintly, her mind taking a moment to place it.

"Oh. That." She was pretty sure it was a type of Rite. Syl had mentioned it at some point in relation to her path's questlines—something about a disciplined period of isolation to reset sensory Resonance, or something along those lines.

"Well, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if it was me doing the disturbing."

"Lady Mournvale," Falko said, seeming to choose his words with care.

"We'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt Mistress Sylven's Walk." Vera glanced around, noting how uncomfortable some of them looked. Not too fond of her remark, then.

"Alright," she replied.

"Maybe I won't, then." Relief immediately crossed their faces. Falko dipped his head.

"Thank you." Vera studied him for a moment.

"Is there a reason you call her Mistress?"

"She's our Pathfinder," he said simply.

"Pathfinder?" Vera repeated.

"Are all of you Valewalkers?"

"Not all of us. Moni isn't." Falko gestured toward the youngest member of the group. The girl really didn't look older than fourteen or fifteen. Her face was scattered with freckles, and a mess of dark hair fell loosely around a pair of sharp eyes that had been watching Vera from the moment she arrived.

With the twin baldrics crossing her chest—each lined with more knives than Vera cared to count—and the dark armor she wore, you could easily imagine her slipping into someone's room at night and cutting their throat before they ever woke. Funnily enough, she had been the only one in the group who hadn't shown much wariness toward Vera.

"Valewalkers," Vera murmured.

"That explains a few things. Did Syl bring you all from the Vale to join Last Hearth?" Syl's backstory in the game had been tied to a place called Iriath Vale, an isolated zone with an entire arc built around even reaching it in the third expansion. The people from there were sometimes called Valewalkers.

"She did," Falko said.

"After she assumed the role of interim guildmaster, she contacted the elders of the Vale and asked for people to assist her in her work among man's dominions. We were among those who volunteered. There are a few more of us beyond this group."

"Wait." Vera stopped walking.

"Syl's the guildmaster?"

"She is."

"How'd that happen?" The man hesitated briefly.

"I'm… not too familiar with the details, to be honest. Those of us who came later haven't had much chance to interact with the guild's founding members. Excluding Mistress Sylven, I've only seen three others. What I do know is that the previous guildmaster willingly passed the role to her."

"Huh." Vera chewed on that as they started walking again and reached the guildhall entrance. She tipped her head back to take in the facade, appreciating the dark stone and ironwork built to resemble a hearth.

"Cinder gave it up voluntarily?" The CinderCtrl she knew wasn't exactly someone who let go of control easily. Any of them would have said the same. They'd given him endless grief for being a control freak over the years, and it had only been partly as a joke. If he hadn't actually been a good guildmaster, their group would probably have eaten itself alive long before now. Did his giving up that role hint at this version of Cinder being different from the one she knew?

Or maybe the circumstances meant that it was more in line with his personality?

"You wouldn't happen to know if Mira laughed in his face when it happened?" she asked, stopping in front of the entrance. She wasn't really expecting an answer. No matter the reason he might have had, if the Mira in this world was the one she knew, she would have given Cinder more grief about it than anyone else combined. Vera would have liked to confirm that much was still the same. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Falko gave her a questioning look.

"Mira?"

"Mireya Halstrad." He shook his head.

"I can't say."

"I can," a voice said from beside her. Vera turned to Moni.

"I can tell you," the girl said.

"I can even tell you the exact words sis hit him with."

"Sis?" Vera looked the girl over again.

"You're calling Mira 'sis?'""Yes. Problem?"

"No. Just curious why."

"Because she's my sis," Moni said, with a small, airy shrug. As if that was just the obvious answer.

"…As in, she's your actual sister?"

"Not by blood. Still my big sis, though." Vera studied her for a moment longer, then let her attention settle a little more carefully on the girl's Resonance. She went still when she caught the faintest trace of something familiar underneath it. It reminded her of the Graven Daughter. For a second, her hand almost moved to summon Stillwake, but then she realized who this girl must be. Moni was one of Mira's housing NPCs. The same way Caldrin was hers.

Moni's level sitting at the Seventh Binding fit squarely within the range you'd expect from the housing NPCs of a high-level player like Mira, and Vera knew her friend had always been fond of the whole 'big sister' dynamic.

"…What?" Moni asked after a few seconds of Vera staring at her.

"You got a piece of gravel rattling around up there, or are you always this slow to blink?"

"Moni." Falko's voice turned sharper.

"You should treat her with respect." Moni glanced at him, then back at Vera.

"You got a piece of gravel rattling around up there, or are you always this slow to blink, Lady Mournvale?" A short sigh left Falko.

"I'm sorry, Lady Mournvale. She can be a bit… unadjusted."

"I'm fully adjusted," Moni said.

"I just don't want to bother." Vera held the girl's gaze for another moment, then smiled.

"I don't mind. You can tell who she learned from." A small twitch at the corner of Moni's mouth made Vera think the girl filed that away as a compliment.

"Did Mira tell you to join Last Hearth?" Vera asked.

"You're a newer member too, aren't you?" The girl's expression immediately fell.

"…Yes. Both of those."

"You don't sound too thrilled about it."

"I would've been thrilled if she'd actually let me go with her instead of dropping me off here like luggage."

"Go with her where?"

"Wherever she went." Moni's jaw set just slightly.

"Didn't matter." Vera watched her for another beat, then nodded.

"I'd like to talk with you privately later, if you don't mind. Not sure if you heard, but I've been out of the picture for a while now, and there's plenty about Mira I'd like to catch up on."

"Yeah, I know you were gone. Sis complained a lot about you." Vera chuckled.

"I bet she did." She turned back to the entrance and moved to push open the heavy double doors.

"By the way," Moni said.

"When the old guildmaster handed over the seat? Sis called him throne-shy ember-quencher no better than a guttered candle that finally stopped pretending it had any wax left." A real laugh left Vera. She had no idea what that was even supposed to mean, but that was about as much confirmation as she needed. Even if this world's Mireya wasn't the same as her friend, they had the same personality. They stepped inside.

The main hall of Last Hearth was tall and open, pressed up against the great black slab of molten rock that the guildhall was built around. Its fractured surface was bound with iron braces and glowed faintly from its interior, with the surrounding space left deliberately wide. Dark timber beams ran overhead, while weapon racks and a couple of long tables lined the walls. At the center of the room sat a broad circular hearth, burning low with steady emberfire.

Vera took it all in, then looked up at the balcony ringing the upper level, its railing hung with trophies, banners, and a respectable number of landscape paintings. Those were her doing. She hadn't painted them herself—that hadn't been a thing in Ashen Legends —but it was one of the few things she'd personally contributed when they were putting the place together. It was nice to see them still up there, and her eyes lingered on them for a moment before drifting back down to the hearth at the room's center.

There was a single figure seated beside it. Another smile worked its way onto Vera's face. Lit from below by the slow pulse of the flames, the figure turned to look as they entered. There wasn't much to make out—their whole body was buried under a heavy cloak layered with gray fur and dark feathers, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low enough that their face was nothing but shadow underneath.

Next to them, a massive sword leaned against the edge of the hearth, its blade engraved with worn markings that ran all the way down its length, tip pressed into the stone floor like it had been set there a long time ago and simply never picked back up. As Vera crossed the room and stopped in front of them with her hands on her hips, a long, thin arm reached from beneath the cloak and came to rest on the sword's hilt.

"Bram," Vera said, breathing the scent of woodsmoke and old iron.

"How are you holding up?"

"Ashborn Ascendant." A deep, unhurried voice came from beneath the hat.

"You return to the Hearth at last. Long were the days of your absence." Her smile grew. She was pretty sure he'd just told her she'd taken too long. She looked him over properly, taking in the details. He was exactly as she'd expected. This was Bram Holloway, steward of Last Hearth. Though 'steward' had never quite fit what he actually did in the game.

The title was a bit of a misnomer—CinderCtrl had pushed for it, and none of them had felt strongly enough to argue, because honestly, they'd all loved the theme as well. Having a cloaked figure sitting in silence by the fire in their entrance hall, waiting for whoever walked in through the doors. Who didn't want something like that? Steward in name, but in practice, he'd been something closer to the guild's formal guardian.

Vera let her Resonance brush out faintly, touching the edge of the man's own as his shadowed eyes found her from beneath the brim. He was harder to read than Falko and the others, but she could still roughly tell that he was at the Tenth Binding. Guild NPCs had a higher ceiling than housing NPCs, so that wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was when Bram slowly rose, lifting the great sword from the floor with one hand and bringing it upright as he faced her.

"Wouldst thou have the fires within tempered, now that you stand once more before the Hearth?" Vera stared at him.

"... You want to fight?" The shadowed gaze held on her for a few long moments. Then, as if having read something from her expression, Bram lowered the sword, set the tip back into its worn groove in the stone, and settled himself down in front of the hearth again.

"Other matters call for you," he said.

"Attend to them. As sworn, as ever, I shall remain by this fire. When you have the will for it, return—and we shall temper the flames within together." The brim of his hat dipped slightly toward her.

"Welcome home to Last Hearth, Ashborn Ascendant." A small knot in her chest that Vera hadn't even registered came slightly loose at his words, and she got the urge to ask him to rise again and pick up the sword. But she didn't.

"Thanks for the welcome back," she said, meaning it more than she expected to.

"I'll… take you up on the spar eventually. For now, you wouldn't happen to know where Cinder and the others haven't gotten to?" He eyed her, something shifting behind his gaze, then looked back to the fire.

"Seek Lady Sylven. There is much to be said between you."

"…Right." Vera glanced back at Falko, Moni, and the others.

"Mind taking me to where Syl is?" She could track down the rest of the guild NPCs later. Syl was the priority for now. Falko nodded and led them past Bram, through the entrance hall and down a passage at the back that wound through the guildhall's inner corridors, skirting around the base of the great molten slab. Things were roughly as Vera expected based on the game, though they passed a couple of servant-looking people she didn't recognize along the way, and none of the other guild NPCs.

Eventually, they descended a staircase and came to a stop in an underground chamber that Vera recalled being where Syl had kept her quarters. The tall, gold-haired woman from the courtyard was already there, standing outside the doors with her arms crossed. She looked at Falko.

"Still in the Walk."

"I see." Falko turned to Vera.

"Are you willing to wait, Lady Mournvale?" Vera looked at the doors, her Resonance reaching out past them almost without thinking.

"For how long?"

"Mistress Sylven began her Walk three mornings ago, on Kindleday. The process usually runs somewhere between four and seven days. It's possible she may finish by this evening."

"Evening." Vera's Resonance stretched a little further, nudging gently against what lay beyond the doors.

"That might be tricky. I promised my daughter I'd take her around the city tonight, and I can't be out too late if I want to tuck her into bed at a reasonable hour." A brief silence settled over the group. Falko looked at her.

"Your... daughter?"

"Cutest little gremlin you'll ever see, I'll tell you that much." Vera grinned.

"You should let your mistress know that if she wants to meet her, she should probably wrap things up in there sooner rather than later."

"We can't speak with her during the Walk. That would be highly disrespectful."

"Oh, really? Whoops. Then maybe I shouldn't have done what I just did." Vera withdrew her Resonance, along with whatever stray sliver of meaning might have accidentally hitched a ride with it. Falko and the others exchanged looks.

"What—?" A sharp sound came from the other side of the doors. Everyone's eyes snapped toward them. There was a pause, then a thud, like something massive breaking, followed by quick footsteps. The doors swung inward hard enough to pull the air with them, and a half-dressed woman filled the gap, a pair of ethereally bright eyes finding Vera instantly.

"YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER?!"