Chương 92: Lineage

As Vera stood in front of a chamber full of staring pseudo-officials and influential somebodies, she found herself wondering why she'd agreed to this. Really, she could have left this mess to Elaria, couldn't she? Elaria clearly had a much better handle on this sort of thing, and it had been her idea in the first place. But no. Vera had to go and feel some stupid sense of responsibility and solidarity, throwing herself straight into the line of fire just because she hadn't been able to tell that damn woman no.

She couldn't stop hyper-fixating on the bead of sweat trailing down the back of her neck as her gaze kept skimming across the very large gathering of people. Public speaking still wasn't for her. There was just something about the possibility of humiliating herself in front of a crowd that made her deeply, instinctively hate it.

Which was kind of ridiculous, considering she was also in a position where she could probably kick the doors off their hinges, flip everyone in the room the bird on her way out, and at worst only mildly inconvenience herself. It was weird, honestly. She could be as shameless as a scam artist working a tourist strip when it counted for absolutely nothing. So why did that shamelessness not kick in at times like this? Whatever. She was going to damn well pretend like it had.

"Is the assembled chamber prepared to accept Mournvale's presence here today as a speaker beside me?" Elaria called, her attention shifting away from Vera and up toward the tiered rows before them. A few seconds of silence followed while people visibly wrestled with the question. Vera tried not to take it personally that the idea clearly did seem to present a problem for at least some of them.

She had been in this world long enough to know there was always the off chance that she had, at some point or another, kicked a wyrm through somebody's ancestral summer estate and accidentally created a blood feud without realizing it. As hushed murmurs started passing between the rows, and while people kept sneaking glances at her, Vera rocked lightly on her heels and toes and let her eyes continue to wander over the crowd, mostly out of curiosity, to see if she could spot anyone she recognized from Ashen Legacy.

There were at least a few, by her count. The Caer Virell Chapter-Master. A couple of quest NPCs. A semi-faction head she was pretty sure was tied to Darnelle. And— She paused when her gaze landed on the nearly colorless eyes of the woman sitting by herself near the edge of the chamber, watching Vera with a hard, unreadable look. That… was Yria, wasn't it? Yria Wakeshade? As far as Ashen Legacy characters went, she was only a few steps behind Elaria in terms of prominence and raw cool factor.

From what Vera had been told, though, Yria was supposed to be out on the front lines somewhere, so what was she doing in Caer Virell? The surprise probably stayed on Vera's face a second too long, because a faint frown pulled at Yria's brow as she studied her. The woman had been sitting with both arms crossed and an air of total unapproachability, but after a moment of Vera continuing to stare, she lifted one hand and made a few short, sharp gestures.

Vera froze, then blinked a couple times when she realized she understood them. What are you staring at, runt? Yria lowered her hand again, resting it on the pommel of the sword chained to her wrist and poking out from the seat beside her. Vera stared even harder. Tthen, after hesitating for several seconds, she slowly raised the hand that wasn't holding Stillwake and awkwardly signed something back. Yria's frown deepened. Vera felt the strange urge to both gulp and laugh at the same time.

Apparently, without ever consciously recognizing it, she knew some form of sign language. And she might just have called Yria Wakeshade a big slug? Out of all the things her hand could have chosen to say, that was apparently where instinct had landed. Vera was just barely resisting the urge to sign something else when she caught Elaria looking at her again, and even with most of the woman's face hidden behind her helm, the disapproval came through loud and clear.

It was like she was asking, 'can you not, for once, and focus?' Vera glanced back at the room full of important people, some of whom were now very obviously looking between her and Yria. Her hand dropped back to her side. Right. She'd come here to support Elaria. Sort of. Even if the whole thing was awkward, she could probably manage a few minutes of being serious. She had managed at least a couple of hours back in Marrowfen when she attended that big policy meeting.

"Flamebearer," a heavyset man in deep garnet robes trimmed with silver said slowly, focusing on both Vera and Elaria, "are you asking us to hold a formal vote on whether Lady Mournvale should be permitted to attend and speak alongside you this morning?"

"If that is what is required, yes," Elaria replied. The man's expression tightened for a moment. He looked around the chamber.

"I… rather doubt anyone here intends to object to Lady Mournvale's presence. Or am I mistaken?" No one spoke. Was that a good sign? The man turned back to them.

"There you have it, then." Elaria inclined her head.

"Good. Then we can proceed."

"Excuse me, but one moment first, please, Flamebearer," another man said, rising from his seat in the same garnet robes.

"Lady Mournvale's appearance is very sudden. Given her absence and the circumstances surrounding her return, there are certain questions I would like to ask before we proceed to any broader discussion, if that would be acceptable." Elaria looked to Vera, clearly leaving the call to her.

"Sure. Go ahead." Vera gestured at him. That was probably reasonable. The man's eyes lingered on her, and he adjusted his sleeves like he was preparing mentally. Vera's first impression was that he looked confident, but now she was second-guessing that.

"To begin," he said, "is it true that you were the one who slew the Silent Lord in Marrowfen?" Vera nodded.

"Yes, that's true."

"And that the Silent Lord's revival coincided with the resurgence of the Pale Reconciliation?"

"It'd be more accurate to say the Pale Reconciliation caused the revival, but yeah. Close enough."

"Then is it also true that you dealt with that threat yourself?"

"I dealt with Veyrith by myself. The Pale Reconciliation as a whole got handled with help from Hollowstone Table and some other groups we managed to pull in."

"Veyrith…?" the man asked.

"The Silent Lord's name," Vera said.

"Veyrith, the Vowpale Ascendant. You didn't know that?" A trace of embarrassment passed over his face.

"I was not familiar, no. Moving on, were you aware that the Boneward Concord had been infiltrated?" Vera studied him for a few seconds, then shook her head.

"I wasn't. Were you?" The man stared at her.

"I was not, Lady Mournvale. Of course not." He cleared his throat.

"Putting that aside, did the Pale Reconciliation and the Silent Lord have anything to do with your return?" Vera shrugged.

"No, not really. That part was more of a happy little coincidence."

"Happy…? Are you suggesting it was a good thing?"

"As in happy that I happened to be there," she clarified.

"I generally think homicidal cults with death wishes are bad for pretty much everyone involved."

"... I see. Then if that was merely coincidence, could you explain the reason for your absence for more than two years? There are many situations in which your aid would have been of value, and according to the standing articles of the Ashbound Compact—" The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm not answering that." He stopped. The chamber stayed silent for several breaths.

"Not any of it, Lady Mournvale?" the man finally asked.

"Not any of it. I was gone for reasons that don't concern you people, and I'm not going to discuss it here." She offered what she felt was a reasonably polite smile.

"You'll survive not knowing." She did not get the sense that he liked that answer, but he also didn't seem willing to press her. Eventually, he just sat back down and whispered a few quiet words to the person beside him. Another person near the upper tiers rose, bowing her head slightly toward Vera. She wore the same style of robes as the last man—marking her as a member of the Ember Conclave, like most of the people here—though hers weren't quite as ornate.

"Lady Mournvale," the woman said, "there has been considerable discussion lately regarding the present administrative state of Marrowfen, and some uncertainty within the Conclave as to whether the Boneward Concord will be reestablished, as well as what its stance toward the Covenant of Flame may be. Since you were present in Marrowfen after these events, could you offer us some clarity on the matter? Did you have any involvement in the decisions made there?"

"Very little," Vera replied.

"I know this might come as a shock, but I don't actually like politics much." She was pretty sure she heard a few mutters from somewhere in the chamber.

"As for the rest of that..." Vera glanced at Elaria.

"Isn't that more what she's here to talk about? I'll leave the specifics to her." She let her gaze pass over the chamber again, then lifted both brows.

"Any other questions?" For a second, she really hoped there would not be. Then, of course, someone else stood up. Vera suppressed a sigh. She ended up fielding questions for a few more minutes, this time mostly from people she was pretty sure belonged to the Cinder Council.

A couple of envoys from different Covenant factions wanted details about how strong Veyrith had actually been and how, exactly, Vera had dealt with him, and Chapter-Master Ruun had similar questions while also subtly needling her about how strong she had become. She answered as plainly as she could, even if some of the people who weren't Kindled clearly had trouble believing her when she said Veyrith hadn't been a real threat and that she'd killed him by literally erasing his soul.

Still, she was honestly a little impressed by how well she managed. By the time she finally stepped back and let Elaria take over with a more detailed briefing on the situation in Marrowfen—one that was delivered from a significantly more practical perspective than her own—most of Vera's nerves had actually started to ease. While Elaria spoke, Vera's attention drifted back to Yria every now and then, and she eventually happened to meet the woman's gaze. What are you hiding, runt? Yria signed.

Vera glanced at Elaria, and seeing that the 'Flamebearer' wasn't looking at her—and ignoring the fact that she was still very much in full view of the entire room—signed a quick response back. Wouldn't you like to know? Yes. I wouldn't be up in this paper-pusher's roost otherwise. Tell me so I can leave. Is the wait getting to you? It's okay. You can take a nap, and I'll wake you when we get to the interesting part. Probably.

Vera couldn't say for sure exactly why the darkening look on Yria's face filled her with such immediate satisfaction—or foreboding—but she could at least tell that the Veralyth Mournvale of this world had apparently had a much closer relationship with Yria than the player ever did in Ashen Legacy. Normally, Vera would probably have been at least a little hesitant to throw herself headfirst into a dynamic that originally belonged to someone else, but this was a decent distraction.

Also, she didn't feel quite the same dread for this interaction that she had before first meeting Elaria. Two years cooped up in your mansion made you overconfident, runt, Yria signed. I'll have to remind you what happens when you get like this. Try me. I'd love it if you could jog my memory. With her final response, Vera pushed the meaning through her Resonance instead of signing it by hand, and she caught the surprise that flashed across Yria's face when the message landed.

Smiling to herself, Vera looked away and pretended not to notice the sharper, increasingly irritated gestures the woman started making after that, choosing instead to act like she was listening very carefully to Elaria's briefing. She did recognize that it might not be too smart to deliberately antagonize a Marked One when she wasn't completely sure what her relationship with that person had originally been and was mostly working off vibes. Especially not when said Marked One had just threatened her.

But Vera was also kind of hoping the threat had been real. She was genuinely curious what it would feel like to fight another person operating at roughly the same level she was. Elaria never seemed especially keen on fighting her, and Vera had been too wary to press that too hard. Syl would probably agree to a spar if Vera asked, but she had a feeling the level gap from the game translated into a much bigger gap in reality. Yria, though, was officially one of the strongest people around.

She should at least be able to give Vera a decent fight. Vera might have started drifting a little too far into imagining what that fight would actually look like—and trying to work out where they could even have it, since she was not at all sure she could restore an entire landscape if things got as destructive as her fight with Veyrith had—right around the time Elaria finished her report and moved on to taking questions.

Most of those questions were asked with a kind of measured caution and formality that made Vera feel that these people respected Elaria more than they respected her. Which wasn't surprising. Elaria had that effect on people. Besides, Vera was fairly sure she wasn't even technically part of the Covenant, so the fact that the people here were entertaining her presence at all was probably mostly out of respect for her achievements and her strength.

Eventually, though, one question came Elaria's way that carried a lot more edge than the rest. It came from a man in formal dark robes with bronze-threaded trim who appeared to be a member of the Cinder Council.

"I won't deny the usefulness of your report, Flamebearer, nor that it provides a clearer account than anything we have yet learned through Ashmark or what has had time to reach us overland," he said.

"However, I feel that there is still one matter that you have failed to explain. That is why it was necessary—or proportionate—for the Flamebearer of the Covenant and Keeper of the Pyric Oath to travel there in person, thereby abandoning her duties in Caer Virell and along the fronts against the Unraveled." Quiet murmurs rippled through the chamber. Some people looked offended that he'd dared to ask it so bluntly. Others looked like they had been waiting for someone to finally do exactly that.

Vera's eyes went to Elaria as the woman regarded the man in silence.

"I have spent the past twelve years observing my duties as Keeper and Flamebearer, serving the Covenant and dominions of man without fail," she said, a hard edge entering her voice.

"I still bear Dawnbrand, and I remain Emberward's Chosen. If I had abandoned my duties, that would no longer be true. Where I entrusted my responsibilities to my men, I did so knowing full well they were capable of bearing them." The man held her gaze, nodding once.

"That may be so, but it was still a considerable risk. What if your presence had been needed? What could possibly have compelled you to go to Marrowfen yourself?"

"My daughter's safety." A palpable shift moved through the chamber.

"…Your what?" the man asked, sounding like he genuinely thought he'd misheard.

"My daughter's safety," Elaria repeated evenly.

"I received word that my daughter was in Marrowfen, and given what had just transpired in the city, her safety became my immediate concern. I will accept any censure for leaving my station and the risks that came with that decision, but I believed it a necessary step to make sure my daughter had not come to harm." Everyone was staring at her like she'd just announced that the sun had fallen out of the sky.

The stunned silence lasted for several seconds, but then whispers started rising through the tiers, quickly swelling in volume. Soon, the whole chamber had erupted into overlapping voices, questions being thrown at Elaria from every direction. Even Vera hadn't been ready for the reaction to be this big. She had expected surprise, sure, but this level of collective shock felt a little excessive. Elaria didn't move. She just stood there and waited as the uproar continued, not responding to any of it.

Off to the side, Vera caught Yria trying to sign something at her.

"SILENCE!" Finally, an aged man in Conclave robes thundered over the noise as a pulse of Resonance rolled out from him and shut the chamber up at once. Vera was mildly impressed. He looked old, but he also appeared to be of the Tenth Binding, which was more than she could say for most of the Ember Conclave. From what she could see, a lot of them weren't even Kindled. His sharp eyes swept across the chamber before finally settling back on Elaria, studying her with an intensity that didn't sit quite right with Vera.

"Flamebearer," he said, "are you saying that you have an heir the world has never known of?" It didn't show beneath her helm, but Vera could tell the question got to Elaria a little.

"Yes," Elaria said anyway.

"Is she of your blood?"

"She is." The old man went very still. After a moment, Vera noticed his breathing deepen. Her brief flicker of respect for him started to curdle as the restraint in his expression gave way to something else. It looked almost like… fervor.

"The Wounded Sun still shines upon us," he said, his voice taking on a reverent weight.

"The line of the Last Ember yet endures. I never truly believed you would fail us, my lady. It is a great relief to hear that Ashward lives on." Across the tiers, Vera caught a few heads nodding in open agreement. She blinked. Suddenly, she understood what was going on. They were traditionalists. The Covenant of Flame, as a faction, had only existed for a bit over a decade, thrown together to push back against the tribulations threatening the dominions of man.

But a lot of the groups that now made up its backbone were much older and had simply been folded into the new structure when the Covenant formed. The Pyric Oath was the easiest example. Now it was one of the Covenant's core military orders, but once it had been the primary force responsible for Caer Virell's defense. As for the Ember Conclave, Vera wasn't as familiar with its history and exact purpose, but she knew one thing.

It had once been closely tied to the Ashward line—the collection of families that had once served as the custodians of the Ember Throne and, even over a century after the Throne's fall, had continued to linger as a source of political and symbolic weight across the central dominions. Apparently, this man was one of the people who was still loyal to that.

The man's expression stayed in high spirits, and his Resonance still spread through the chamber— Until it was crushed flat as Elaria's surged in its place, driving the temperature up hard enough that Vera felt the change against her skin.

"The Ashward line is no more," Elaria said, each word final as she fixed the old man with her gaze. Sweat quickly beaded on his brow, but he didn't look bothered. If anything, he looked more certain than before.

"My apologies, Flamebearer, but the Ashwards should no more come to an end than the Last Flame Unyielding itself. You chose not to carry its legacy forward, but surely you can see it now. What has fallen needs to rise once more. The Keeper of the Last Ember has acted so that you would not have to. Your heir may bear what you refused."

"She will not inherit it."

"Is that truly yours to decide? What of the Ember Scar? Does she bear it?" Vera saw something tighten at the corner of Elaria's mouth. She instinctively stepped closer to the woman, but stopped.

"It is mine to decide," Elaria eventually said.

"And she does not bear the Scar." The old man shook his head slowly.

"How can that be? If she is the sole surviving heir of Ashward, then I'm sure she must—""Serel is not Ashward's heir," Elaria cut him off. Vera suddenly had her wrist seized and was pulled hard to Elaria's side, their arms lifted for the whole chamber to see.

"She is a Mournvale." The old man's eyes widened. Something like horror and disbelief broke across his face. Vera's mind went blank for a second, even though this was exactly the moment she'd come here braced for. Beside her, Elaria's voice rang out again.

"Do not presume to shackle our daughter with your dead obsessions."