Chapter Text
She must have died.
Returning to her body has the same sensation as always, as though she is speeding down a beam of light back into that celestial body. Rushing headfirst into what, she does not yet remember.
It is only when she re-enters that body, feels the slow knitting of itself back together that it starts to come back to her.
Ketheric Thorm. The father of her one, true love.
“Isobel,” Aylin whispers, the grief returning as strong as ever. She tries to rise to her feet, but she is still, ironically, mortally wounded, for all that her immortal regeneration is beginning the slow work of returning her to full health.
“Don’t you dare speak my daughter’s name,” a voice snarls.
Slap.
Her head snaps to the side, jarring her neck from the strength of the blow.
“Where – ?”
She sees the jagged rocks going on for eternity, feels the thick emptiness and darkness but for flashes of purple lightning, hears the constant, ominous rolls of thunder, and remembers.
She is in the Shadowfell. Someone is in trouble and needs her help! Only … that wasn’t true, was it? It was a trick, and the very person who led her into the Shadowfell to help, killed her.
Her vision, temporarily fuzzy from the blow, comes back into focus and she sees Ketheric Thorm smirking at her, triumphant. And then he ignores her as he lifts his eyes up in worship.
“I have done as you asked, Dark Lady,” he says reverently. “Accept this gift from your most loyal servant.”
Something hums in the dark of the Shadowfell, Shar herself speaking to her disciple, though Aylin cannot hear what she says. How did she not see that he had turned from her mother Selune to wicked Shar in his grief?
“What have you done, Ketheric!” Aylin demands, ignoring her injuries and rising to stride across and seize him by the neck to demand answers. She makes it no further than two steps before she is stopped, her arms stretching uselessly forward, blocked from advancing further by an invisible barrier. She searches for the source; sickly sigils glow beneath her, through a pool of blood on the ground that she knows is her own.
And she suddenly realises: she has no armour, no weapons. Her wounds leak freely into the tunic she wears beneath her armour. She, Dame Aylin, has been imprisoned in a cage built from dark magic.
But she is a celestial daughter of Selune, not a helpless mortal. She calls upon her power – the power of Selune, her blessed and most holy gift to wield. And …
… Nothing …
“It cannot be …” she murmurs, perturbed, but by no means disheartened. She reaches out for her mother and discovers, with a realisation that cuts into her very heart, her very soul, that their connection has been weakened to the thinnest of threads.
“Oh, I assure you, it can be,” an oily voice says. “And thank you, Aylin, for your fine donation to my collection. I’m sure it will be used well, in time.”
Balthazar.
She whips her head around and sees a hooded figure dragging away a pair of white angel’s wings, dripping with blood and leaving streaks of red across the ground.
“No! NO!”
“Shall we?” Balthazar says to Ketheric, ignoring Aylin completely.
And now the terror is real. She is trapped in the Shadowfell without power, without sword, without her wings. Her beautiful wings – gone. Cut away.
She, a daughter of Selune, has been tricked like a common mortal. Ketheric has no idea of the enemy he has made and the vengeance she will shower upon him and his disgusting pet wizard.
“Release me!” she demands. “I swear upon my oath –”
“Yes, yes,” Ketheric interrupts. “I’ve heard it all before. All that quaint paladin nonsense. But don’t forget, Aylin, you stole from me first, and now you will pay the price. Forever.”
“This is not over Ketheric! I will hunt you down and tear you limb from limb! I will smash your head in until your skull is nothing more than shards like glitter –”
She rages at them, even as they walk through a portal Balthazar has created, and then they are gone.
Alone in the Shadowfell, she screams, and screams.
Only Shar hears her.
Shar loves the sound of her of screams.
And so she stops. And paces her new cage, panicked and frightened.
* * * * * *
Her wings do not grow back. Something in the dark magic that keeps her confined blocks that part of her celestial nature from returning.
She paces her bar-less cage like a lion. A lion waiting for prey that never comes.
This is not the first time she has been captured. She has been imprisoned oh … six or seven times, in her long, immortal life. The Shards, the awesome planetar servants of mother Selune, have rescued her each and every time. Her longest imprisonment was two years, such a small amount of time in an eternity.
She can wait. She can be patient. For how much sweeter will her vengeance be, for the waiting?
Her eyebrows furrow. But what will Ketheric do in the meantime, to Reithwin, and to Moonrise, with Dame Aylin out of the way? It all seems so obvious now. The growing Sharran presence in Reithwin must have been his influence all along, while he continued, outwardly, to claim allegiance to Selune. The grief from Isobel's death must have turned him to the Lady of Loss and to wicked deeds.
Why didn’t her mother tell her, Aylin thinks furiously. But she casts this thought quickly aside. She knows as well as her mother the rules of Lord Ao, the Overgod who keeps the Great Balance between good and evil, mortal and immortal, lower and higher planes. There are constraints by necessity. Overstep his bounds, and the Overgod will show his wrath by stripping her mother of her power and divinity.
Alone in the Shadowfell, Aylin prays.
‘Mother?’
‘My dear heart,’ comes back a light, silvery voice in her mind, softer than usual. Muffled.
Aylin sighs in relief to hear it nonetheless. The sound of her mother’s voice seems to carry a touch of Argentil, the shining hall where her mother lives in ever-present moonlight on her celestial plane.
And then there is nothing to do but wait.
These two things she holds onto: that she is the daughter of Selune, and she will have her vengeance.
* * * * * *
She dies of starvation. She returns.
She dies of starvation. She returns.
She dies of starvation. She returns.
‘Mother?’
‘I am here, dear heart.’
She dies of starvation. She returns.
She hums the melodies of songs to Selune with her eyes closed, blocking out the darkness of Shadowfell with thoughts of moonlight.
And then there is a new sound. Aylin’s eyes fly open, and she spies a figure descending to her prison. The figure is too slight to be the general Ketheric or the fat wizard Balthazar. A rescuer, at last!
She stands, straight and proud, ready to receive her guest and bestow upon them the blessing and thanks of Selune for the rescue of her magnificent daughter.
“By the Moonmaiden!” she says in relief to the helmeted figure.
“I will not hear of your moon bitch!” a male voice spits from behind a faceless helmet. A sword is drawn and Aylin reaches instinctively to draw her own – forgetting, that she has nothing to defend herself with. Forgetting that she is confined, powerless.
“Hear my devotion to you, blessed Nightsinger! For you I will sunder this Selunite and rise, a Dark Justiciar!”
“Wait – ” Aylin cries.
The sword impales her, right through her heart.
She returns. Alone. Bleeding.
‘Mother?’
‘My dear heart …’
* * * * * *
“Selunite,” the female assassin growls angrily.
“You will know who I am, whom you kill,” Aylin says fiercely. “You will know that you kill a daughter of Selune!”
“Good,” the assassin says, uncaring.
The last thing she thinks, before the arrow enters her brain, is: At least I died before I starved, this time.
* * * * * *
It is not exactly a parade of would-be Dark Justiciars, but at least once a month she is killed and reborn. She spends the time in between working on her speeches to them, hoping one of these dark-crazed warriors will yet see the light.
And each new Dark Justiciar can’t resist telling her about the terror Ketheric has unleashed upon Reithwin.
Each new death and return only add more wood to the fires of the vengeance she will rain down upon him and all her follow him.
‘Mother?’
‘Yes my heart, my daughter.’
‘Where are the Shards?’
A pause.
‘We try, my daughter. We try.’
Still Aylin waits. And broods.
And then there are no more visitors for a long time. How long, Aylin cannot be sure of. It is years now, certainly. But she does not give up hope that the Shards will come, that they will find some way into the Shadowfell and rescue her.
She spends the long years thinking of Isobel. Remembering every detail of her face, her touch, her body. Reliving every moment of their relationship, cut all too short, from the day they met to the day she died. Imagining herself to be in Isobel’s embrace and starting to wish that she too, was dead. A permanent death.
She no longer paces her cage. She lays on the ground waiting for death to come, over and over.
Where are the Shards?
‘Mother?’
‘I am here, beloved daughter.’
She dies. She returns. Over and over. A ceaseless, pointless cycle.
No one is coming for the daughter of Selune.
* * * * * *
She no longer moves. She dies in the same position she is returned, staring up at the dark purple storm of the Shadowfell. She no longer recalls the feel of moonlight on her skin, the taste of wine, the feel of food in her belly. How low Dame Aylin has been brought.
Days blend into months, blend into years.
‘Are you there daughter?’
It takes months for her to muster the energy to respond.
‘I am here, mother.’
‘Do not lose the light, daughter,’ Selune whispers.
‘Light,’ Aylin whispers despondently to herself, trying to remember what it looks like, as she dies again.
* * * * * *
Someone enters the Shadowfell for the first time in quite how long, Aylin cannot be sure. It has been a long, long time.
Aylin rises from the ground, curious to see who her visitor will be. No part of her believes it will be a rescuer.
Her eyes widen in disbelief, for who should it be but none other than the villains, Ketheric Thorm and Balthazar? They are much changed since last she saw them. Balthazar’s eyes are red, his skin a sickly grey and cut with profane symbols. There is a disgusting smell of necromancy on him.
Ketheric looks hollowed out as though death is somehow upon him also.
“You look well,” Balthazar says. “One hundred years, and you haven’t changed a day.”
Aylin freezes in shock. Can it really have been so long? A hundred years! Oh Moonmaiden preserve me!
“Ah, I love a happy reunion,” Balthazar says, a smile on his face she longs to rip off his skull.
“You villain!” she spits at him.
“Now, now, Aylin, manners. Or I shall have to be harsh with you.”
“Let’s just get this over with, quickly, before anyone notices we’re here,” Ketheric says to Balthazar, ignoring Aylin completely and wandering around the platform, staring out into the void.
Balthazar removes several pouches from his robe pockets and begins to draw runes that he splashes with blood around Aylin’s prison, just short of where she can wring her hands around his neck.
“What are you doing?” she asks in a low, fierce voice.
“It’s time you shared the wonderful gifts your mother has given you, Aylin. Now don’t interrupt again, or I shall get cross.”
“As if I, daughter of Selune would listen to – ”
Pain strikes her, so hard she falls to the ground in a faint. When she comes to, she knows she did not die this time. But she feels something, many somethings, gripping her around her arms and legs. Has she been shackled? She is still able to move, which doesn’t make sense.
“We’re ready to test, Ketheric,” Balthazar’s oily voice says.
Aylin roars at him, ready to rip his insides out, forgetting her prison walls. And the things gripping her press down. She looks at what restrains her with a snarl on her face, and sees ghostly green, clawed hands holding her in place.
“What is this!” she cries in horror. “What have you done, foul monster!”
Ketheric sighs, as though she is a merely child having a temper tantrum, not the glorious sword arm of the Moonmaiden.
“Will a simple cut do?” he asks Balthazar, not even looking at Aylin. As if she is beneath him.
She seethes.
“Of course,” Balthazar replies.
Ketheric draws a dagger, and cuts his own hand. Aylin gasps as she feels a cut on her own hand. What in the nine hells – ?
Something is draining out of her. Before her eyes, the cut on Ketheric’s hand heals. And he turns and faces her, finally.
“Well, well,” Ketheric says. “You were good for something, after all.”
Rage larger than she has ever known overcomes her and she screams and screams, and screams, long after they are gone.
* * * * * *
No Sharran initiates follow.
Instead, she feels swords slice her belly. Arrows pierce her insides. A spear, through her heart. But there are no assassins. These are Ketheric’s wounds, transferred to her. She dies, over and over, and he does not.
And the unfairness of being forced to be use her divine power to protect the very man who imprisoned and tortured her unfurls a palpable rage within.
She prowls around her cage thinking only of vengeance.
‘Mother!’
‘… Daughter? I sense … a raging anger ....’
‘It is mine. I rage, mother. I rage.’
Does mother know, some of that rage as at her? For forgetting her, for one hundred years?
‘Do not forget love, daughter.’
As if Isobel’s consort could ever forget love.
* * * * * *
She senses them enter the Shadowfell. She senses the intent to kill her, once more. Are the Sharran initiates back?
‘Daughter …’
Hesitation, from mother?
‘I am here, mother.’
‘This the chance we have been waiting for.’
Aylin’s pacing abruptly stops.
‘Daughter, the Shadowfell is thick, our connection thinned, but I give you what I can. I give you what I can.’
Aylin feels a sliver of Selune’s divine power and glory enter her and breathes in the feel of moonlight, wishing she could see it. Feeling calmer for her mother’s gift, she watches a large party of Sharrans descend to her prison.
The one that leads them, the one with hair as black as Shar’s, already wears the plate armour of a Dark Justiciar in anticipation.
So it is another Sharran initiate come to rise into that evil station, after all.
“I have felt you coming, the first in a century,” she says. “You, who have come to seek the praise of your wicked goddess. You, who have come to drive a dagger through my heart!”
“Not a dagger, a spear! My Lady Shar’s spear!” the poor deluded Sharran replies, filled with the same senseless hate of the Dark Lady.
Aylin feels the gravity of the moment, the one time her mother has been able to send her help. But from a Sharran? What is she to do, beg? No, Selune’s daughter never begs. She looks at the woman’s companions and notes, interestingly, that they do not seem to be united with the assassin’s intentions at all. She sees, sympathy, compassion, horror, at Dame Aylin’s predicament. Emotions she has not seen on the face of another for over one hundred years. In the background of her consciousness, the Moonmaiden’s gift of insight gradually begins to work.
“Oh, oh gods, no …” one of the women, a little white-haired thing, cries out.
Another companion, a devil? looks as though he is going to step between her and the dark-haired woman.
“Stay back, let me handle this. Her fate is mine to seal!” the dark-haired woman says fiercely, glaring at her companion, who relents. So they are not united at all. A chance for Dame Aylin, indeed.
“The fate you seal is your own,” Aylin interrupts. “To be a Dark Justiciar is to turn your heart from everything but loss. You will know no love, no joy, only servitude.” It’s a speech she has given many times to the Sharran initiates, though none have been persuaded yet.
And then, Aylin feels it – what the Moonmaiden’s insight is showing her. The woman’s memories are fractured to a degree Aylin has never seen before in a Sharran. Why? she asks, and the Moonmaiden’s insight shows her, in a rapid transfer that takes less than a second for her celestial brain to parse. This is no ordinary Sharran before her, and she bears no ordinary weapon. Once upon a time, she belonged to Selune, before she was stolen. She was indoctrinated and had her memories removed and altered to try to shape her – for this very moment. She is but a trophy to Shar, stolen from mother to prove a point about the power of the dark against the light.
And yet the once-Selunite is as dangerous as any initiate who has come to kill her. This truth that Dame Aylin is privy to would likely tip her over the edge, if she tells her too soon. Her heart beats fast. She will need to be careful with that knowledge, careful with her words for all that her heart cries for her to lash out and bite from her prison. For Shar has armed her with a weapon that would kill her for good. And she cannot die – not before she has had her vengeance on Ketheric Thorm.
“Well, well, well. I sense the spear, the one empowered by your goddess – to kill the child of a god! Do you know who I am, little assassin? For I know you, a lost child, frightened by wolves in the dark.”
“What – what did you say?” the woman whispers, visibly shaken.
It has worked, the small sliver of insight, to make the Sharran stumble. For there is a part of her that is already taken with Selune, even if she does not yet realise it. But Dame Aylin knows.
“Much has been promised to you, hasn’t it? But what has been taken from you? What do you know of your own heart, your own life? I sense more in you than you know.”
The conflict in the woman is as clear as day, and Aylin’s heart beats with hope, for the first time in a century. I entreat you, Lady of Silver. Please.
“Whatever you think you know in me won’t matter, once I become who I’m meant to be!” the Sharran snarls at her. And Dame Aylin can feel Shar’s approval at the words, her crazed longing to see the daughter of Selune’s blood spilled one, final time.
The black Spear of the Night, smoking with darkness and death, appears in the woman’s hand. She looks down at it, uncertain what to do, for all her ferocious words.
And Aylin paces, the import and gravity of the moment impossible to bear. After one hundred years, it all comes down to this. The Sharran appears to consult a tearful comrade who is obviously in love with her, who obviously does not want to lose her to the darkness of Shar. A Sharran who knows something of love? She would have thought it impossible.
And the woman moves suddenly, the tip of the spear swinging round toward Aylin and in that split second Aylin resigns herself and thinks, blessedly, of Isobel.
But then it continues its trajectory and flies out of the woman’s hands, over the edge of the platform, down into the void.
Miraculously, the woman has chosen light, after a lifetime of living in darkness and the suffocation of Shar’s embrace. Hope flares in Aylin, once more. She is not yet free, but she is so close.
“I … I can’t believe I just did that,” the woman says shakily, her face pale with fear. “Lady Shar will disown me. What will happen to me?”
“Not what will happen, but what will you do?” Aylin says, stirred by the woman’s courage, her instinctive mercy. Here is one of great strength and great possibility. Here is one whose heart was too strong for Shar to break completely. “Your past is not yet lost, your future is not yet fixed. Lay a hand on me in friendship, not-quite-Sharran, and I will fight the battle that has been waiting for me this last century. Then, oh then, we will have much to discuss.”
Aylin kneels down with her eyes closed, and hopes. And hopes.
A gloved hand touches her shoulder, tentatively, as though it is not quite sure whether it is supposed to be there, and the prison that has held Aylin in place for a hundred years collapses.
In one shining moment, her connection with her mother is fully restored and she feels the touch of moonlight glowing on her skin once more. And then it is no longer the feel of moonlight, for she is moonlight.
Dame Aylin rises, and is transformed in all her splendour and glory. She is sheathed in the gleaming armour of the Moonmaiden, she is equipped with the silver greatsword, and her gleaming white wings spring forth once again.
After one hundred years of imprisonment, she is the Sword of the Moonmaiden once more.
“I am resplendent!” Aylin exclaims, glowing with moonlight that hugs to her.
‘Mother?’
‘I am here! I am here daughter!’ Selune’s voice comes to her clear and strong. ‘Now flee that foul place and come back to your mother’s embrace.’
Aylin’s wings beat softly, as she descends to face her saviour. The woman is in shock. Of course, she does not yet know the truth of wicked Shar’s games with her, she does not know why she spared the daughter of Selune. But Dame Aylin knows, and Dame Aylin does not lightly take this gift of mercy, this gift of courage. The Moonmaiden shall reward her, and Dame Aylin shall be the herald of her blessings once more.
She pauses a moment, feeling her mother’s joy, not only for Dame Aylin, but for the once-Selunite who stands in front of her. She senses what her mother wants her to do.
“You have done what we thought was impossible,” she says to the woman. “You have released me from a century of sorrow. Your power is great. So too must be your weapon. You must choose what you will wield, and the Moonmaiden will provide. Thus I have said, thus it will it be so. Are you ready?”
“Ready?” The woman says uncertainly. “Ready for what?”
Aylin feels the channel of divine power open between the woman and her mother, to replace what Shar has taken from her. A gift of thanks for a daughter returned, with others to come. But first, there is work to do. The work of a paladin, long overdue.
Aylin’s eyes harden and she feels the rage rise within her once more. “To kill Ketheric Thorm!”
And Dame Aylin, the Moonmaiden’s sword rises up from one hundred years of captivity, rises from one hundred years in the Shadowfell, rises from one hundred years of oppression and suffering at the hands of Shar.
Dame Aylin is free from the Shadowfell at last.
As she hovers above the Thorm family mausoleum she knows a pang for her darling Isobel, interred within. There is darkness still, all around. Shar’s work. It gnaws at her bones, as it had in the Shadowfell, for all that she is sheathed in moonlight.
Aylin’s eyes flash with anger as she flies above Reithwin, hideously changed by Shar’s curse. Something unusual draws her eye in the distance, a dome of moonlight? So her mother works here still, in some way she has not deemed worthy of sharing with Aylin.
Some instinct takes her to the dome, where she sees fighters gathering, fighters watching for her. Dame Aylin is a beacon of hope and light once more.
Though she is impatient for her revenge, she recognises the need for help to help assault Thorm’s stronghold. She flies above the army as it marches upon Moonrise, circling over and above them, itching to begin the satisfying work of delivering justice upon evil that she has been kept from doing for one hundred years.
She scouts ahead, far above arrow shot, and sees an army gathering at Moonrise to meet the one arriving from the dome.
As the dome army positions itself to start their assault, Dame Aylin descends in all her glory between both armies and draws the sword of the Moonmaiden with a satisfying ring out of its scabbard. How well it feels to have it in her hand! How satisfying to wield it again at last, against these cultists, these harbingers of evil. She impales cultists and watches blood run off her blade with satisfaction as the familiar hum and clang of battle rises around her. But it is clear Ketheric does not hide amongst these and it is he she seeks. She takes flight and shoots through the halls of Moonrise Towers like an arrow, the cultists inside too startled by her radiant presence to do more than gape.
How changed Moonrise Towers is since she last visited, answering the summons of Ketheric Thorm who had a problem he hoped she could help him with … she snarls at the memory.
But then she feels an ache of grief for her darling Isobel, a remembrance for all the times she snuck through her window to visit her underneath disapproving Ketheric’s nose. There were good memories here, some of the best.
Still Dame Aylin searches for her quarry, her prey. She shoots up a grand staircase and up into the air above the rooftop, her celestial brain calculating the positions of her foes within seconds as she sees her quarry at last: Ketheric Thorm who has fled like a coward from Dame Aylin’s wrath. She hisses in impatience, for she will have to clear ranged and arcane enemies protecting the villain Thorm before she can even get close enough to smite him.
She feels the power of the moon inside her, filling her, and in an eruption of power hurls moon motes at her adversaries. Everywhere they land, deadly moonfire erupts, killing and scattering enemies.
And Dame Aylin breathes in the feel of it, the feel of another battle like the hundreds of battles she has fought before, the feel of her own battle sense still reliably in her bones and in all of her instincts. This is what she was made for; a weapon of the Moonmaiden to crush the darkness.
The arcanists are still troublesome, and she swoops in and cuts with her sword and dodges their spells, wearing them down as she uses her air power to her advantage. At last she lands on the rooftop, to crush Ketheric Thorm, and she notes with a grim approval that the team of warriors she had met in the Shadowfell have arrived.
It is to be an alliance then, the best way to rout a villain, for there are still many of his lackeys to vanquish.
She turns her glorious face from them, for before her is the author of her torment, Ketheric Thorm, and the sight of her free and clothed in all her splendour frightens him. How this pleases Dame Aylin.
“You!” he snarls.
“How good it is to see you again, Ketheric,” Dame Aylin says mockingly. “At last you’ve found a god-master that suits you, it seems.”
Ketheric glares at her, and all his resentment seems to bubble up in him, as fresh as the day they first argued over Isobel. “Aylin, the thief. You stole Isobel from me, and now you think you’ll take my life in the bargain?”
At the mention of Isobel’s name, Aylin’s eyes glow with rage. “You dare speak her name? After your crimes innumerable, you would evoke her before me?!”
“Enough,” Ketheric says. “This ends, here and now, at last!”
And Dame Aylin can feel death magic raising unholy servants to fight for him. A coward once and again! She turns to her new allies, to lead the charge against Thorm.
“He will crumble at the power of your touch,” she exhorts them. “Give him all you have! THE GODS FIGHT AT OUR SIDE!”
And glowing with moonlight and the power of Selune, Dame Aylin sweeps forward to strike down the enemy as she pushes forward to meet Ketheric Thorm with her blade, smiting dark mages while her allies begin to engage the necromites that have surrounded them. And Ketheric Thorm runs and hides again, like a coward. THE COWARD!
She starts to follow him, seething with rage, when he suddenly calls out “Enough, ENOUGH!” as though he is the general he once was, to be commanding her!
And she is about to take flight and send her sword directly through his heart when something enormous erupts from one of the turrets, and at its pink, fleshy touch, the rooftop disappears and Dame Aylin, the Sword of the Moonmaiden is underground, on a platform, surrounded by runes and splashes of blood … oh Lady of Silver no!
NO!!!!
Dame Aylin is imprisoned, once more.