#dawnveil

O.K. See ya

Sederis’ expression darkened. “When I did what needed to be done. Because there wasn’t any other option. Leave these Lordlings alone and they’ll tear each other apart. Leave the lowborn to conspire amongst themselves and they’ll welcome the Alliance into our borders with open arms. Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I enjoyed to imprisoning the council?!” There was a pause as Sederis collected himself. He hadn’t expected to raise his voice like that. “Sorry. I just- I’m just trying my best- Just sometimes, the best isn’t enough.”

“Wow. She was right.” Ny stares at him for a moment, struggling to find any trace of the boy that she grew up with. “You sound like your father. No, worse than your father. You used to do things because they were the right thing to do, none of this ‘needed to be done’ shit. Your father died alone and unloved. He drove everyone who had ever cared about him away, even you. You better stop yourself before you try to emulate him any more.”

“I’m doing these things because it is the right thing to do. There are thousands of lives that rely on order being kept. Thousands more balancing on a knife’s edge, as the war draws close… It was something that my father understood and something that I’m beginning to understand.” He stepped out of the light, moving to get his whiskey. “He understood that he needed to be hated. To be feared. In order to save the lives of our people. It’s a burden that we have to bear.”

“From the way she tells it, you’re just doing what you think your father would have done. Maybe you need to ask yourself if you’re doing what’s best for you, or what’s actually the best thing for everyone else.”

“I’m doing what's best for the people. Even if they don't believe it. I'm not a factor when I weigh up what needs to be done. I can't be one.”

“Well, you could have fooled me.” With a sigh, she smacks her hands on her thighs, standing and going to the door. “Goodnight Sederis.”

He took a swig of his whiskey and sighed. “What do you see then?” He said. “If you don’t believe a word that I’ve said- what do you think?”

“Well, I think Lirelle is right, to a point. You think you’re better off if you try to be like your father, you put him on a pedestal because you think he knew what he was doing. That might have been true in his time, but this is now. You are not him. You are Sederis Emberheart, the boy that I grew up with who used to love getting in the mud, who would put crabs down the back of Lirelle’s dress and was always kind to the people here. You need to see past your father’s shadow, past the shadow of the conflicts you think are brewing, and make the choices that you think are right. By your standards, not his.”

Sederis laughed. It was a sad and pathetic thing. “I tried,” he said as his laughter gave way to despair. Resting the bottle of whiskey in his lap, he looked at Nyrexis with tear filled eyes. “I tried. I really did. When I first reclaimed the place that was waiting for me, that’s exactly what I did. I raised the conscription age to seventeen, to give the would-be-soldiers a childhood. I gathered the lowborns and created the council in Kearn- The first council of its kind in the Emberglades- to give voice to the common folk. I wanted to do good. I really did…” His sentence trailed off and his gaze fell to his feet. “I came back because I wanted to help. But sometimes you can’t have what you want.

“I’m going to tell you a story, Ny. One I have never told anyone. And if the war that’s coming is as bad as I think it’ll be, I’ll probably never tell this again. But the reason I came back, made peace with my past, and claimed the title I was born to; wasn’t because I wanted to take up my father’s bloody legacy. It was because I wanted to protect people.

It must be three winters back now. I was in Northrend, serving under Felthier Truefeather. We were there to stop yet another army of the dead. There was one week where the weather was particularly bad, so bad in fact, that even the dead couldn’t continue their assault. They’d just freeze solid under the snow. But though the fighting stopped, the dying didn’t. You see, the dead had wiped out every village east of where we were stationed, and there were thousands of refugees. Hungry, exhausted, souls without places to stay as the blizzard buried us all. I remember, all I did that week was chop lumber. I chopped and I chopped till my hands bled because it was the only thing I could do to keep them alive. Every evening, I’d distribute the wood I managed to collect for the day and every evening, fewer and fewer families would show up. I’d find them later, frozen or starved to death in the back streets of town. So by the time the weather cleared and we returned to duty, less than half the refugees remained. I remember thinking to myself- If only I had a ship, or the gold to hire a ship, they didn’t have to die. If only I had more power. I could have saved them. Perhaps then I’d have them evacuated to the Eastern Kingdoms, or shipped in food from the Glades. But all I had were my hands. Bloody and useless as they were.”

Sederis lifted his bottle of whiskey, took a good long look at it and then put it away. There was no escaping his misery now. “When I became Lord of the Emberglades I quickly learned that even power can’t save the helpless. All you can do is prepare, and protect. Making sure that it never gets to that state in the first place. So now, whenever I think of giving up on it all- that perhaps it’ll be better if I just let the Lordlings fight amongst themselves like they always have- that perhaps I should just let them surrender to the Alliance- I think of the families I saw, huddle together in death. Dead in some back alley no one knows the name of. And then I remember that I swore I’d never let that happen to my people. Not on my watch.”

“Then why doesn't it show through in the things you do Sederis? Everything you've done, surely someone must have told you it would hurt them more in the long run? Even you can see enough that it has. Maybe that's what you had in mind but you've lost sight of that Sederis.”

“Because this world had other plans. I can’t raise the age of conscription when we’re about to be dragged into another war that’s likely to come to our shores. I can’t have a council of when it’s going to sell out their own people the moment an occupying force arrives. And I can’t do any of these things without angering half my subjects, not when they break with thousands of years of violent tradition and history. Maybe in a better world, a more just world, my intentions and actions would align and I could invite my people to live better lives. Lives without the need of war, or fear. But this isn’t a better world. In this one, I rule warmongers and tyrants in an age of perpetual war. If I don’t hurt them now, there might not be a long run. So this is the best I can do.”

“And this is your best? Crushing the powerless and propping up the warmongers and tyrants?”

“It’s either that or plunging the Emberglades into civil war.”

“And so you’d rather let them hold your people hostage.” She gave him a look of intense disappointment.

“What would you have me do then?” Sederis sneered, clenching his fists. Fresh anger rushed through him for the first time in months.

“Stop being your father.” She glared at him with a cold and deadly calm. “Stop being ruled by fear and circumstance just like he was. You said you wanted to help the people? So help them. You are Sederis Emberheart, you are the Lord of the Emberglades, start acting like it. Strip these Lordlings of their titles, give their lands to those who value lasting peace. If there was a grain of truth to anything you just told me, and you’re truly here to better the lives of your people, then, unlike your father, the people will rally behind you regardless of what happens. If what you said wasn’t just you lying to yourself, then you came to power to stop the warmongers and tyrants. Don’t be one.”

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Servants greeted him as wandered the manor halls like a spectre, watching passively as he bore witness to the everyday lives of the people within it. Here, a maid went about her duties changing the linens. There, Stenden chased his new friends down the halls, in the same manner he had chased Lirelle and her sisters. He was in search of something, he didn’t know what exactly, only that it was old and ellusive. Gossamer curtains bowed and swayed as he continued down empty hallways, listening to the heartbeat of the manor. With everyone going about their day the house was silent save for the distant crashing of waves and the hint of domesticity from the kitchen; the only place in the manor that was never quiet. It was to this same timeless heartbeat he had been scruffy child freed from the bonds of responsibility, lifting skirts and stealing morsels from the resident cook. But as Sederis continued wandering the hallways of his youth, he began to understand that these halls didn’t just tell him of who he was, but also of who he could’ve been.

Because this was not just a place of memories, but a place of dreams. A place of decisions not made and other untaken paths down the forking road. A place of loves that never blossomed and of things that were never meant to be. Yet while these things had never come to pass, they had never disappeared either. They were all still here, living within these walls of plaster and marble in all their limitless possibility. Sederis felt that ache again, wondering that if he did everything right- like a spell- chanting the right incantations and invoking the right powers- he could reach out and to them. Recapturing the magic of it all, just for a moment, before they slipped through his fingers like sand.

-

Laughter brought him back to the present and he watched as a boy appeared at the junction between two hallways. Looking and weighing up his choices, the boy chose to run to Sederis instead.

He looked into the eyes of the young boy before him. A bright eyed child with crimson hair. Sederis remembered seeing him somewhere, long ago, and figured that he must have been one of Stenden’s new friends. “Are you lost?” He asked, kneeling down to meet him eye to eye. His emerald gaze meeting the untainted sapphire of the other.

The child blinked at him and didn’t respond, merely offering his hand.

“You want to take me somewhere?” Sederis reached out to the child but froze when he realized that something about him was eerily familiar. Perhaps it was a the curve of the child’s cheek, or the unassuming glare, but he had seen him somewhere, long ago. In a mirror. Sederis shook his head at the child, withdrawing his hand. “Run along Sederis,” he said. “Your mother’s waiting for you.”

The child scampered off down towards the beach, where an outline of a lady in white waited for her son.

He smiled.

“Are you okay?” Riah asked, stepping out from around the corner. She had been watching him and was genuinely curious at what she had just witnessed.

“Yes, just saying goodbye.”

“To who?”

Sederis stared back out across the beach, unable to find any trace of the mother or her child. “Myself.”

Riah looked to the beach as well, shielding her eyes from the sun beams that filtered into the manor. “And where did you go?”

“To a place where I can’t hurt him.” Sederis wiped stray tear from his cheek, accepting that these things were never meant to be held. These dreams. They were fragile things that were better left in the walls of this place. If he touched them- connected them with reality- they would shatter. He understood, at last, that the past was better left untouched. Preserved forever in nostalgia. Ageless and perfect to the day he died.

Art by Isharton

Sederis watched the waves roll onto the beach. “I don’t know,” he said. “I know I left the isle as Sederis Emberheart when I sailed off against the Lich King. But I don’t think I ever came back. Not really. I became something else over there. Twisted by war and loss until that was all I could think about- all I still think about-” He looked at Drenden. “Even now, everything I do is to prevent what I felt over there. Loss. Powerlessness. I fooled myself thinking that if I could just be strong enough, amassed enough power, I could protect the people I cared about. But it’s never enough, is it?”

“No amount of power is enough to ever guarantee that. We’re all one untimely death away from losing everything. We do what we can, and we must believe that it is enough. My girls seem to believe that you are still Sederis Emberheart, and I did not raise bad judges of character. At least that’s what I’d like to think.”

“Even now? Nevermind the scars, or the damage. But as a Lord attempting to oppress the people, for the people?” Sederis looked skeptical. “Ny spoke with me last night. Reminded me why I became a Lord in the first place. To protect. I just- I just don’t know how. She thinks that I need to deal with the problem by removing the roots. Tearing down houses that have ruled for generations. Putting in their place new families who value peace. That the way to heal the Glades is to bloodlet it.”

Drenden sighs again, a broad smile creeping across his face despite the man’s clear exasperation. “Of course that girl would tell you that. Now, not to say that she’s wrong, because she isn’t, but that sort of thing will not work in the Glades, and you’re smart enough to know it. She’s lived here all her life, she is Dawnveil, so of course she’d tell you to do what works here. No. You cannot afford to do that in your position, not so boldly. Tell me Sederis, how is your brother? Is he still in charge of that infernal propaganda department of his?”

“He is, and is probably the only thing keeping the Glades together at this point.”

“Then make use of him. Because you can do exactly that: Protect your people. All of that. Make changes for the better. Real change. Not propping up the broken systems that relied on cruelty that Mereded put in place, but to build new ones. Better ones. The type that your father wanted to but couldn’t… But,” Drenden smiled at last, raising his finger. “The trick is to make them think that they thought of it themselves.”

Photo by Lucas Marcomini