Chapter Text
For an openly practicing necromancer, Professor Volkarin was a man whose existence seemed devoted to making you forget what blood magic he used on corpses.
Even for a day of tramping through the woods and following dusty footpaths, his appearance was painfully neat—so starched, pressed and polished that it was difficult to imagine him willingly working amid rot and contagion. He moved with a mincing gait, and spoke with a gregarious warmth that was rare among mages and noblemen of any stripe. During the first several hours of travel, he’d proved to be an incurable chatterbox, musing rhetorically, in a light and lilting tone, over every bit of scattered rubble and each picturesque tree or cliff.
Isolde trailed him silently, watching him with as much attention as she gave to scanning the woods for dangers. When Rook had ordered Isolde onto this mission, Isolde hadn’t needed their purposeful, pointed look to know that her assignment wasn’t simply to guide and guard Professor Volkarin through the Arlathan wilderness. The malfunctioning artifact summoning demons too close to Strife’s camp, less than a week after Professor Volkarin had joined their party, was as much an opportunity as it was an obligation. Rook was shrewd; they always had more than one reason for doing anything they did.
Watch him.
A dangerous man, witnessed only by a lowly guard, might well give himself away.
But hours into their journey, Professor Volkarin had yet to do anything worth reporting to Rook. His behavior, if anything, was more disarming than concerning. The bold, straight lines he walked in were tangential as often as they were purposeful; he diverted often, with great excitement, to draw closer to whatever had drawn his attention. And everything, it seemed, drew his attention.
As they walked through a crumbling building, Professor Volkarin turned to Isolde and asked conversationally, “What do you make of that statue, there?”
This spot had likely been a great hall, once, though the central arches had long ago collapsed. Massive slabs of deteriorating stone were strewn all around them; all other traces of the building had rotted away. The statue looked to have been placed under the center of the hall’s dome. It was a modest decoration, by the opulent standards of the central Arlathan ruins, barely taller than Professor Volkarin was. It had been a softer, cheaper stone, and the erosion of a few centuries of rain had worn away almost all the sculpted details. It was possible, barely, to make out the remains of a four-legged creature, and a blob of something that was on its back.
“Likely a halla and rider, Professor Volkarin,” Isolde said. “Could be a portrait of someone. Likely the manor owner, or a war hero.”
Professor Volkarin had a face suited to sculpture, Isolde thought idly. The sharp, striking planes of his face would be ideal for carving. She wondered if there was already a statue of him, somewhere in Nevarra. The universities she’d seen from afar had no shortage of similar decorations.
“Oh, call me Emmrich, please,” Professor Volkarin said reflexively.
He waited a beat, as if expecting her to continue speaking.
“You’re rather taciturn, aren’t you, Mithen?” he said.
Isolde watched him, unsure how to respond.
“Quiet,” he clarified.
Isolde couldn’t quite figure out a polite way to say most people of your station don’t like it when guards speak. I didn’t realize you wanted me to.
“Yes, I suppose,” she said instead.
“Hm,” he said, his sharp eyes picking apart the details of a statue. “A manor—yes, I can see now, this is a rather isolated structure, and we have seen no evidence of the thoroughfares more common in Arlathan settlements of a certain size—”
Professor Volkarin broke off, glancing at Isolde.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I? I do like to think aloud, but I could refrain, if the sound is bothering you.”
“No,” Isolde said.
Many of the Veil Jumper researchers she’d known had the same habit—but Professor Volkarin’s perspective was so foreign that his conclusions about familiar features of Arlathan felt novel.
And at least, when the words made no sense, his voice was pleasant to listen to.
“I thought what you said earlier about mapping Fade geometries from the seasonality of the forest plants was interesting,” Isolde added.
He gave her a wide, surprised smile that seemed disproportionate to what she’d said.
“It is, of course, clear to anyone that the mixed seasonal foliage of Arlathan is the result of powerful magic,” Professor Volkarin said. “But what’s less obvious to the casual observer is that the Fade itself has a spatial component—that is, it occupies a physical area, much as a building does. But crucially, it is not a fixed place. Just as a mortal occupies space, and yet is capable of motion—one remains about the same height and weight, generally, but is quite likely to move and stretch throughout the course of one’s daily activities, you see?”
He spread his arms to illustrate the point.
“When it comes to the Fade, certain scholars hypothesize that certain shapes are more likely to occur—much as a person is likely to return to the same place to sleep each night, and likely to assume approximately the same position each time. If one were to map the peculiarities of magic in Arlathan, using the clear signals of the plant seasonality as one’s metric, it may be possible to delve far deeper into this question than previously possible—”
Professor Volkarin rambled for quite some time, unexpectedly patient and detailed in his explanations of magical theory. Unlike the magic experts Isolde knew best in the Veil Jumper camps, he explained concepts clearly, without falling back to indecipherable jargon.
It was far from the first time that his reactions had departed from the expected script. He wasn’t the travel companion Isolde had anticipated, at the beginning of the trip. She’d resigned herself to being the pack animal of the journey, to be treated with arrogance and condescension, vainly hoping that he’d ignore her entirely.
But apparently, the courtesy he’d shown Rook hadn’t been airs; he extended the same considerations to Isolde, despite having no reason to do so. Stranger still, he seemed to genuinely mean the kindnesses, rather than the hollow courtesies Isolde had observed Human nobles to show each other.
So when Isolde abruptly became lost in his explanation of how new mappings of the Fade were tested, she dared to ask him, hesitantly, “But I thought that the Fade could only be accessed through dreams, or where the space between worlds is thin? If you’re dreaming, you don’t control where you start, and there aren’t that many portals between worlds, are there?”
“A wonderful question!” Emmrich said, beaming with apparent delight. “For mages, it’s possible to induce states to connect to the Fade, and those ceremonies allow one to choose the place where one begins. It's not perfectly stable, of course—nothing to do with the Fade could be described as such—but certainly an easier methodology than random dreams.”
His continued explanations of Fade theory paused mid-word as Isolde sniffed sharply, turning her head. There was a faint, perplexing smell of apples on the air. In Arlathan, it paid to be wary of the unexpected. Isolde’s spear went up, and she scanned the area, alert. Cautiously, she edged closer.
The stout trees in front of them were apple trees, Isolde realized quickly. No magic at play here. Her shoulders relaxed, her spear tip lowering. They’d stumbled onto what must have once been an orchard. Several dozen trees clustered thickly, their tangled, gnarled roots making the ground treacherously uneven underfoot. After so long of neglect, the fruits were sparse, but not gone. The early summer sun dappled the ground. The pattern of it tossed and shifted as a pleasant breeze passed through the leaves.
It was, Isolde thought wistfully, one of the places she’d gladly have lingered a while in, if not for the need to guide Professor Volkarin.
“Oh!” Professor Volkarin said, following her gaze to the grove, and brightened immediately. “Good nose; I would have missed them entirely!”
He made his way into the trees without hesitation, investigated the find with boyish, unselfconscious enthusiasm, moving with undisguised eagerness.
The joy in his expression was unexpected; she hadn’t considered that he’d enjoy the discovery as well. Emboldened by his reaction, Isolde tentatively stepped into the orchard herself, picking around the remains of last year’s fallen apples and the hard, uneven curves of roots. Where the hearty roots didn’t dominate, moss grew in dense patches. Isolde curled her bare toes into the thick carpet of it, pleased, and took slow, deep breaths. For a moment, the tension of her assigned mission fell away.
“I’ve never seen fruit bearing trees so large,” Professor Volkarin marveled. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find that even these have been reinforced by magic. What a remarkable place Arlathan is!”
He inspected the yield of half a dozen trees, pulling the lowest branches down for inspection, inhaling the aroma, before plucking an apple and sampling it.
“Eating apples,” Professor Volkarin said with pleasure. “Somewhat underripe, given the season, but wonderfully tart.”
Professor Volkarin turned toward her, offering a small red apple on his palm. “Would you care for one?”
The attempt to share caught Isolde as off-guard as his earnest delight had. She smiled at him tentatively, but couldn’t help a brief twitch of disgust, nausea rising rapidly in her stomach. The scent of the grove brought her back, with unwanted clarity, to the hard early spring before she’d turned fourteen. A bruised barrel of apples was all she’d had. She’d eaten them until they were half-rotted.
“Ah, not to your taste?” Professor Volkarin said.
“I eat them if I have to,” Isolde said, not meeting his eyes.
Surprisingly, he said nothing to that, despite his obvious enjoyment as he crunched into the fruit. He picked several dozen of them, wrapping them carefully in his pack.
They’d begun to walk on when Professor Volkarin spoke up again.
“Is Mithen a common name, among the Elves? I believe I may have heard it in the Veil Jumper camp we began our journey in.”
After a quiet moment of confusion, Isolde told him, “It’s not a name. It means ‘guard’ in Dalish.”
“Oh,” Professor Volkarin said, sounding strangely embarrassed.
Huh—had the non-Elven members of the Veilguard not intentionally been referring to her by her title this whole time?
“My name’s Isolde,” she told him.
“What a lovely name,” he said at once, brightening.
“My father liked it,” Isolde said. “He always said he’d waited almost a decade to have a daughter so that he could name her that. He heard it in a play, once, and—”
Isolde bit her tongue. Her papa had always told the story the same way: starting with his journey of six leagues to reach the city of Wycome for the high festival. He’d walked, bargained and haggled, doing all sorts of odd little quests for people who’d give him cart rides, tricking the enforcers and greasing palms to be let into the city. Then he’d recount the wonders of the festival itself, pausing lovingly on the moment he’d first heard the name— during the first play he’d ever seen in person. Even two decades later, he’d spoken of it with awe in his eyes: the painted scenery, the beautiful costumes, the riveting, dramatic plot… his story had always gone all the way to the day that Isolde was born, finishing it out with and you were worth the wait. And then he dropped a kiss on the top of her head, as if the telling wasn’t complete without it.
Professor Volkarin would not, under any circumstances, wish to hear Isolde’s long and bumbling retelling of a poor Elf’s life story. Mentioning her papa had probably already been a step too far in what was no doubt a cursory show of politeness.
But Professor Volkarin’s face was softening.
“How delightful,” he said, and his voice gave every impression of meaning it.
Professor Volkarin drew Isolde into even more conversations as the day went on. In the back of Isolde’s mind, wariness was rapidly growing. Wealthy Humans never took a personal interest in her. Any contact they bothered to initiate was for clear purposes: some use they could make of her.
Was it Isolde’s connection to Rook, then, that Professor Volkarin was after? Sounding Rook out, just as Rook was doing to him in turn?
Isolde’s skin prickled to consider what else he was after, if not Rook. It certainly wasn’t for any honest lust—rawboned, bat-faced, plain, as tall as even some Human men and with barely more curves than one, Isolde had little to tempt him. No, a man who looked like Professor Volkarin would not stoop to making use of her. He had, at any time, far more appealing options.
The Humans that bothered to bury the lede of what they wanted from Isolde were the ones to be wariest of. Whoever believed that they needed her guard down first… Isolde still had nightmares of escaping the silver merchant from Seleny.
Would a necromancer’s request be worse still?
When Isolde gave cautious responses to Professor Volkarin’s personal questions, he backed off quickly, keeping the topics light and airy. It was an impressive feat; for the entire day’s journey, he made himself easy to talk to.
They circled the same small patch of Arlathan several times, Professor Volkarin’s eyes periodically distant as he tried to catch the Fade disturbance that would accompany the malfunctioning artifact. Isolde remained on high alert; the same properties that made their journey necessary would make it risky to get close.
An hour and a half later, Professor Volkarin’s head lifted, his muscles tensing. From his body language, Isolde could tell that they’d found their target. She flexed her knees, shifting her weight in preparation for a fight. Her spear was in her hand in a moment, her senses on high alert.
Professor Volkarin turned, mouth opening, only to see her ready. He blinked, surprise crossing his features, and gave an affirmative nod. They crept closer. Even stepping carefully, the crunch of their footsteps over the rocky soil sounded too loud to Isolde’s pricked ears. Professor Volkarin made to walk through a wintry patch of the forest, the bare trunks and branches providing little cover; Isolde caught him by the elbow, jerking her head to tell him to go around. Professor Volkarin acquiesced immediately, gesturing for her to lead the way. They went slower, curving around to take advantage of trees that kept their fall foliage.
“No demons at the moment,” Professor Volkarin said very quietly, head cocked to the side, eyes vague as he listened to an internal sense.
They drew close enough to see the artifact. There were a set of elaborate carved pillars all around it, the intricate markings almost hidden under a thick covering of ivy and moss. Set on a short half-pillar was a set of interlocking brass circles, carved with runes, fitted together in a way that confused the eye. By the thick, uneven pieces of curved glass scattered all around the base of the pillar, it likely had been topped with a complex structure of blown glass. By now there was only a jagged bit of tube where it had once attached.
One heavy crystal prism remained above the broken glass, floating ominously in the air. It glowed from the inside, a flickering yellow like light passing through a frosted window. Thin, silvery etchings lit up like rivulets of water reflecting blazing summer sun. The glow had no obvious source—the actual sun was too low in the sky, and too hidden by clouds.
Near the prism, the air rippled with a strange shimmer, a puckered, wavy edge of a color Isolde had only ever seen in afterimages. It was dizzying to look at, shifting between colors that felt simultaneously unreal, and more intense than anything she’d seen before.
A Sentinel stood a few hundred feet from the artifact, its eyes dull in its gleaming helmet. Long experience told Isolde that it would activate as soon as they approached. Professor Volkarin’s eyes narrowed as he took it in.
“Leave it to me,” Isolde said in a low voice.
Isolde approached on quiet feet, swinging around wide so she could keep herself inside its blind spot. When she was close enough, she wildly sprinted the last stretch. As the whirr of its activation sounded, Isolde stabbed up inside the seam of the armored neck, just under the lip of its helmet. The mechanism that allowed the head to rotate snapped; Isolde pulled back sharply and stabbed for the join between its pauldron and chest plate. The Sentinel whirred into action half a second too quickly; Isolde’s spearpoint glanced off. It swung for Isolde. She darted back, dodging several of its attacks in succession. It took half a minute before she spotted an opening. She lunged forward, shoving her spear inside the weak point of its pauldron. There was a resounding crack, and one arm suddenly hung lower than the other. The great axe whistled through the air, so close that its sharp edge scored a new fine line into Isolde’s leather armor.
“Oh, well struck!” Professor Volkarin called out, impressed. He swept his staff in a wide arc, sending a blast of green magic hurtling for the Sentinel. It collided like the blow of a great hammer, sending the armor staggering. Isolde didn’t waste the opportunity. She struck for the elbow, landing a hit heavy enough to partially sever the joint.
As Isolde pulled away from the retaliating strike, the shimmer in the air rippled, drawing back to show a void that roiled dark purple and vivid red-pink. The rip expanded so rapidly that Isolde flinched, expecting it to swallow her whole.
Her distraction cost her. The Sentinel smashed into her with a heavy blow of its great axe. Isolde was sent flying, rolling several times over the rocky ground. The pain made it hard to breathe.
Oh, that was going to cost her. She sucked in a breath, ribs screaming, and lurched to her feet. Pain shot through her hip, agonizing, but her leg took her weight.
Out of the rift stepped a demon, long-limbed and covered in spikes, a scattering of red eyes splashed across its face like weeping sores.
An icy chill ran down Isolde’s spine, her knees weakening. She fought against her locked muscles, lunging inside the Sentinel’s guard, and smashed its core with the butt of her spear. With a shudder, the mechanical eyes dimmed, and it went still.
“Terror demon,” Professor Volkarin said, his voice thin with fear. He clutched his staff, frozen, eyes wide.
Isolde took a breath into lungs that no longer wanted to expand, and charged. The demon sent a spike of magic, and Isolde rolled out of the way. She drew closer, but the demon’s attacks were too fast and too wide for her to get within range. It lashed out at her with hands that were only bone and tendon, the tips of its fingers deadly sharp points. When it missed, its claws tore through the soil like it was water.
Professor Volkarin jolted out of his reverie. He slammed his staff against the ground, green sparks flowing out in every direction. The earth two dozen feet from the demon erupted, clods of dirt spraying everywhere, as bones tore out of the ground. Ghostly threads of green wrapped around the skeleton of a halla, and a wolf with a crushed skull. The wolf leaped for the demon with eerie silence. The halla lowered its antlered head and charged.
Isolde darted closer, the distraction of the skeletons allowing her to stab the demon through the ribs. The blade tip glanced off its uneven ribcage, failing to spear the heart.
Isolde leapt back to dodge the demon’s swipe, and Professor Volkarin threw a concussive blast of his magic. A chunk of the demon’s right arm tore away. Out of the corner of her eye, Isolde saw Professor Volkarin sag from the forceful drain of the spell.
The tear in the Fade began to pulse again, its edge swirling.
“Get the artifact!” Isolde yelled. “I’ll distract it. If another demon comes through—”
Professor Volkarin accepted this soundlessly, sprinting for the plinth. He skidded to his knees in front of it.
Isolde could spare no attention to see how he fared. She was forced to dodge, and dodge again, too overwhelmed to attack. Fear rolled through her cold belly, an icy sweat covering her all over. The skeletal wolf snapped at the demon’s leg, but the damaged ruin of its jaw could do nothing. It raked the demon with the exposed bones of its paws, but the demon’s tough skin barely showed a scratch.
In any other battle, the skeleton’s attacks would have been an opening; in this one, fear kept Isolde from realizing the opportunity until it was too late. It took everything Isolde had not to turn tail and run.
The demon opened its mouth, like the seam of a doll ripping open one stitch at a time, and let out a shriek that chilled Isolde’s blood. She froze, her heart skipping a beat.
The skeletal halla leapt in front of Isolde, catching the blast of demonic magic that had been meant for her. Its yellowed bones crumbled. The remaining force of the attack still struck Isolde hard, sending her sprawling. Her courage broke; she scrambled away on hands and knees, her vision tunneling. Heavy steps, shaking the ground, leisurely followed her. The demon let out a low, lingering hiss, delighting in her terror.
“I have it!” Professor Volkarin cried out.
Isolde looked over her shoulder. A sharp spike of light struck her eyes like a blow. The wobble in the Fade closed, slowly.
Professor Volkarin leveled his staff at the terror demon, a determined look on his face. An overcharged blast of swirling green magic shot from his staff. This one hit the demon directly in the chest; it froze, immobile, between one step and another. With strange slowness, its body fell. It crashed to the ground, silent and still.
Isolde stood. Humiliating trembles wracked her body. They didn’t stop even when she tried to still them.
The skeletal wolf lay on the ground, and the green glow around its bones vanished, like a last mortal breath leaving the body. Isolde looked down at the remains of the halla. Only a bony scrap of its cheekbone and eye socket remained.
Entering this mission, the knowledge that Professor Volkarin performed necromancy had not been a comfortable thing to know. But still shaking from the intensity of the fight, Isolde was filled with sudden, blinding gratefulness for his skill.
Professor Volkarin brushed a loose lock of hair back into its neat coif with a shaking hand, breathing raggedly. His eyes were vague as he glanced at her, but he blinked, his eyes abruptly focusing.
“Are you alright?” Professor Volkarin asked with concern, his gaze taking in the scrapes on her cheek.
Isolde considered the damage. It would be quite painful to walk all the way back to the Lighthouse given the blow from the Sentinel, but it was certainly within her ability, and it wouldn’t make the injury any worse. The places her skin had scraped away when she rolled were beginning to make themselves known now that the battle was over, but none of them were losing any real blood. A quick swipe of antiseptic when they paused would put them to rights. The demon magic, much more concerning at the time, seemed to have been a temporary effect; lucky.
“Fine,” Isolde said.
“Excellent,” Professor Volkarin said, sounding shaky.
He let out several long, slow breaths, some of the tension in his shoulders relaxing.
“You did a marvelous job distracting the demon. Thank you,” he said.
Isolde blinked, unsure how to respond. Apart from Rook, no one had ever thanked her for her job.
“You were the one to actually kill it,” Isolde said.
“I daresay that if I had been standing closer, I might not have managed to do it!” Professor Volkarin said. “The waves that radiated off of it… you’re a far braver person than I to manage to get so close, let alone trade blows with it.”
Isolde smiled uncertainly at him. It had felt far more like cowering than bravery, and she’d barely managed even one strike on it. But if Professor Volkarin felt that she’d earned her keep, she was glad of it.
He smiled at her, as apparently sincere as always. For one moment, holding his gaze, Isolde felt that they were actually looking at each other. Two people, alive and well, thanks to the efforts of the other.
Looking far more settled, Professor Volkarin turned his attention to the artifact. He circled it several times, a thoughtful look on his face.
“The main contraption is small enough to take back with us. Could you apply the point of your spear on that spot there, please? I believe we may be able to lever it out…”
The faint warmth that had built in Isolde’s chest was abruptly snuffed out. Right. Yes.
She silently moved to where Professor Volkarin had directed, wedging her spear into the recess and prying the artifact up. It loosened from the plinth with surprising ease. Professor Volkarin rocked it from side to side a few times as Isolde dug the point of her spear deeper in, and in less than a minute, the artifact dislodged.
By the time Professor Volkarin lifted it free, observing it from all angles, Isolde’s shaking legs were steady again, her face blank.
“I wonder what the original intent of this object was. Was it meant to lure demons, or is that simply a side effect of age-related decay?” Professor Volkarin wondered aloud.
Isolde unwedged her spear from the platform and slotted it back into place on her back, silent.
Their return to the Veil Jumper camp was quiet; Professor Volkarin was preoccupied with a small object he’d extracted from deep inside the artifact, turning it over in his hands, a faint frown on his face as he inspected it. His constant stream of chatter was mostly done under his breath—and Isolde couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was saying. They arrived back to the Eluvian without him having bothered to talk to her once.
Everything would return to exactly as it had been before. As it was meant to be.
Isolde stepped through the light of the portal, pushing down the pang in her chest. She should never have expected anything else.