Champion of a Lost Cause

Tahu’s outer wall rises through the rain, its battlements crowded with watchmen. Beneath the barracks, travelers queue for inspection while Effruin approaches with the sealed warrant hidden beneath his clothing and his healed shoulder moving freely.

A narrow-faced young woman with copper-brown skin, ink-stained fingers, and a green clerk’s robe checks travel papers beside the gate. Nearby, a broad middle-aged man with a shaved head and scarred cheeks watches from beneath a red officer’s cloak.

The clerk lowers her voice and gestures toward an inner road beyond the gate, where stone buildings and torchlit archives rise behind the inspection yard.

The inspecting guards shift their spears into ready positions. The captain’s gaze settles on Effruin, while the clerk retreats half a step from the crest and the open gate.

Effruin draws Braugarth’s warrant from beneath his clothing and places it in the captain’s hand. His scars and drow features mark him as an escaped slave, making surrender a submission to contempt as much as authority.

The warrant’s seal and precise order lend weight to his calm declaration. Effruin steadies himself against every instinct to reject the Empire’s custody, while the document gives the captain no reason to doubt the surrender.

The inspecting guards take Effruin’s position without striking or binding him. The captain keeps the warrant and orders the eastern records passage cleared, granting Effruin a direct route toward Harvess’s trail.

Effruin passes beneath the gate under guard, surrendered by choice rather than overcome. Rain closes behind him as Tahu’s inner roads open ahead.

The inspecting guards close around Effruin with spears ready, guiding him from the eastern passage into Tahu’s prison wing. His surrender leaves them contemptuous and cautious, and Effruin keeps his will fixed against submission to anything beyond his chosen purpose.

The guards lead Effruin down a damp stair beneath the gatehouse. Iron doors line the corridor, and torchlight crawls across old stone as their footsteps carry him deeper from the city streets.

They open a narrow cell and escort Effruin across its threshold without binding him. The door shuts behind him, its bars separating the surrendered fugitive from the armed men outside.

Escaped Slave weighs upon the guards’ stares, making the cell feel like a judgment already delivered. Effruin remains still beneath their contempt, his Legendary will refusing to bend while he waits for the bounty’s issuer to arrive.

The corridor settles into watchful silence. Beyond the bars, the warrant passes from hand to hand toward the records offices, and Effruin waits in custody for the confrontation he came to Tahu to find.

Effruin sits cross-legged on the cell floor, spine upright and remaining hand resting against his knee. Torchlight trembles across the bars while the corridor keeps its silence.

He draws each breath through the remembered pressure of chains and shouted commands. His past experiences in similar locations pull his attention toward those old sounds, but it cannot carry him away from the cell.

Resists Blood Ties gives his discipline a colder foundation. Thoughts of Harvess and the family she shaped find no claim upon him, passing through his awareness without directing it.

Breath follows breath. The old memories lose their sharp edges, the cell’s damp air becomes sufficient, and Effruin’s will settles into a precise, unbroken stillness.

Time passes beyond the bars. Footsteps eventually approach from the upper stair, measured and deliberate, while Effruin remains meditating, prepared to receive the bounty’s issuer without yielding his purpose.

The steps stop outside the cell. A shadow falls across the threshold, and the lock remains untouched as the arriving authority waits for the guard’s signal.

The guard’s signal comes softly. The lock turns, and Matriarch Harvess enters the corridor alone, her presence making the waiting guards fall silent behind her.

She stops before the bars and studies Effruin without haste. The warrant remains sealed in one hand, its authority carried from the gate to this buried chamber.

The words pass through the corridor’s damp air. Harvess does not approach the bars, and she does not offer the guards any explanation for claiming the prisoner herself.

Harvess lifts the warrant slightly, keeping the seal between them like a family relic turned instrument. Her gaze remains fixed on Effruin through the bars.

Effruin does not stand. He locks his gaze on Harvess through the bars, hatred held so fiercely that his posture becomes a rigid refusal rather than submission.

The word sold drags old pressure across his thoughts: collars, commands, and the reflex to obey. His thoughts to his early life in bondage makes his breath hitch, while his identity as a slave turns the guards’ contempt into a weight against his spine.

For one instant his eyes drop toward the stones. His anger pulls them back to Harvess’s face before the lapse becomes surrender, and resistance to his blood ties denies her any claim as his mother.

Effruin remains on the floor, but the stare he summoned is no longer steady enough to threaten her. Harvess lowers the warrant and steps nearer the bars, now certain she can command the interview.

The question holds steady despite the old commands clawing at his breath. Post-Traumatic Stress makes obedience echo through him, while the contempt reserved for an escaped slave presses against his spine.

His hatred and wrath fixes Effruin’s attention on Harvess’s face, stripping away fear, memory, and every claim she might make.

Ignoring Effruin's poorly-hidden surprise, Harvess draws a folded military dispatch from inside her robe and holds it to the bars. Grahamin has begun investigating the family’s wartime dealings, and she wants Effruin placed where his vengeance can silence that inquiry.

The dispatch is no bluff: it bears Grahamin’s route and departure hour in clear imperial script. Harvess has revealed both her motive and a tangible path toward the retribution Effruin seeks against his enemies.

Harvess taps the dispatch against the bars. The route was issued through Grahamin’s own command, and no warning has reached him that she has turned his investigation into a trap.

The dispatch gives no sign that Grahamin, a large, muscular middle-aged man with copper skin, wavy brown hair streaked with gray, and an enchanted silver lower jaw, has discovered Harvess’s design. His route remains exposed, while her knowledge of his movements rests entirely on imperial reports she has quietly redirected.

Harvess lowers the dispatch but keeps it within reach. Beyond the corridor, guards remain silent, unaware of the plan’s full shape and waiting for her next command.

The language of sale and obedience catches in Effruin’s breath, while his scars seem to pull the guards’ contempt tighter around the cell. The wineskin’s alchemical heat steadies his rhythm; Effruin's denial of blood ties denies Harvess any claim, and Vengeance’s Mark fixes his purpose on Grahamin’s danger.

Harvess studies his rigid posture until the old command loses its force. His breath settles instead of breaking, and the hand holding the wineskin remains steady against the remembered pressure of chains.

Harvess turns to face towards the guards, smiling a wicked smile. The lock on Effruin’s cell clicks open, leaving the passage clear and the bargain accepted, though the armed witnesses remain within reach.

Effruin lunges through the open cell door. The guards raise their spears. Effruin finds delight in the opportunity to indiscriminately kill the soldiers of Sosshan.

Escaped Slave marks him as prey in their eyes, yet Vengeance’s Mark fixes every guard’s position. Killing Stroke turns his single-handed advance into a precise, merciless chain of impacts.

The guards fall in moments, their weapons clattering across the corridor. The attack succeeds completely, leaving the witnesses dead and the passage open, while Effruin’s left arm is wrenched hard by the effort.

Effruin remains standing, though his left hand hangs briefly numb and his balance slips against the bars. Harvess steps clear of the bodies and keeps the military dispatch extended toward him.

Harvess produces a small black sphere from within her robe. Shadow clings to its polished surface, swallowing the torchlight rather than reflecting it.

She extends the sphere through the bars. Effruin’s scars and the guards’ earlier contempt frame the offered object as another instrument of imperial ownership, while the command to examine it catches his breath against memories of collars and obedience.

He takes the artifact and weighs it in his remaining hand. The Chimera Hide Wineskin’s alchemical warmth steadies his senses, and Vengeance’s Mark fixes his attention on the sphere’s changing shadow.

Its darkness is not emptiness but stored possibility. Effruin recognizes shadow magic shaped for immediate command: concealment, force, passage, and other abilities answering the user’s intent rather than a single fixed spell.

The knowledge settles clearly despite the old slave’s reflexes and the Empire’s judgment. The sphere is empowered by a myriad of on-demand abilities, and Effruin now understands its nature and use.