Coral’s Story:

“Coral! We're going to be late if you don’t finish up quickly!”

“Ah!” I exclaimed and quickly yelled down the stairs. “Give me just a second Tommen, I’m finishing up the letter to my parents!”

I gave the letter another look over and nodded happily.

“Dear Mother and Father,

It has been over a month since last I send you a letter and hope this one too finds you in good health.

I am proud to tell you off my newest achievements. Thanks to the teachings of the Templars I have not only learned to read and write to their standards, making this the first letter written by myself, but also broadened my horizon on many a thing.

While I am still unable to wield our Goddess's blessings, I have taken to the physical exercises like a fish to water. I can now say to be able to hold my own against even my stronger trainees.

I too have learned many ways to bind and treat wounds of the ailing, filling me with the hope that one day I can be of help to our village. I already sent a request to my superiors to be stationed with you at the end of my training.

Sadly I will have to cut the letter short as my first true assignment is calling for me. After this mission, I will be sworn as an Initiate. Wish me luck!

Your loving daughter,

Coral, Templar Trainee”

Ps. Hanna is keeping watch over me as always. So you need not worry.

More than happy with the letter I had written, I folded the parchment and together with a few copper pieces l put it into the envelope I had purchased. The friendly old man selling it had ensured me that once it was sealed with a special wax only my parents could open it, so I had gone all out and bought the wax too. Sadly this had cost me basically all of my allowances this week. But in my opinion, this was worth it, there was little so important to me than letting my parents know how I was doing. Sure, some of the other trainees teased me for it, but Mother and Father had cared for me all my life and even paid for my trip to the capital. So it was only logical that I had a close bond to them. And after today I would be one step closer to returning to my village a full-fledged Paladin of Light. That was if everything went well on our mission...

“Piss, I shouldn’t think such dark things. May the Goddess guide me.”

Offering a quick prayer to Ishanda, I banished my glum feelings and fears to the back of my mind and rushed down the stairs. Waiting for me on the last step was Tommen, my brother in arms. With his armour polished to a shine and the golden blond hair he looked just like the ancient stories about his lineage. I didn’t need help to imagine how Ishandria's Herald could have sprung from his ancestors. He was by all accounts a picture-perfect example of a Templar, in heritage, looks, and mind. And there was no one else I would have rather by my side.

Which, irritatingly, was exactly the reason for my own feelings of inadequacy. Where he was this perfect amazing man people would paint pictures of, I was the total opposite. I wasn’t beautiful or had great hair nor was I particularly skilled in combat. I mean, our Goddess hadn’t even deigned to gift me a sliver of power. All in all, what people saw when looking at me was... well, exactly who I was.

An average girl, from an average family living in an average coastal village. Unlike Tommen with his great looks, I had brown hair, brown eyes, and during summer almost just as brown skin. My hands were rough and my skin was blotchy and rugged. Many times people had even mistaken me for Tommen's servant! I could only hope that once I grew into my Goddess’ favour, she would bless me with the same good looks as the other Templars. Shaking my head of these silly ideas I greeted my friend.

“Tommen! You did wait for me!” I gave him a quick hug.

“Hmph.” He pushed me away from him. “Don’t think of it as having anything to do with my fondness of you. If you were the only one to come late your bad reputation would rub off on me too, at least like this we can tell that we were held up.”

“Sure, Tommen...” I smiled at his grumpiness. “Let’s go! Oh, and we have to go by the couriers on the way.”

“So you did manage to finish that letter after all?” He was already on his way outside as He mumbled under his breath. “Took you only three days...”

“Hey! I heard that!” I quickly followed him outside. “Not everyone had as fancy an education as you, all the way from when you was little!”

“You mean, all throughout my childhood.”

“Bah!” I glowered at him “That is basically the same shit that I said!”

“No. My “shit” was accurate and acceptable of a Templar, yours made you sound like a country bumpkin.”

“Screw you, everyone from my village talks like this, there is no way I can just forget it all in only a year!”

“I believe your teachers were very adamant about you doing exactly that... and as quickly as possible too.”

“Yes, yes, wait here for a sec while I send off my letter.”

A few seconds later I was missing another three coppers and vaulted over the stairs’ railing that led up to the courier office. From Tommen’s glare, it was very clear that he was unhappy. In his opinion, we had waited long enough already and would not stop again. So we basically ran the last bit towards the meeting place. Once there it became clear that we were truly and utterly the last. The Templar in charge, a man named Gram Uriles, didn’t look very pleased.

“Lord Terian and his trusty sidekick... Coral.” He sneered at us, throwing me an especially venomous glare. “Would you mind telling me why you two are late again?”

Tommen jammed his elbow into my side. I looked at him confused, there was no way I could come up with an apology! But he didn’t seem to care and just pushed me forward, the traitor! I stumbled towards the Templar unsure what to do, now that all eyes were on me.

“Ah... uhm… SorryIwaslateIhadtosendaletterandIforgotthetime!” It all just kind of burst out of me.

“I see... ten lashes with the rod next time we make camp. Don’t let this happen again.”

I swallowed in agitation, I was not looking forward to that kind of punishment. The man was very clearly not happy about having a filthy peasant in his group. Sir Uriles was hard enough on the common folk that had enlisted but I was of even lower social standing and this, in turn, made the punishments I received far worse. Suppressing the fear and anger I made sure none of it showed on my face as I answered.

“Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir. Such grave misconduct will not arise again... Sir. I thank you for keeping the punishment just, Sir.”

All the time I had been bowed over and so hadn’t noticed his forming smirk; only when he began laughing, did I finally look up. For a second I had hope, perhaps he had only meant the punishment as a joke? My hope was quickly shattered when he stopped laughing and kept talking instead, only this time the anger in his voice wasn’t faked.

“Will you look at this, the little piggy knows fancy words! And here I thought the only thing she could grunt was “No, Sir.” or “Yes, Sir!” but no, she actually learned to talk like a real person!”

He looked towards the rest of the recruits but none of them laughed. And yet while they were all visibly uncomfortable not one of them made a move to speak in my favour, instead, they just stood back and let Uriles do as he pleased. For several minutes he ridiculed and berated me but I no longer cared to humor him. At some point, it just no longer hurt me as it used to. And so I just stopped replying to his mean-spirited questions, no longer would he get “Yes, Sir.” or “No, Sir.”. Too much was too much, I was done being cowed by him. Apparently, after a short while, he noticed that too, and unsurprisingly he liked that even less.

“No more groveling?” He approached and took my face in between his fingers, like a cow on market day. But he barely got so much as a flinch out of me. “Well, if that is how you want this to go, Coral. Twenty lashes for insubordination. You will bow before me... Let’s go Trainees. You too, Piglet.” Without another word to me he rushed off, yelling at the other recruits to get going.

As the others trainees got up I pointedly looked away from them, they knew what they had let happen was wrong. And the church was very clear on how no bad deed would be left unpunished. Instead, my gaze fell onto a single large crow watching us pass by. She tilted her head at me before taking to the sky. I knew the bird, for a long time now too. In fact, I had even named her Hanna. The strange black crow had watched over me ever since the day I was born; at least that is the story my parents had told me. Sadly this time around she would have a hard time trying to protect me from the punishment awaiting me.

Every passing hour of the day I dreaded the evening when we would make camp. It was made very clear by Sir Uriles’ comments that I wouldn’t find rest this night, be it from a sore back or worse. Normally the punishment would be administered by my brother in arms. Fight together, cry together. Tommen up until now may have never hesitated but he had always taken care to not actually break my skin. Templar Uriles must have noticed this too, for today he had proclaimed that from now on he would take care of my punishments personally.

The sun took seemingly no time to complete its long ride along the sky and far too soon dawn turned to dusk. Soon we would make camp and with it would come the time for my punishment. I didn’t even get to help with setting up the tents, Sir Uriles pulled me aside almost immediately. I wanted to struggle, cry and beg for forgiveness I truly did, but I didn’t. I had sworn myself to become a Paladin, and a Paladin didn’t flinch, they didn’t waver, or break down like a little child, they were steel; bright, and unbreakable. And so too I would try to be steel.

I didn’t comment on his constant insults, nor his heavy, stinking breath. Templars were strictly forbidden to indulge in alcoholic drinks, making this another of his crimes against the Goddess. After we had finished our mission I would report each and every act of misconduct of his, but sadly that time hadn’t come yet. At the moment I was forced to stoically watch and feel him rip my armour right off of my body. He didn’t even care for its integrity, instead, he used a knife to cut the straps holding the metal together... and to cut off my clothes. He was still screaming and yelling as he bound me to a tree half-naked, my hands wrapped painfully around the trunk. Like this, I wouldn’t be able to block off the hits in any way. But, to my dismay, as it quickly turned out, I wouldn’t even need to.

Above me a crow cawed, it must have been my Hanna, her voice sounded almost like she was mourning. What could it mean?

Then suddenly, everything around me was chaos. Screams coming from the camp. Ghastly lights floating in the forest. The sound of battle reached my ears. The cries of wounded and dying people as an unseen foe ripped into the recruits. I could barely twist my head to get a look at Uriles. He too was fighting off several people. Their smell was death and decay and rusted iron. In complete panic, I tried getting away from the tree. The rope around my wrist wasn’t too strong, I would be able to get them off. But just as I managed to remove the sloppy bindings something heavy and cold impacted my skull.

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Then... pure darkness.

I had never experienced this feeling myself but I still knew it for what it was, I was dead. Soon I would re-enter the Ancient Wheel, and like so many times before would be reborn into another shitty life, doomed to die again. Bits of memories flashed before my eyes, not ones of this life but still very much indeed mine. The choice. A knife coated in red. A young boy. The result. Two men. The dead rising. The victory. A crown of silver thorns. The fall. The rope around my neck. Death... again. All of it fractured, all of it broken.

As I watched these deaths, again and again, another scene forced itself upon me. Just as I could already feel myself slip back into the ancient mechanism of rebirth, I saw something that was decidedly different. It was too clear to be a memory, too crisp and alive. A strange woman dressed like a noble but bent over in pain. There was no sound but despite this, I could hear her screaming. Her eyes flickered around, searching for something before finally, they settled on... me! She shouldn’t have been able to see me but still, she did. Her eyes were piercing my very being all the way through the thin veneer of my last life. She looked at my soul just as I somehow did at hers and it took but a single moment for us to recognize the truth. Involuntarily we spoke the words connecting us together.

“A single soul shattered for crimes it won’t remember. Your punishment for eternity. Never again will you find peace.”

I screamed in agony as our connection was cut. I remembered it all, the judgment burned into the core of my soul. Hadn’t I suffered enough? So many decades, again and again, a violent painful death. Cursed to never be whole again. I was tired of it... I was tired of dying again and again after a meaningless life. But I was especially tired of the forgetting, I could have avoided so many deaths and hardships, had I just remembered, had I just been whole. I truly wished all of this would just end; The Wheel be my witness, I would do anything for this!

“A wish granted for a price, my angry, broken little soul. Never again will you forget, let death be but a nuisance to you. But don’t thank me yet... a gift to go with your punishment. A sign of my love. May it serve you well...

ARISE MY CHAMPION!”

The voice reverberated throughout my very being and with a start, I opened my eyes.

‘I am... Alive!’

. . . . .

Camellia’s Story:

Just like on so many other days I awoke with the sun was already high in the sky; being of high social standing certainly had its perks. Annoyingly the first thing I had to notice was... the smell. Apparently, someone had been having a bit too much fun this night. A pungent musk was clinging to every corner of the room, especially my bedsheets, which after glancing down I had to realise were ruined again. Deep grooves had been cut into the fabric and the soft wool below. At least I couldn’t see any obvious stains this time around. So the... festivities must have been rather tame, which, much to my dismay, had not stopped the wards in my room from activating. Heavy steel chains had snaked out of the nearby wall and attached to the oh so fashionable ornaments around my body.

“Crah! Sex-fiend! Sex-fiend!” A deliberately mocking croaking came from a bedpost above my head. I looked up in frustration, throwing the offending part a deathly glare. Jenna, my trained Raven, had apparently decided to grace me with her presence again.

“I definitely didn’t teach you that word! You could have only picked that up from the servants; and I already told you to stop begging for food from them, you dumb bird!”

“Bloody devil’s Whore! Crah!”

“I give up, you clearly only learn what you want to learn.”

All I could do was let out a heavy sigh and fall back into my pillows. There was no way in the Hells that I would manage to fall asleep again. Thankfully the bindings just barely allowed me to reach the bell for my chambermaid. And yet when I rang it, no one came. So I rang it a second time, again to no avail. Where was that blasted girl!? Utterly fed up with the situation I just kept ringing without pause. In the end I had to wait several minutes until I finally heard my bedroom door open. In came a girl of maybe sixteen that had barely left her mother’s home as it seemed, her head bowed deep in shame.

“I am so sorry, Milady Camellia! I was going to come immediately but Linda, the other maid I was with, kept giving me tasks to do and I wasn’t sure what to do, and then she threatened to punish me and I-” It was in this moment that she actually looked up. “By the Gods! Milady! You are naked!”

“I am also chained to the wall if that has escaped your attention. If you could remove the chains now?”

“Of- Of course, Milady! Right immediately I will! I am so sorry for looking at you! Let me just... Uhm... Milady, these do not have locks? Or any other wa-”

“Say the command word!” I interrupted her harshly. “When you were given this position, someone told you a specific word in case something like this happens. It’s probably something like Gyro or Talcum or Mirabelle.”

“Ah, yes! It was Veld! Huh? Veld. Veld! Veld!? It... isn’t working?”

“You have to touch each chain to deactivate it while saying the word.”

“Ohhhh! Thank you, Milady!”

It only took several more minutes of this, mostly because she painstakingly avoided looking at my “naked” form. Then finally when the last chain slid back into the wall I practically catapulted myself out of bed, stretching to the sun with a satisfied growl. I truly hated being chained up like this. Of course, it had been on the Baroness’ insistence that I be shackled to the wall like an animal. That woman had a special talent, getting on both my sister’s and my own nerves. But while I certainly liked her so little that I would appreciate for a chandelier to fall on her, my sister always found ways of making the relationship between my stepmother and us ever more strained.

First Clementine had set ablaze every left shoe in the house, then she had somehow managed to get the servants to serve Mother’s favourite horse for diner, and not a few months ago she had found a way to deliberately fuse the – initially temporary – shackles to our flesh. Now we were not only stuck with them, but Baroness Esmeralda could also never again parade us around like some sort of puppy. Which wasn’t all that surprising considering I now permanently looked like a dangerously insane criminal. Oh, what several pounds of steel on your body not change...

“Milady? Did I do something wrong?”

“Huh?” I focused on the maid again. “Why?”

“You have been staring at me for half a minute now… and your bird seems to be upset...”

“Don’t worry about it.” I flashed her a bright smile from behind the metallic muzzle covering my jaw. “Just get me dressed and you can go.”

“Ye- Yes, Milady.”

I couldn’t help my ever-widening grin, they were always so sweet when they just started out. So shy and confused, so utterly terrified of me, just like the adorable prey they we-. I immediately shut down that train of thought. This was exactly the kind of thinking that had landed us in shackles in the first place. And no matter how much a certain someone – Clementine – tried to insist that they were beautiful, I truly did not wish for any more bindings! With an indignant huff, I pulled my gaze from the young girl and instead turned to face the barred window overlooking the city.

The city of Sumerson stretched out before castle Grayhold almost like a soft blanket. It was rare for there to be a day without snow covering the wide wooden buildings. Considering the overall frigid temperatures this close to the Winter’s Ridge it would have been ridiculous to build high into the sky and so the city was more a gentle rise and fall of roofs covered in fluffy white. Rarely did any buildings rise higher than the city walls. And those that did were usually old stone buildings left over from the early days of the settlement when it had been little more than a bastion to ward of the dangers of the northern expanse. Nowadays such defences were mostly obsolete, nobody would bother attacking a city this far out of the way.

I could help but look at the frosty surroundings with a bit of nostalgia. I wasn’t entirely sure but when it had happened but one day I woke up to find that I could no longer feel the cold. The sensation had just disappeared, with heat and pain it had been the same. I could put my hand into a fire and I wouldn’t even notice. One day the servants had forgotten to heat my room and I had woken to frozen stiff blankets. At first, this had been a cause for a lot of injuries but these days fire and frost barely even left a mark on my body. According to the court-wizard, it was simply my body adjusting to the increased levels of stress put on it. But I knew very well that it had to do with the nature of my curse.

“Are you alright, Milady?”

“Yes, dear. I was just thinking of my twin.”

“I... uhm. Yes... of course.”

“So, what dress did you choose?”

“Ah, one of the blue ones?” She held it up for me to see.

“No.” My eye narrowed at the sight of this abomination made of tulle and baby blue lace. “You’re to only choose from the left side of the drawer.”

“But Milady, your Mother sa-.”

I turned around quicker than she could react. “Step-Mother! Do not ever again call her my mother!”

I walked over to her and ripped the dress from her hands before pointedly throwing the thing into the fireplace. Slamming shut the door my maid had opened, I instead reached into the other side and pulled out one of the outfits I had already put together before and handed it to her. By now I was already starting to develop a massive migraine; I just wanted to get this over with. Which apparently went right over the head of the maid as she just stood there frozen, looking at my face in terror.

“The dress. Open the clothing bag and help me into it. Now!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

She quickly undid the lacing and slipped the outfit out of the fine linen bag. Which only made her eyes grow wider.

“Bu- But Milady, this looks just like what the Demon worshippers wear!”

“By the Hells.” I sighed. “Firstly they do not worship demons, they use them. Secondly, you should never call the diplomat from Andania anything but Mistress al’Kassadin. And yes, most of my personal wardrobe has been imported from the Empire. Now get to it, will you? One last thing, what is your name?”

“Ah! Seli, Milady!”

“Good...”

The day had gone by like almost any other, pointless meeting, formal letters, suitors, and annoying supplicants; during all of which I had to continuously cast an illusion to hide the grotesque metal bindings sticking out from my body – many fucking thanks clementine. After all that, dinner with my family. My stepmother had of course found another new thing to nag me about, my three step-siblings were constantly laughing and making jokes about my appearance, and my father... the one who was actually Duke of this castle, was just sitting idly by and eating. The entire time he ignored the scathing comments and spiteful remarks towards my person. Ever since my mother had died he had grown so quiet that it was a wonder this country could still run without me. By now I was doing most of his work alongside my magical studies and still, this dumb cow of a stepmother would nag me about suitors and marriage all the time.

At some point during the dinner, I had grown so enraged by her needling that I had almost lost my composure. Instead of staying and possibly risking the humiliation of our magical wards activating, I had stormed off into the nightly castle. And so it was that evening had already come and gone while I - very gracefully, of course - stalked along the castle's hallways. The Andanian dress I was wearing had such a tight skirt that anything else wasn’t really feasible. But at least it had gotten me a lot of attention throughout the day. There was little as entertaining as taunting everyone around me with our delectably wrapped-up body. The tight leather had drawn enough gazes that I was certain my dear sister would get herself a treat soon enough. I didn’t necessarily mind though, for at least this way I could better focus on my studies.

It was when I opened the door to my private reading room that a strange feeling crept up on me, it was like a tugging not on my body-mind you but also not really on my mind. The pull went so much deeper and what I could feel from it was... strange. Fear, anger, pain, and excitement mixed all together into an intoxicating cocktail of emotions. What the Hells was going on here? Against my better judgment, I reached out for this strand but as soon as I touched it my entire world was pain. 

My vision blurred before focusing on a scene in the woods. A group of Templars was being massacred by what looked like a horde of ragged peasants. Like rabid animals, they fell upon the warriors that had barely enough time to grab their weapons. But this - however interesting it was - wasn't what had drawn me in. My gaze flicked around the battlefield; a young woman was bound half-naked to a tree. I had never seen her before and yet I knew her. This feeling of... companionship was stronger than I knew how to deal with. My body and soul yearned for her, I needed to touch her hold her close, and forever be one with her. None of that came to be...

In an instant, my vain dreams were cut short. A peasants club caved in her head. I recoiled in horror and pain, this couldn't be! I could feel her pain in that last moment, I could feel her sadness, her shock... her annoyance? Despite her obvious death, I could still see her, I could still feel her being right next to me. In fact, I felt even closer to her than I had before, confused and still reeling from the pain of it all I looked ahead, right into the void. There she was not as a person but as something different entirely. I could look directly at the very core of her being and it was beautiful. Underneath the veneer of wasted lives was a massive gemstone of sliver and black hues; inactive and broken, it was but the shattered half of something I so deeply and intimately knew.

My mouth moved without my own accord and words I hadn't even realized that I knew spilled from my lips.

“A single soul shattered for crimes it won’t remember. Your punishment for eternity. Never again will you find peace.”

Tears spilled from my eyes as I took in the pathetic waste that had been her lives, lives that I knew had not been kind on her. I couldn't just lose her like this, not again! Not now that I had finally found what I hadn't known I was searching for. There had to be another way!

"There is, Hell-kissed one. You can save her your twin. It isn't yet too late..."

"Who is this?" I yelled into the void. "Why do you care?"

"Too long I have watched this travesty... the Lightborn would never understand. There is a power in you, a power to do evil as well as good. Just like in all of us. Or maybe I simply tired of watching you suffer? It matters not, I offer you a way out... at least for one of you. She will not return to the wheel but she will also never return to you. Do you accept?"

"I- Fuck! I don't fucking know who or what I am talking to!"

"This is your only chance to stop the cycle... Do you accept?"

"Fucking fuck... YES! I accept! Save her!"

"A promise given, a promise kept. Until we meet again, Accathia, Child of Thorns."

The second she stopped talking, I felt my consciousness fade. Accathia... how long had it been?