“Does anyone know anything about a… Point Ponder?” The thorn said as he gazed upon the map that laid on the still damp ground. “Yes, I happen to know of the place.” The wayfarer said casually as he glanced over to the map. His nonchalant attitude covering up, momentarily, Mauve’s intense reaction.
Hidden by her helmet’s faceplate her eyes were wide with grief and fear as the memories of that fateful day filled her mind like flashbacks. The blood, the gore, the bullets, the death, it all came to her at once. So much loss, so much pain. However stoic as she was, she was not willing to let the others see her inner turmoil for the moment, lest it overwhelm her. She was, after all, a woman on a job from the king himself, if she couldn't keep it together, was she really worthy of the knighthood she had only recently gained?
“I know it well.” she spoke up after a moment’s silence. The simplicity of the statement belying her emotional struggle. “I served there during the war.”
The wayfarer’s eyes lit up in recognition. He knew of the battle of course, the loss of Point Ponder is considered by many to be the worst single battle loss in the entire war. “Were you… in the battle?” the Wayfarer asks hesitantly, almost unbelieving that the Knight he had been traveling with had survived such a bloody affair. There is a tense pause that hangs in the air before she turns to look at the Wayfarer, face still obscured by her helmet.
“Aye, I was.” she replies back simply once again. The impact of her comment not lost on those in the party that understood the implications. The Wayfarer hesitated, he considered if he should console her perhaps, perhaps even question further, all seemed too insensitive at the moment, but before he could speak further Mauve spoke once more.
“Follow me, I will lead the way.” She says as she turns in the direction of the fort, without looking back, leading the party to the sight of that most gruesome battle.
The trek there was uneventful. Though the group largely had little to say on the matter, either out of respect or out of disinterest or ignorance, the intensity of the moment had not yet left her. As she crested the hill and came right up to those stone walls she had lived, bathed, slept, and ate in for months. Its crumbling visage left her to pause for a moment. A new wave of memories flooded into her as she took a few steps forward and laid her metal-gauntleted hand on the stone masonry.
“What was the point of this fort anyway?” someone from the group spoke. Mauve didn't catch who though. Regardless, almost instinctively she responded, all while her hand never left the tattered, bullet ridden wall. “It was the frontline, a fort right at the edge of the lowlands.” She said softly, as her eyes didn't leave the wall. “Set to keep an eye on the movements of the Faldra down below.” There is a tense moment that hangs in the air before she turns fully around, her arm no longer touching the wall that so filled her with memories. “We should split up, we will cover more ground that way.” The Thorn says breaking the tense moment for her with the simplicity of a mission.
“I’ll take the palisades, if needed I will have a vantage point.” The Musketeer says with a bit of pep. It was clear to Mauve that she was by no means taking this lightly, but it still helped to underline the difference between them. Both serving at Arcadia's behest, both warriors worthy of song in their own right, but one still so young and new to Wyradel, and one that had been beaten down by the ravages of time. Still, once more she chose to not show weakness, not to show emotion, though she was growing worried that despite her best attempts her facade was cracking. She just hoped that the Rose Yellow would be found before her mask shattered completely, but at least for now she was keeping strong.
“Then I'll take the ground floor and head inside, underground there is a war room and the armory.” Mauve says to the Musketeer. There was a short discussion that followed about who would go where and after the groups settled with an agreeable split they set off.
As Mauve stepped through the broken wall and into the fort she found it harder and harder to repress the memories of that day. The sounds of metal clashing, Knights falling, bullets ripping through the air with a thunderous roar, it was almost as if, for a moment, she was living through it again. However she soldiered on. She barely even remembered who was part of her team by now, assuming whoever they were they were following her as she descended down the cobblestone stairs to the basement where the armory lay dormant.
A thick oak door covered the entrance to the armory, rusted shut and rotting it still laid imposingly before her. A simple mockery of her past blocking her from accessing the room she was all too familiar with. She walks over and unhesitatingly rams into the door to break it open to no avail. She was prepared to do it again before the Thorn walked up beside her and spoke.
“Together then?” he asked simply as he too prepared to ram the door with her. She was, for a moment, nearly startled by his sudden appearance, so encased in her own mind and memories of that day that she had forgotten entirely she wasn't alone. But she didn't let it show. She had made a grave error losing sight of her surroundings for even a moment. If the Thorn was an enemy… if he was a Faldra she…
The two of them slammed against the door with their combined might once, twice, thrice, and then finally a blast of magic shot between them both blowing the door clean off its hinges destroying it entirely. “You two were taking too long.” Rose White spoke in her normal arrogant and haughty way. It did bother her how the Roses, or at least this Rose acted as if she was more important than everyone else, but she held her tongue, she did fear her magic, something she had recently come to recognize in the fight with the necromancer.
Without a word she entered the armory. The smell of rusted metal and decaying wood immediately filled her nostrils. Her helmet doing little to filter out the dust that had caked the room since the fort was abandoned. She had frequented this room many times during the war, she used to even be on a first name basis with the quartermaster, so regularly did she train and polish her weapons that it became a habit to return here at least once a day. Not as if the days deployed to Point Ponder were filled with anything but doldrum and tension if she wasn't doing something with her time.
However, as much as she wanted to stay a moment and take in the room she knew all too well once more there was little here for them, the weapons had rusted due to moisture and neglect, and the room held no Rose of any color other than the one she was accompanying. So with little word she grabbed a handful of still usable arrows and walked out, handing them to the Wayfarer. “Use these if you need.” she says as she walks past without another word, heading now to the last room in the underground. The war room.
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She was less familiar with this room as she was the armory. She was only a second class Shieldmaiden at the time, while she certainly ranked higher than the volunteers, the scouts, and the squires and inarguably commanded respect and awe, she was not consulted on military matters or planning. But she had been there enough to recognize how the room seemed to be torn through. The once regalia filled walls lay bare, the shelves once filled to the brim with books and records only held the tattered remains. The large table at the center of the room where the general was usually found, standing over, pouring over maps and papers laid still. A thick coating of dust offering evidence to the fact the room had not been touched since the battle.
However a large map of the area did remain, it sat on the large table and as she approached it so too did the others. The Rose White seemed lost in thought as she poured over the map. For a moment she watched the Rose stand there, hand in chin, lost in thought nearly as much as she was. She empathized, surely while this was a rather traumatic reunion with arguably the second worst battle she had ever taken part in, Rose White must too be going through similar thoughts in her head. Her mentor was slain by a Rose, and the prime suspect at the moment being the one they were on the hunt for currently. However her train of thought was broken when Elizabeth, the maid-servant of the Duchess, came running down the stairs.
“I was told to tell you that there is a… ghost upstairs, at least that's what I think it is. The Astralist is talking to it now.” She says in the same mildly fearful voice she always seemed to have. It always struck Mauve as strange, that a woman as well traveled as her could be so… apprehensive all the time. Even if the Duchess was the more adventurous and outgoing one, surely her maid had been through some tough situations with her. How she managed to keep her fear of shadows through it all is almost as impressive a feat as overcoming it, but her thoughts were not on her at the moment, it was on what she said.
“A ghost?” Mauve repeated back to her more confused than anything. “Yes… that is what the Astralist said anyway.” Elizabeth says back, her words only further confusing Mauve even more. A ghost? Ghosts are real? Then what about… her thoughts are paused as she reaches up to grasp her astralist sun necklace, her only memento of her father she had with her and the most portable one of her mother’s and found it to be missing. Having forgotten that she had handed it off to her king a few hours earlier as a promise that she would return to collect it.
Her mind was temporarily awash with a new feeling, worry. After meeting her mother in the great beyond she was assured in the knowledge that she would be with her mother and the other knights in the afterlife, that she too could tell her stories and march with the hallowed heroes of old. To her that was what the Astralists preach, becoming one with god meant that she would be with those who were like her, her heroes, her brothers and sisters at arms. The greatest reward she could ever be granted. But for the moment, she was terrified. What if instead of an afterlife surrounded by the honored dead she… became stuck here… a ghost, unable to ascend to join with the others in God and become who she always wanted to be. Not the Last Knight but A Knight. However her panic was broken quickly when she heard Rose White speak.
“A ghost, Bah.” Rose White said simply as she kept looking over the map, seemingly uninterested in this new spectral visitor. “How can you dismiss this so easily?” Mauve almost uncharacteristically shouted at her.
Rose White finally turned her attention away from the map and up to Mauve. “Because I'm uninterested in ghost stories, it does not concern me.” She says to her coldly. “And how can you be so sure?” Mauve fires back. “With a Rose about, there is no telling if this ghost is connected.” She says feeling a tiny bit heated at Rose White’s lackadaisical response. She wanted to make a comment about the necromancer, or about magic or anything to prove her point but so out of her depth was she that she couldn't even find a good solid foundation to argue with. However it seemed the conversation was cut short as the Duchess then entered the room.
“It seems the Ghost has knowledge about the Rose, I think it would be for the best if we were all to gather up top.” The Duchess speaks as she enters. The comment alone was enough to make everyone, Mauve and Rose White included, turn to face her. There was no more discussion, they all headed topside.
Once on the palisade she saw the other group, notably the Astralist speaking to… nothing. A conversation had as if he was a crazed man locked in a cell alone for years on end. However she had experienced enough in Wyrdadel to not discount anything. So she wasn't so quick to dismiss the possibility that an invisible specter lay just before his eyes.
The conversation seems to halt as they arrive. And more importantly for Mauve, her eyes drew attention to the one place she wanted to see. The grave. Her Grave. Right over the lip of the palisade and over the crenellation she could see a long rip in the ground. Torn dirt and mud where a tunnel once lay, a testament to her final stand and last act as the savior of the few knights that made it out.
As the conversation continued behind her Mauve could feel herself getting emotional, standing here, once more, seeing the battlegrounds that surrounded them, weapons and armor discarded into the dirt as if tossed aside, left untouched only to be reclaimed by the elements.
At this point Mauve was only half listening. She was too caught up in her trauma to fully process the conversation happening around her. The Astralist mentioned something about how the ghost recognized the Knight. Strange, but understandable, a ghost haunting a fort of a failed battlefield where she once fought did have a chance of knowing her. It could be anyone from the Bowman she had lost less than a week before the battle began to the general who ordered her to escort the Peacekeeper. It was of little concern to her. She wasn't feeling overly constructive at the moment. Let the others do the thinking, she was having a hard time just keeping it together.
She was of course aware of the ghost’s seeming interest in her, the cold touch on her shoulder and the freezing temperature she felt as she walked to the edge of the battlements. But it changed nothing for her. She could barely hear the ghost anyway, sounding like a shout spoken from the other side of a massive castle. Hardly heard by even the most attentive mouse. It wasn't worth straining herself over. She was, as expected, taking part in the conversation especially since it seemed so focused on her for some reason, but her mind was elsewhere. That was, until, the Astralist spoke up once more, speaking for the ghost as if a messenger.
“She says, Armistice says hello.”