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Sincerity in Muteness

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Chapter Three: Fort Joy

"How did you come to the island, Boneman?" Masella asked before meeting the great ruin of Fort Joy. Initially she had been against the notion of returning to it if to solely quell her friend's unusual curiousity.

There were Magisters a-plenty in the ruin after all. No new galleons had come to heel in over two months, so a new face was surely something to rouse their suspicion, unless the Magisters saw all sourcerers as the same.

Even neaby, just shy of the many stone steps that rose high to meet the outer barbican of the once walled city, the old souls of the island bore down their judgemental cruelty upon her. Sculptured effigys of historic lords, once rulers of the island, thronged from the barbican seemed to shimmer, distort, as if ancient memory were resurfacing through a fabric in time.

The wind whispered their names; Minister Sevek Frollo, Lady Eleanor Rhenawedd, Lord Sirius Krause, and finally Lord Braccus Rex, whom stared out into the horizon, represented in the mightiest of champion statures, whilst a ring of chained elves formed the basis of his pedastal.

Masella attempted to shake away any resonance of the past. It had been a curse of hers since she was a child, being a source of awakening for strong emotions of tragic resilliance that never truly died, even if their barers had. She could still hear his lions pawing the stone faraway. Even glimpsed manes stalking the mountaintops cupping the valley.

Masella withdrew from the closest ancient statue of Braccus Rex and sought comfort in her own dead man's shadow. Her Fane, even if a scholar of unusual eccentrics, was far more compelling to her than any cruel whisperings of another time. As well, in that moment, with a fear of slavery so close to her, she needed the comforting monotone voice of another, if solely to feel grounded.

"Is it not enough that you travel with me? Must we speak as well? Or gesture, as it were. Dear mortal, this is the third time you've pestered me. Are my where-goings and has-beens that important to you?"

The elf nodded once, further hiding in his shadow.

He sighed. "If you must know, I was captured, like you, on a vessel set for this very island. As dashing as this place is, I was never to arrive here in chains. No, the witch I seek tore the vessel apart with the help of an unfriendly Voidwoken. I, being the inbodiment of cunning and wit, merely waited for the vessel to sink before I took to walking... here."

"Why here?"

"Have you been listening at all?" he asked, broad shoulders rising ever-so highly above his chin. He shoulders reminded her of a well-worn barge of willow that corded when he moved.

"That witch has my mask! Must I repeat for a second time why you mortals love to threaten me with rotten fruit and pitch forks? I'm missing my glorious visage, and until I retrieve it from that crone's hands, I am stuck hiding my face on this island. Does that compute, mortal?"

Masella nodded once more, though she felt herself shrink in the wake of the oncoming castle. Fane seemed to notice her hesitance yet said nothing.

Inside the ruin was just as she remembered. A bailey forming a once long court-hall with many cumbled archways and terrifs splitting off into a variety of different paths. Every nook was consumed by cages with chains bound with skeletons dangling from their pillars.

"This city..." Fane muttered, peering around the place with a flare of disappointment in his voice, "an utter disaster."

In the very centre of the hall stood a depiction of Lucian the Divine, last Avatar of the Seven Gods. Like the previous shrine his shimmered in an acriminous aura. Staring as she did, the wings along his spine undulated, though it may have been a trick of the sunlight caught in the patterned feathers.

"Ah. Another one of your divinely chosen. Should of known the Magisters worshipped him like some type of god. Any man of importance seems to hold sway over your beliefs. You'll all swoon for the next man deigned saintly, I'm sure of it."

Masella frowned at the snark in his tone. Her fingers threaded into his mantle and tugged him, softly, towards the divine. "You are a scholar."

"Yes, I am, but not on your history. No, mankind, dwarf kind, lizard kind, yes even elven kind strive for the greatness that is rememberance. See this ruin?" She peered around, nervously pulling at her tattered garment. "How old is this ruin? A century? Perhaps two? It will be dust in another. Then another civilisation will take its place. There is no rememberance to your kind's mortar and rock. Not even source could keep these monuments from withering."

"Do you not believe in the gods, Boneman?"

The skeleton scoffed. "Your Gods? Why should I? They've never had the decency to grant me any wishes before. I tried, once. You know what I heard?"

Intrigued, the mute watched him with bated breath, hoping to all hope that he was about to provide some historical wisdom that would change her views of ascendancy forever. Only his hand watted the statue away as if it was nothing more than dirt beneath his boots. "Nothing. Not. A. Peep."

She stepped away, frowning deep. "That cannot be true."

"Oh, but is is, dear mortal. Who is it you elves believe in again?"

"Tir-Cendelius," she gestured, kneading her amulet daintily held around her neck. In that moment it felt like solid gold. "The poet."

"A poet!" he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter. "A poet created a race of elves to frolic through trees and dance under the moon in all your nethers. And you think I'm mad."

He was about to turn when he paused. It seemed a thought had occured to him. "It is not that I do not believe in your gods, I simply believe that other forces helped them become what they were. And, if they were just people, then I dare they they belonged to another people, not those I see now. And then I have to wonder... who were their people? Where are the others of their kind?"

He shrugged her touch away, twisting to the divine effigy with as much skepticism as he could muster. "Have you never truly thought on the existence of other matters? Tell me truly. Have you always believed that your god created everything, and that there was no other theoretical reason for your existence? No other celestrial divine?"

Her brown eyes fell downcast as she searched the gravel beneath her toes, in a way for an answer. It had been so many years since she had even thought on her people's god. On her people. On her family, for they were in simple graves under an oak that held no statue, no emblem, no memory.

Masella could walk the lands of elvendom; under the wild glades of her forefathers; under the starry skies of Tir-Cendelius' own protection, and not find a peep of her sisters' remains. It was during the last century that she had, for a heartbeat, contemplated on the existence of god. On the purpose of her being, on why she was to appear alive and yet be undead.

Her silence seemed to irk the undead boneman. He was about to depart when her fingers once more threaded through his pauldron feathers. Her answer was meek. "Once."

"Then it seems you have some sense, mortal. You might not be a waste of venturing material after all."

And you might not be so completely heartless, she wished to say, only it remained as it was. A thought.

Her focus drifted to a cart and tent not too far from them. Even so far from the coast the walled city rank of salt and brine. However, the tent held with it something that she definitely never expected to see: a forge, with tools and hammers and chisels, and an anvil in the main quarter. Magisters patrolled the district constantly with their doberman hounds. Each time they circled the premises, their hounds sniffed at Masella's heels, perhaps sniffing for any odour of source on her person. Each time she would shuffle farther and farther away, drawing her hair further across her body in some small form of comfort.

Fane continued to the forge, and she followed meekly behind him.

Why would Magisters have steel wrought and cut? she wondered, spying the many cutlasses, shields and longswords displayed for viewing pleasure. Each lay protected in old cloths and forgotten rags.

She was about to touch one when a cough caught her unaware. Masella backed away from the steel, shielding her hands in fright.

"Oi! What'd you think you're doing with my stock?" demanded the forge-master.

Masella was even more surprised to find a stocky woman in control of the store. An ashen haired woman to be precise, with muscles far more gallant when held at her hips than even the statue of the divine was. Though the peel of her lips and odour of fish on her breath more than wiped such a fantasy from her mind. No, she was a blacksmith, true and true, with soot dripping from her sweaty forehead. More man than woman, she was, with more than a few scars to prove it.

Masella mumbled frantically, forcing Fane infront of her while she picked at her dagger. Outside Fort Joy she would have happily slit the throat of the blacksmith in two and stole her wares. In a city full with slavers, it was another matter entirely.

Fane greeted the woman cooly, as if her very presence was barely an affront but more of a curious annoyance. He eyed her steel even more, then took to taking her aside. For some odd reason he began to touch her face, which caused the elf to quirk a curious glance at them both, then away. Ever-curious, she heard the shuffle of metal, caught the blacksmith dipping into her wares for something he seemed to need. Only to return empty-handed. In the split of a blink she whipped her hand across his jaw and threw him out of her tent.

Fane landed face-first into the dirt beside Masella's feet, coughing up mud even though he lacked the orffices to cause the reaction. The blacksmith drew up to them once more with a hand half-raised, ready to strike if necessary. "You! You dare to ask me that?! A face-ripper? What sort of devil's sourcery are you tryin' to trick, eh?"

"It was merely a question, damnable woman!" the skeleton retorted, slipping his cowl back over his skull before she noticed his lack of skin.

Her gloved fist aimed for him again. Fane jumped out of the way, falling back to catch a broken pillar with both hands.

"You tell Master Kniles that I don't deal with the likes of dark arts. He wants toys for his dungeon? He makes them himself! Go on! Slither back to whence you came. And as for you!"

Masella drew her shiv with one hand, hiding it behind her back as the blacksmith dared to fall into her shadow.

"And you! If I see you pawing my wares again, they'll find your bloody carcass in the sea! You hear me, elf?"

Masella gritted her teeth yet relented, nodding low. The unnamed woman disappeared back into her tent, and the only sound that came from within was the hammer of steel on an anvil.

The elf helped Fane up with a hand and gave him a questionable look.

"And... uh..." He seemed to frown, scratching his head in confusion. "I don't rightly know what just happened."

She quirked an eyebrow high, then begun to tap her toe patiently.

The undead frowned down at his shoes. "All I asked was for a tool to remove faces. Alas, I lacked the correct term to accurately describe my need. Face-ripper felt more than apt at the time. Now... now I'm not so sure."

After a while he readjusted his robes and decided to guide Masella away from the blacksmiths, most likely too embarrassed to be in the vicinity any longer. Sometime later it begun to seem as if exploration to the skeleton was just as important as finding supplies, which had been the original excuse to come to the castle in the first place. And further inside the walls they travelled, the more of the castle's true colours became apparent, as did the true authority over any collared sourcerer.

Where the sea curled up in basalt arms of the island's cove, between shady inlets and beneath foreboding towers built from paste of volcanic loam, the walled city of Fort Joy mewed in the commerce of a chained populace, whom were allowed to govern their own laws under the mighty authority of the one true order.

Masella knew not the extent of their might until she saw chains cut to the likeness of burial stones, hung from the necks of men, be it dwarf, human or lizard, from long, swung cages. Other cages, those not yet full in death, kept women, elders, even a child to sell. The price for each? For one, a solid gold coin. Another a cooking pot. The third a barrel of caught heron that smelled at least a week old. Flies buzzed over the catch, and it seemed that the fish were not freshly caught but plucked from the shore. The scales even had maggots inside the scales, burried deeply into the actual fishs' bones.

Unlike Fane who strolled by his surroundings without notice, she memorised everything. She needed to, so that should the skeleton ever wish to venture inside the castle's walls again, her answer would be a firm, unmoveable decline that no amount of sway could alter.

Rumours slipped through mouths thick with dry spittle. Rumours of sourcerers being snatched in the night by Magisters, never to return. Tales of a 'cure' for her magic, if such a thing were truly possible. Masella shivered at the thought.

Source was given to me by Tir-Cendelius himself, she thought, whilst gradually tugging her amulet. Source is natural. To send it away, barbaric.

Without source she would not be alive, or as alive as she was. Without source she would never have been allowed to play in the Proud Spire, would never have had a theatre to call home or have friends to call family. She would have nothing, no one. She would never be able to leave the island alive without it.

Too preoccupied with her thoughts, she never noticed a weak hand grasp the crook in her arm and press her firmly into a cage until the very bars dug painfully into her skin. Shaking her head, she blinked away her reverie and glimpsed into the eyes of a very old, somewhat handsome male elf.

For some reason, a vision of familiarity slipped through her mind. It may have been due to the immense time in which it had been since she had seen a truly living, breathing elf that brought her an instant ease, or that his features, even when drawn out and dry from drout, still held a subtle softness to them that it eased the creases of his years to the point that he appeared no elder than eighty seasons. To a human lifespan, forty years.

"Mistress," he begged, tugging her cuff further in. "Mistress, water. Please. I beg you."

The elf glanced around quickly. When he was sure no one saw his actions, he bent her neck to his mouth and whispered, "I can help you escape. Yes. Escape. I ask for water. Nothing more. Please-"

Masella tore her arm away. She too peered around before giving into her curiosity. "Who?" she mouthed, slipping her hands together and passing them between his and her chest.

The elf pursed his lips. "Who... am I?"

The mute nodded.

"Elasaer," he sighed. "I am Elasaer, mistress."

His name was easy to mouth, pleasant to roll even though no sound was produced. He seemed to realise her inability and proudly bowed his head. "To know thirst is simple. To know hunger, simple still. To not speak. To not sound the words our lord. To not sing. I am sorry, mistress."

A tear slipped down Masella's cheek. She was about to respond when she felt the presence of another on her back. There was no warmth there. Only the cold compress of ancient bone.

"Apologies aren't going to get us off this island," answered Fane, having taken ear of their shared conversation. "Neither is pity. You, mortal, are alive. Thus you must drink, preferably, or so I've heard, not from the sea. Since your options are limited, I would suggest keeping your water for yourself. I fear this poor fool will die within a day of drinking it anyway."

Elasaer watched Masella without word. Her gaze travelled down the broadcloth he wore, woven from sheep that perhaps once roamed the island before being culled. Where Fane appeared bored of the conversation, she remained interested, not only due to the promise of an escape but also from the guilt of leaving one of her own behind. She uncorked her waterskin and drip-fed Elasaer so no liquid was spilt.

"Thank you," he mumbled, slurping the contents down as if it was a fountain of youth. "Blessed be you, mistress. Thank you."

As the elder elf continued to drink the water freely, Masella withdrew her hands and gestured to Fane to translate. "The mortal asks why you've been caged."

Elasaer paused only briefly, licking any remaining water droplets from his arms. "They call me thief," he whispered, wincing from a pain in his lower back. "Thief. Yes. Though I never stole. No. I found refuge by the quay. He-"

He pointed to another cage that also held another elf, one so bent over with pain that is was a surprise he could still stand. "He was caught stealing oranges. I only fished for our dinner, for our families... I was caught. I was judged guilty, as was he."

Masella watched his eyes, stared freely into them and found a relief she had not expected. Relief, and no guilt. His eyes were a crystal green-blue, as clear in colour as the very ocean itself during the day. It was in those that she knew. He was telling the truth.

"Yes, well," said Fane, snatching the waterskin from his frail fingers and thrusting it back into Masella's chest. "It was a pleasure chatting to you, but we really much be off."

"What about a way to escape?" Masella pleaded, grasping Fane's shoulder and forcing him to a standstill.

"The fool was probably lying. I doubt he'd know a way out of here if it hit him in the head. Besides..." The skeleton faltered. "We have somewhere else we must be."

Masella drew her lips taught. "Another place?"

"Why yes, of course. Did you not hear my squabble with the blacksmith? To the dungeons! I must see this Master Kniles. Only then can I finally leave this wretched island."

Her hands slipped freely from him, falling into fists by her thighs. "Your mask... that is all you care about? I thought we came for supplies. Never to return. You want us to get caught. Tortured. Maimed?!"

The very notion was inconceivable! Disasterious! Abhorrent- scaresly imaginable!

And as her temper begun to rise and she felt the familiar burst of source trickle down her fingertips, an unsuspected voice, free from brittle rasp, answered them. "I know the dungeon you speak."

Fane turned to Elasaer in surprise. "You? Of all people, you do?!"

"Yes..." the elder elf whispered, fixing his gaze once more on Masella. "They took my beloved. They leashed and caged me like a dog. I owe them no allegiance. To you, mistress. I swear loyalty. Only to you."

"Because she gave you water?"

"Because she was kind," Elasaer bit back with sudden sharpness. "You would not understand. You are not people. Not my people. Elven are alike. Same heart. Same courage. She was kind. I will be kind. For her. For my beloved. I must find her. With you. That is my choice."

"And will you help us, Elasaer?" Masella gestured, though she herself felt a fear slowly brewing in her gutt, one that could not be so easily quenched.

"I know that place far better than they, mistress. I cleaned. I cooked. Alone you are not safe. With me. As I guide. You will be."

"Then it is settled," exclaimed Fane as he used his fingers to swiftly break the lock of the elder elf's cage.

Yes, Masella thought grimly, gazing up into the great grey keep overlooking the entirety of the walled city, settled.