Niamh Valfear

[Aurora]

❂

The War may have ended in Heaven and Hel...

But it still rages on, in the world of mortals.

~ Verse seventeen

[Aurora]

1330 - Age 7

‘You can’t leave until you’ve eaten. All of it.’

Every evening, the same hunk of red, bloody meat sat in front of her. A porcelain plate and silver cutlery did not make it any more appealing; she found it grotesque. Still, the girl had no intention of disobeying her mother.

The antique knife felt heavy and cold in her small hand as she brought it to bear, and cut into the grim meal. It was lukewarm, left a very distinct coppery taste that tickled at the back of her tongue, and it took some nerve for her to swallow. A small sanguine trail stained her lips.

‘Good. I know it isn’t very appetizing, darling, but it is for your own sake.’

She tried to forget the thing; its macabre taste. Her mother’s arms draped around her shoulders helped in no small way. Gentle and warm, Niamh often thought that she would like to grow up to be like her. Indeed, she had inherited more than merely her illness and frailty; their raven locks were a great deal thicker than her father’s sandy brown.

‘Go on, go play. I’ll read you a new story, later.’

Keluben - a small but proud city nestled on the borders of Rustwood. Seventeen years after the emergence of the most horrifying plague known to history, the place has not flourished. Still, it remains a favorite stopping point for travelers, even if they are greeted less with open arms, and more with apprehension.

The Valfear household, through these times of madness, had held onto a modicum of luxury; its patriarch a trusted physician. Rumors surround his pale, reclusive wife - superstition and fearmongering. Niamh, as their sole daughter, was afforded all the privileges that came with their station; private tutoring, a nanny, a more than capable chef - let it not be said her earliest childhood was troubled.

From the beginning, however, the child seemed to struggle; an unknown condition rendered her pale and listless on the best of days. In tandem with clouded eyes that lost much of their light during her first years, it was all quite a fright to her parents. While her eyes were likely far clearer then than now, she cannot remember a day when she saw with great clarity. Entirely due to her family’s affluence, this fragile, stumbling girl nonetheless grew, learned, and blossomed.

One day, a chilly evening in the early months of 1330, Niamh’s father had a curious pair of visitors. A colleague, he said; a middle-aged man, his dark hair greying at the temples, with a well groomed goatee headed for the same fate. His narrow blue eyes seemed fixed in a stern frown, and he wore round wire framed glasses. He was dressed in grey robes; scholarly but stained.

Their discussion seemed private, the men speaking quietly by the fireplace over a rapidly diminishing bottle of amber liquid. Far more interesting to Niamh was the newcomer’s companion; a girl who could not be much older than herself, a girl that had snuck out into their small garden. Niamh did not need eyes, could have heard her across the property.

She spied her soon enough, trying to climb a tree by shimmying up the trunk, her arms and legs wrapped around it. She cursed and grumbled loudly as she slid down the trunk, again and again.

‘Gods freaking trees, damn things aren’t usually so hard to effin’ climb.’

‘You’re going to fall.’

‘Then stop gawking and help me, I just gotta get to the lower branch and I’ll be fine!’

And so, filled with righteous purpose, Niamh moved to assist the would-be acrobat. She tried to push the other girl higher, but it quickly became apparent that she would be doing no such thing - they both landed in a tangled heap in the grass.

The louder girl groaned as she pushed herself up from Niamh, and turns back to glare at the tree as though it had personally wronged her.

‘You have ‘purf-formed poorly’ as me da would say.’

‘Is that him inside, with my father? Is he sick?’ Niamh asked as she raised herself to her feet, using the tree trunk as a guide.

‘I thought he was here for you. Ya look a bit crook, ya know.’

‘I know.’

‘Right. Well, da told me summin ‘bout MacArthur’s Gate. Think they’re going there soon.’

‘Oh…’ That place was new to her, and her father traveled often enough. The name would shake her, later in life, but as a girl she thought nothing of it.

‘Nee.’

‘Yes?’

‘Eh? No, that’s me name. Nee.’

‘Oh. Mine is Niamh.’

‘Wot, like knave?’

No, like Niamh.’

‘Niiiiii-ev. That’s a funny name.’

‘So is Nee!’

It was a meeting that would shape the both of them, before the end. A friend, tried and true, through misery and innocence lost.

[Aurora]

1333 - Age 10

There was an intangible sense of longing to the Rustwood. These were the early days of Dewfall - verdant green revealed itself here and there, life reawakening as it does every year, though never again to attain the vibrancy of the past. Niamh could but wonder and daydream about an Eden before the torment, a world she never knew.

It was a rare treat to be so far from home. A family friend had taken a small group of townspeople to the edge of the forest, where they plied their various trades. There were lumberjacks, trail guides, hunters - Niamh was set to gathering firewood and roots, mushrooms and herbs. A hint of frost lingered on the wind, but she went about it as best she could, resigned but determined to at least carry her weight.

Keluben proved fertile soil for the girl. Her parents fussed over her health, but it seemed like she would live, if not prosper; she grew tall, clever and lovely amidst the trees, streams and rivers. Whether the same could be said for her dearest friend is debatable, but they shared a deepening bond that nourished them both.

‘Rabbits’re stupid. Reckon this earns me a break.’ came the familiar voice from somewhere nearby - two dozen paces to her left. For all her shortcomings, her hearing was quite sharp.

Niamh merely smiled as she continued foraging. She voiced a hymn under her breath as her gloved fingers dug into the thawing soil.

The older girl sat loudly on a fallen tree trunk, a brace of slain rabbits at her feet. ‘I’m tryin’ to think of some good rabbit recipes here, and yer humming that bloody hymn again? Can’t believe you think ‘bout all that rot. Yer just a lil’ girl, still. S’made up.’ She sighed, and continued her rant. 'Sick people ain’t nothing but the work of all them bloody sorcerers. They don’t prove nothing ‘bout no Archangels coming from heaven and crud.’

True enough, she thought. Like many children, these two were steeped in the encompassing lessons of the Church - but their response clearly differed. Mote was skeptical; refused to let anything control her. Niamh, on the other hand, had never stopped reading after she'd learned how. She knew the verses and the prayers, and had taken to wearing her mother’s Decusian symbol around her neck.

‘It's all around us, if you'd look. I wish you wouldn’t give me trouble for believing.’

‘Yeah. Uh huh. Look, Nibbles, the wagons fillin’. We’ll probably be gone within the hour. We’ll cook this lot at home.’

Home - it had become a bittersweet word. Her mother had taken in the young Mote, and it pleased Niamh to no end to have her around, but her mother had been ailing for nearly two years, and recovery seemed further and further out of reach. The girls’ fathers had not returned from MacArthur’s Gate, and while there had been no bad news either, Niamh was no fool.

A tormented world was all she knew; death and uncertainty shaped her cradle. She knew she would not see him again. Mote's company, dubious and abrasive as she was, comforted her more than she cared to admit.

[Aurora]

1333 - Age 10

As Eden failed to hold onto even illusions of security and safety, doom took root in the minds of its people; a slow poisoning, warping compassion and reason.

So grew the grip of fear around the town of Keluben; a blanket of rime and dust, leaving its streets ugly, and chilling the spirits of its people. Hospitality became rare as a blue rose, and doomsday prophets occupied corners, stages and boxes. Repent, they screamed; surrender the pretense of hope on Eden; strike at impurity and be saved. Niamh, barely ten years old, had heard it all before, but not quite like this.

Even weeks prior, some of the town's more susceptible folk had begun to give Niamh a wide berth, whispering amongs themselves, prompting the infinitely more perceptive Mote to hurl obscenities and hurry the girl quickly along. The town was on the brink of a witch hunt, she knew, whether or not it even held any witches.

The following evening, in the heart of Midsummer, a woman's shrieking rang through the streets. It was one of surprise, fear, and injustice - morbidly accentuated by the glow of the pyre in the night sky, the crackling of wood. Niamh found herself trembling under her blankets. Her mother entered the room, possessed of a calm that an older Niamh might have recognized as a facade, and she hurried her daughter through the house, out the back door, where a carriage awaited them.

The ailing lady of the Valfear house was not a fool, and she knew this frenzied witch hunt would not look kindly on her. Her hands trembled as she took a moment to smooth her daughters hair, dress her warmly, and wipe the tears from her confused, uncomprehending eyes. Mote was there, her own eyes wide as she looked and listened to the streets of Keluben.

The two girls were ushered into the carriage, and Niamh wished only to comfort her mother, who had begun to slip, tears running down her gaunt face, her eyes filled with the grief of separation - a grief Niamh had never known. Until now.

When her mother did not enter the carriage and the horses began to move, the girl understood, and she despaired. Wildly, she jostled the doors, clawed at the wood, shrieked and cried at the window that showed the image of her mother fading in the distance.

For hours, Mote could but hold her, try to hush her, but to no avail. As the storm passed, Niamh became a broken thing. She sat motionless; rocking as the carriage did, her eyes glazed and vacant, her tears run out. Mote held her hand, using scraps of cloth to bandage bloodied fingers, and did well to hide her own fear for the sake of the youngest.

The carriage took them northeast, away from their home that had fallen not to the torment, but to the shadow of fear it created in the minds of men; fear of monsters that were not even there.