Axeholm stands empty of the restless dead. We were successful.
I was successful.
I spoke to the group when they woke, and told them about what we had to do. I didn't mention that there had been other options, or what those might be. Perhaps they might have chosen to destroy the banshee, perhaps they might have wanted to try harder to talk around the king, but that was not my choice. My choice was to put the banshee to rest, and it was not their souls and future that were on the line.
Although it almost was.
After we had come up with a sound strategy for going into the city once more, I took Koraliki and we went to find a good location for the bodies of the two elves; the mother and daughter, since the plant that had woven itself into the daughter's bones needed darkness to flourish. Koraliki had keen eyes and knew about places of nature even if her use of words was even less prominent than mine. I dug the grave when we found a good spot, knowing that time would likely be of the essence once our allegiances in Axeholm became known to the king.
Smoothly as it went, we returned to the city and to the prison cells. After Koraliki opened the cell of the daughter, she bent down to tend to the body, but as I made my way in, my progress was stopped as the cell door suddenly swung shut with some force, bashing me aside, and the banshee appeared. She spoke in what I assume to be elven, and Koraliki, despite being trapped in a small space, managed to reply. The banshee appeared to be pleased by the answer, unlocked the door and disappeared, leaving us to resume our task.
Together we wrapped the body, and its attached plant and roots that she dug out, into a roll of silk that I had found earlier in our journey. It had been a while since I had handled bones like this, but it is not something one forgets. My hands were nimble even as Koraliki went to open the other cell with the mother's skeleton in it. It was at that point, when she had attempted to unlock it, that things went awry. The king had noticed us, and his voice resounded throughout Axeholm, even as Koraliki seemed paralysed as something in the lock had triggered.
I saw the king in the central chamber having got past Idris and Zenari. I saw both of the Rockseeker brothers fall in one hit, and Gundren pass into the beyond in that very instant. There was no saving him, not without getting past the king. I had no idea if Zenari and Idris still lived, too many walls. It was not looking good, and yet I still had a task.
I had intended on burying both skeletons at the same time, together, but of both of them it was the one in my hand, with its rare bloom growing out of the silk wrapped bundle of bones, that was the most important. With the daughter buried, the banshee could find release, with the daughter buried we might get that aid from the Three. I made the only decision that made sense. I chose to leave the party and do the duty I had been sent there to do.
Koraliki was still at the cell door, an alarm sounding that would once have brought guards, but they were long gone. She was paralysed, but it would wear off, and I could do nothing for her except try to save the situation in the best way I knew how. I took her cloak, the one that had once been mine, and stepped back before teleporting to the cave up the mountain. I knew I had so little time, not when the king was so desperately powerful. With as much care as I could manage, I placed the body in the grave I had dug earlier, and covered it with the soil.
As the last of the soil filled the grave, I saw the spectre of a young elven woman standing there, staring out at the land beyond the mouth of the cave.
"It's nice to see the sky again," she said, though whether to me or herself I do not know. And then she faded from view and was gone, her soul put to rest.
With the cloak, and the grave already having been dug, I had been fast, but I needed to return to the group as quickly as possible to aid them. The sunny day had turned dark, and only was getting darker as I ran. The clouds had become thick, and I ventured a glance up as I dashed, worried, only to see the faint outline of three dark figures in the centre, seemingly calling up the storm. Whatever they were doing, I had my own task to focus on.
It was dismay then, when I came into view of Axeholm only to see the battered form of the King there at the gate, no sign of the others.
"Tell me where you put her!" the king shouted to me, "Tell me where she is!"
The momentum of my run was still there, but I held back, just a little, readying myself as the king, his armour dented and ragged in many places, charged at me. His movement was one of a determined run, but his state left him open. I saw the gap in his armour, the place where my claws could fit, enough to tear. As the king moved to swing at me, I moved, swifter than I had ever managed before, my thoughts of the Three. I might have failed to keep my group alive, but I would not fail in my task for them.
My claws sank deep, and I used the momentum of the king's movement, and the strength granted by gauntlets, to swipe up, rending and tearing with such strength that I was able to grip into the bone itself and with a snarl, tear the head from the body.
There would be no resurrection for him.
Even as I stood there, panting a little from the strain of the swift run, the king's body started to disintegrate in the air, crumbling into dust even as I watched until only his armour remained.
The king was no more.
Movement brought my eyes around, and I saw Koraliki, amazingly still alive, step forth along with the banshee. Like the daughter, she looked to the sky, before saying something I could not understand, before fading away, her soul departing even as the bones that Koraliki was carrying scattered to dust in the morning breeze.
Koraliki wasn't the only survivor, all had survived, except Gundren. Idris tried to revive him, first with the armour, then with healing, but he was long gone. Gundren had taught me much, but Idris especially seemed almost as distraught as Nundro was at his loss, not willing to stop trying to save him even when it was clear he was gone. I watched on from the side, already knowing there was nothing I could do. It was too long for revivify to work by then, and my place was not amongst their mourning. Gundren had already moved on to where he should be, and the loss of him felt as distant as it always did; a pale imitation of the grief that so lined the others.
It was standing there, present but separate, that I was probably the first to see the daylight fade more and more from the entrance, as darkness took its place like the storm outside had coalesced and was travelling into Axeholm. On that cloud of darkness three shadowy figures glided in. None of us spoke.
"You have done well," the robed figure said to me from the Three. "We will speak again."
They continued on, the darkness of their passage continuing towards the throne room and beyond. We all watched, silent, listening to the only sounds present: that of the restless dead snarling and scrambling through the huge crack in the floor, in the gap that had been created in the huge doors to the lower parts of the city.
We listened to all those sounds, and then between one instant and the next, there was none.
Silence reigned. Thousands gone in an instant.
There was nothing violent about it, one moment Axeholm was teeming in its depths with restless dead, and the next moment they were completely absent. My knees weakened at the sudden lifting of the weight of necromantic energy in Axeholm, the sense of all those restless dead nearby that were no longer there, as well as the press to deal with the place.
I hadn't even been truly aware of it until it was no longer there. The guiding force, the need to see to the task that had always been with me, or at least before Phandalin it had, the one that led me from one task to the next. I had thought it gone in many ways, other than when I had been guided to the door of the city. But I now knew what that felt like. Was it possible that it had always been there, but I had grown in power so much that I had somehow blocked it out without meaning to? Had it merely been growing in such small increments again that I had not noticed? The difference, now that pull had gone, was astounding. I felt light, I felt true relief that was heady and disorientating.
And yet… And yet.
Alone now, and in triumph we stood, making plans to go and aid the caravan of Phandalin to reach Axeholm, and there was no tug once more. The lightness felt almost wrong in its emptiness. No guiding hand showing me the path to go.
I sit now with the caravan as we camp for the night. I wear the dead king's magical armour, and the gauntlets that grant huge strength. I sit with the group still alive around me, the townsfolk that look upon us with awe. We will travel back to Axeholm, where the people will find shelter and safety, where only Gundren is waiting for me to put him to rest. What will happen then, when he is gone?
The robed figure was the one who spoke to me upon entering Axeholm, who told me he would speak to me again. Does that mean that the dice of my actions rolled in his favour? What will the future hold for me now?
I do not know, and the not knowing is not at all comfortable.