Chapter Text
Thwack!
A resounding pain fills your head as the quarterstaff connects with the right side of your skull, sending you reeling to the floor for the second time today.
“Dead! Again, young Visionary, you observe but you do not see,” your teacher chides gruffly. She is an Unspeakable Visionary - outranking you by quite a large margin, and a representative of the great heights expected of you.
"You said left," you protest, leaning on your own wooden spear as you pull yourself back to your feet. Something warm and wet is slowly falling down your scalp, under your burnt red hair - you're bleeding.
If she notices this, your teacher's stern expression does not falter. "I trusted the truth of my strike to the shadows, and you did not look to them to see it. You must learn to use your blessing. All is not always as the moonlight shows it to be; you have been taught this."
"Yes, Unspeakable Visionary," you submit, resolving yourself back into a ready fighting stance.
She frowns at you. "Stand straight," she commands, poking with her weapon at your shoulder she had struck earlier. "Your spear is not an arrow, and you are not a bow. Do not bend like one."
You allow yourself to be poked and prodded back to proper form. You've failed two times today already - you'll need every advantage if there is not to be a third.
"Better," she assesses, pulling her weapon back and readying herself. "Now. Remember your training, and see this time. Look for what the Nightweaver has to show you."
You breathe deep and focus your senses, taking in every detail of your opponent. Jet black hair in a tightly disciplined bun behind her head. Immaculately maintained leather armor adorned with the sigil of your order in the center: a perfectly divided sphere of black and white, split in two. Her left foot moves against the flat stone of the temple floor, dirt tracked in from outside compacting underfoot. Her four-colored eyes study you, one a piercing amethyst on a brilliant white sky, the other a sparkling emerald against inky black that pours outward in tattooed rays across the side of her face. Someday, your three colors will ascend to four as hers have - your golden left eye ritually joined with the Nightweaver’s, as your teacher’s is.
But that, if it ever comes, will be many years from now.
Your teacher’s eyes narrow slightly before she begins her assault with a shout. “Left high!”
She swings her staff, striking as stated from your upper left. You move to block, bringing your spear’s haft to bear in defense as you try to watch her movements in the moonlight and the shadows both. It is a difficult task, especially when your teacher’s skill vastly outstrips your own - but you, it is believed, have eyes blessed by the Nightweaver and the Moonmother both. You will see what the shadows hold.
Crack!
Her staff connects in the center of your spear, a blow blocked. “Left low!”
Your teacher spins, a flourishing strike that will surely sweep your legs right out from under you if you don’t block it. Her body twists, her arms raised, hiding nothing. She is, you think, striking exactly as she says. You plant the butt of your spear into the floor, closing the hole in your defenses and praying to the Moon and Night you saw correctly.
Thock!
“Right high, left low, lunge right!”
You shift your defenses again, retreating backwards to give yourself room. Her first blow comes as she described, a downward blow from your upper right. Her second sees no twirl, a strike on level from your left, truth of her strike foretold by her right shoulder’s retreat.
A rightward lunge should be next, and you begin to adjust your stance again to deflect it - but, you notice, the shoulder has not advanced out of its retreat. Time seems to slow as you watch your teacher’s shadow, betraying her as it flows into a thrust towards your left instead.
The correct response would be a parry and a strike of your own, but you don’t have the time for that - a sidestepping dodge will have to suffice.
The Unspeakable Visionary’s staff strikes nothing but air, and a surge of confidence flows through you. You’ve proven yourself as capable - now to exceed expectations. If you can score a single hit on her, you’ll be regarded as far beyond a simple Young Visionary.
With a shout, you attack back, spear thrusting towards her abdomen. Your teacher, far from inexperienced, dances deftly to the side, the moonlight she’s been obstructing suddenly filling your eyes. For the briefest of moments, you lose track of her - and that is all she needs.
Thwip-THUMP.
In a single move, her staff connects with the back of your knees, sending you promptly and unceremoniously onto your rear. She laughs at your fumbling attempt, planting her staff into the stone at her side.
“Dead again. Well done, Visionary,” she says, and you can tell despite her amusement that she means the praise. She walks the two paces to where you sit, and offers her hand to help you to your feet.
You take it - to do otherwise would be a grave offense, implying you think yourself above the wisdom and teachings of an Unspeakable Visionary. She speaks words of power, and a cold jolt runs through you as you are pulled to your feet. The bleeding wound on your head no longer hurts, and the pain in your almost certainly bruised shoulder vanishes.
“You learn quickly,” she states with the smallest of smiles, “but you attempt to leap before you are ready. I was once as you - be patient, and the Moon and Night will reveal what you need to know at the appropriate times. Trust their guidance, and we will make a powerful warrior of you yet.”
You bow your head, reverence hiding a smile. “Yes, Unspeakable Visionary.”
“Go, now. Clean yourself up before your meditations, and be proud today. Tomorrow, we will begin anew - until you can See well enough to evade me more than the once.”
You exit your trance, retraced memory complete. 111 years have passed since you were that young trainee, 34 of them with your own void-black eye, blessed with the Vision of the Night. You should be grateful for Her blessings tonight, you suppose, as your misfortune has happened to befall you during a new moon - the Nightweaver's power is at its zenith.
The half-elf is staring at you, chin on her upturned hands, from across the campfire that was made against your better judgment. She is supposed to be keeping watch, but appears to instead be watching you so intently that you feel as though you're being studied. The Githyanki will be furious - or she would be, if she was awake to see this dereliction of duty.
You reach for your rarely used Common to remark on her lax watch, but she speaks first.
“‘Unspeakable Visionary,’” she says like it’s a question. It comes as a surprise to you - that is, roughly speaking, what your title translates to in the Common tongue.
“You speak the True Speech?” you ask, in your native tongue. It is exceedingly rare for anyone to speak it outside of your homeland - rarer still that you would find someone who does this far away, by random chance.
She seems to struggle with her response. “I…read above my speech,” she manages. “Of little pieces,” she adds with a grimacing but hopeful smile. Her tongue is clearly not practiced in speaking yours, if she’s ever done so before at all. It’s even poorer than your unpracticed Common - but for an outsider to have any command at all over the True Speech is a feat worthy of respect, and demands no small amount of curiosity in return.
“We speak in your language. It will be easier,” you intone practically, brushing the rust off. “How came you to learn my tongue?”
“I found an old collection of texts once, in…at home, and used it to teach myself. Not much more than scraps, really - most were half-burnt or water-stained beyond recognition. Missing whole pages, in others. Enough to learn a few words and phrases, but little more than that."
She's not telling you the whole truth, of that you're fairly certain. You decide not to press the matter - yet.
"There was a passage on you , as unlikely as it may seem. The only legible entry on an otherwise unsalvageably smeared fragment," she continues, sitting up straight. "Ubêdui-fan. It said you made a pact with one called the Nightweaver, which granted you a special connection to Her. Is that true?"
Even in the unfamiliar language, you can tell when someone's words are weighted with a trap. There's a right answer to this question; a way she wants you to answer it - but does she desire the truth, or does she really want the Nightweaver's deceptions to fill her ears?
You match her green-eyed gaze in silence. “It is,” you state, choosing the truth after a few moments. No use in enshrouding your nature now, not when you’re perhaps mere days from death.
The woman tries to conceal her emotions at your confirmation, failing rather miserably at doing so. You’ve chosen correctly by her, and her elation at your answer is writ plain at the edges of her lips. She opens her mouth to speak, but as she does, her face contorts from the beginnings of a smile into a silent scream of agonized pain. She grabs her wrist with her left hand, her right’s fingers bending away as they try to flee an invisible, inescapable wound.
As quickly as it overtakes her, the affliction fades. She looks at you, something like embarrassment having replaced whatever happiness had been on her features before.
“You are injured?” you ask, concerned. She may have fractured a bone or sprained some portion of her hand in the Nautiloid crash, and an injured mace-arm could quickly prove lethal at a critical moment.
“No,” she says after catching her breath. “No, it is just…something I have to live with. I would be grateful if we did not speak of it further.”
The number of secrets this one has grows steadily. First her strange artifact and secret mission, then her unexplained reaction to the Nightweaver’s name, and now this.
“You entrust the Night with a great deal, Shadowed Heart,” you remark, one eyebrow raised the smallest amount. “Take care not to lose yourself in it completely.”
“Shadowheart,” she corrects. “And I trust Lady Shar with -”
She stops herself, seeming to realize she’s just said something she should not have. Her brows turn down in resolve, doubling down. “I trust Lady Shar with what is necessary.”
Shar. You have not heard this name for the Nightweaver before. Perhaps it is what Her Shadowed Face is called, outside the Frozen Wood.
“Shar. This is the Nightweaver’s name, to you?”
Her resolve morphs into plain confusion.
“I - yes? Have you not heard it before?”
“I have not,” you state flatly with some irritation giving your tone a biting edge. “The Nautiloid…” you pause, trying to pick the Common word for aumapan from your mental dictionaries. “Amman carfa-de… abducted from more than just your Sword Coast. Your customs are not familiar.”
At this admonishment, she softens. “I forgot how far you are from home. It is rare to find those who do not spurn those who worship Lady Shar, much less a kindred spirit who adheres to Her - or one like Her.”
She pauses, uncomfortable. You let the crackling flames of your campfire fill the air between you, choosing to say nothing.
“Your name. I mentioned it before - how did you come to have such a name?”
“It is not a name,” you explain. “A woman with my blessing is Fan - Visionary, I believe it is said in this tongue - and is not granted a name. Ubêdui-fan is my title, earned with the joining of my eye with Her shadows.”
You touch two fingers below your left eye, its black sclera a void with a shining gold iris at the center. “My left, which now sees that which cannot be spoken. The Unspeakable. My right remains in the Moon’s light.” You tap one under your other eye, still as milky-white as the day you were born, its iris a piercing ice-blue.
Shadowheart physically recoils. “The Moon?” she says incredulously. “Selûne - the Moon-witch, is Lady Shar’s mortal enemy! You cannot serve both!”
The ways of people outside the Frozen Wood are truly strange, to you. You take a deep breath, recentering yourself, before responding to her as you would a very young child. “You cannot separate the two Faces of the Night. The Moonmother and the Nightweaver are but one being - two Faces of the same. Their dual natures keep the balance of all things; were they to separate all would be plunged into chaos.”
Frustration brings a scowl to Shadowheart’s brow. “And to think I thought you to be a fellow believer in Lady Shar’s truth.”
You opt not to respond. Using the Common tongue is proving mentally taxing to constantly translate to, and this conversation is quickly going nowhere. Better not to waste the energy.
“However am I going to explain this in my prayers?” your keen ears hear the black-haired woman muse quietly to herself. She looks up at you, jade eyes full of determination. “I suppose you’re not totally lost. Perhaps you can be brought to see the truth of things, in time - that only in purest darkness do we see clearly.”
She stands. “Lady Shar’s blessings upon you. Good night,” she says with a haughty air of finality in her tone.
She turns on her heel and briskly strides the few short paces to where she’s pitched a tent with her bedroll, dropping the front flap door of the tent and disappearing from view.
You look up at the tenebrous sky, a void dotted with brilliant white stars giving what little of the Moonmother’s light there is to be had this night. Perhaps the woman and her misguided practices belong in your own prayers, as well.