Chapitre 16: Moonlight
He opens his eyes and for a moment, panics, unsure of where he is yet this is fleeting. Despite the darkness, his mind recovers from the sleep and remembers that he was taking a bath.
"How long have I been asleep?" He asks himself as he runs his fingers on his head and hair, partially to take them out of his face.
The room he was in was dark, barely lit by a dying torch. It had no windows and it was rather small. Besides the wooden tub with water and a stool nearby, there was nothing else in that place. A rather thin wooden door was the way in and out of there.
Das gets out of the tub and exits the room, it was a bathroom inside his tower, he goes up the stairs and enters his bedroom, the place is illuminated only by the light of the moon coming from the hole on his wall.
The place was as messy as it was when he was there last time. Drachen slept peacefully on his bed, the blanket placed lovingly on top of her, even if she didn't need it.
After picking new clothes he sat down on the wooden chair.
"I must have slept for hours" He whispered noticing the moon directly in front of the hole on his wall.
It was larger than usual, or so it seemed to him. He had always been captivated by the moon. Its smooth, flawless surface of snow-white coating seemed almost like a giant pearl.
This thought is passing, however, because now that he is properly rested and refreshed his mind focuses on what really matters. He needs to end the threat that the phantom represents.
He rubs his chin as he thinks of what can he do.
While he can simply wait for Afzal to send a messenger he doesn't want to do that and barging in there to pretend he knows what he is doing doesn't sound smart or appealing in the slightest.
Then, as his eyes move around his dark room, they land on the clean, but slightly burned red cloak he wore the day Eversmile was set ablaze and he gets an idea. He stands up from the chair, wears the cloak once again with its hood down, and calls his staff to him.
While unlikely, he may be able to find some clues on the stranger and the nature of this enemy in what's left of the village. For a moment he considers taking Drachen with her, knowing how worried she gets if she wakes up and he isn't near.
However, he can't depend on her. He remembers the dread he felt when the phantom caused her to go unconscious, her presence had also undoubtedly saved him.
But would he be able to save her? He couldn't even DEFEND her. So he decided to lit one of the candles on a table and wrote a note letting her know that he had gone to the village and would be back before the sun reached its peak.
That would be around twelve hours, more than enough time to take a good look at the place. He left the note near her, tucked inside the blanket, and left the tower.
Soon, lightning struck the middle of the village, and Das stood there.
The place was, unsurprisingly, dark. If it wasn't thanks to the moon the place may have been as pitch black as the forests surrounding it. The air whistles going through the decayed, crumbling, scorched buildings.
Das hits the end of his staff on the ground and an orb of lights appears from it. It raises several meters off the ground right above him and lights up a large area around him.
He takes a little bit of time to look around. There isn't a single corpse in sight.
In their place, there is silence. A graveyard without tombstones.
The ground is still marked by his fight against the phantom and the knight. He walks up to the small sinkhole his body created when crashing down on the ground, kneels in front of it, and remembers the emotions he felt when he fought with all his might to prevent the stranger from performing him with the blade.
He stands up and decides to go to the church, being the only building spared from the flames, thanks to the divine or more likely, the fact it's entirely made out of stone.
The insides are clean and the whole place looks like if it would hold a ceremony the next morning. Likely work of the priests that must have cleaned the town and taken special care of the sanctuary.
Going deeper he finds the hatch leading to the basement, he goes in, and with a wave of his hand, all the torches on the pillars are lit, providing sufficient light for him to take a good look at the place.
It has been trashed, with a multitude of crates broken and thrown on top of each other, while everything around him seems rather messy, there is a clear path that has been made moving away the crates and barrels directly in front of him.
He walks forward and his boots step on shattered glass as it cracks beneath his weight, he looks down and sees it belongs to a cup of some kind. But noticing nothing more interested around the area he moves on.
Eventually, he reaches the end of the path directly against the wall of the basement and he sees something peculiar and out of place, a pair of open shackles.
He kneels and grabs both of them, he wonders why would a sanctuary possess such items.
Rubbing his chin he remembers his talk with the phantom before they fought to try to reach and grab anything that may provide some light on what he found and something picks up his interest as he recalls that at one moment, the phantom seemed about to mention something about a person that guided him.
His eyes widen, he had somehow forgotten about that critical piece of information, because if what he thinks the phantom tried to say is correct, then he has two problems to solve. Not one.
Satisfied, he stands up and leaves the basement. He reaches the gates of the sanctuary as a large cloud covers the moon shrouding everything in complete darkness.
Noticing the orb of light above him is shrinking he is about to cast the spell again when he notices that at the edge of the gates there are unlit wax candles, with white flowers that have decayed a little bit.
"People that had loved ones in this village must have come to left them lights" He whispers.
But just as he is about to carry on with his spell, he remembers the horrid images of the heads on the stakes and the burning piles of bodies. He flinches and lets out a defeated sigh.
"This is the least I can do" He thinks, letting the orb shrink further and disappear right as he slowly moves his staff from one side to the other, letting the dozens of candles placed on the doorsteps of the houses, on top of rubble and burnt remains of were once hundreds of people lived "I'm sorry, for not saving any of you" He whispers, a somber tone on his voice.
He stares at the empty plaza, dozen of warm orange tiny lights around it come from the houses, barely enough to combat the shadows, but somehow, it gives Das a sense of peace.
It is then that he notices a silhouette, someone stands in front of him across the plaza as the clouds move and let the light of the moon shower the ghost village once again.
Unable to move, he thinks that what stands in that plaza with him must be an apparition of some type.
Her hair was black as the moonless night, her skin white as a frightening ghost. Wearing a dark cloak like the ones he uses, except this one shows more of what lies beneath.
A rather common dress, white and gray it would seem, with a leather corset that gives her a more elegant appearance. Her hands rest to her sides and her face seemed calm, but her eyes looked at him probably the same way he looked at her.
In fact, for a moment, the sensation of looking at a ghost changed and it felt as if he was looking at a different version of himself.
"I didn't know there would be anyone else in here" She says, her voice smoky and soft. Taking a few steps forward.
Das blinks a few times, still finding it hard to believe that the woman was not a specter of some kind.
"What is it? You look like you just saw a ghost" She says giving him a sly smile as she gets closer.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone either" Das says snapping out of it and instinctively placing the hood of his cloak on his head "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see it after all the grieving families had left but got a little lost in the woods on my way here. I saw lightning strike a place so I just went in that direction and luckily it led me to the village"
"Did you lost someone?"
"Yes, I did. Like everyone in Rudenwind" She holds her hands behind her, eyes look away from Das.
Her words sting, a reminder of his failure.
"I'm sorry" Das says without realizing.
"Don't worry about it archmage, but thanks" She is now only a few meters away from Das.
"How did you?-" He replies taken by surprise.
"Is that a very peculiar walking cane or something?" She says leaning forward and pointing at Das's staff.
"Oh! Right" He says facepalming.
The girl laughs gleefully, showing him the type of childish sincere smile that he rarely sees on anyone but Lioth. The type of smile that relaxes him.
"Did you come here alone? It's dangerous in a place so distant and devoid of people, especially if you are a woman" Das says, with genuine concern as he walks up to her.
"Then why don't you escort me for a bit? Powerful archmage" She kneels in front of a nearby candle and moves her onyx hair behind her ear as she grabs a tiny bronze coin.
Das is once again surprised, but this time for a genuine first in his life. He suspiciously looks around him, this is a situation he had never been in before.
"Are you sure? You seem awfully trusty of a mage"He lets out, his eyes looking at her with caution.
"Why? Are you gonna eat me?"She asks leaving the coin where she grabbed it and standing up.
"No, but-"
"Oh! Are you perhaps going to turn me into a half-woman, half-snail creature?" She covers her mouth in an overdramatic way.
"No, no. But-" He tries to reply fighting a growing smile at her antics.
"Or.."She closes the distance with him, getting so close he leans back. Their faces separated by mere inches "Are you gonna do something to me, under the blanket of the silent shadows?" She asks, a mixture of teasing and somber seriousness.
"No" Das says at her with a stern face and pushes her away gently.
She seems to study his face for a few seconds as if trying to catch any hint of a lie. Once she seems satisfied her face lights up and she flashes him yet another childish smile.
"Then you can come with me" She says walking past him "Come, I won't take long" She says waiting for him a few meters away.
At that point, Das is both cautious and mildly irritated at the curious girl. But his sense of guilt is enough to make him nod at her so she leads the way.
"If I may ask" Das speaks while using his staff to lit the candles the further away they get from the plaza "Where do you come from?"
She stops and looks up at the moon above them.
"Here" She says without looking back at Das.
"You lived here? Then, it must have been awful to come back and see it in this state.
"I don't think you quite get it" She says returning her gaze forward and walking "I was here when it happened"
L’AVIS DES CRÉATEURS 
PenguinSam64
PenguinSam64 I apologize if the chapters take a little bit longer to upload. My laptop is half potato and with the scorching heat, it's true hell to write sometimes.
So be patient while I try to upload two chapters every day, I'm taking a short break and immediately writing the next one!
Hope everything is going well for you, reader!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone