Twenty-Fourth Entry

The battle opened on a whisper of steel.

Ragar’s arm snapped forward and two of her daggers cut through the air— one biting deep into the undead wizard’s back, the other stolen mid flight by its skeletal hand. That grasped blade screamed as rust bloomed instantly across its length, then uselessly clattered to the ground and crumbled to rot. Ragar recoiled for only a breath before steeling herself once more.

That vulnerable moment at the temple was an exception.

Shock does not slow her. It hardly ever does.

The spirit’s attention still lingered over Raph’æl’s declaration for a brief moment before its hollow regard tilted, then settled… in my direction. Even under my taut sleeves, the hairs in my arms still managed to stand on end. I had a chance to react that I did not take. Not with my dearest friend purposely forming a stubborn barricade before me. He widened his stance, shield raised in quiet defiance. In his other hand, I felt the intention of the gesture before it flared along with his elven diction.

His spell rang out. A dolorous, resonant chime that shook dust from stone and memory alike.

Toll the Dead.

The sound echoed. The party stilled.

But judgment did not follow.

The spirit’s gaze slid away from me and locked fully onto Raph’æl.

It laughed.

Then its hand closed around his throat.

Ghostly threads of Raph’æl’s very essence were forced from him and onto the wicked, grinning spirit. Just as it had done to Ragar through the door. I recognized what I was witnessing, yet dread still hollowed me out. My voice vanished. My body moved without it.

I caught him when the spirit released and pushed him back. My hands kept him upright as he bent forward, gasping for air that refused to return.

With his posture low, I reached for his neckline, instinctively seeking blood or torn flesh to mend. But there was nothing. No wound. No mark. Only a spiritual absence. That wretched spirit took his and Ragar’s breath, strength, something deeper than blood. 

And even then, with trembling knees and downcast vision, his shield stayed raised.

In the terrible moment I had reached for him, I saw his face. Fear burned bright in his maroon gaze …then it somehow settled upon my own. For a fleeting, stomach-churning moment, it felt as though he could see past the etched brass and into me.

I knew then what role I had to take.

And I had to take it afraid.

Tears blurred my world, but I refused to let them flow. My voice held steady. My mask must have reflected the composure I longed to embody.

“Raph’æl, trust me.”

His answer came strained and rasping, but without a shred of doubt.

“I do. Implicitly.”

That word opened something in me.

Space folded beneath my hands as I wove it, enveloping and drawing him away from danger and into the nearest refuge I could claim—a cot, scorched but standing at the other end of the room. The spell snapped into place cleanly. Vortex Warp. Instant success. His startled yelp as he landed told me I had taken him by surprise, but he was safe. Safe from its grasp.

“Hehe… I have enough,” the spirit crooned with excitement.

Stolen vitality gathered around the wretched being, shaped into gleaming, ethereal armor. Its grin stretched wider than I thought possible, swollen with obscene confidence.

So afraid.

But I stepped ahead.

All I had endured, yet I was never built for this. I am magic stretched thin, a bow of glass drawn too far back. No armor. No trustworthy steel. Just ceremonial vestments cut and resewn into something passable. A life spent surviving by luck and timing rather than force.

I have always known where I am weakest.

And yet…

I still retrieved my dagger from the ground and placed myself between the spirit and Raph’æl. Not instinct. Choice. Clear and deliberate. This was stupid. I could feel the danger like pressure against my ribs. I could imagine the fatal cost of a single misstep. But I could not move any other way.

Because Jack needed to finish reloading his weapon.

Because Super wasn’t present.

Because Ragar had to reposition herself.

Because Raph’æl was behind me.

I owed them all. Ragar taught me what it meant to be truly equipped. Jack’s mighty posture has steadied mine. Super’s trills have kept my steps light. But …too many times has Raph’æl been forced to be my anchor. His voice has pulled me back from brinks in both the waking and dreaming world, when my magic frayed or my fear threatened to swallow me whole. He’s been driving my steps, unknowingly. I’ve leaned on him the most without realizing how often. And only now, in this moment, did the balance become visible.

I did not step before that cot thinking I would survive.

I stepped before it knowing that if I did not, he might not.

And if this is what it means to choose someone, then I suppose I have already done so.

Long before I had found the words for it.

Focus.

The Forge of Spells was within reach.

Gundren was finally safe.

Just live for a little longer.

A glint from my peripheral—Jack. He stepped fully into the chamber, Hew in hand. Something between concern and fury in his eyes. From his vantage point, I could only imagine how small and ridiculous my wispy svirfneblin frame looked within that space. I imagined his biting criticism once this was all over eventually evolving into chortles by the campfire, rows of sharp draconic teeth flashing as he’d joke with Super over my foolhardy actions. I would probably hear about it for days on end.

I looked forward to it.

Jack’s dragonborn shadow swallowed us as he stepped closer, arms raised behind the vengeful wizard’s spirit. A mighty swing. Hew bit into the wizard’s shoulder, bones snapping as the axe lodged fast. The spirit barely reacted, but Jack used the embedded blade to wrench it around.

In that same breath he drew his one-handed rifle.

“Die, bitch,” he snarled.

Thunder cracked.

Bone burst apart.

The thing endured.

Lightning followed—Jack’s breath unleashed in raw fury—only to be swallowed whole. The armor flared brighter.

Only then did understanding burn through me.

My fireball. The lack of heat.

It hadn’t failed… the creature had been fed.

Ragar saw it too, her rapier slipping uselessly past the armor. “Different approach,” she said aloud, already adjusting. Her gaze flicked toward me, then past me, toward Raph’æl.

I realized later what she had done—threaded a plan directly into his thoughts. Silent and safe from the foe’s knowledge. He would accept it. As he tended to.

“Understood,” Raph’æl called from the cot.

From that very spot, he fractured the room with faith and cleverness alike. Mirror Image scattered three versions of himself across the chamber and finally, mercifully, pulled the spirit’s focus away from us. His illusions moved with precise intent. One darted past the spirit’s flank with its scimitar in hand, another crossed the chamber entirely, miming the careful preparation of a spell it could never truly cast. Unlike Raph’æl’s duplicity ability, which allowed his copies to invoke his magic, these were just moving images; simple deceptions meant to provoke the enemy’s attention. They often worked.

However, it was the third illusion that told us the next step to take.

At my cleric friend’s silent urging, the last mirror image knelt beside a chest tucked beneath a scorched desk, its movements reverently slow. Reaction was immediate. The undead wizard snarled and lunged, clawed hands slashing through the illusion, only for it to fizzle into nothing.

It cried out in fury as the copy faded with no life essence to drain.

It’s guarding the chest?

From there, a scheme struck me.

“Do you even have enough of a mind for me to attempt this…?” I breathed, not fully intending to speak aloud. Still, I reached for the cantrip. An extension of the digits, an Undercommon murmur, then off like a dart went my Mind Sliver.

It missed. The intended target, that is.

It still landed within its mind in a way I wasn’t expecting. I somehow enacted divination rather than wounding.

For the briefest instant, my mind’s eye lurched. The chamber was no longer as it was. I stood within an ancient memory, an impossibly vivid one. I saw the wizard as they once were—alive, young—arriving here for the first time. I watched them kneel and place their valuables into a chest. Coin, trinkets, an impressing sum carefully counted and stored.

That same chest.

The cantrip collapsed. Present reality quickly fizzled back like fire on dry kindling. Across from me, Ragar’s grin flashed sharp and knowing. She had been hoping for this—something that would pull the creature’s attention loose from combat.

She moved at once.

The undead wizard moved to retaliate, but Jack cut in, hurling a hand axe that struck the spirit’s collarbone before clattering soundly to the floor. 

I recall him and Ragar glancing at one another for just a second. I could almost imagine their dialogue in my head, had we not been keeping the spirit from learning our strategy.

“Cover me!”

“As if I have a choice.”

But instead there was the scraping of boots, the ringing of steel, and the rattle of coin as Ragar managed seize the chest. I found myself strangely relieved—not just that the plan was working, but that even with their friction, Jack and Ragar could still find harmony in the chaos of a fight. I felt comfort in that level of trust.

The wizard’s spirit wailed and lunged after its earthly hoard, but was thwarted by one of Raph’æl’s illusions slipping between it and Ragar’s escape. In that opening, the true Raph’æl sprang from his place of safety to join his mirror image and struck with his scimitar.

The spirit struck back—only to hit the illusion instead. It dissipated in a scatter of false light.

Something about the spirit’s confusion must have encouraged Raph’æl. He chuckled, suddenly overcome with a boyish mirth. It made my heart race. It was brightness slicing through the center of all this horror.

Are we really going to be alright…?

His remaining illusion closed in beside him as he called out, taunting through both mouths, “Hah. Two clerics left. Think you can get me before you hit the wrong one again?”

The spirit emitted something between a hiss and a growl, loud whispers rattling like bones dragged across stone. “I HATE YOU…”

Raph’æl did not flinch. He just shifted his stance, scimitar angled for a strike, shoulders squared with practiced resolve. But as he did, he muttered something under his breath with a wry but tired smile. Something I swear sounded like….

“No more than I hate myself.”

I felt a painful knot at those words. They weren’t surprising, given all that he’s gone through. But I still wanted—needed—to believe I had misheard. Surely we’ve been through enough together to bring him hope that his fate was restorable.

But there was no time to follow those thoughts. The spirit’s armor flared brighter, power gathering for… something. Something catastrophic. Big.

Whatever it was, I had to react.

My wand’s components rattled softly as I drew from the Weave. Cold magic surged from them to my extended hands, releasing a storm of conjured frost. Snowball Swarm. Packed snow and ice burst in a swirling tide, slamming into the creature and driving it back a step. It was just enough magic to disturb whatever it had planned to unleash.

Raph’æl looked at me and smiled. The darkness in his face eased just for a moment. That particular smile, I’d seen it before. It always seemed to surface when I casted that spell. I wonder, sometimes, if it’s his favorite of mine. I should ask.

Somewhere in the chaos, Jack and Ragar began wrestling for the chest. I missed what sparked the tug of war, but the victor was predictable. Jack’s mighty Dragonborn grip wrenched it free and hurled it against the stone wall. CRASH. Wood shattered. Treasure spilled across the floor in a glittering, mocking cascade.

The spirit shrieked, indignation and fury tearing from its throat.

Raph’æl seized the moment. He raised his holy symbol high, and divine light poured forth— Ilmater’s blessing made manifest.

For the first time, the creature flinched in agony.

Radiance!

We are close.

Just a bit more.

Ragar immediately dropped to her knees and dragged the spilled gold toward herself with both hands, deliberately loud and messy. Coins skittered and rang across the stone, polluting the chamber with a bedlam of noise. She looked up at the spirit with a wide, goblinesque grin.

“I’ve got your shit, you stupid ghost!” she taunted through her teeth. “What’re you gonna do?!”

Jack moved at once, planting himself between her and the undead wizard, wearing a scowl that spoke of obligation rather than fondness. A barrier of muscle, scales and dogged determination. Raph’æl and his remaining double swept in beside them, splitting left and right, mirroring one another to deepen the confusion.

For a heartbeat, it worked. The spirit’s attention was fracturing under too many targets. He could only drain essence from one at a time, opening himself up to threats.

But then it chose something new.

The wretched thing phased straight through Jack.

He collapsed from the shock, as though something vital had been ripped longways inside him. He hit the stone hard and retched, his body betraying him all at once.

Panic closed around my throat. I have seen what happens when Jack is taken out of a fight. How quickly everything can unravel when he is down.

The spirit’s armor flared brighter than ever before.

“THAT’S MINE,” it shrieked, voice splintering into a rage. Its bony arms lifted and its collected power coiled outward—wide and unmethodical.

Whatever it was about to unleash would strike them all at once.

But I had long decided that it would not end like this.

Not in the darkness I spent my life trapped in.

Not in the service of a beholderkin’s careless whims.

Not with my friends standing helpless before a living corpse that fancied itself inevitable.

I cried out as I tore into the wells of my metamagic, demanding the Weave bend now. I felt the strain instantly—magic pulled too fast and hard, ill in my chest and stomach—but I did not let go. I quickened my casting and balled it in my hands rather than the wand, forcing the spell into being before fear could stop me. It burned.

The spirit sensed it.

It paused and faced me, indignant, using the essence it had pulled from them all to make an ethereal barrier in a desperate reflex.

But by then, it was already too late for me to pull back.

In that second of panic, the Chromatic Orb swelled too large in my grasp. Too unstable. For a terrifying instant, I was back in my bedchamber.

Back then.

The first time.

The unstable orb in my palm.

The screaming of the matron.

Even as it flew, my hands shook and fought to condense it mid-flight.

Don’t.

Don’t hit them!

My vision faded to white. Nothing but white.

Impact.

A sound like the material plane shattering inward.

Starburst behind my eyes.

When my vision returned, the chamber was silent.

The wizard’s spirit was gone.

No echo of his rasp. No tatters or remains. Just absence where malice once stood.

They were all staring at me. Awe, fear, shock.

My hands flew to my face.

The mask was still there.

So why did I feel so strangely exposed?

They told me.

They told me the spell that had vanquished the creature—tearing past its barrier as if it had been nothing at all—hadn’t looked like it was casted from my hands. That the thunder in my palms returned to me and flared outward from the mask itself, as if the brass plate had breathed radiant light into the chamber.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I could only breathe out.

“Ohh.”

I was led by hand out of that chamber.

Back to the Forge of Spells.

———

While the others conferred with the rest of our allies and settled into a short and uneasy rest, I stayed up. Far too alert. I let my thoughts pull me backward, to the first night I ever wore it.

The second town was still burning when I had fled.

They had been such kind people. Nothing too odd or curious. They were just living their life. Asking the questions anyone else would. What would I like to eat. How many days lodging. May we offer a hand.

Some didn’t even have to speak. Perhaps a wave of acknowledgement. Maybe even passing glances and nods from across the street.

All to my bare face. Looking into my eyes.

And every one of them paid for it.

The Messengers’ casters and assassins came as I slept. They were efficient. Indiscriminate. Men, women, even children—anyone who had ever seen my scars was forever silenced, as if memory itself were the crime. I ran until my lungs tore and my legs gave out, until the smoke thinned and the screams finally fell behind me.

That night, I made camp alone.

I fed the fire everything they had made me wear.

The messianic vestments went first—the cloth still stiff with ceremony and perfumed reverence. Then the tanzanite necklace Temenos had placed around my throat with salacious hands, its perfect teardrop gem catching the firelight like a false promise. After that, the ceremonial sleeves—gold and brass jewelry I had once planned to sell for coin, but now feared would only buy someone else’s death.

I watched it all burn.

I turned away sobbing, the sound breaking out of me in ugly, animalistic gasps. I let them painfully tear the scar on my lips as I could not hold back anymore. I wanted it gone. All of it. Every symbol. Every expectation. Every hand that had ever tried to shape me into something holy and moldable.

Then the fire popped.

I looked back.

The tanzanite had shattered—its perfect cut ruined into a jagged, uneven stone that still miraculously flared with a soft magic. The fire itself burned white-hot now, far brighter than it had any right to be. The gold and brass had melted together, flowing inward, forming a dome in the heart of the flames.

It was smooth. In the most uncanny way.

Then a pattern flowed onto it as if drawn by an invisible quill.

Two closed eyes were etched deep onto the perfect dome, dark against the glowing metal, serene—as if in prayer. There was no mouth. No nose. Beneath the eyes, faint spirals scored the surface, red-dark and familiar.

The same shape as the burns on my cheekbones.

Something in me went still.

I don’t remember deciding to move. I only remember reaching into the fire.

The flame did not sear my skin.

The metal was cool when I touched it.

That was the first time I heard the voice.

Not aloud. Not inside my head the way thoughts are. It felt like liquid gold poured gently through me, warm and certain.

Wear it.

So I did.

The moment it touched my face, the material plane returned to me. Not dimmed. Not muffled. I could see as clearly as if it was my face—despite there being no holes to see through, no space to breathe. My breath came easily. My vision held. The mask did not sit on me.

It belonged.

I slept that night for the first time since the massacres.

And in the present of this entry, after everything—after radiant light and shattered spirits and companions staring at me in stunned silence—I found myself wondering if the mask’s birth was the moment this so-called Rilmani came into being. If the simple act of learning the word from the Spectator awakened some form of connection.

Or if it had always been there.

Waiting for me to finally break away from the world that made me.