The Shattered Land

INTERLUDE

For all that the world seemed to be defined by this frigid silence, she somehow felt abstracted from this chill. It was the foundation of reality.

An eon passed before she realized that there was more. That she could feel a hard surface beneath her. She remembered Lei. Her friends. Her life.

She opened her eyes.

After an eternity of shadow, the light was blinding. Slowly her eyes adjusted. A magic lantern hung directly above her, mirrors within the casing shaping the light of the cold fire into a focused beam, shining directly down onto her. She tried to sit up, but her muscles wouldn’t respond.

“You knew this time would come.” A man’s voice. Familiar. This was all familiar. Calling on every ounce of strength that she possessed, she managed to turn her eyes toward the source of the sound.

It was her father. Talin d’Cannith. Suddenly it all came back to her. The vision, almost a year ago now, when she had collapsed in the tunnels beneath Sharn. She was back in that same chamber, stretched out on a stone slab. There were other slabs around her, the shapes upon them hidden in the shadows.

“After all this, all we’ve put her through, you’re just going to give up on her?” It was her mother. Aleisa. Lei couldn’t see her, but she could never forget the voice.

“It’s nature, nothing more.” Her father’s voice was calm. “We did all that we could for her, but in the end, it’s a weakness of the medium.” He bent over another slab, and when he stood he had something in his hand. A head? A warforged head? “This. This is how you defeat death.”

Her mother stepped into view and struck the head from her father’s hand. It fell to the floor with a clang, “Damn you! This is our daughter, not just another experiment.”

Talin retrieved the fallen head and returned it to the slab. “Everything is an experiment, my love. You know that as well as I do. Some are just more … complicated than others.”

“This isn’t over.”

Aleisa turned and walked over to Lei, gazing down on her. She was young, a woman Lei barely remembered from her childhood. It was a face Lei had almost forgotten, one that had been hidden by age and stress, but now, it was like looking into a mirror.

“It seems to be. You have to be prepared for the loss. I told you that at the beginning.”

“No. She has the tools. She just doesn’t know how to use them.”

Now her father was looking down on her as well. She tried to speak, to question, but her jaws were fixed as stone.

“It is a shame,” he said. “Such promise, such potential. So much time spent teaching, but all that is flesh must perish. We knew that from the start.”

“Not yet.” Aleisa laid a hand on the center of Lei’s chest. Her touch was warm, and it seemed to drive away the pain and cold. “This is your battle, Lei. You have all the weapons you need, but you need the will to fight, and I can’t give you that.”

Talin watched, and she could read nothing in his eyes. “There’s no more time.”

“I know.” Aleisa’s voice was gentle, but resigned. “It’s all up to you now, my daughter.” Fingertips drifted across Lei’s cheek. The light was fading, and her mother’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Just remember that whatever happens-whatever happened-I always loved you.”

The room faded away, leaving her in shadow, but Lei could feel something nearby: a bar of white light, even though that light was hidden by the darkness that surrounded her.

The cold began to seep back through her limbs, but now there was hope. Clinging to the sound of her mother’s voice, Lei found the strength to raise her arm, to force her hand through the shadow.

She reached out for the light.