The Titan of Twilight

Epilogue

I soar upon the ashen winds of dusk, a restless shadow in the eternal eventide, a hunter always chasing and never catching. The sun lies just below the horizon, sinking as fast as I fly, forever retreating, forever calling me onward. Below passes Toril, the world the giants should have ruled: swarthy deserts behind gloom-shrouded mountains that loom over twinkling cities standing upon the shores of glimmering seas strewn with islands as numerous as stars, an endless procession of savage lands and forbidden realms and lost kingdoms, a vast, exquisite reward for a crime as dark as the night.

Now and again, I see the ones who did this to me, standing upon the parapets of their brittle castle, holding my nephew in their arms and teaching him to be a frail human king. Often I swoop low over their heads and cry a greeting, shaking the loose stones from the crenelations and blasting the guards from their feet. This frightens the groveling humans, I know, but never Kaedlaw. He has begun to walk now, and in the summers he often sneaks onto the keep roof and waits for my umbral wings to appear in the dusk sky. When I screech, he claps his hands with glee and chortles madly until his father the firbolg rushes out to gather him up.

There was no reason to save Tavis, I know. Do not ask me to explain. Perhaps I was repaying him; he struck with compassion when he could have slain, and I suppose that creates a bond of sorts.

“If that’s what you believe, then it’s true…”

Or perhaps it was Sky Cleaver’s doing; Tavis was the One Wielder, after all, and I was as bound by Annam’s will then as I am now.

“… to be free? Stop crying, now you are…”

It was my own mortality, then. I didn’t know this before I left the Vale-how could I? — but there is a bond between all things that die, and in the firbolg’s passing I saw reflections of my own.

“… sound like a sop. Talk like that…”

Say what you will, whoever you are! I have learned better than to listen to your voices.