Tears and Memories

[DirectorBright]

---

Old friend...
I hope that you two are happy.
I wish I could have done more for you.
I wish that you could have grown old together.
Now all I can do is pray her spirit survived, and found you in the afterlife.
I had moved on with my life, so many decades beyond.

Yet there is one more thing I have to do, it seems, all these years later.
You are reunited with her, or so I pray with all my heart and soul...
It is only right your rings be reunited as well.
Even if you are so very far away...

---

It has been many years since the fall of the Queen of Fortune, Rio Emeraldi.
It has been even longer still, since the fall of King Marfons.
Most have forgotten their names, by now, decades later. Entire generations have passed on, nations moved, borders shuffled. Some remember. Family, or those who endured long enough to recall that era.

The world forgot the name and face of the necromancer who killed him, the last of his legacy snuffed out in the flames of Mestra's final stand.

A statue gathers moss beneath the tree that they confessed under, and though it bears their story, it's hard to say how many have read it.

His oldest friend never forgot.
He trained both from the age of fourteen, forged their armor and weaponry.
He descended into Necromancy to try to protect them- and because of them, he gave it up.
They were the cause of his redemption, and pushed he and his wife-to-be together.
He crafted for them the rings of their marriage, and the sword Ascension, upon which they swore their vows.
He watched him die, and watched her wither on alone.

When they were gone, he grieved, and engraved their tale upon the stone, that something of them would endure.
Feeling like his own story had ended, too.

I can still hear the way that he cried for the ones he was missing
I can still hear the way that he cried for the ones he had lost

---

It aches.

I thought I had moved on, but more and more, I dream- and I see you. Both of you. I hold you again.
I wake up, and you are gone.

Fifty five years have passed since we met, and I still remember you as you were, then. The bright eyed children, the little Arcadian knight-to-be, the southern-sea prince for whom she was his world, who sought only to protect those he cherished. I remember the day that he asked me to remove my mask, the day I gave her armor and sword, the day each of you outgrew me.

I remember everything.

Neither of you deserved the ending that was forced upon you. Neither of you deserved to be so broken by the world, nor for the trials of your rule. You were the best people I had ever known, and the world tore you down and broke you to pieces bit by bit for no reason other than that you dared to live and be happy. Neither of you were respected at the end, with Mars defiled by the necromancer's hand, and Rio- the sage's death magic.

If anyone deserved a good ending, it was you.
It should have been you, who lived to this age, surrounded by happy children... not me.

... Ala carries your ring, Rio.
Yet Marfons... his remains lost.

Deathwind had it, and then it was never seen again, after their master died the next year...

I did not forge such a thing for it to meet an end like that.
If it is that she survived the Sage in spirit, if not in soul, then... it is wrong the rings be apart, whilst they are together.
If she-

...

If...

... then... at least- some part of you, can be together again...

Donning his armor, the Captain-General of Goldlight holds in his hand the maps used to create those rings- the circuitry that bound the heart and soul of Rio and Marfons Emeraldi. He sets out towards the southern islands, where Korcula stands with Arcanum now atop. The place Deathwind once sat.

The place Marfons died.

Searching for the other half of that matched set he made, long ago.

Time moves on.
Nations move on.
People move on.

He saw them in the rivers
He felt them in the rain
In dreams, he heard them whisper
The truth that is his pain

Grey hasn't forgotten a thing.
Never will.

---

Attendees: Grey Aundeoth, kin or friends of the Emeraldi's

Risk: DM Discretion
Rewards: The Prince's Knight [RING], DM Discretion

Themes: Recovering what was lost, righting a wrong, echoes of one's past

DM: This could be you! (contact jackbright_ on discord)