Session 7 Summary

The party leaves the Cube behind, ice pillar catching the last light through the trees, and turns south toward the Mourning Marsh. Grendel drifts to the back of the group almost immediately, quiet in a way that doesn't sit right with anyone.

Torbin notices first — the same instinct that's kept him alive in unfamiliar woods his whole life — and falls back to ride beside him. When he mentions the word "lonely," something in Grendel flinches, and he snaps back a little too fast that he's not lonely, he's just protecting the rear. Torbin lets it go. He doesn't stop riding next to him, either.

Myra, watching from the front without turning around, notices too — she always notices — but says nothing. She's thinking about her sister, about the strange comfort of being the reliable one, the steady one, and how much of that steadiness has always been a kind of armor.

The marsh announces itself long before they reach it. The trees start losing their leaves the closer they get, the light dims in a way that has nothing to do with the hour, and eventually they can see it properly — a black, roiling cloud sitting permanently over the treeline like the region has been cut off from the rest of the world. Aku confirms, simply, that this is the Mourning Marsh. He promises the story for the campfire. Myra doesn't love that answer. Nobody does.

They find a ruined, roofless building at the marsh's edge — traditionally where the wolf tribe leaves offerings for The Knight that protects these woods, offerings that vanish by morning without fail. It's outside the treeline proper, which makes it feel almost safe. The party sets up camp there, deciding to leave the wolves behind rather than risk them further in — Loudy is already dragging his paws just from proximity to the marsh, and nobody wants to find out why.

Firewood duty splits the group. Torbin and Myra head into the damp treeline together, catching glimpses of things that don't quite make sense — a flickering blue light deep in the marsh that vanishes the instant Torbin looks straight at it, a flash of red neither of them can place, a lone deer Torbin lines up and then, remembering Aku's warning about provoking something, lets go.

Back at camp, Grendel and Emathion rig up the tarp over the broken roof — a practical job that Grendel, predictably, can't resist over-decorating with ribbon and embroidery, drawing gentle mockery about wedding dresses and "promise garb," the wolf tribe's word for marriage.

That night, watch assignments settle — Aku first, then Torbin, then Myra, with Grendel reluctantly agreeing to share Myra's shift rather than skip it entirely, unwilling to look like the one person unwilling to pull his weight. Before anyone sleeps, Aku finally tells the story he's been promising.

Long ago, he says, Morganna was a creature of shadow and ambition, favored by a sorcerer named Avaritia — a man so consumed by greed that he eventually claimed an artifact of true invincibility, unable to be harmed, hurt, or made to bleed. Avaritia commanded a host of Knights, the same kind of ancient statue the party has already found at the sacred spring, bound entirely to his will — until Morgana found a way to free them.

When Avaritia finally turned on her, wanting to consume everything she had left, something happened that even legend can't fully explain. Morganna ended his invincibility. She took the artifact from him. And she gave her life to stop him for good — the sacrifice, Aku suspects, that the town itself was later built to honor.

One of the Knights, some say, never left. It stayed behind in this very marsh when the others vanished — which is why the sacred lake with its statues feels connected to this place in a way nobody's been able to explain until now.

Aku mentions that his father once used the term "LegendKeepers" — tying straight back to the observatory and the still-missing Clarisse's notes. He adds that Clarisse's mother had ties to his tribe too, once upon a time, close enough that the tribe elders remembers her by name.

...
...
...

The fireside conversation turns personal after that as Aku asks the group about their history — Torbin's noble upbringing and his sister Charlotte, mayor of Morganna; Myra's flight from the Sunfire Expanse, everything she's ever done in service of her sister's happiness; Aku's pursuit of knowledge in his father's memory, admitting he hasn't actually traveled far at all. Grendel, when it's his turn, casually deflects the conversation away from him. Throughout all of it, the flickers keep coming — red, then white smoke, then blue, then something shaped uncomfortably like one of them, gone the instant anyone turns to look.

Aku, when finally cornered about it, only offers that the forest "shows you things" — that wolves who've challenged the Knight here have come back howling, or unconscious, though never dead. His own father visited once and came back saying nothing at all. Before turning in, the party leaves careful offerings for the knight— rations, neatly wrapped, one suspiciously perfumed — just in case.

...
...
...

Torbin's watch brings the Knight itself out of the dark — a towering, armored shape gliding through the marsh, carrying an unconscious Hyenakin over one shoulder. It reaches the treeline, throws the body down without ceremony, seems to register the glow of Torbin's lantern, and simply turns and floats away. It doesn't seem to care who's watching.

Later, when the fire runs low, Myra volunteers to gather more wood alone — really, to go check on that Hyenakin. She finds it still unconscious. Something in her argues to finish it before it can wake and finish them first; something else argues she's supposed to be better than that now.

In the end, old instinct wins — she kills it cleanly, crushes the skull so it can't rise again, and returns to camp to face Grendel's unusually sharp questioning. When she finally admits what she did, he agrees with her without hesitation, and for a moment neither of them quite knows what to do with the strange, fragile agreement sitting between them.

It's in that same quiet that Myra finally gets Grendel to talk — really talk. He admits his troupe, Kikita and Lauren, vanished without a trace before he ever came to Morganna, and that he has no leads left to chase.

Myra, struggling visibly to get the words out, tells him she thought they were becoming friends. The moment the word leaves her mouth, a flash of green darts through the trees behind her — the same phenomenon as before, but green this time, and Grendel knows immediately whose color it is. He wants to chase it, but he doesn't.

...
...
...

By morning, roped together for safety, the party pushes into the marsh proper — following an arcane pull Torbin and Emathion both sense, and the simple logic that the deepest decay must lead toward the center. A swarm of bats bursts from the underbrush without warning, and in the scramble that follows, a fog rolls in from nowhere. It doesn't lift. One by one, the rope goes slack, and the party finds themselves alone...

Torbin Alone

The rope went slack in Torbin's hand, and for one long moment there was nothing ahead of him but white. Then a shape resolved out of the fog — and it was Charlotte, exactly as he'd last seen her, tired in that particular way she always was after a long council session, though something in her eyes here was sharper, sadder than he remembered.

Ghostly Charlotte
"Hey, little brother."

Torbin
"Wait — you're not supposed to be here. This is a swamp."

Ghostly Charlotte
"We could've been anywhere... anywhere but this forsaken town."

Torbin
"I can imagine it's a lot of work, being town master.
Every week another problem. I don't even feel connected to this town anymore."

Ghostly Charlotte
"I miss my family in Stormglen... I wanted to study magic.
I wanted to go to Sevenfold. But I'm stuck here. Babysitting you."

Torbin felt the words settle into him, heavier than he expected.
He'd always assumed she was fine. He'd never once checked.

Torbin
"I think you're right...
Maybe I should be taking more of the weight onto my own shoulders."

Ghostly Charlotte
"Why would you say that?"

Torbin
"Because I know I've been running from it. Heading into the woods,
cuddling animals, playing forester, while you carry the town alone."

Ghostly Charlotte
"Why don't you, then? I could have used your help."

Torbin
"You're just better at that stuff than I am."

Ghostly Charlotte
"I think you underestimate yourself."

Torbin
"Look... I'm more like an axe to a piece of wood. You're a scalpel."

Ghostly Charlotte
"What are you trying to say?"

Torbin
"I don't think whatever I'd bring to that table would actually help those people. I'd think too pragmatically. That's why I needed you."

Ghostly Charlotte
"But have you ever thought about what I wanted?"

Torbin
"No..."

Ghostly Charlotte
"You should have."

Torbin
"I will, If I get out of this place."

Ghostly Charlotte
"You think you will? Or are you going to?"

Torbin
"If I don't make it back — I suppose I could haunt your office.
Though that would just be one more problem added to the pile."

Charlotte studied him for a long moment, something unreadable in her face.

Ghostly Charlotte
"Is that how you really feel?"

Torbin
"Yes."

Ghostly Charlotte
"Then I'll grant you the gift to see."

The fog dropped away from him entirely, all at once, and Torbin found he could see the whole marsh spread out before him — Myra breaking free somewhere to his left, Grendel bolting in a blind panic through the mist, and Aku, frozen in place, staring at something none of the rest of them could see.

Myra Alone

The fog swallowed her whole, and for a moment there was nothing — no rope, no voices, just white pressing in from every side. She called out. Nothing answered but the fog itself. Then, faint and ahead of her, she heard Emathion's voice calling her name. She moved toward it — and walked straight into someone. Dark blue clothes. A shield slung across the back. Dark hair, dark skin. When the figure turned around, Myra's breath caught.

It was her sister.

Ghostly Linene:
"There you are, Come on. Let's go."

Myra:
"What are you doing here?"

Ghostly Linene:
"Getting you out of here."

Myra:
"Why?"

Ghostly Linene:
"Because I'm your older sister. I'm the one protecting you.

Myra:
Why aren't you home? Why are you here?"

Ghostly Linene:
"Why do you always have to make things so difficult for me?
"We could have had a good life in Stormglen."

Myra:
"That's not fair!"

Ghostly Linene:
"I gave up a job as a knight in that city. I begged!
I disgraced myself in front of a noble — for you!
And you never once acknowledged it.
You just left me to mourn the life we could have had!"

Myra
"I have a good life,"

Ghostly Linene:
"Do you think I'm happy?"
"Have you ever once asked me that?"

Myra
"I didn't want to hurt you by asking."

Ghostly Linene:
"Keep telling yourself that."

The words landed exactly where they were meant to. Myra had spent years believing everything she'd done — the running, the fighting, the compromises she didn't talk about — had been for Linene's sake, so her sister could have the quiet, safe life she'd never gotten to have herself. And now here was that same sister, telling her none of it had mattered, that Myra had left her behind to suffer for it. It cut in exactly the place Myra had always been afraid to look too closely.

But something about the shape of it was wrong. She went quiet, searching Linene's face, and then said two words only her sister would understand — a game from when they were children, a rhyme they'd used to slip past their parents, to check that it was really each other and not some clever mimicry.

"Pear tree."

The old answer should have come back without thinking — no, it was an apple tree, said with that particular exasperated fondness. Instead, the reflection in front of her only echoed the words back flat and wrong, missing the rhythm of it entirely, as if it understood the sounds but not what they meant. That was enough. Myra reached out to grab her by the shoulder — and for one terrible instant, her hand passed clean through, before the shape of her sister solidified again beneath her fingers. She didn't let go. She pushed, hard, and shoved the vision backward into the black water at the edge of the path.

There was no splash. It simply wasn't there anymore.

Shaken, she kept moving — and misjudged her footing in the dark, walking straight into the trunk of a dead tree instead of a person, and suddenly... Linene. Still there. Still watching.

In all the confusion, Torbin had found her in the fog, as he had faced a reflection of his own sister in the fog, he told her that "It is a test! Speak to it from the heart!"

Myra didn't run this time. Some part of her — the part that had never quite believed she deserved to be forgiven for the things she'd done to survive — needed to see this through.

She let the vision of Linene keep speaking, let it needle at her, ask why it had taken someone else, Grendel, Torbin and Emathion pointing out how distant and closed-off she'd been, before she was willing to admit any of it to herself.

Myra:
"Because I'm scared! That... That....!"
"That if I admit it, then the guilt might eat me!"

The vision studied her for a long moment.

"Then I'll give you the gift to see."

The fog peeled away from her eyes all at once. Myra braced herself for the guilt to come crashing down the way it always threatened to — and instead felt something unfamiliar settle into its place. Relief. Light and strange and almost embarrassing, like she'd been carrying something so long she'd forgotten it had weight at all.

She blinked against the sudden clarity, got her bearings, and turned — and that was when she saw Grendel, closest to her in the thinning mist, already caught in something far worse than hers had been...

Emathion Alone

Emathion walked slowly, trying to feel his way through the fog rather than blunder into anything foolish — and then a voice spoke from directly behind him, low and amused, using his own cadence back at him.

Emathion?
"Can't figure it out this time?"

He turned, and he was looking at himself. Same claws, same posture, a faint, insufferably smug edge to the expression that Emathion was fairly sure he did not wear himself.

Emathion?
"Did you expect someone else?"

Emathion
"No. But I expected only one of me."

Emathion?
"Seems like you need two minds.
You're not going to solve this alone.
Then again — who needs anyone else, right?"

Emathion
"I'd appreciate a little more explanation before you talk in riddles."

Emathion?
"Do you need the explanation, or do you just want the answer written down
so you can read it aloud?"

Emathion
"Either works."

Emathion?
"So it's not really about the thrill of figuring it out together. Not about working with the others. You just want the answer. Let's be honest — the rest of them are useless. Even counting Aku."

Emathion
"I disagree. They have their uses."

Emathion?
"Exactly. Uses. Not people. Just tools to be used."

Emathion
"No," Emathion said, sharper now. "I don't agree with that. If anything, I'm growing more attached to them by the day."

Emathion?
"Are you? Grendel's whining. Myra's coldness. Torbin's sarcasm."

Emathion
"They know things we don't. That's the whole of their value. We already established that. Then why am I doubting myself right now?"

Emathion?
"I don't know. You tell me."

Emathion
"If there are two of us, why are you the one asking all the questions?
Why am I the only one of us questioning the other's right to exist?"

Emathion?
"Good question. Maybe the answer's already in your head."

Emathion
"If you won't share it, then it seems you're the useless tool here."

Emathion?
"So you're admitting you're the useless one — since your plan to hold each other's hands got you separated within minutes. The rope was useless too. And let's be honest, you don't even really care about any of this — the observatory, the LegendKeepers, any of it — for its own sake. Who cares about Grendel's missing friends? About Myra's sister? You didn't bother to find out. You never asked."

Emathion
"That was outside of—"

Emathion started, and stopped, unsettled by how much the thing seemed to know.

Emathion?
"How do you know about that?"

Torbin found them like that — two identical figures, facing off, and no way on earth to tell which one was real. He stepped between them carefully, addressing the one he thought he recognized.

Emathion?
"One of your tools is standing in front of you."

Emathion
"I don't think my friends are tools. I think they have uses — and being able to make use of someone doesn't mean that's the only thing that defines them."

Torbin, standing helplessly between the two nearly identical faces, found himself nodding along despite everything. "One use doesn't define the whole of a person. I'd agree with that."

Emathion?
"So... have you been treating them as tools — or as people?"

Emathion
"I don't see the issue."

Emathion?
"Then I'll make you see it."

The mouth on the other Emathion opened, and it kept opening — too wide, wrong in every way a mouth could be wrong — but it did not strike Emathion, it struck Torbin. The strike landed hard, deep, before he'd even understood a fight had started.

Grendel Alone

The fog took him without warning, and Grendel ran away from the silence, because silence was worse. He heard nothing but his own breathing and the wet give of the ground beneath his boots. Then, arguing. Voices, close by, familiar in a way that made his chest tighten before he even placed them.

He pushed toward the sound and stumbled into a small clearing where two shapes stood waiting — and for one impossible, weightless second, his whole body forgot how to be afraid.

Grendel:
"Ki... Kikita...? Lauren?"

They looked exactly as he remembered them. The same easy smiles, the same familiar bickering already halfway through some old joke about someone's curves. For a moment it was so them that Grendel laughed — a broken, disbelieving sound — and took a step closer.

Grendel
"I found you!"
"I've been looking everywhere.
Where did you go? What happened?"

Kikita tilted her head, almost fond.

Kikita/Lauren
"We didn't go anywhere, Grendel. You left us behind."

Grendel
"No — no, you disappeared.
Right in front of me.
Gone, like smoke. I've been searching for you ever since!"

Kikita/Lauren
"Is that what you tell yourself at night?"
So you don't have to actually deal with us being gone.
So you don't have to bring it up to anyone. Pretend we never existed at all."

Grendel
"That's not — that's not how it went."
"Why are you saying this to me?"

Kikita/Lauren
"Why didn't you tell the lumberjack about us?"
"About the three of us. About what we shared.
What we felt for each other."

Grendel
"I didn't know if I'd ever find you again,"
"I didn't want it to hurt worse than it already did."

Kikita/Lauren
"We didn't leave you. You left us."

Grendel
"No. No, that's not—"

Kikita/Lauren
"Then why do you let everyone believe you'll sleep with anyone,
anything, no matter who — when really you just miss us?"

Grendel
"I... I... Because we always were saying we liked a little extra fun in our bed—"

Kikita/Lauren
"Why do you stuff us into the back of your head, then? Pretend we don't exist?"

Grendel
"I didn't want to talk about you and get hurt all over again. You were gone, and I—"

Kikita/Lauren
"And you don't think ignoring us hurts us?"

"I'm not ignoring you. I told Myra about you.

Kikita/Lauren
"Once, and only because she cornered you into it. Do you honestly think she trusts you?"

"She called me her friend."

Kikita/Lauren
"She was placating you. Let's be honest with each other, at least."

Grendel
No... No! She meant it. She wanted to protect me."

Kikita/Lauren
"Keep telling yourself that, and we'll mourn what's left of your love for us."

Grendel:
"Mourn — you don't love me anymore?"

Kikita/Lauren
"How could we, when you left us behind and pretended we never existed at all?"

Grendel was shaking now, tears slipping free before he could stop them, some part of him screaming that this wasn't right even as another part — the part that had spent every night since they vanished replaying every version of what he could have done differently — drank in every word like it was owed to him.

Kikita
"You know, Lauren. I think there's something we could do."

Lauren:
"Oh, I always love your ideas."

Kikita
"I found a rope!"

Grendel's blood went cold.

Lauren:
"We could finish it properly. Together.
And then, then we could finally mourn you the way we're supposed to."

He didn't understand at first, and then he understood completely, and something in his chest simply gave way. He started to cry — not the quiet kind, the kind that comes apart at the seams, the kind he'd been holding back since the moment they vanished.

That was when Myra found him.

She'd broken free of her own fog only moments before, and she crossed the space between them fast, catching his shoulder, telling him it wasn't his fault, telling him to keep looking, that they weren't real —

But it was already too late. One of the figures — Kikita, or the thing wearing her face — opened her mouth, and it kept opening, far past where a mouth should stop, rows of teeth where a smile used to be. She lunged.

Myra threw herself between them...

Aku Alone

Aku had fallen still the moment the fog thickened, what waited for him there wore his father's face. It didn't shout, didn't need to; it simply asked why Aku hadn't been faster, hadn't been there in time, and let the guilt he'd carried since that day do the rest of the work on its own.

Aku knew, somewhere underneath the cold settling into his chest, that this wasn't real — his father would never have looked at him like this, would never have laid the blame so plainly at his feet — but knowing it didn't make the ache in his ribs any smaller.

He didn't run from it the way the others had run from theirs. He stood there and let it speak, jaw tight, refusing to give it the reaction it seemed to be fishing for.

When Torbin found him, blade lowered but eyes still fixed on something only Aku could see, he said only that it wasn't his father — that whatever it was, it was borrowing a shape it had no right to. Aku didn't answer right away.

He was still staring at the space where the apperation of his father had stood, shouting the words "I did leave him! I thought I knew better!"

Torbin finds him mid-confrontation and, gently, tells him what he already half-believes: that his father would be proud, and that guilt over what you couldn't control isn't failure. That his father would be proud of the man he was becoming.

But this nightmare was far from over....