SyetYarkayIV

Syet is not exactly a name so much as it is a label or possibly a title - it is what the Yarkay family calls ones like her, because for as rare as Aasimar are said to be, the Yarkay line has been especially blessed.

In point of fact she is not the fourth Syet to be born into their line but rather the fifth. The original IV fell into darkness, and thus the title was revoked and passed on to the next Aasimar to be born.

The birth of an Aasimar was always something special, a wonderful and luck-filled event to be celebrated, but the horror that the Fallen had wrought was still enough to cause the current Syet - who was an albino like the previous one - to be viewed with suspicion and distrust, even 50 years after the Fallen was finally defeated.

Despite the constant fear surrounding her while growing up, Syet relied on the counsel of her deva guide, Tadriel, through her dreams to remind her that she had been born for a purpose, and that purpose did not require her to be popular, or happy -merely effective at rooting out Darkness and strong enough to destroy it where she found it. Her dreams were not conversations or instructions, merely impressions and visions. But they often came with a sense of responsibility and a hint of guilt, and while Syet had no way of confirming it, she often wondered if Tadriel had been the guide of the Fallen as well. She took solace in the idea that perhaps she was not the only one with something to prove, and that concept of solidarity, however nebulous, got her through the worst of the mistrust and doubt. As time passed and she survived the gauntlet of her childhood, and grew into her height, her family finally decided that if she hadn’t turned evil yet then there was probably some use they could make of her. They outfitted her as was her due as a scion of the Yarkay line, and once she completed her training, they bestowed the rank of knighthood upon her.

(Lady knights are usually given the title of Dame but I rather like the more gender neutral Ser, so she is Ser Yarkay for short with her full title being Ser Syet Yarkay IV. There is another name she goes by, a nickname one of her tutors gave her, and it’s not exactly a nice name but it’s something that’s just hers, and as such she does not give it out lightly. Should her companions earn her trust, she’ll reveal that Syet isn’t really her name, and they can call her Maroz.)

She has managed to earn respect in her time serving as a paladin of Tyr, and when the news came down about the rediscovery of Arkkadon, Syet was the natural choice to send on an expedition.

After all, she would either survive and defy their expectations as she always has, or die and cease to be a problem.

Syet has been searching, ever since she can remember, for evidence that the Fallen was forcibly turned to evil. Her status in her family’s court has made this difficult - while she is unquestionably an heir and has earned the respect of her rank, there are always those who whisper against her - and she suspects that her current assignment to travel to Arkkadon was someone’s attempt to get her out of the way. She is unhappy that she has to leave without a resolution to her personal quest, but Tadriel has been relentless in pushing this trip as a part of her purpose - here at last is the opportunity to fight the Darkness in its purest form, and such an opportunity is one she cannot allow to pass.

———-

She could never remember what had originally drawn her to the Temple of Tyr – she’d been all of six at the time, so it might have been something as simple as noticing that it was avoided by most of the people she wished to avoid, and was thus a safe place to hide, or perhaps Tadriel had been influencing her even then. She had no way of knowing for sure, but it became a refuge for her to escape the whispers, and the kind of cruelty that only children can wield so devastatingly well. Sheltered under the great warhammer and scales that was Tyr’s symbol, she could simply be, without having to worry about what she might become.

The Judges, solemnly going about their duties in the temple, did not question her presence – and best of all, they did not ever seem to report it, either – and so for a few hours every day she would disappear from the court and enjoy her stolen freedom. Sometimes she would bring a toy to play with, but most of the time she was content to sit and watch the goings-on and enjoy the beauty of the sunshine coming through the great crystalline dome without having to risk direct exposure to it.

For a month, it was peaceful. And then one day, when she was staring up at the scales with the mischievous intention of climbing up onto one of the plates, everything changed.

The radiant, white-winged being in her vision spoke, for the first and only time in their long acquaintance, in a voice as clear and crisp as the autumn winds, I am Tadriel, and then with a somewhat warmer hint of amusement she added, There are better ways for you to tip the scales of Justice in your favor. Never fear the Darkness, for I will always help you find your path.

With that cryptic statement, Tadriel had gently enfolded her in her enormous wings, and then vanished in a blaze of light so bright Syet had had to close her watering eyes. She had been very confused to open them and find herself on the ground in front of the altar, surrounded by a group of concerned Judges, who had all been arguing amongst themselves about whether or not her parents should be informed of the incident. When they noticed she was awake, they gently questioned her about what had happened, and she told them about her vision.

This set off another round of arguments, albeit a great deal more enthusiastic than the previous round. From their excited chatter, she gathered that Tadriel was an angel, or deva, who was a denizen of the celestial realm, where deities such as Tyr resided, and they often acted in service of a chosen deity.

Everyone at court always spoke of the Fallen – always, always within her hearing and with careful, fearful sidelong looks in her direction – but so few were willing to talk about what the Fallen had been before he fell. No one told stories anymore of the first three Syets, who had all lived and died centuries ago, only the Fallen fourth. In the Judges, she finally found a willing source of information, although she was a little unsettled at the glee with which they now seemed to view her. In her parents’ court, she was an eerie echo of the Fallen, a potential liability, and thus held little value other than her status as firstborn, but to the excited Judges, she was something called an Aasimar, descended from celestial beings and destined for great things. Devas chose to act as guides to the Aasimar that were born on earth, and it was one of Tyr’s own messengers who had chosen her. This, then, was the cause of all the excitement.

After ascertaining that she had not been injured while in the throes of her vision, one of the Judges, a kind man named Strashitsya, accompanied her back home, to inform her parents that she’d been chosen by one of Tyr’s devas, and that the Temple would like to formally request permission to take over her tutelage. This had been greeted with some derision – after all, a guide had not been enough to prevent the Fallen – but Strashitsya argued that the Temple had not been given a chance to intercede in the matter of the previous Syet – had, in fact, been told in no uncertain terms to mind their own business and only begrudgingly allowed to handle the matter after it was too late to change things – and that, perhaps, if the current Syet was allowed to grow within the shelter of their tutelage and guidance, a different outcome might result.

Syet was the only one who heard him mutter that in service to Tyr, justice might finally be served. She remembered Tadriel’s words about tipping the scales of Justice, with a capital J, and wondered if perhaps this was what she had meant.

———

Maroz knew something was up as soon as she received the summons. It wasn’t often her parents made so formal of a demand for her presence – or, for that matter, demanded her presence in the first place, as it was easier and less disruptive to their court if she stayed away – but it seems they’d decided to err on the side of caution and make sure that regardless, this was a summons she could not ignore. The young runner that had been dispatched to her current location waited while she read the missive, fidgeting with impatience and, she could tell, nervousness at being so close to her. She bit back a sigh; it sometimes seemed that no matter what she did, no matter how many lives or villages she saved, there was nothing she could do to overturn all the rumors that had followed her around since birth. Whispers of the Fallen that no amount of good deeds on her part could ever silence.

When she was younger, her parents had tried various things – wigs, dyes, magic – to change her hair, so as to offset the most striking and unsettling aspect of her appearance, but she’d never been able to abide the sensation of a wig, even the strongest dye never lasted beyond the first washing, and no glamour spell would hold for more than an hour, if that. It was as though her heritage was so thoroughly stamped onto her that there was little she could do to hide it. Admittedly, there had been a handful of times when her unearthly appearance had worked to her advantage, but she’d had to fight off more than her fair share of people who either wanted to wipe her off of the face of the earth or sell her into slavery for what she was – she would always look strange no matter what she did, and with as fair as her skin was, she burned in even the slightest hint of sunlight, so it was better to just cover herself head to toe and ignore the whispers about the mysterious hooded stranger than go uncovered and have to ignore the same kind of whispers that had followed her from her earliest recollection.

Unnatural. Ghost. Abomination. Freak.

It was with a touch of irony that she reflected that her childhood might have turned anyone evil. So much hard work to make something of herself with so little reward, and no one she could trust – if she hadn’t had the guidance of Tadriel, if she’d been completely alone in the world, she might very well have given in to despair, resentment, anger, and a whole host of other negative emotions that had plagued her over the years. Nebulous though Tadriel’s presence might have been in her life, it had still been enough to firm her resolve not to become what everyone feared, and her innate stubbornness had helped her carry out that resolve to its fullest degree. Once she’d earned her knighthood and traveled beyond the reach of her parents’ court, and seen more of the world, she found that – assassins and slavers aside – the world was, overall, a place worth trying to save. And being one of Tyr’s paladins had proven she was capable of having faith in something other than herself, although her ingrained distrust of pretty much everything mortal remained. It had helped, she thought with some amusement, that Tadriel had essentially vetted the god beforehand, or she’d never have given him the time of day, never mind her service.

Tadriel had been pushing her towards something for a while now – hinting at some great destiny that awaited her, that would take her far from everything she knew. Reading the summons to accompany a ship headed for Arkkadon, Maroz felt certain that destiny had finally found her… as well as an equally unsettling certainty that destiny wasn’t the only reason she was being sent to a place from which no one had yet returned alive. Someone in her parents’ court was behind this. While it was true that as Ser Syet Yarkay IV, paladin of Tyr, she fulfilled many qualifications that would make her an excellent choice for such a journey, there were others that might be better suited – and more expendable – than the firstborn of the ruling house. Maroz refused to believe that her parents had actually advocated for her assignment to such a dangerous journey, but, she thought bitterly, it seems they must not have argued all that strenuously against it, either. After all, she might be the firstborn and thus technically the Yarkay heir, but she was far from being the only heir. She might have suspected one of the oldest of her younger siblings, but the stories of what the Fallen had done to his family had so terrified Maroz’s siblings that they practically fell all over themselves to reassure her they had no intentions of betraying her in such a way.

In any way, really. At all. Ever.

It would be oddly endearing, but then again, she couldn’t be completely sure that none of them would go out of their way to stop someone else from betraying her, especially if they could be reassured that she was being sent rather permanently out of the way. Trust no one, sleep with one eye open and always, always follow the money.

Words to live by, to be sure; even if it resulted in a lonely life, she was still alive to live it.

Maroz gave in to the urge to sigh, and the runner jumped back about a foot. She gave him a long, derisive stare from beneath the shadows of her hood before scrawling her assent on the parchment of the summons, handing it back to the runner and informing him that as her business in this area had been concluded, she would return home as soon as possible. He sketched a brief – very brief, bordering on insulting – bow, before scrambling back up onto his horse and galloping off as fast as its four hooves could take him. She watched him go, muttered a brief prayer to Tyr asking for patience rather than strength, and began the arduous task of removing and packing up her armor. It was a risky move, but the fact remained that she was still a lot faster carrying it rather than wearing it, and she’d need every bit of speed she could get out of her own two feet. Firstborn scion of a wealthy house she might be, but armor, especially plate armor, was expensive, and thus given the choice between plate armor and a horse, she’d gone with the armor.

She could have bought a mount on her own, it was true, but the kind of horse she’d have needed to carry both her and the armor was not only anywhere from four to seven times more expensive than a regular mount, it was also still a flesh and blood creature that could be shot out from underneath her, whereas the armor alone would ostensibly protect her from such shots without the risk of breaking a leg if it fell on top of her. Other knights and paladins of her acquaintance – before they saw her in battle – had expressed their incredulity at how she managed to fight effectively without a proper mount, but Maroz had cited examples of all the times she’d seen good men and women taken out of action by the death of their mounts to want to risk it just for a height advantage, which, at over six and a half feet tall without her boots, she had more than enough of as it was. If her main weapon had been something like a lance or a spear, she might have been willing to concede the point, but a warhammer necessitated getting up close and personal with one’s foes.

Plus, even if she had owned a horse, she’d have had to leave it behind to make the journey by ship to gods-bedamned Arkkadon.