Oct 26, 2026 · 35 min · 9 segments
Deep beneath Secomber’s ruins, a wailing relic and a cursed voice offer Garren the one thing he’s always wanted: proof his forbidden theories were right all along. But every answer has a price, and…
Sheets of rain pelted the canvas tent strung up between two crooked trees in the forest.
A single dry corner remained under the heavy downpour, the tent fabric sagging in each corner and threatening to burst at the seams.
Olivier Vagarin, the bard, stooped over a journal placed on an overturned wooden bucket, fighting every frustration in his head at once.
His unkempt hair and mustache with undyed gray bristles itched at his face and head.
The broken quill nibs stacked carelessly to the side.
The dampened pages prone to tearing as he wrote.
An occasional flex of mud splashing up on the page tested his calm.
But the biggest test of his patience was the composition he was furiously scribbling onto the page.
He viciously struck through another series of notes he had just
penned.
No, no, dammit! It wasn't a coastal third there.
It was a trill.
A sixteenth note, perhaps, yes.
He scribbled a bit more, darkening in the note heads and flicking quickly to draw the stems across the sheet music.
His eyes were completely locked on the page, too busy to notice that his packed mule had stuck its head inside the small tent flap to keep at least one part of its body dry.
A peal of thunder didn't faze him, but instead seemed to punctuate another mistake as he ripped the page free from his broad-paged notebook, fiercely crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder.
The paper landing among a dozen others soaked in the mud.
He flipped his notebook back to what he had already accomplished so far, the intro and verses conjuring a memory into view, but the chorus was still giving him trouble.
To excise it required a feeling he had to recapture and be in the moment.
He thought himself slipping into madness, and there it was again, the biggest frustration, self-doubt.
The great wheel's spokes always turn for those who grow stagnant in self-contempt.
He dotted the staccato notes on the new page, and he wrapped a slimy stick on the side of his bucket to awaken the false life in his lyre nearby, casting Minor Illusion to begin vocalizing the composition as he picked up the instrument.
The humidity in the tent did his instrument no favors as the worn and rust-covered strings cut into his thickened calluses, but he fought through the pain in his old fingertips and began strumming along, The tune swelled, mournful as the gray clouds above his waterlogged tent.
He kept time with minor illusion, and it felt like the right key.
The notes made sense.
Sheets of rain pelted the canvas tent strung up between two crooked trees in the forest.
A single dry corner remained under the heavy downpour, the tent fabric sagging in each corner and threatening to burst at the seams.
Olivier Vagarin, the bard, stooped over a journal placed on an overturned wooden bucket, fighting every frustration in his head at once.
His unkempt hair and mustache with undyed gray bristles itched at his face and head.
The broken quill nibs stacked carelessly to the side.
The dampened pages prone to tearing as he wrote.
An occasional flex of mud splashing up on the page tested his calm.
But the biggest test of his patience was the composition he was furiously scribbling onto the page.
He viciously struck through another series of notes he had just
penned.
No, no, dammit! It wasn't a coastal third there.
It was a trill.
A sixteenth note, perhaps, yes.
He scribbled a bit more, darkening in the note heads and flicking quickly to draw the stems across the sheet music.
His eyes were completely locked on the page, too busy to notice that his packed mule had stuck its head inside the small tent flap to keep at least one part of its body dry.
A peal of thunder didn't faze him, but instead seemed to punctuate another mistake as he ripped the page free from his broad-paged notebook, fiercely crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder.
The paper landing among a dozen others soaked in the mud.
He flipped his notebook back to what he had already accomplished so far, the intro and verses conjuring a memory into view, but the chorus was still giving him trouble.
To excise it required a feeling he had to recapture and be in the moment.
He thought himself slipping into madness, and there it was again, the biggest frustration, self-doubt.
The great wheel's spokes always turn for those who grow stagnant in self-contempt.
He dotted the staccato notes on the new page, and he wrapped a slimy stick on the side of his bucket to awaken the false life in his lyre nearby, casting Minor Illusion to begin vocalizing the composition as he picked up the instrument.
The humidity in the tent did his instrument no favors as the worn and rust-covered strings cut into his thickened calluses, but he fought through the pain in his old fingertips and began strumming along, The tune swelled, mournful as the gray clouds above his waterlogged tent.
He kept time with minor illusion, and it felt like the right key.
The notes made sense.
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