Chapter Text
The way of the paladin is a tortuous path. It is a small white road that skirts along the edge of a steep mountain. One bold step and you fall into the precipice; one step too far and you are lost in the depths of the dark forest that always hovers on the sides of your consciousness. When you are tired, when you are uncertain, when the light goes out in your heart - not even then can you turn back. To do so would be to lose yourself in the sea of grey, purposeless steps, in the sea of dark, nameless faces that you have left behind.
For Xenk, the path of the paladin is the only way forward. He can do nothing but keep going on, continue undeterred always in a straight line, without allowing himself to give in even for a moment. Even if, when he closes his eyes, he feels the distance between his own back and the harpooned fingers of the ghosts calling to him become dangerously thin. Even though sometimes the temptation to just look back is so strong, so strong...
The most difficult moments are when Xenk finds the road ahead barred. Just like now.
"What do you want?" says the priestess. Her voice is as croaky as a gear that has not been activated for centuries. Only skeletal hands and part of a withered face emerge from the long pearly mantle.
Xenk feels an immediate deference for her. He knows old and dry things. He is also one of those things. Maybe other people don't know it, but Xenk never forgets it. "I just want to be able to keep going, madam," he says, lowering his head politely.
"Do you know where you are?"
The mist that permeates the corpse of what was once a lush forest enters Xenk's bones. It makes its way in, settles in, and Xenk feels that if he stays there too long it will curl up inside him. That place - where is it? How long has he been there already? Xenk blinks, and for a moment the greyish branches look like fingers beckoning him to come closer.
"I think it is possible that I have lost my way," he admits softly.
"Yes, I can see that," says the priestess, something akin to contempt in her cold voice. "Well, those who have lost their way usually retrace their steps."
Xenk feels his own eyebrows furrow. "I cannot," he tries to explain.
"Only those who are complete pass through here, paladin. And you are many things, but complete you are not."
The priestess stands, more dead thing than alive - and for that matter similar to Xenk. Would it be so terrible to stay here, where all is familiar and calm, where Xenk can perhaps, at last, stop-
"You shall not pass, paladin of Thay. You shall not pass, for you have come to the final border. Find what you lack. Take back what has been taken from you. Then, perhaps, perhaps..."
The priestess extends a bony hand.
A gust of invisible energy strikes Xenk in the sternum, and sends him back - in search of something that was taken away from him so long ago that Xenk cannot even remember what it should be.