Chapter 81 (Interlude 10) - Dreadborne Harbinger (Patreon)

The tiny park had no name as far as J-65 knew. It was simply a small space that held a single, ancient star-oak with a stone bench ready for any passersby to sit for a while. She had been coming here for years, and she had yet to see anyone else sitting to enjoy a brief break from the responsibilities of the Imperial Academy. As the sun drifted below the horizon, above her head, silver leaves began to shimmer with captured moonlight in the evening air. Normally, she would be enjoying the gentle light herself, being a star elf. But not tonight.

In her gloved hands rested the white mask that had defined her for over a decade — a polished, featureless thing designed to strip away individuality and replace it with one purpose. Being a Sentinel. She stared down at it, her thumbs tracing where the features of her face would have been painted on a different mask long ago. 

The mask Jezeri had worn as a child.

Jezeri continued to stare down at the symbol of her position in the Imperial Academy, her thoughts swirling in a way they rarely had over the past decade. Sentinels were trained to be present, efficient, and, above all, without distractions. But here, in this quiet park, hidden away from the endless demands of duty, memories she had long buried rose to the surface, whispering to her like ghosts.

Jezeri.

That name felt fragile now, distant and worn like a fabric faded by time. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken it aloud. It had slipped from her life the day the previous scion of House Blacksword had been removed from the Imperial Academy. Though over a decade ago, thinking over those memories revealed that the ache of that severance lingered down to her bones.

Jezeri idly flipped the mask over, revealing the intricate runework on its interior that allowed her to speak, see, and hear through that blank, featureless white visage. House Blacksword. The name still carried weight, even if the House itself was still dwindling away. And yet, for Jezeri, it was more than a name — more than just another noble House — it was an anchor of her past, the source of both her greatest joys and sharpest sorrows.

She had fled a life she refused to remember beyond that mask she had worn as a child. What came before the Hall of Bonds was a dark blur, stained with shame and pain. So much pain. That place had offered her a fresh beginning, though at a cost. There, girls like her were assessed, cataloged, and sold to scions able to purchase their service. Some that had been sold alongside her became chambermaids. Others companions or scribes. Jezeri hadn’t cared at the time. She only wanted escape.

She started paying more attention when her escape came in the form of a contact signed by none other than the scion of House Blacksword of the time.

Before arriving at the Hall of Bonds, Jezeri had known well the reputations of the most important Houses of the western region of the Empire, House Blacksword chief among them. House Blacksword was synonymous with brutal efficiency on the battlefield and cold detachment in political circles. Their warriors were forged in harsh conditions and trained from a young age to wield weapons and strategy without hesitation. To outsiders, they were a House of unyielding steel, ruthless in pursuit of victory and survival against the myriad threats that worked to destroy them.

Yet she knew that there was an unsettling undercurrent to that reputation as well. Rumors spoke of harsh discipline, fractured family ties, and a relentless expectation of perfection that crushed many under its weight. Their scions were said to be merciless, both to their enemies and their own kin, living by the creed that weakness had no place in the Blacksword legacy.

Being chosen by such a House was a mixed fate — prestigious, certainly, but dangerous for any who couldn’t meet their exacting standards. When Jezeri had been claimed by the female scion, she had braced herself for a life of cold commands and exacting servitude on and off the battlefield.

Instead, she had been trained as a simple maid.

Her duties were easy, light even: maintaining the scion’s chambers, tending to garments finer than anything she’d ever touched, and other small, miscellaneous tasks that might need doing. For all the monotony, life had been good then. There was a simple dignity in the work, and for the first time, Jezeri had felt safe.

But that peaceful routine hadn’t lasted. She still didn’t know why the scion had chosen her, of all her servants, but her role changed roughly six months into her service. Under her Mistress’ direction, she was trained in the arts of observation, subtlety, and self-defense. Her hands, once accustomed to polishing silverware and folding dresses, learned to wield daggers and extract secrets from guarded lips. Jezeri slowly became more than a simple servant — she became a confidante, a shadow moving unseen through the corridors of power. A spy in plain sight.

Looking back, those days had been even better. She had found purpose, a true calling, doing something she had been good at. And despite the differences in their ranks, she had forged an unlikely friendship with her Mistress.

Mistress Blacksword, as she asked to be called, was fierce and brilliant, with a laugh that could light up the darkest room of Blacksword Manor. She treated Jezeri not as a servant but nearly as an equal in all but name. They shared whispered conversations late into the night, discussing matters far beyond Jezeri’s station. Politics, strategy, even dreams for a future where House Blacksword might rise again to its former glory.

Jezeri smiled faintly at the memory, though the smile did not reach her eyes. Those days had ended abruptly. Mistress Blacksword had been forced to leave the Imperial Academy, and Jezeri’s place at her side had ended. The bonds that had once given her a sense of belonging were severed, and Jezeri found herself adrift. She hadn’t been with Mistress Blacksword when it started, but she later learned what had happened with the scion of House Brightcoin from others.

It had started with words. A subtle insult here, a veiled remark there — sharp-edged barbs exchanged between Mistress Blacksword and Scion Brightcoin.The Brightcoins were one of the most influential noble Houses in the western region of the Empire, in large part due to how their coffers were overflowing with wealth accumulated from trade and their covert war against House Blacksword. House Brightcoin had a reputation for getting what it wanted, no matter the cost, and their scion that shared Mistress Blacksword’s year was worse than most of that greedy House. Valdar Brightcoin had a reputation for getting what he wanted, and for arranging accidents for those that prevented him from doing such.

Mere rivalry, even open hostility between Mistress Blacksword and Scion Brightcoin she could understand, even expect. But what Jezeri hadn’t expected was what Mistress Blacksword had confided in her several weeks into the escalating conflict. The star elf remembered that night, and the fury and disbelief with which Mistress Blacksword spoke, well.

“Valdar Brightcoin had the audacity to ask for permission to court me,” Mistress Blacksword had said, pacing the length of her private study. “He claimed it was to mend the rift between our Houses. But the truth is far uglier. He lusts after me, Jezeri, and worse — he has a plan to ensure I won’t survive past our wedding night.”

Jezeri had felt her blood run cold. “How do you know this, Mistress?”

Mistress Blacksword had given a bitter laugh. “Because I listen, and I watch. Much like you, Jezeri. There are always whispers if you know where to find them.”

Jezeri had been kept at the edges of the ensuing conflict, her role limited to support and intelligence gathering among other servants outside House Blacksword. She had watched from the shadows as Mistress Blacksword navigated the dangerous terrain of noble politics, maneuvering against Valdar Brightcoin and his scheming allies. Jezeri had admired her courage but had also felt growing unease that things were slipping beyond her Mistress’ control.

The final blow had come swiftly, as such things often did. A command had come down from House Blacksword itself — her Mistress was to be withdrawn from the Imperial Academy. No formal reason was given, but Jezeri understood the truth. House Brightcoin had won.

Jezeri still didn’t know all the details of how it had happened. Other servants spoke of betrayals, political pressure, and perhaps even bribes exchanged. What mattered was the outcome: Mistress Blacksword was gone, exiled from the Academy and stripped of nearly everything she had once commanded. The estate’s vast assets the Mistress had painstakingly built up were liquidated in a humiliating series of auctions, leaving only the manor itself intact. Even the servants had not been spared. Jezeri, despite her close ties to Mistress Backsword, was also to be included in the auctions. 

Jezeri’s hands clenched tightly around the Sentinel mask in her hands, so tight the edges began to cut into her palms. Mistress Blacksword had sworn to return, that she would find a way to reclaim what was being taken from her. Jezeri had believed her then. Mistress Blacksword had never been one to break her word after all. But days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. No representative came for her.

The auctions were to proceed.

And so, Jezeri had stood on that dias once again, her hands trembling despite her best efforts to appear composed. The auctioneer’s voice had droned on, detailing her attributes and skills in impersonal tones. Though she was no longer a wide-eyed girl, Jezeri knew her features — soft and exotic yet marred by faint scars — still made her desirable in a way she wished they did not. She had caught more than one pair of eyes lingering on her during that wretched event, but none had filled her with more dread than Valdar Brightcoin.

The scion of House Brightcoin had lounged casually near the front of the audience, his rank affording him excellent seating. Her eyes had unwillingly drifted his way, attention attracted to how his golden hair gleamed in the light. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his cold, predatory eyes. Jezeri had known that smile too well; it was the kind worn by those who saw others as unthinking prey.

She remembered the moment his gaze had locked onto her, a spark of cruel amusement flaring in his eyes. Lust and violence simmered beneath his aristocratic veneer. Even now, years after he had graduated from the Academy, the memory made her skin crawl. He had leaned toward one of his syncophants, whispering something while looking in her direction that made his supporter chuckle darkly.

Jezeri's fear had been a sharp, biting thing, but she had fought to keep her expression neutral. That grew harder once it was her turn, and a number of scions began bidding on her. All had examined her with expressions much like that of Scion Brightcoin. For a moment, in her weakness, she had considered biting off her tongue.

Then, salvation, unexpected and strange, had come from the Sentinels. 

A representative of the Sentinels had appeared seemingly from nowhere. He observed the bidding war unfolding between House Brightcoin and several lesser houses with an inscrutable expression. When the bidding reached a fever pitch, the Sentinel representative simply raised a gloved hand. A murmur had swept through the audience, but Jezeri had felt the brief stirrings of hope. Even Valdar Brightcoin had stiffened, his smug expression faltering. After a moment of tense silence, the auctioneer declared Jezeri sold to the Sentinels.

While Jezeri had left the dias in a rush, eager to get to the Sentinel’s side before one of the scions, perhaps even Scion Brightcoin, sought to attempt a final time to secure her for themselves. She had been lucky. She knew that. The rest of the Blacksword servants hadn’t been. Even to this day, their fates remained a mystery to her, all of them lost to the whims of whatever buyers had claimed them. 

Her life with the Sentinels had been far different from the life she'd known under House Blacksword. There were no luxuries, no indulgences, and certainly no friendships. Training was grueling, discipline absolute. Even the small freedoms she had once taken for granted were forbidden.

Her purpose was singular: to serve the Imperial Academy as a weapon and protector. Nothing more.

For a long time, she had forgotten about House Blacksword entirely. The bitterness and longing had been buried beneath the cold steel of duty. She had convinced herself that those days were gone, that she was no longer Jezeri but only J-65, a Sentinel without a past.

Then Klarion had arrived at the Imperial Academy.

She remembered the moment vividly: the scion of House Blacksword, disheveled and still covered in blood, stepping off the Waypoint. His clothes were all but ruined, his face set in a grim mask. Jezeri had felt herself pulled to him from that moment, but when she learned who he was, that he was a Blacksword, a surge of anger had nearly undone her composure.

It was only a testament to her Sentinel training that she managed to suppress her emotions enough to remain polite. Klarion’s disheveled state had made it easy to jump to conclusions. She had assumed he was just another spoiled noble who had likely been off gallivanting and gotten himself into trouble before arriving at the Academy.

When she had first elected to guide him, she'd expected to encounter yet another privileged noble, coddled and arrogant, raised on luxury and self-importance. Her memories of Mistress Blacksword had always been of a poised and confident woman who moved through the world as though it owed her deference. But Klarion, however, was none of those things. From the moment she laid eyes on him, disheveled and bloodied, she'd sensed something was off.

It wasn’t until they reached the tailor's workshop that her suspicions crystallized.

Alecto, one of the greatest tailors in the Academy, had been disapproving of Klarion when he walked in, his clothes in tatters and stained with dried blood. The man had been terrified at the state of Klarion’s clothing and had only too eagerly agreed to help the young Blacksword get out of it and into one of his magically crafted uniforms.

It was while she lingered by the door, bound by the rules of the Sentinels not to let a scion who had arrived for the Induction Ceremony out of her sight before delivering him to the amphitheater, that everything had changed.

As Klarion struggled to shed the remnants of his ruined garments, and Alecto had used his magic to help, Jezeri's breath had caught in her throat as soon as she saw his body. Scars crisscrossed his entire form—faint silver lines and harsh, raised ridges that spoke of harsh battles and near-death encounters. The sight of them struck her like a physical blow, for they were so much like her own.

Suddenly, the narrative she'd built in her mind about Klarion shattered. This was no spoiled scion, raised in the safety of a luxurious manor before being shipped off to the Academy for a prestigious education. No, this was a young man who had danced with death and survived. He bore the evidence of a life lived on the edge, where pain and struggle were constant companions.

Jezeri had initially planned to lead him astray, to make him late for the Induction Ceremony as a petty act of defiance against House Blacksword. But as she looked at Klarion, standing there with the weight of unseen battles etched into his flesh, she couldn't bring herself to follow through.

He wasn’t what she had expected. And, for the first time in a long time, something intrigued her.

As she spent more time with him, she got the sense of a strength about him—not the loud, boastful kind common among the young scions who strutted around the Academy’s campus, but a quiet, unyielding resilience. Even more surprising to her was how it was tempered by a surprising kindness. Klarion had been polite to her, even deferential in a way that nobles rarely were toward others, let alone Sentinels. That, combined with his scars, placed him in a category entirely separate from the rest of the scions she had met, even Mistress Blacksword herself.

Jezeri found herself making a decision she didn’t fully understand at the time: she would help him, not hinder him. 

So, she ensured he arrived at the Induction Ceremony on time, guiding him through the  Academy campus with practiced efficiency. Klarion had thanked her sincerely, his expression genuine, and something about that simple gratitude lingered with her long after she watched him disappear into the grand Amphitheater of Induction.

It was how he had treated her that she decided to… slightly bend the requirements of her duty after he emerged from his ceremony. She had easily been able to justify the logic of it in her own mind, but all her reason had fled when he emerged from the Ampotheatre of Induction. He was taller, broader, his presence sharper and more commanding. It had made her breath catch. New red-gold eyes gleamed with intensity, their gaze magnetic and almost unnerving. The awkward, kind-hearted young man she’d escorted to the ceremony was still there, but wrapped now in the first layer of the man he would become. 

Her pulse had quickened despite herself. She thanked the Seven that she was covered by Sentinel armor, and that the mask she wore covered all her skin. She could feel how the heat crept up her neck beneath that mask, staining her cheeks with a blush no one could see. Years of discipline warred with a sudden, unwelcome awareness of him as more than a mere scion she was tasked with monitoring in her capacity as a Sentinel.

Sitting at the bench, Jezeri shivered, hands loosening around the mask she held, and she almost dropped it as she remembered the feelings that had coursed through her body in those moments in front of the Amphitheatre of Induction. She had pushed them away then, and kept her voice steady as she talked to him. Despite the warmth that continued to linger in her chest.

How Klarion had treated her, those feelings aside, ended up reinforcing the choice she had made then. She hadn’t taken him to one of the more opulent restaurants favored by the noble scions. Those places were dens of intrigue and manipulation, frequented by the likes of House Brightcoin and their slimy hangers-on. Klarion, with his unrefined honesty, would have been easy prey. Instead, Jezeri had led him to Hearth & Ember, a modest tavern tucked away on the edge of the campus grounds. The establishment was owned and run by Ordran, a grizzled veteran of the Imperial Legions who had been granted permission to set up his tavern at the Academy. Jezeri had a good opinion of Ordran—he was fair, straightforward, and didn't tolerate nonsense.

The tavern catered more to servants, Sentinel trainees, and grunt workers than to nobles, which made it a sanctuary of sorts. The slimy scions who thrived on manipulation and deceit avoided the place, unwilling to sully themselves by mingling with "lesser" folk. That made it the perfect spot for Klarion, at least in Jezeri's estimation. She had been pleased when he had reacted much as he had so far in their interactions: with thanks and appreciation.

Jezeri had watched him quietly since that night, even followed him several times, though well back out of range of the ears of that Leporine bodyguard of his. But for all her attention, apparently, she hadn’t been following him often enough.

Her jaw clenched, suppressing an almost animalistic growl, as she recalled the conversation with the nurse at the Academy Infirmary. Klarion had returned from the dungeon barely clinging to life, having nearly died in a reckless attempt to save his bodyguard, that same Leporine who she had known would be woefully unprepared for the dangers of the Dungeon. It had been an assassination attempt, clear as day to someone like Jezeri, who had seen her share of backroom plots and deadly ambushes. Klarion was strong, but he was naive—too trusting, too inexperienced in the treacherous world of noble politics. That combination made him an easy target.

And it enraged her.

His foolishness had nearly gotten him killed. He had fallen into the trap like a naive fledgling, thinking only of saving his bodyguard without considering the larger threat. She had to give the Leporine credit, though—from what she could tell, the Leporine was trying harder now in her bodyguard duties, pushing herself to be better. Still, it grated on Jezeri. She could have done a better job protecting Klarion, and she knew it.

But none of that mattered now. What mattered was stopping whoever had tried to kill him. And Jezeri had a strong suspicion about who was behind it.

She still didn’t fully understand why she was helping him, but there was something about Klarion that drew her in. He was kind but strong, unrefined yet capable. And beneath it all, there was a sense of vulnerability that resonated with her own past.  The path ahead for Klarion would be filled with challenges, but she found herself hoping he would rise to meet them. He was different, yes—but sometimes, different was exactly what was needed. Exactly what she needed.

She brushed her fingers over the smooth surface of her mask, a symbol of the life she'd had thrust onto her as a Sentinel. She hesitated briefly, then smoothly donned it again. Jezeri stood, the weight of memories still present but lighter somehow. The park’s tranquility finally wrapped around her like a comforting embrace after she made up her mind. Klarion Blacksword was not what she had expected—but then again, neither was the path her life had taken.

She left the small park and its ancient star-oak behind, her armor clinking softly as she moved.

It was time to visit Scion Copperhand.