Matriarch Soraya of the Al-Sabil tribe watched the common woman being led into the Great Hall with the weary, analytical gaze of a desert hawk. She had lived a long life, had seen a hundred ambitious chieftains and preening emirs make their plays for power. She knew a political gambit when she saw one. The Northern King, Valerius, had failed to sway the council with his scholar's apocalyptic theories; now he was resorting to the oldest trick in the book: an emotional appeal, a story of a simple peasant, designed to tug at the heartstrings. Soraya settled back in her seat, unimpressed, prepared to dismantle this new, pathetic argument.
The woman was clearly terrified. She was a small, plain-looking person, her simple healer's tunic and worn leather satchel a stark anomaly amidst the silk, steel, and fur of the assembled lords. She was a field mouse in a den of wolves, and Soraya could feel the waves of fear coming off her. Yet, as the woman reached the center of the hall and turned to face the council, Soraya saw something else in her eyes, beneath the fear: a core of unshakeable, quiet resolve. This was not a woman who broke easily.
"Healer," King Valerius's voice was gentle, but it carried across the tense hall. "Please, tell the Council your name, and where you are from."
"My name is Hanna," the woman said, her voice quiet but clear. "I am the healer of Greenhollow, on the edge of the Whispering Woods."
"And you were part of the company that traveled south, to the place called Qar-Teth?"
"I was," Hanna affirmed.
"Tell them what happened on your journey home," the King prompted. "Tell them of Captain Malik."
Hanna took a deep breath, her gaze sweeping across the powerful, skeptical faces staring down at her. She began to tell her story. She spoke with a simple, unadorned honesty that was more compelling than any of the practiced rhetoric that had filled the hall earlier.
She described their desperate flight from Qar-Teth and the new, monstrous creatures, the Ashen. She described the brutal skirmish, and how Captain Malik was bitten. Her voice remained steady as she detailed the unnatural poison that took hold, a corruption of life itself that resisted all her known remedies.
"All my knowledge, all my skill, was useless," she said, her voice raw with the memory of her own helplessness. "I was a healer, and I was watching a good man die before my very eyes. We had no god to turn to. We had no hope."
A grim murmur of understanding went through the hall. This was a feeling they all knew.
"But my training was not my only tool," Hanna continued. "I had my memory. I remembered a passage in an old text, a legend of a rare herb called Kingsblood, said to counter poisons born of shadow. It was a fool's hope. No one had seen it in centuries."
She then spoke of Finnian, the young navigator. "He was not a scholar," she said, a flicker of pride in her eyes. "But he was a student of the world. He listened to the lore. He remembered the flight of birds and the color of the rock in a distant ravine. He took a fool's hope and, with his own skill and courage, he turned it into a reality. He found the Kingsblood."
She described the long, uncertain night, the careful preparation of the poultice, the slow, agonizing wait. And then, the breaking of the fever.
"It was not a miracle," she said, her voice rising with a quiet, powerful conviction. "There was no flash of divine light. There was no bargain made, and no price was paid. A man's life was saved by a page from a forgotten book, a navigator's sharp eyes, a company's refusal to surrender, and a healer's stubborn craft."
She looked directly at the council, her fear gone, replaced by the simple, profound authority of the truth she had lived. "It was a human victory."
The hall was silent. Hanna's story, a simple tale of survival, had resonated more deeply than all of Praxus's cosmic theories. It was not a story about gods and monsters. It was a story about work. It was a story about resilience.
Matriarch Soraya felt a profound shift within herself. This was a language she understood. The desert did not reward prayers or grand theories. It rewarded knowledge, skill, and the endurance to see another sunrise. This small woman from the forest was speaking the truth of the sands. For the first time, she saw a path forward that was not based on faith or defiance, but on a pragmatic will to survive.
Of course, Gunnar Frostfang was not moved. "A charming story," he scoffed, his voice a contemptuous growl. "You saved one man with a lucky patch of moss. The Ashen killed thirty of my miners last week. A poultice will not stop an army of monsters."
Before anyone else could speak, a new voice, sharp and clear, cut across the hall from the Karak delegation. It was Astrid Stonehand.
"She is not offering a poultice to stop an army, High Chieftain," Astrid said, rising to her feet to face her rival. "She is offering a strategy. A strategy that our late High Chieftain Storn forgot in his pride. The Magister calls it the Chorus. It is the idea that our own skills, our own forgotten knowledge, are a weapon. It is a strategy of survival." She pinned Gunnar with a fiery glare. "What is your strategy, Gunnar? To die bravely and alone in your mountain halls?"
The alliance between the two pragmatic women, the old desert matriarch and the young mountain huntress, was forged in that instant, a silent nod of mutual respect passing between them.
The tide in the room was turning. The leaders from Verdane, who lived by the lore of the forest, were nodding in agreement with Hanna's tale. Even the wary merchant-princes from Zahram could see the value in a strategy based on skill and shared knowledge.
King Valerius saw the shift. He rose, his presence commanding the hall.
"You have heard the testimony," he declared, his voice ringing with a newfound power. "The choice before you is clear. Do you place your faith in the monstrous bargains of a Tyrant who demands your life as his price? Or do you place your faith in yourselves? In our own collective strength, our own forgotten knowledge, our own unbreakable will to survive?"
He looked around the room, meeting the eyes of every leader. "The Kingdom of Aethel has made its choice. We will fight, not with prayers, but with everything we are. We ask you to join us."
He had asked for a vote, a decision on a unified alliance.
The hall was silent, every leader weighing the terrible choice.
Matriarch Soraya rose slowly to her feet. She looked at Hanna, the small, brave healer. She looked at Astrid, the fiery chieftain. She looked at Valerius, the king who was betting everything on his own people.
"The Al-Sabil of Zahram," she declared, her voice ringing with the authority of a thousand desert suns, "will stand with Aethel."
---
The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Day 400 of the Age of Fear (continued)
Victims of The Reaping: 0
Victims of the Covenant: 2
Deaths from Ashen Attacks: 9
Deaths from Civil Unrest: 1
Total Lives Lost: 12
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— A Covenanter "martyr" in Zahram, who sacrificed himself in a failed attempt to assassinate a rival Emir, further destabilizing the region.