And so the travel begins.

They deal with Logram the Eyegouger on the way. Ingrid, the sorceress from West Harbour, is locked in a veritable sea of unknown variables. An orc chieftain seems a minor nuisance in comparison with mysterious extraplanar psionic warriors that hunt a cryptic silver artefact from a secret old war with alleged demon involvement. Casavir digests this information over his first few days on the road with the new companions. They are a strange bunch: a loud dwarf with a heart of gold, a reformed tiefling thief, a young elven druid who has hardly left her swamp before and a gnome bard whose mind jumps over ideas like a mad squirrel. This is the team this young sorceress prefers to travel with through the dangers so much bigger than a human's normal experience.

Paladins do not argue with destiny when they are blessed to recognize it, so he asks Ingrid if he can accompany them. Perhaps, until Neverwinter, for he is not welcome there. He left it in disgrace. Ingrid touches his shoulder briefly – a butterfly wing of reassurance – and nods.

They reach Old Owl Well, and he discovers that the commander of the local force is Callum. Khelgar informs him that they found the Katalmach and here he is in person, and Callum visibly cannot decide whether he should act as a lord or an old mentor. Ingrid steps in without hesitation and suddenly her voice has steel in it. Casavir watches in amazement as this well-mannered sorceress, almost a stranger to him, tells off a member of the Neverwinter Nine on his behalf; she says that if anyone wants to accuse Casavir of anything, they will have to deal with her now, and Lord Callum backs off immediately – it is the good old Commander Callum now.

Casavir is not used to being protected. It is a nice feeling. It is a surprise that Khelgar and Neeshka and Elani and even Grobnar suddenly form a unified front as if he is one of their own. He learns that Ingrid has an incredibly special way of forging loyalty: the loyalty given to her is never one-sided. Nevalle, and Ophala, and Judge Olaf, and Lord Nasher himself will have to choose to ignore his presence or confront her. And the times are troubled again; there is need for another selfless hero to solve the noble lords' problems while their manicured hands stay clean.


They assist the city militia in restoring order in the docks, and fight the crew of a Luskan spy ship, and get access to the Blacklake District. The old sage Aldanon tells them of the war of Ammon Jerro and that the two silver pieces Ingrid bears in her bag are shards of a githyanki silver sword and of course the astral warriors are eager to have them back.

"They can have the shards back. I am so tired." Ingrid tells him quietly on the way to the archives, and Casavir almost turns back to see if there is someone behind him – if she places her confidence in him by mistake. "I have not finished my studies. I was at my father's, visiting, and suddenly there are the githyanki, lizardfolk, bandits, orcs, cultists raising the undead all around. I long to be back to my books. My life story should be called 'How everything interrupted Ingrid's reading'. It is ironic that an ordinary person can become so tangled in some larger plot."

There is nothing ordinary about you, Casavir thinks as she smiles ruefully and walks on without waiting for his response. The archive door is hanging open and there is blood in the anteroom, so he does not have the chance to get back to this thought before it is ridiculous to bring it up.

Then there is the trip to Highcliff to warn Shandra Jerro that the githyanki will hunt her down, and Casavir slightly hopes there will be a peaceful evening for a slow conversation when they get back to Neverwinter, but as they pass through the southern gates Ingrid comes across a friend. He is a fair young wizard from her academy, a handsome boy and a noble. They stay back and talk, and then Ingrid catches up with her companions to tell them that she will stay at Elon's for the night. Casavir cannot quite place that ugly feeling he experiences. They spend a month tracking Shandra's kidnappers into the northern hills and the odious ranger, Bishop, gives a new poisonous context to all their relationships. This is when Casavir realizes the name of that feeling was jealousy.

In the quiet of his mind, he laughs at himself. He had no right for jealousy. He is an old warrior Ingrid picked up on the way, an aide and maybe – if he is lucky – a friend. She is eight years younger. She is clever, confident, strong, powerful, chosen, and he should remember his place. It is his lifelong loneliness speaking. She is kind to all of them, and he is not used to kindness, so he mistakes her general love directed at the world for something exceptionally his.

Casavir smiles and congratulates himself that he recognized this illusion before it could take control of him. Ingrid is free to spend her nights with whoever she pleases. It is none of his business.


When they learn that Ingrid has a shard of a legendary silver sword lodged in her chest, Casavir is almost unsurprised. The githyanki prefer to die rather than let her keep it, and their last dark warning is about a great evil raising its head in their world. It may be the last curse – empty words, hollow threats. Ingrid's future cannot be that dark. She deserves a better fate.

Casavir does not have many illusions about his own future though. He will inevitably die in battle, and if he is lucky, his death will be worth it. If he is completely honest, he would also like for his death to be quick. He would prefer not to rot slowly with his guts out in the mud. He had been close to the threshold of life and death before, and he is a little afraid, but he pushes that shameful thought down as if it is his worst enemy.

He is the only one in their company to have seen the Luskan war. He was seventeen, more a boy than a man, and it was ages ago. This experience separates him from them. In his eyes, it gives context to everything; his companions do not have this ominous feeling of everything falling apart regardless of their will and effort. Casavir treasures their ignorance.

When he was young, corruption seemed an essential flaw of leadership – but now he knows it is not true. Not every leader leaves dying soldiers behind. Not every blade strikes to kill. Not every conflict ends in blood. His heart is full of joy every single time he witnesses that Ingrid prefers conversation to bloodshed. He prays that she remains strong in her faith that all living souls deserve life. She is not one to demand sacrifices and give pious speeches that justify why people should sleep in the snow or eat rotten bread. No, Ingrid respects dignity of simple needs. She plans everything and plans everything well. They always have a large tent, one for all the team, and Ingrid and Grobnar spend a good week trying to figure out a small, safe, and easily assembled stove to heat it.

Later, when he will try to identify the exact moment of falling in love with her, he will always come back to that evening conversation about magic. She told him that it takes sorcerers months to learn a new spell.

"Most of my fellow students would try to use those precious months to learn something spectacular. Lightnings, fireballs, ice storms. How many methods of destruction does one need? I mastered fireballs because, well, you need fire often, for many purposes. Magical arrows are a compulsory part of the curriculum, and that is about enough harm. I seek pragmatic utility. Making water hot, helping people sleep, raising invisible barriers between the harmful and the vulnerable. An arrow stopped is better than an arrow notched. Seeing what is concealed is important, as well as making a heavy thing weightless to move it. Finding water. Making a blade sharp again. Since we started this reluctant adventuring, I also learned a spell to hide our campsite in darkness and illusions. Now I am learning to freeze the opponent' feet to the floor because, seriously, what is it with all these bandits attacking before we can talk?"

Casavir did not register the moment when he started mentioning Ingrid in his daily prayers. Neither did he register the moment when she became the single focus of them; the only thing he wants from his god is her well-being.

Faith is not a crime. He is doing nothing wrong.


They discover more cult chapters all over the Sword Coast, and one of them is right in Neverwinter. That week Lord Nevalle graces the Sunken Flagon with his visit, and for a moment Casavir hopes it is because of their report.

Of course, it is not. The Luscanite ambassador has accused Ingrid of the Ember massacre and Lord Nasher offers her knighthood to hold her trial here in Neverwinter. Casavir knows that all these events are the same spiral that is coiling tight. The silver shards, the undead rising from their graves, the Shadow War and Luskan are somehow connected. Ingrid is in danger because she has the power to undermine someone's evil plan.

They spend two months collecting evidence – from Neverwinter to Port Llast to Ember to the Duskwood. The imminent trial is hanging over them like tons of stone in the underground caves they explore there. Despite the assurances of Sand, the moon elf lawyer who travels with them as the Crown's support and supervision, Neeshka is confident that the trial will be a fluke, and many others share her doubts. Casavir overhears Bishop offering Ingrid to run away into the woods one night. Ingrid responds softly that she still believes in justice, and the ranger laughs at her. It is likely that the ranger knew that Casavir was listening to their conversation: the man fishes for anything that can hurt Casavir's feelings and applies salt to his wounds with a merciless hand.

Casavir will believe in justice if he is the last person in Thoril to do so. He knows his beliefs are not as complex as others', but he had deliberately constructed himself so that he has unity of speech, mind, and deed, and he knows that if he cannot say some sentence aloud, he should not be thinking it either. He is boring and predictable. It is good to be boring and predictable. When he is troubled by what strangers say about him, he thinks of a simple undecorated sword, predictably sharp, reliably heavy. He is a sword like that.

Casavir may be uncomplicated, but he is not stupid. He absorbs knowledge, he has a formidable memory, he breaks complex problems into tiny pieces and reconstructs them back with just as much ease. He sees people in their own course and knows that most decisions are made reluctantly, when there is not enough information, time, and interest – and therefore any quick judgement is usually wrong. Blind mercy is still better than educated cruelty.

At this point, Ingrid knows him better than anyone, and he is grateful to her for the deep conversations of history and philosophy they sometimes have by the campfire. He had not known he was starving for them before his hunger was satisfied. To think that she might be sentenced to death for the crime she did not commit is unbearable. Casavir lets his mind explore the situation if Tyr's clergy will judge her guilty like it happened to Fenthick Moss and Lady Aribeth. He discovers that he will abandon his faith if the price of it is Ingrid's life. He is a traitor in his heart already, for what is faith, tradition and decorum when put on the scales against one innocent soul?


The trial comes and goes, and though they clearly prove that Ingrid is not guilty, the Luskan side demands trial by combat. It is believed that Tyr will allow the virtuous to prevail; the Luscanites obviously believe in nothing but brute force. Their champion is a monstrosity of a human, and Casavir learns how fragile his faith really is as he wears a trench in the stone floor of the temple waiting for the solitary part of Ingrid's vigil to be over so that she is allowed visitors. It is finally his turn to enter the small chapel, and he does not notice the priests whispering behind him.

Ingrid is on her knees on the cold marble. She is so small compared to her tomorrow's opponent. Her wrists are narrow like branches of a young tree, and in her light linen tunic she is like a candle in the cold gloom of the temple. Casavir is overwhelmed by everything he wants to say. I love her, the thought bursts from the bud like pearl-white petals and blooms in his heart, I love her.

He implores her to let him be the champion in her stead.

"Thank you," Ingrid says in a strange, deep voice and takes his hands. Her palms are freezing. "Judge Olaf asked me to ask you. He said that Tyr will protect you, and the people will see that faith is not an empty sound, and that you will see it as an honour. But Casavir, I am conflicted and afraid: do you all trust your god so thoroughly? Are you confident of the victory just because I am falsely accused?"

If he lies to her that they are confident that Tyr protects the innocent, she will calm down and go into that arena herself. If he tells her the truth that they have no way of knowing the gods' will, she will go into that arena herself because she will try to protect him. Instead, he presses her hands to his heart to warm them and says:

"I trust my sword, and my shield, and my devotion. I believe that the gods keep an eye on us, and that Tyr will hear my prayers. It is unknown to me if we deserve his direct interference. Ingrid, let me bear this burden. Grace me with your trust."

Ingrid does. Two lives are now hanging in balance, and perhaps Tyr will notice them.

Casavir prays and thinks that to be loved by someone might give you strength, but to love someone gives you courage.

He defeats Lorne the next morning, and as the crowd roars in appreciation of his victory, he can only think of his private secret that he carries like a stolen rosebud – under his shirt, close to heart, invisible yet there.


The events that follow blur into a fast series of rushed decisions and hasty missions. The Luskan plot takes shape, it now features a name – 'Black Garius', a Hosttower mage that has gone rogue and aims to summon and bend some ancient force to his service, and the cultists are a link in this plan, a small army to forge a larger army of the undead who feel no pain and question no orders.

Meanwhile, it turns out that several lords possess other silver shards – they are mere collectors of curiosities and relics, but their mansions are attacked, and their kin and staff are slaughtered brutally. By demons and devils, two varieties of evil that are even worse than undead creatures.

They keep watch over the lords' houses and fight and fight and fight. Then Aldanon, the old sage with proclivity for confusing monologues, is kidnapped and for a long time it is unclear whether he is alive. Ingrid grows thinner by the month; she is troubled by all this uncertainty and death.

Casavir's gaze lingers on her longer than he wishes to accept. He has grown attuned to every change in her expression, every little breath, every gesture. He is always aware of her stance, of her motions, of her feelings. Recently, he realized she knows that – she nods instead of saying 'yes' because she knows he will always notice it. He did not suspect that he held his breath to hear her speak until she glanced at him with those intelligent, piercing eyes of hers, and he caught a ghost of a smile on her lips. Ingrid is too kind to laugh at him, but it is likely that she understands this longing of his more clearly than he does. He is a novice, and she is a grandmaster at reading hearts and minds.

In the privacy of his tiny room at the inn, Casavir stares into the darkness. When he was her age, the attention of older women seemed so inappropriate to him. If Ingrid can read his heart, his feelings must look gross to her. Undesirable. Tainting. When did he grow so old? Early years trudged by slowly and could fit so many events – and then they rushed by like mad mountain winds. He does not have a right to think of her. It is not fair to her.

Everybody who has a heart shall love her if they get a chance to be close to her for a few weeks. It has been two years since they met. Who can blame Casavir for having been drawn to this magnet of a person?


A month later they get a tip that Black Garius keeps Aldanon prisoner in the ruins of the Crossroad Keep. They travel there to storm it, interrupt a ritual so dark that Casavir's blood goes cold in his veins when they approach the spell circle, rescue Aldanon and a mysterious Githzerai seer who reveals the truth to them finally.

They are entangled in two plots, not one. The first underwater danger is the King of Shadows, an ancient Illefarn guardian who is rising to avenge the long dead empire, the other is Ammon Jerro, a powerful warlock who sold his soul to the nine hells in order to get the means to fight this King of Shadows.

None of the parties will care for what destruction they may bring to the Sword Coast, and the Crossroad Keep must rise from the ruins to be the heart of the coming war.

Ingrid becomes its Knight Captain and aims to turn it into a prosperous city with enough military strength and allies to protect Neverwinter. It will be several years before her plans take flesh and she will earn the grudging respect of the sceptics who said she was too young and inexperienced for the job.


They are always so close. It drives him mad, to be that close and eight years apart. She is a natural force in the vessel of a human body, a contained storm, a magical being. Everything she does is right and has a reason. He is an old soldier under her command – experienced, knowledgeable, valuable, but old. Soldiers do not live that long; he should have died in the Luskan war. Everyone else did.

Her construction is ambitious, and he is of use – he can train her recruits, he knows a lot about fortifications, and he can command several hundred people to work as an entity. He is an asset to this castle and town, but merely because too many better and more experienced people perished before them and there is no one else.

It is inappropriate to confess his love to Ingrid now, because it is laughable and, honestly, scary – to have been loved by your friend for years, to have felt safe and relaxed in his presence and to have been unaware of his indecent longing. Casavir thinks that his love is now ridiculous and late.

"Stay alive, Casavir," Ingrid tells him once when his shield arm is badly injured. She is worried. Her face is pale, and she keeps touching his shoulder. He should not be reading too much into it – his head is clouded with potions, and people always touch the wounded to reassure themselves. "I measure my thoughts against your opinion. I am not an inherently good person like you are. I often see manipulation as art. I falter and consider easier paths, shortcuts, compromises. I am too inspired by the fickle love of a crowd. Without you, I will be lost. Stay alive."

It would be easier for Ingrid if he could just forget about his feelings and have less layers in her presence. This duality of meaning is haunting him, for whenever he speaks to her, his words imply more than she can extract from them, and he is being dishonest in this covert way.

Casavir reflects on it calmly and judges that with so much fighting and this morbid war brewing in the marches of Merdelain he will probably perish soon, and his mute love will rest with him, so there is no need to trouble Ingrid.


The town and the keep need workforce. Farmers, craftsmen, merchants, soldiers, workers. People need safety to settle here; safety requires for the land to be populated – the fields, the roads, the villages. All his experience is used and challenged here: he trains recruits in the morning, leads patrols during the day, takes part in the military construction council in the evening. There is almost no time to think about this exhausting feeling that nestles in his chest like a big bright phoenix.

If only they saw each other less often. He sometimes leads a company to defend their borders; the first day apart hurts the worse, and then the pain grows dull. It never disappears though. There is always some invisible string that ties him to her and pulls him to the castle whenever she stays behind.

Ingrid is not a predator. She does not make any effort to show off, to attract, to seduce. She is more like the forest, the sky, the sea – she exists to her own purposes, she follows her chosen path she sees with her eyes closed. She does not flirt with him like he watches her do with other men: like it is a game conventional in these foreign lands and she accepts it as a ritual dance but maintains her distance. Instead, she treats him with complete trust, with calm respect, with chaste confidence. She wears no polite masks with him; she lets him stand as close as he dares; she always answers his questions with naked, striking honesty – letting him into her mind, into her heart, into her memories without reservation.

Whenever he appears in her sight, she has a smile for him, a slow and warm and fond smile that blooms on her lips. In conversations, in heated debates, in pointed exchanges on the road, her eyes often seek his silent advice or support – and he often catches how her face softens when she turns to him. She receives his pain as if it is her own. She lets him simmer in her friendship that looks like something stronger than a most romantic love he has read or heard songs about. This chaste affection drives him mad more effectively than any frivolous flirtation could. This intimacy burns, this benevolence tortures, this devotion wrings his heart out, because any moment without it starts to feel increasingly like rejection. Ingrid is not a predator, but he is prey head over heels.

Love is not a pleasant feeling. It can crush bones with its weight.


The town seems such a peaceful place now, but Casavir does not see streets – he sees routes to be defended if the enemy breaches the walls. He takes in the fields at sunset, and his mind paints them burning. His gaze travels to the walls. There is so much to do, and so little time. The tide is rising. This tide will put every single decision to test. Every person will show their true nature under the duress, and some of them are weak links in their armour. Bishop, for instance.

Bishop is a threat. Sometimes he stares directly at Casavir, and the paladin's flesh creeps. This cold stare holds a dark promise. A cannibal would stare like this. Casavir has a momentary impression that in Bishop's mind he is screaming with pain and shakes this vision off as soon as he can. Bishop gives him a crooked smile and Casavir turns away.

He is sure that the ranger will be a problem. He is a problem already, but the man is competent, agile, talented. Evil. Casavir regrets that Ingrid does not send Bishop away. Casavir regrets that they have ever met. Casavir wonders how the planets will move if he kills Bishop.

The ranger smells of fate – reeks of it, in fact. He is caught in its tenets like an ugly poisonous fly, the whole net is vibrating with his anger and intense dissatisfaction. This man is a bad omen. On his own, in the wild, he is bound to be the rotten step that brings down heroes and kingdoms. Within their view, his poison is brewing slower.

Ingrid told Casavir once that Bishop might be a key to the future they dread, and she would like to keep him close and understand him. Casavir has been thinking about it ever since. Sometimes you cut one knot and break the whole net. The ranger's words are often poisonous in the way to resonate in his heart, but he does put his effort into their mission.

Casavir sometimes dreams that it is the ranger who kills him. Perhaps Bishop is simply a danger to Casavir, not to all of them. Well, if the gods need his pain to be some sort of price for an advantage for Ingrid, he will take the pain gladly.

Martyrs in the making, the Hero of Neverwinter once said of paladins. Casavir has a vague suspicion that every single word he has ever heard will somehow be woven into the single tapestry at the end.

He is so pathetic with this untimely, unnecessary, unwanted love of his.


It grows worse when they travel together, and these travels start to happen more often. They seek out allies on diplomatic visits, and every single lord attempts to solve their long-term problems with their hands, whether it is a dragon in the mountains or a petty conflict. They take a long journey to Arvann where the ruins tell the story of the creation of that King of Shadows and learn of the way to dismantle his power. It leads them on in search of five Illefarn statues. It means too many cold nights in proximity, too much riding and climbing and walking together. Healing, and bandaging, too. Shared watches. Shared space. There is no distance to keep. So many people were attracted to each other simply because the road pushes two souls together like nothing else.

At times Ingrid smiles at him, and his very essence flutters with the intensity of feeling: he can feel the sunlight that warmed her childhood, hear her silver laughter during the moments she was happy. She coils the world into a tight circle around herself. Her presence charges the atmosphere. Can he be the only one who notices that?

Even if he confesses to her now – serves his soul for her to discard at will – what choice will he give her? Ingrid is building up her power. This is neither her aim nor desire, but she sees it as her unique method of giving flesh to whatever ideas she deems worthy. She navigates the waters that had drowned him, serves the realm on her own terms, and follows her path that – by a coincidence – leads up the ladder of power. Casavir recognizes the displeasure in the lords' well-powdered faces when they behold him by her side. He is a wild card, a possible traitor, an unreliable step, an unpredictable voice to them. They smell that he answers to no one except his god and his own reason. They somehow fail to see that Ingrid is made of the same rock. She is still unblemished by public disobedience.

Casavir grimaces in the darkness of their common tent. If he confesses to her and she rejects him, he will be dust, for the very thought of it makes him part at the seams. If he confesses to her and she accepts him, he will pull her down, keep her back, deprive her of the ambiguity she needs to maneuver between the cliffs of social contracts. Between the two paths, he would like none. So, it is best if he keeps silent as long as he can. Probably, until his heart burns out to ashes or explodes or spills over.

Once he dreams of a grey room, a butcher's table, a bald woman carving into Ingrid's unconscious body with a knife, and he cannot do a thing about it. He wakes up in cold sweat. Ingrid is in the tent beside him, her breath is even and slow. He rolls on his side to take a closer look at her serene face. It was just a dream. The dreams always are what you saw, what you wish and what you are afraid of. Casavir is afraid to lose her, that must be it.


They seek out the last statue in the Illefarn ruins of Merdelain right near Ingrid's birthplace to discover the village of West Harbour destroyed utterly and its inhabitants slaughtered to a man. Ingrid walks through the familiar streets in silence and tears stream down her face. Her adoptive father is not there. Her friend Bevil is not there. All the others are dead. Unburied, left to rot. It is Ember all over again, but this time the attackers were not people. These were demons and devils and shadows. The last statue is destroyed, and there are shadow reavers waiting for them in an ambush.

Ingrid summons so much fire in that battle that ugly brown stones melt into long rusty-coloured streams of lava. Casavir is afraid that she will grow cruel – who would not in her place?

They return to the village to bury the dead. Ingrid asks Casavir to share a silent vigil with her, so that the proper rituals are observed for the dead to rest in peace, beyond the reach of necromancers and evil spirits.

Bishop calls them crazy yet hangs around reluctantly. In between the prayers, Casavir remembers that Bishop loses his nerve at the sight of the undead. Several years ago, they were setting up their camp when several skeletons stumbled upon them. Bishop sent arrow after arrow at them though they could do nothing to the bare bones, and then he shifted behind Casavir and gripped his shoulder to the point of pain, scared to death, forgetting their animosity completely. Casavir hoped that would end it. It did not.

They do encounter undead creatures more often than anything else these years. Old corpses rise in swamps, in village cemeteries, in castle catacombs. They wander the earth aimlessly, haunt the wild nature, rip the living creatures apart if they are not fast enough to run or strong enough to fight. For too many times Casavir had to summon his blessing and sprinkle holy water on his hammer.

On their return to Crossroad Keep, Ingrid pledges her life to Sehanine, the elven goddess of the Moon that her adoptive father prayed to. She does not grow cruel and does not seek vengeance. She finds solace in her faith and seeks to restore the Sword of Gith, to save others from the bitter fate of her homeland.

Priesthood suits her so much.


Ammon Jerro joins them in redemption of his granddaughter's death at his hands – by mistake and through misdirected malice, and they obtain the necessary shards for Ingrid to forge the Silver Sword of Gith by the power of her will.

Now the sword is whole, and she is a beacon of light, too beautiful to be human. She is the heart of the sword. She is the sword. There will be no mercy and no escape for her: the King of Shadows will need her dead, for she is the weapon and while she exists, he is vulnerable.

Casavir's gaze takes in the miracle unfolding begore them and travels beyond it. He sees the narrow lines of clavicles above her neckline. He sees her stubborn set of shoulders – proud yet tired, so very tired. He sees the small wrinkles that concerns have placed on her brow. She has buried too many people to stay young. Even this moment of triumph unfolds in the cemetery of her childhood.

His gaze circles their companions. Their faces reflect various degrees of awe, the recognition of the moment worthy of legends, some elation, some disbelief. Sand is trying to conceal the fact that he cannot be cynical now. It does not matter. What matters is that Casavir feels that this moment sets Ingrid apart from all of them. This fabric of legends shrouds her humanity more effectively than noble titles and power ever could. She is now a magical being, a weapon as much as a human, and from this moment on she will be very lonely.

Casavir's heart breaks a little for her. He closes his eyes for a second to let this intense feeling encompass him and nurture his determination.

When he opens his eyes, Ingrid is looking right at him. She is sad and serious, but her lips curl in a hapless, understanding half-smile when their eyes meet, and Casavir suddenly realizes he was not the only one who followed every breath and hung on every subtle change in expression and ached to touch but never dared.

He must confess. It may be the last year of their life, and it is only a matter of time before they set off into the swamps of Merdelain for the final confrontation, but there will not be a single day this year when Ingrid should be torn apart by loneliness.

His love can be her strength, too.


A/N:

This story grew from a simple idea: Casavir must be a much more complex man that the OC story gave him credit. This thought haunted me for quite some time and resulted in this long stream of text. I am afraid that it revealed too much of my own fears and aspirations, for you can never live with the character for several months and escape filling their shell with your own fights and struggles. Anyway, this is over now. Hopefully, this game will let me go.

Do comment if you read it to the end – I am afraid the fandom is dead, so raise your voice if you are still with it.