Epilogue: Aleera

Aleera was aimless after the battle with the Queen of Ash. She helped with any restoration needed for the city and then slowly began cutting the ties she had built. The time of her promise had come. She would be able to travel with her god forever. That had been her wish and it would be realized as soon as she settled her affairs upon her home plane. She would not be back for a while and needed to let the world go on without her. 

She relinquished her leadership of the guild, ownership of the hall and the connected tavern to Hepolita. She also passed over ownership of the bank accounts for the children they had taken in to the eldest of the siblings. They were independently wealthy but the accounts were proof of their hard work at the tavern. It helped the children overcome the trauma of losing their family to the Curse of Ash and gave them a great work ethic. Aleera also relinquished her position as a member of the Council of King’s Crest. She had only held the title for a few months but her ideas were great and they were sad to see her go. Still, the city had Urstil to keep guiding them from the shadows and the people would endure. 

She never really got the chance to say goodbye to the others but she spent a few weeks with Kaladrax at his estate. It was nice to be able to enjoy the luxuries she had only rarely experienced. The family was still learning how to be close after Fafnir was brought back from the dead. They spent long hours talking and getting to know each other again. It helped to see the family healing from their experiences. The Curse had been harsh on the whole island but it felt harsher when seeing the effect it had on their own friends and loved ones. There was an ache in Aleera’s heart that would never forget that Kaladrax had once died, that she had once died and that people around them seemed to die. Those lost ones only sometimes came back. 

Still her promise called to her like nothing else and the Traveler wanted to go out and see new places. Now that the old gods were gone, the barriers between planes, dimensions and universes had weakened making it easier to travel to farther places. There was a plethora of new worlds to explore. The call was getting stronger with each passing moment. On her last night with Kaladrax they had a nice dinner and she told him she had to leave. He had a life here, a family to look after. She was and would always be, a drifter. Her home was the wide open road and it was killing her to stay in one place for so long. Beyond that, she knew that he had much more to accomplish and she wanted him to have that chance. Asking him to go with her now would leave so much unresolved for him. 

She was leaving but she was not forgetting him or leaving him. He would get the chance to finish everything he needed to before she would come back for him. She promised to come back and shared that part of her wish was to take Kaladrax with her as her companion. They would travel to new worlds and he could research everything that caught his eye. Time was the only thing in their way. He had to live his life and hers was moving beyond mortal constraints. Kaladrax was upset of course, he had expected them to live together at the estate. He hadn’t thought that she would want to keep traveling. He realized that most of their adventures together had been them going to strange and exotic places. 

He didn’t want to let her go, his possessive side didn’t want to let her go, but he knew he couldn’t keep her caged. It would kill her spirit and she wouldn’t be his anymore. He asked her to wait a few minutes and left the room. When he came back he carried a wooden square in his hands. It was a dragonchess board. The wood was a dark black ash wood and the pieces for it were carved into black and white dragons. To match their places on the board. He had a twin in his bedroom. They could play no matter how far they were from each other. When she moved a piece on her board, it would move on his and vice versa. He hoped it would be enough to keep them connected over the years and tried to let her go with dignity. She kissed him for a long time before running out of the house towards the unknown. 

She cried as she ran, her tears streaming behind her like small diamonds in the night. She ran until she found the doorway waiting for her down a dark, dank alleyway. She stepped through the glowing entry and disappeared into a world of sunshine and meadows. Her adventures with the Hand of Destiny had come to a close but her adventures had only begun. She took her patron’s hand on the other side of the doorway and they walked off into a new world together.