Severin Silencieuse
Frost had already spent the better part of the night awake on his bunk with one arm propped behind his head. He had actually given serious consideration to counting the visible bolts in the ceiling, maybe even in the walls, as a substitute for sheep amidst the metal scape of the Castrum. He thought he had buried the past, but a single realization that his old childhood friend, Aimee, was alive and well had dredged up many things he would just as soon have left in the dust.
Hazy memories. He recalled the scent of musty earth, candle smoke, old tomes, and dampness. If he closed his eyes, he recalled the caverns. They weren’t exactly cold, no matter the season above ground, but thinking back he was certain the atmosphere of the place probably only made his sickness worse. He remembered the curious, distant eyes of other Duskwight children as they peered into the chamber at him - the “Silent One”, who seldom spoke and even less often left the confines in which he slept. How they judged and wondered at the only son of Severin Silencieuse, the weakling, the letdown whose very existence was as a burden of shame upon his sire.
Ah yes, Severin. Nothing the man did was ever out of love for his own offspring, but an obligation to the wife who perished trying to bring him into the world. His studies meant so much more, an endless search for an answer he could never seem to find and one he no longer had a use for, as if finding what he sought would absolve him from the self-imposed guilt brought by Alarielle’s passing. And that guilt was thusly imposed on the sickly child in the form of perpetual resentment. Nothing Severin sought during all those years spent after his son’s birth would remove the sickness which remained.
His sire left it to others to see to his son’s care in the form of food, bathing, basics more than anything. The boy served as a reminder of failure to the accomplishments of the once storied Arcanist, now seemingly driven into a deep corner of the labyrinthine caverns his clan called home. And when Severin wasn’t there to browbeat him, he was off tending to and studying the flow from the aether node around which the clan had settled. These were the times when Frost - Glace by his birth name - crept from his bed and borrowed from the seemingly endless collection of tomes his sire kept in the same chamber. Boredom taught him how to read, necessity kept his sanity. Before he turned nine summers old, he felt confident in his self-schooling that he could explain how to properly set broken bones for proper recovery.
In all that time and for as often as he both saw and endured his sire’s shadow, few memories of the man stuck with him more than the demise of Genereux. Caverns being what they are, the clan were no strangers to the presence of bats, and one had seemingly found itself in Glace’s chamber on a frequent basis. Aside from the books, this one small creature more or less became his first friend if not a pet, and he would spend almost as much time watching Genereux as he spent reading. The bat would sometimes even cling to the wall beside the boy’s bed, though almost never when Severin was present.
It took only one time being seen for that friendship to come crashing to an end. Maybe it was some form of concern on Severin’s part, even for as much as Glace had his doubts, but Genereux met his end by way of a thick tome flung from across the room. The sound of the impact, alone, jolted Glace from his sleep, doubly so at the weight of the book landing on his stomach, but nothing felt more jarring or painful than the sight of the now lifeless bat crumpled on his chest.
The next memory which still seared deeply into his chest came from days and endless nights when the undead invaded the caverns. He felt sure Severin would leave him behind as the others fled and leave him as prey for the monsters, but he was surprised when the old man did just the opposite. The flight from the depths was a hasty one. Entire livelyhoods were left behind when the tunnels were sealed, and most of the survivors fled with only the clothes on their backs. Where they would go was a subject of hot debate amongst the clan leaders, but one of their passing destinations would be Gridania. In leaving everything else behind, Severin had still managed to bring with him the heaviest burden he knew, and he had to leave it off somewhere.
No matter how he begged, pleaded, and clung to Severin’s robes, Glace’s fragile fingers were pried away and the boy was all but shoved into the waiting hands of one of Stillglade Fane’s Conjurers. As soon as he was free, Severin moved on with the remaining members of the clan and didn’t spare even one backward glance.
Frost scowled up at the ceiling reflexively at the memory. The once sickly child, now a man grown, had changed over the years into something far more than surely even Severin could have imagined possible. For a moment, he wondered if the old man was even still alive but not out of concern.
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