From The Ashes

Chapter Nine - Living Legends

Arvayn Bryvaris

"I thought it was but a myth." Arvayn murmured, staring down at his own pale face reflected back up at him, from within the cup of golden mead clasped in his hands. "I'd heard the stories, the whispers. I just never thought any of it was more than that. The thieves guild of Tay..."

Locke smiled at him from across the table, "Well, think again. You can't sit in a myth, yet here you are." He gestured to the room in which they were sitting, and it really wasn't much to look at. It was a simple bedchamber, containing a plain bed with white sheets and linen blankets, the table at which they were currently sitting, a chest at the end of the bed, and an empty bookcase.

It was strange to think that this simple, plain room, that wouldn't look out of place in the poorest of inns, was a part of something so legendary. Something so significant to the outcome of the War of the Claim.

He'd heard of the guild in Tay, the myth of an underground thieves guild that had, according to legend, played an integral part in the standing of Tay throughout the conflict. It was said that the War of the Claim was started all the way back in 1567 in the Second Age by King Caedmon II of Kemmaweth, just over four thousand years ago.

It started with the newly crowned King, merely a month after his coronation when he issued the claim to the oldest settlement on Tayrul; the, at the time, village of Tay. He claimed it was his, by right, as he was born there, raised there during his knighthood and was well versed in it's history. He had an odd attachment to the place, for someone who'd been taken as a soldier from the streets to live a better life, as a King in a castle nonetheless.

He was denied this claim by the King of Ostaviel at the time; King Lorwan I, who claimed the village as in his lands, his kingdom, and therefore, his rule by right.

This had, somewhat ludicrously in Arvayn's opinion, led to Caedmon declaring war on Ostaviel.

A war lasting the full seven years of Caedmon's reign.

A war he never won, despite his forces reaching the village in droves. In numbers that, by all accounts, should have been able to outnumber and take the village.

Only, by some miracle, they didn't.

Of course, this event did not go unnoticed, and was investigated furiously time and time again by many. Every one of them spent countless hours, days, months, and years milling about the village in ever growing frustration. Attempting to scour every nook, every cranny, to unturn every leaf upon every tree for an answer to maddeningly find only nothing. To lie awake each night to silence and overlapping, endless potential conclusions to what seemed to be an neverending riddle. A source of salvation so elusive to even the most meticulously trained eyes that they came no closer to finding so much as a sliver of tangible evidence of the truth, no matter how long they spent in deep study and contemplation.

It had seemed to be merely a scapegoat at first, the closest answer they could manage to scrape together out of all the combined histories of the village.

It had no particular backbone, no physical evidence ever recovered proving its existence. Yet when word first arose of it, people flocked to it as an answer. An answer that, though lacked in authenticity and any kind of surety, was better than no answer at all.

The existence of a lesser known guild hidden within the very walls of the village, with all members eager to remain clear of the public eye.

All members superbly, almost inhumanly competent at their jobs.

So much so that not one of them was ever caught, nor even sighted during the battle or the investigations that followed.

It had all seemed so outlandish a tale that Arvayn had never been able to bring himself to believe a word of it. That he brushed it aside as nothing but a tale told to thrill and abate the boredom of working peasants. An old wives tale fabricated to entertain and yammer about in times where recent gossip was scarce, or had been completely exhausted.