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00:00:00.920 Speaker 1 Before we started this week's episode, I just wanted to give a special thanks to
00:00:04.740 Speaker 1 Katie at Summation Fifty-Two for her poems and inspiration, which I integrated into
00:00:09.600 Speaker 1 this episode. You can see more of her poems at summationfiftytwo.com. Thanks, Katie
00:00:15.500 Speaker 1 [haunting music]
00:01:05.720 Speaker 1 . Soul Binder.
00:01:10.800 Speaker 1 Strength from within. Learning trust from where you've been.
00:01:17.460 Speaker 1 A truth that is withstanding. A reminder that inner peace becomes built
00:01:23.560 Speaker 1 in. Trust in where you are going.
00:01:28.440 Speaker 1 Belief.
00:01:30.840 Speaker 1 Belief in wha--
00:01:34.920 Speaker 1 I can't, I can't do this anymore, Marcus.
00:01:41.300 Speaker 1 I'm not strong enough. It should be you finishing these poems
00:01:46.300 Speaker 1 [paper rustles] . One.
00:01:52.820 Speaker 1 Die tomorrow
00:01:54.000 Speaker 1 [wind blows]
00:02:01.400 Speaker 1 . Stand.
00:02:03.640 Speaker 1 Estus Darkwater watched the snow blow into the lean-to. Her breath
00:02:09.400 Speaker 1 billowed in great white clouds of steam, a cold so deep that she couldn't feel her
00:02:15.440 Speaker 1 face, her hands. A numbing cold. A gentle death awaited
00:02:21.480 Speaker 1 her, and soon, if she did not rise now. Stand
00:02:28.180 Speaker 1 up.
00:02:30.380 Speaker 1 Her limbs rattled, then fell limp again. She couldn't.
00:02:36.560 Speaker 1 She couldn't rise. An unbearable weight had pressed her to the ground, a
00:02:42.400 Speaker 1 weight that dominated every waking moment. It would be so easy to lay down.
00:02:48.540 Speaker 1 It would be so easy to just stop. Just stop doing anything.
00:02:54.640 Speaker 1 But the voice in her head demanded more, always demanding more.
00:03:01.760 Speaker 1 Get up. Die tomorrow. Die
00:03:07.620 Speaker 1 tomorrow. Why couldn't she die today? It would be
00:03:13.440 Speaker 1 so nice to die today.
00:03:17.160 Speaker 1 No.
00:03:19.340 Speaker 1 The inner voice offered no explanation, no comfort, only an
00:03:24.780 Speaker 1 implacable will. That will was all that drove her now. She was not
00:03:30.540 Speaker 1 human. A human had depth, richness. Estus had only
00:03:36.160 Speaker 1 rage left. And when she blinked open her eyes, she found that rage was
00:03:41.780 Speaker 1 enough. Perhaps she could die tomorrow instead.
00:03:48.040 Speaker 1 And with the weight of a mountain on her shoulders, she began to rise from the
00:03:52.620 Speaker 1 floor. She raged against that weight, gritted her teeth against the pain.
00:03:59.500 Speaker 1 No. No tears. Not again. She'd cried so often that
00:04:05.540 Speaker 1 it wasn't even meaningful anymore. It wasn't cathartic. It was just something that
00:04:11.180 Speaker 1 happened when you bore a mountain on your back. Estus got a hand under her.
00:04:17.540 Speaker 1 She stared at the rotting floor of the lean-to. The canvas flapped noisily in the
00:04:22.860 Speaker 1 wind next to her, taunting her. Her arm shook from the effort, even though the
00:04:28.840 Speaker 1 weight wasn't physical. There was nothing wrong with her body. She stared at the
00:04:34.220 Speaker 1 floor six inches from her face, smelled the musty boards, the clean, icy
00:04:39.980 Speaker 1 scent of fresh snow outside. Her face was a mask of rage.
00:04:45.880 Speaker 1 She fed that rage, the only animating force she had. You
00:04:52.120 Speaker 1 don't have to do the whole day now. You don't have to do anything
00:04:57.920 Speaker 1 except stand. You just have to stand, damn it.
00:05:04.340 Speaker 1 And with a heroic effort, she stood. A shadow of a shadow
00:05:10.280 Speaker 1 of a woman, but still, she stood. That first burden of
00:05:16.260 Speaker 1 the day was always the heaviest. From there, she would have the willpower to start a
00:05:21.840 Speaker 1 campfire and cook herself a simple breakfast. There was no denying that a hot meal
00:05:26.880 Speaker 1 had a magic of its own. Maybe just enough magic to get her through this day. After
00:05:32.820 Speaker 1 this day would be another, though, and then another. The days would keep
00:05:38.500 Speaker 1 coming. How could she bear that? She couldn't. No.
00:05:44.760 Speaker 1 Stop thinking. Thinking is death. You can't die.
00:05:51.180 Speaker 1 Not yet. Estus let out another billowing cloud of breath and parted the
00:05:57.120 Speaker 1 tattered canvas to look out of her shelter at the towering pine forest [wind blows]
00:06:02.700 Speaker 1 .
00:06:08.192 Speaker 1 Thin, dark pillars that spread into a tangle of bony branches set against the
00:06:12.992 Speaker 1 lightning morning sky. Snow had piled in around the little shelter. It
00:06:18.992 Speaker 1 would take any other person an hour to clear enough space on the ground for a proper
00:06:24.251 Speaker 1 fire. Estis, however, was blessed with power. Power enough
00:06:30.152 Speaker 1 not to be bothered with many of life's little unpleasantries. But, she remarked, not
00:06:35.452 Speaker 1 enough power to actually change the events that truly mattered. Dark thoughts
00:06:41.292 Speaker 1 simmered under the surface. She shoved them back into the depths, lest she get
00:06:45.732 Speaker 1 dragged down with them again. There was work to be done.
00:06:51.652 Speaker 1 Estis felt around in the cloth pouch at her right hip. There were little pockets
00:06:55.952 Speaker 1 sewn into the pouch to organize the glyphs she carried. Most of the pockets were
00:07:00.112 Speaker 1 empty. Some part of her mind screamed at her for that. She shoved that down too.
00:07:06.352 Speaker 1 She ran her hands across the glyph in the far left pocket. It had the right shape,
00:07:11.832 Speaker 1 but was there really only one left? She pulled out the heat glyph, a
00:07:17.432 Speaker 1 small, red, glass-like object about the size of a marble. It was cut like a
00:07:23.332 Speaker 1 gemstone, but warped and twisted, with the tip like a flame frozen in time.
00:07:29.972 Speaker 1 Estis tore the canvas drape off the wall with her left hand and held the heat glyph
00:07:34.352 Speaker 1 out in front of her with the right hand. She thrust her right hand into the hill of
00:07:38.692 Speaker 1 snow and connected her mind to it. She imagined the boundaries of the snow hill,
00:07:44.472 Speaker 1 imagined it as a single object. Then she bound the heat glyph to it. The glyph
00:07:50.492 Speaker 1 flashed out of existence with a little red pulse, and at the same time, the snow
00:07:55.092 Speaker 1 hill simply washed away in a wave of steam. She had to shield her eyes from the
00:08:00.972 Speaker 1 thick, hot cloud. When the steam dissipated, there was a wide circle of moist, dead
00:08:06.472 Speaker 1 grass where the snow hill had been. She stumbled out of her makeshift shelter onto
00:08:11.372 Speaker 1 the still warm ground, though the chill was already creeping back in. Perhaps
00:08:17.792 Speaker 1 she should have bound the heat to her clothes instead. Or, she realized, saved the
00:08:23.352 Speaker 1 last heat glyph to actually start a fire. Stupid.
00:08:28.392 Speaker 1 Impulsive. When had she grown so short-sighted? I
00:08:34.232 Speaker 1 suppose I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way after all.
00:08:39.932 Speaker 1 So she spent the next hour gathering fallen limbs in the early dawn for a fire. The
00:08:45.572 Speaker 1 pine forest was deathly still, making her own movements seem loud and intrusive
00:08:51.592 Speaker 1 by comparison. Hopefully, the sound would not attract danger. She
00:08:57.692 Speaker 1 kicked herself again for her low stock of glyphs. At
00:09:03.312 Speaker 1 last, she assembled a small clutch of sticks into a nest for the fire. Estis rifled
00:09:08.872 Speaker 1 with clumsy, frozen hands through her pack of dwindling supplies for the flint and
00:09:13.612 Speaker 1 steel to start the fire. It wasn't in there. She ignored the little spark
00:09:19.532 Speaker 1 of panic in her chest, so she checked the side pockets. Empty. Except for
00:09:25.572 Speaker 1 a single glyph. A composite glyph of some kind. A reflective gray
00:09:30.972 Speaker 1 rectangle with little streaks of orange running through it like veins of fire. She
00:09:36.512 Speaker 1 rubbed it between her numbed forefinger and thumb and closed her eyes, trying to
00:09:41.652 Speaker 1 discern what it had been. Steel. Steel and something else.
00:09:47.832 Speaker 1 She couldn't be sure, though. It looked familiar somehow, even though she couldn't
00:09:52.312 Speaker 1 remember making it. She put it in her coat pocket to investigate later. Assuming
00:09:57.692 Speaker 1 there would be a later. Estis was shaking from the cold. This was such a
00:10:03.712 Speaker 1 stupid way to die. That implacable voice in the back of her mind told her that this
00:10:09.052 Speaker 1 was exactly how most people died. From mundane causes. An illness.
00:10:15.312 Speaker 1 An infection. A bad heart. Exposure. So
00:10:21.212 Speaker 1 she stumbled back out of the lean-to and into the pine forest. She leaned against a
00:10:26.291 Speaker 1 tree. Her shivering was actually beginning to slow. The cold
00:10:32.172 Speaker 1 was almost beginning to feel warm now. She was sure that this was not a good sign.
00:10:39.372 Speaker 1 Give me your heat. And now she was talking to a tree.
00:10:46.292 Speaker 1 Not a good sign either. Estis placed one hand on the massive pine tree and looked
00:10:52.352 Speaker 1 up. How did anything survive this far north? This thing was
00:10:58.212 Speaker 1 alive. Somehow. It must have some heat.
00:11:04.152 Speaker 1 She traced the branches with her eyes, looked at where it intermingled with its
00:11:08.932 Speaker 1 neighbors to form a skeletal canopy. She imagined the tree's roots where they must
00:11:14.572 Speaker 1 penetrate the frozen ground beneath her. The tree was cold, just like everything
00:11:20.552 Speaker 1 else, but not quite as cold as everything else. When she was sure she held
00:11:26.552 Speaker 1 the entire tree in her mind, she focused on what little warmth it had, and she took
00:11:32.512 Speaker 1 it, drawing all of it to a single point in her right hand. There was a tiny flash
00:11:38.572 Speaker 1 of red light, and the tree creaked and groaned as the heat was removed.
00:11:44.512 Speaker 1 Estis looked down at her right hand. A tiny red heat glyph lay on her palm.
00:11:50.792 Speaker 1 It was barely larger than a grain of sand. So small it might blow away. She
00:11:56.712 Speaker 1 closed her numbed hand tightly around it and trudged to the next tree and repeated
00:12:00.972 Speaker 1 the same process. Finding the edges of the tree, holding the object in her mind,
00:12:07.152 Speaker 1 then consciously drawing only the heat from it. Ten minutes later, her mind
00:12:12.928 Speaker 1 swam with the effort. Her thoughts were getting stupid, sluggish, her
00:12:18.528 Speaker 1 movements dreamlike. When she looked down at her hand, she had a dozen or so red
00:12:23.828 Speaker 1 specks of heat glyphs. She moved step by frigid step back to the circle of
00:12:29.768 Speaker 1 grass and the pile of sticks there. Estis held the tiny heat glyphs to her chest,
00:12:35.308 Speaker 1 knowing that she would be unable to bind more if she dropped them. There was a
00:12:40.128 Speaker 1 popping sound in the forest directly behind her, not unlike the sound of the trees
00:12:45.568 Speaker 1 giving their life's heat to her. But it was far off. She kept walking, then
00:12:51.588 Speaker 1 knelt before the sticks to start her fire. Then she heard the sound again,
00:12:58.048 Speaker 1 much closer. And was that the sound of snow crunching?
00:13:04.648 Speaker 1 Estis turned to peer into the gloomy dawn forest. The evergreen canopy blocked out
00:13:09.948 Speaker 1 most of the fledgling sunlight. There was barely any color to the world. Something
00:13:15.127 Speaker 1 long and dark moved through the brush. Some of her training kicked back in, and she
00:13:20.948 Speaker 1 turned back to the sticks. Fire. She needed fire. She bound the dozen or so heat
00:13:26.608 Speaker 1 glyphs up into a single large one. There was that same flash of weak red light as
00:13:31.928 Speaker 1 some of the energy was lost in the transfer. She isolated a single fat stick at the
00:13:37.508 Speaker 1 bottom of the pile and held it in her mind, calming herself, forcing herself to
00:13:43.028 Speaker 1 ignore the sounds of an approaching creature behind her. Then she applied
00:13:48.948 Speaker 1 all of the heat glyph to her stick. The stick burst into flame immediately. Within a
00:13:54.828 Speaker 1 few seconds, the rest of the clutch had caught. The radiating heat of the small fire
00:13:59.348 Speaker 1 turned some switch in her brain back on. There was something right behind
00:14:05.348 Speaker 1 her. She rose and turned to face it, but saw nothing in the gloom. She tried to slow
00:14:10.828 Speaker 1 her speeding heart with deliberate breaths. Estis reached towards the pouch on her
00:14:16.068 Speaker 1 right hip without taking her eyes off the spot where she'd last seen movement, some
00:14:21.227 Speaker 1 thirty feet away. She felt that composite rectangular glyph again. It was
00:14:27.288 Speaker 1 complicated, expertly made. Steel and intellect.
00:14:32.868 Speaker 1 Yes, that was an intellect glyph woven in there. Interesting. Had she
00:14:38.668 Speaker 1 created that? If so, it had been a more thoughtful, more prepared version
00:14:44.668 Speaker 1 of her. Perhaps she had made it before. Before
00:14:50.648 Speaker 1 There was a creaking, popping sound like the sound of rapidly spreading ice. A
00:14:55.988 Speaker 1 nearby tree she'd tapped for heat began to go inert. A chalk-white circle formed on
00:15:01.728 Speaker 1 the trunk where she'd touched it. It rapidly expanded to wrap around the trunk and
00:15:06.788 Speaker 1 sped up and down the bark like a growing cancer. The transition to a chalk-white
00:15:11.928 Speaker 1 material happened quickly once it began. A moment later, the earthy gray-brown of
00:15:16.768 Speaker 1 the bark and the soft green of the pine needles had all turned a sterile matte
00:15:22.768 Speaker 1 white. The needles no longer moved in the weak breeze. The great white statue of a
00:15:28.608 Speaker 1 tree smashed to the ground and shattered into countless tiny pieces, spraying shards
00:15:34.148 Speaker 1 of inert material in every direction. Estis shielded her eyes from the shrapnel. As
00:15:39.328 Speaker 1 soon as she lowered her arms, the next tree went inert, and then the next, and then
00:15:44.788 Speaker 1 the next. Estis dove into the tiny wooden lean-to, realizing only once she'd looked
00:15:50.388 Speaker 1 up from the ground that it would do her absolutely no good if a tree fell on it.
00:15:56.528 Speaker 1 The forest around her groaned, snapped, and shattered with rage. She closed her eyes
00:16:02.508 Speaker 1 and clutched her life with a pure, primal longing for survival.
00:16:08.188 Speaker 1 The storm of noise around her finally stopped and she looked up from the dirt where
00:16:13.148 Speaker 1 she lay. Estis got up and looked around the camp's surroundings. The mounds of
00:16:18.888 Speaker 1 snow concealed the destruction on the forest floor. Only the ugly white bases of the
00:16:24.508 Speaker 1 inert trees remained, sticking up out of the snow like ragged snapped-off bones.
00:16:31.668 Speaker 1 Obviously, the trees had gone unstable after she'd removed the heat from them. They
00:16:37.648 Speaker 1 hadn't just lost their heat. They'd lost their ability to hold heat as well.
00:16:43.668 Speaker 1 It had punched a tiny hole in their identity, their place in reality. That hole had
00:16:49.728 Speaker 1 caused them to go unstable. And when things became unstable, they eventually
00:16:55.588 Speaker 1 went inert. Binding was such a terrific art. You could mix
00:17:01.628 Speaker 1 and combine the very rules of the universe under the watchful eye of the Judge. With
00:17:07.688 Speaker 1 binding, you could cheat reality for a while. How long depended on
00:17:13.508 Speaker 1 what you were doing, on what scale, and, obviously, how skilled the cheater was.
00:17:20.168 Speaker 1 Big overt cheats in the form of dangerously impossible bindings called paradoxes
00:17:25.288 Speaker 1 were caught immediately. More mundane bindings might last years. Eventually,
00:17:31.088 Speaker 1 though, the Judge caught every cheat, no matter how small. When that happened, it
00:17:36.948 Speaker 1 behaved like the Judge of a sporting game. It threw out everyone and everything
00:17:42.288 Speaker 1 involved, not by removing them from reality, but by turning them into the most
00:17:47.208 Speaker 1 mundane and useless of materials, by turning them inert. There
00:17:53.108 Speaker 1 was the sound of something moving again, far in the distance. The creature that had
00:17:59.068 Speaker 1 stalked her had been scared off. For now.
00:18:04.248 Speaker 1 Which was good. Though, if she could still hear it at this distance, it must have
00:18:08.528 Speaker 1 been big. Very big. Which was not good. It might
00:18:14.264 Speaker 1 simply come back when she was sleeping. Yes, that's what she needed, another
00:18:19.364 Speaker 1 pursuer. It seemed unfair that she could be so relentlessly pursued while failing
00:18:25.444 Speaker 1 so miserably in her own quest. She looked to the south, close to the direction where
00:18:31.084 Speaker 1 the beast had fled, and was increasingly certain that she was being followed.
00:18:37.064 Speaker 1 And they were getting closer. Perhaps these two would run into each other. That
00:18:42.684 Speaker 1 would solve a number of problems. Speaking of which The piles
00:18:48.744 Speaker 1 of burning sticks had been scattered across the campsite by the falling trees, their
00:18:53.784 Speaker 1 life-giving fire now little more than smoke and dying embers.
00:18:59.424 Speaker 1 Estis sighed and put her face in her hands. Problems come in threes, she
00:19:05.444 Speaker 1 remembered her mother saying. It seemed that her problems came by the dozen.
00:19:11.364 Speaker 1 She lowered her shivering arms and found that the brush with death had given her a
00:19:16.844 Speaker 1 weak but growing will to live. She did have a little more left
00:19:22.864 Speaker 1 in her, enough to bind the heat from a dozen more trees, far away
00:19:28.764 Speaker 1 from camp this time. Enough to live another day. Enough,
00:19:34.924 Speaker 1 perhaps, to die tomorrow.
00:19:39.924 Speaker 1 It took her the better part of an hour to gather enough heat to light another fire.
00:19:44.464 Speaker 1 Between the warmth of movement and the rising sun, Estis was merely miserable
00:19:49.044 Speaker 1 instead of endangered now. Hopefully she wouldn't lose any toes to frostbite. She
00:19:54.724 Speaker 1 dropped another piece of firewood onto the growing bonfire. It would need to be big,
00:20:00.424 Speaker 1 very big. Once her brain had warmed enough to reason, she'd found a fallen rotten
00:20:06.184 Speaker 1 tree and bound the moisture out of it. The result was an easy-to-move, highly
00:20:11.264 Speaker 1 flammable wood. It would burn away long before it had time to go inert. While the
00:20:16.944 Speaker 1 fire grew, she pulled the map out of her pack. Seventeen red X's marked every
00:20:22.564 Speaker 1 failure so far, every dead end. Each one had turned up no useful
00:20:28.584 Speaker 1 information, or worse, false trails that had wasted weeks of her time.
00:20:34.784 Speaker 1 Whoever it was she was following, if she was following them, they had
00:20:40.304 Speaker 1 known how not to leave a trail. Instead of evidence, now she only followed a vague
00:20:46.304 Speaker 1 intuition. They were going north. She was sure of that.
00:20:52.104 Speaker 1 Estis examined the map for the ten thousandth time. Trouble was, she was running out
00:20:58.044 Speaker 1 of north. In all the Empire, only one town had the misfortune of being farther north
00:21:04.104 Speaker 1 than she was now. A town called Dire. She rolled up the map
00:21:10.084 Speaker 1 and put it away. Such a fitting name. If there were no clues in Dire,
00:21:16.164 Speaker 1 what would she do? Estis stared into the raging fire, now a
00:21:21.904 Speaker 1 towering inferno with flames reaching as high as her shoulders. It was not even a
00:21:27.444 Speaker 1 candle next to her own rage. She knew what she would do if the murderer's
00:21:33.504 Speaker 1 trail finally went cold. Estis reached a hand into the bonfire,
00:21:39.384 Speaker 1 just before it could truly burn her. She bound the heat, then the smoke, then
00:21:45.324 Speaker 1 the light. Without the light, the forest fell back into gloom. She
00:21:50.944 Speaker 1 dropped the light and smoke glyphs back into her pouch, but kept the large heat
00:21:56.324 Speaker 1 glyph in her hand. She stared at the unnatural fire. A fire with no light,
00:22:02.864 Speaker 1 no heat, no smoke. A strange flickering image in the dark.
00:22:09.544 Speaker 1 As she watched, it turned chalk white, then collapsed into a plume of dust at her
00:22:15.624 Speaker 1 feet, leaving her standing alone in the dark forest. Estis Darkwater
00:22:21.664 Speaker 1 stared at the heat glyph still in her open hand. If the trail didn't go cold,
00:22:28.343 Speaker 1 if she found the person or people she pursued, she knew what she would
00:22:34.284 Speaker 1 do then, too. Her hands shook, but not from the cold.
00:22:40.804 Speaker 1 She would give them this fire. That, and much, much
00:22:46.864 Speaker 1 more.