Cold Thunder: Loughshine

Loughshine — Arson

The war reaches Loughshine as a confusion of fire, conquest and pleas for rescue. Rebels search for children and beg Iona to save them; Executors hunt the Champion of Fire and threaten traitors. Greenguard’s Knights call on Dragonlords to unleash flame, invoke Granville’s orders to capture or slay, and claim the heights for the Queen of Victory. Neither army distinguishes its own cause from the civilians trapped between them. A cry to stop ends in horrified words: this was not what the speaker intended.

Felix reaches Kieran with news of allies from across the sea and finds the offer bitterly contradicted by the fighting. Brentan realizes that Greenguard’s Knights are attacking civilians and asks where Victoria is. Kieran will not trade Iona for another tyrant: the Fianna fight for Skye and for their children. He is grateful for Felix’s spying but says his trust in Galanoth has brought fire to his people. He had even been ready to abandon Haeos for Fiamme. The rescue force now seems to have vindicated the crown’s warnings about invasion.

The Hero insists that something has happened to Galanoth and promises to find out. Celestia can reach the Dragonlords whose Dragons she raised, and Brentan promises that Knights and Lords will hear his voice. Their intervention stops Greenguard’s attacks on the rebels, allowing a fragile cooperation to begin. Caoimhe volunteers to guide the Hero and Felix, despite Kieran naming her his successor should he die. She has already needed Celestia’s help to clear smoke from her lungs. The safety she offers is practical and strange: only Loughshine’s shadows can hide them from Iona’s sight.

Loughshine — A rebellion’s lost children

Kieran’s distrust comes from more than Greenguard’s history. He says Iona’s reign has made the common people’s land, livelihood and children possessions of the rich pureblooded Elves. His own daughter was taken because he was judged too poor to raise her. He believes she died in one of the re-education academies and bitterly prefers that imagined fate to her becoming a mindless soldier. The account establishes his loss and belief; it does not establish the child’s death.

His wife was a pureblood Elf who left her former life for a sellsword. Kieran put down his blade to stay close to their daughter, but his wife’s former fiancé found them. She made him promise to flee and leave her to die for their child’s sake. He says he could not keep the promise; the Queen’s men took their daughter, and he never saw her again. He now imagines apologizing in the next life after killing Iona. Exploring the ruins with his daughter also gave the rebellion its name: Fianna was carved into an old stone, and the supposedly Evil trees and ruins sheltered them from monsters.

Caoimhe has lived through a rebellion twenty years long, a lifetime beside Iona’s Elven timescale. She repeats the royal account of Gaheris bringing law to a savage land while acknowledging that Kieran and the Fianna believe otherwise. What she knows directly is that the old shadows protect them. Her own place beside Kieran invites rumors that she is his daughter, but she says he still believes that child died in custody. She directs rebels when she can and compromises between formal distance and affection by calling their leader Mr. Kieran. Neither the rumor nor that closeness resolves her identity.

Loughshine — Through the burning yew

Wicker Magic clears the Cailleacha serving the Warden of the South while the Hero consults Felix. Caoimhe hides her coughing because she fears Felix or Kieran will insist she rest. Maigh Eo then confronts Elder Yew driven into frenzy by the pain of the fires. Kieran once played among them with his daughter, and Caoimhe wonders whether the trees still remember her face. Resentment Harbour sends the Hero to extinguish five fires and check on him, making protection of the ruins and of their people part of earning the Fianna’s trust.

Wisened Yew gathers arils and the Cailleacha’s twine for Celestia’s healing work. Caoimhe’s joke that a healer of Dragons should be even better at healing humans becomes a tentative question rather than a measured law. Stories credit yew sap with longer life or resurrection, and a friend told her yew staves suit necromancers, though Energy necromancers cannot use them as effectively as their Darkness counterparts. Her own unfinished necromancy lessons came from a banished friend. The skeletons tending Kieran’s vegetable garden meet Greenguard’s disapproval, exposing another difference between the allies’ habits and beliefs.

Dragonflare leads to Galanoth, who had fed the rebels before his fire escaped control. The oldest yew is burning, a tree Kieran says has watched over Skye since creation and which even Iona’s family could not cut down. Felix thinks only power on a Champion’s level could do this. The Hero refuses to make that suspicion a verdict against Galanoth: they trained together, and the Hero trusts him. The burning tree forces the question of what the war is doing to the powers gathered around it.

Loughshine — The Queen’s adopted Wardens

Felix explains the human lives beneath the Wardens’ titles. Indradeep is Iona’s eldest adopted son but is not Crown Prince. In a distant farming village, his gift of rain became a disaster when storms ran out of control and lightning burned the settlement. Iona rescued the sole survivor. Felix says the guilt haunts him and admits suspicions, without proving that Iona arranged the catastrophe or explaining what those suspicions encompass.

Iseul, eldest adopted human daughter and Warden of the West, came from a prominent family outside Skye. Her father wanted to sell the prodigy so that his son could inherit. Iona rescued her and had the family executed. Felix doubts whether that act was love, even as he thinks Iseul is the favorite child. Illaria, the South’s Spider Strega, instead gives years of her life to spells that keep enemies out and subjects in. Felix worries that her lowered electrical barrier reflects overexertion and illness. He remembers reading bedtime stories to the masked child he has never seen unmasked.

The present campaign brings their specialties together. Executors accompany the Cailleacha, and Felix fears a joint arrival by Iseul and Illaria would force the allies to abandon their weakest people. He calls Illaria as kind as Indradeep and even more dutiful, while condemning the family’s use of her life. Caoimhe later reports that the three Wardens are on awkward terms, a respite the escape depends on. Power does not free these adopted children from obligations that bind their skill, bodies and affection to their mother.

Loughshine — Relentless flames

Galanoth tells the Hero how he and Artix were taken. Iseul passed them a letter apparently signed by the Hero, asking them to meet in Ashray. Executors waited with children from Skye as hostages. Refusal meant those children’s deaths and more deaths if Iseul returned without the Champions. Felix concludes that the hostages must have been Iona’s other adopted children and says their devotion could make them willing sacrifices. His interpretation is horrifying, but remains an interpretation of the coercion Galanoth describes.

In captivity, Galanoth says Iona made the Champions fight her children by threatening to hurt those same children if they refused. He thinks she was testing Energy spells against a Champion’s strength. The tests changed after Iseul brought someone else from Greenguard; a familiar voice outside his cell does not give him a firm identity. When he escaped, Artix’s cell was already empty, and he could not tell whether his friend had been moved or had escaped first. His account of Artix protecting Iona’s children from broken glass and lightning makes them victims of her anger as well as instruments of her policy.

Galanoth’s own departure involved another unlocked cell and a snowstorm that hid his trail. He joined the Fianna beneath the yew shadows, but Greenguard’s arrival made his blood feel like lava. Dragon breath and mages’ fire grew stronger, and he now fears that losing concentration will incinerate everyone nearby. He believes Fiamme is helping the army rescue him but going too far, and cannot reach her. Smoke and screams recall his own past; his fear that he may wake among dead Greenguard Dragons is a feared disaster, not something that has already occurred.

The Hero insists Galanoth has kept control and suggests that a stray lightning strike set the ancient tree alight. They will find the cause together, rescue the rebels and look for Artix. Younger yews may still offer shelter. With Celestia and Brentan redirecting Greenguard’s forces, Felix proposes using their fire to melt a path through the snow. Iseul’s unexplained delay gives them an opportunity to leave no one behind; it does not yet explain who or what has created that opportunity.

Loughshine — The grace of three

Shock Scatter strikes the Executors before they can join the Cailleacha. Grace of Three clears Energy Elementals from a younger yew and examines a stone beneath it. Caoimhe takes the Elementals’ obstruction as a sign that Haeos still supports Iona, but the stone unsettles the royal account of his favor. The Skye Knot is carved there, older than the monarchy that explains its loops as Haeos, Gaheris and Gareth. The surviving inscription has been chiseled away in places, retaining references to storms and family, several damaged names, and the same Gaelic refrain found at Eblana. Its resemblance to the damaged monument at Eblana does not justify filling every gap.

Iubhair brings five injured rebels beneath the unburnt yew. Caoimhe questions why a shadow that protects people must be called Evil and wonders whether ignorance is being weaponized by the Queen. Parting the Clouds then sends the Hero through Executors and Elementals toward the East. Iseul bars the way, and Arrester requires defeating her before the escape can resume. Celestia reports that the snowstorm is thinning at just the right moment, although she finds the convenience suspicious. Kieran asks Caoimhe whether she trusts these outsiders and accepts her answer enough to order the Fianna to march with Greenguard, leaving nobody behind.

Loughshine — Hostage habit

Iseul interrupts the departure with Mabel as a hostage. She blames the fugitives for Greenguard’s fires, invokes Gaheris bringing civilization to savages and urges Skye to unite beneath Iona against Fiamme’s flames. Even the maid she calls a traitor can supposedly be spared if the rebels return and kneel. Mabel tells them to run. Having cared for Iseul since her adoption, she knows how desperately the Warden wants to please her mother, and calls Iona a two-faced witch. Her defiance is answered with a bright flash and a scream, followed by a new demand for Felix.

The Hero turns hostage-taking into a distraction. Felix is told quietly to keep shouting so Iseul watches their group, and Caoimhe plays along with threats to hold him even if he tries to bite free. Iseul is unimpressed by the strength of a man she remembers struggling with a push-up and tells her Executors to retrieve him. Brentan’s intervention draws her complaint about an attack from behind, though she rejects his description of her as a Princess: she is only her mother’s humble daughter. The Hero tells Felix to get Mabel and the Fianna away while they catch up.

Felix thanks his rescuers and urges Mabel toward cover, but she asks him to tell her children that she loves them. A warning follows. Iseul herself protests that she is right there when her mother strikes. Galanoth tells the others to stay behind him, and Mabel pushes Felix away. The attack kills Mabel, as Felix later says explicitly, and would have killed more without the Hero and Galanoth, according to Caoimhe. The event answers the claim that returning to the Queen would make the servant safe.

Loughshine — A Queen at the shore

After the strike, Brentan calls the Hero back to awareness. The Hero cannot move; Brentan says he has been saved again and promises to carry them. Iseul turns her mother’s willingness to strike near her into another demand on herself, insisting that it was a chance to capture the guests. Victoria intervenes, declaring that she is the one Iona wants. An arrow wounds Iseul without destroying her soul, and she realizes Victoria is using something different. The Warden is taken away protesting, and Felix sees the enemy retreat as reinforcements arrive.

Victoria introduces herself to Felix and says she swam fast enough to catch up. He is alive and feels no pain while Mabel has been incinerated, a contrast that makes the consequences of his forbidden research feel like a curse again. Victoria recognizes that Dethrix blackmailed him and that he healed the king’s prisoners. She ends his exile. Felix later insists that this time he stood up for himself, yet still condemns his survival when someone else died to save him. His promise to use what remains of his body to free the Fianna gives his grief a task, even as he struggles to accept his own rescue.

The Queen orders Greenguard into small parties, each paired with a Fianna guide, to move through forests toward Henry’s and Granville’s forces. Kieran credits the practical use of local knowledge while withholding full trust in Victoria; the Hero and companions earned it first, and he owes Galanoth an apology. Caoimhe had heard that the Queen was spoiled and sickly but now sees her leading in person. The alliance survives as a set of shared actions and guarded judgments, not as the rebels simply surrendering their cause to a foreign crown.

Loughshine — The eye and the shadows

In private, Iona laughs that nobody calls her a witch and promises that the yew shadows cannot hide Victoria forever. She begins to describe what she sacrificed for Haeos but does not finish the thought. Abel tells her that destroying one yew tree has exhausted her. Iona accepts the need to wait: he and Illaria are leading the invaders East according to plan. She wants Greenguard to die screaming mad and to gain everything she has wanted; Abel makes that ambition plural. Their agreement leaves the purpose of the route, the source of the power and the full terms between them unresolved.

Anvil Cloud is the optional work of keeping the survivors safe on that route. Caoimhe gathers yew roots, ion particles and a pendant left by Iseul to charm the army against lightning, using protections also taught to novice Energy mages. She dislikes the smell of burned skin and considers raising undead for heavy work, while expecting Victoria’s disapproval. The same cultural gulf remains beneath cooperation. Ahead lies Naoise’s grave, where Felix hopes the history of a Dragon who nearly defeated Iona’s ancestors may offer help against the present crown.