It was a dark night, but not especially stormy, and Aela was grateful for that. It was hard enough keeping the crystalwings in line without adding bad weather to the mix. Aela had thought to impress Rilaine by bringing her some of the newly-discovered saerulis crystalwings, but Sunny, her own pteira crystalwing, was having trouble keeping them in line.
The sensible thing to do would have been to stop for the night, especially with fatigue rapidly setting in, but Aela was reluctant to stop. Even with Rilaine's crystals rapidly turning the area into a sort of large "mystery spot," Seacliff Keep couldn't be far away. Unless Rilaine had been tampering again, she ought to be seeing the keep's lights in a few minutes. Besides, it was Halloween - not the best night to be away from human settlements, especially for her. Someone who was already a magnet for the supernatural out on Halloween? She'd probably get some long-dead sorcerer popping up for a little...chat.
Aela stared off into the distance, looking for the lantern that always decorated Seacliff Keep's highest tower, and cursed. Oh, she'd be having a word or three with Rilaine. Turning off the warning light, especially on a night like this? It would serve Rilaine right if some poor beast impaled itself on the tower or some lost traveler missed the keep by a mile for want of a guiding light. She suspected Kaldan's guiding hand in that. Rilaine might think the world of the keep's latest arrival, but Aela - and Joloran, in agreement with her for once - had had their suspicions about Kaldan from the moment he'd stumbled into Seacliff.
The lantern wasn't the only thing missing, though, as Aela soon realized. Even with clouds blocking the moon, Seacliff's bulk should have been visible as she approached, but there was nothing. Muttering curses at a certain magi who was clearly overly fond of redecorating, Aela had Sunny circle for a minute, but soon realized there was no point.
"Might as well land and make the best of it," said Aela, patting the crystalwing's shoulder as she directed her toward the cleared patch of land where she'd thought Seacliff would be. She could feel Sunny's fatigue in her faltering wingbeats, and there was no point in asking her companion to exhaust herself over Rilaine's meddling. If a ghost did show up, well, she'd just have to deal with them. Aela had helped no less than three rykeirs find peace, so she could probably talk a ghostly sorcerer into sharing spooky stories if she had to.
Sunny was reluctant to land, though clearly tired, and stayed so close to Aela as to make it hard for her to move. The saerulis crystalwings seemed uneasy as well, and Aela wondered if there were some predators nearby. She was reassured that Sunny was ready to protect her, but worried that there might be something to protect her from.
Aela quickly cast a light spell, making it stronger than usual so as to be certain of seeing anything that might be sneaking up on her, but there was nothing to see. The land was largely featureless - no trees, no bushes, little vegetation at all, and only a few boulders. If the view of the ocean was spectacular (which was essentially a given in this part of the world) and the cliff had a decent beach at the bottom of it, this wouldn't be such a bad place for a few houses - or a keep, for that matter. Aela wondered if Rilaine might be thinking of expanding. She'd need to recruit a few amphisbaenas to shift rocks, but otherwise the project wasn't so unreasonable.
Something still felt off, though. Some magi might have attributed that to Sunny's continued restlessness being catching, but Aela had learned to trust her instincts. She widened the range of the light spell, forcing herself to look for anything out of the ordinary. Something near the edge of the cliff caught her eye, so she walked over to get a better look.
Aela's heart sank as she knelt down, momentarily unable to believe what she was seeing. It wasn't that someone had taken the time to carve stairs down to the beach - that would be a substantial task for most magi, but not especially daunting. It wasn't even that the rope handrails bore the mark of Seacliff. It was that she still vividly remembered enchanting those very guardrails.
Aela straightened up and kept walking, spotting further landmarks now that she knew what to look for - the shiny patch where a fire spell had gone awry, the sandy patch used by generations of pygmy crystalwings, the shed crystals by where the crystalwings’ favorite perch had been. She finally walked over to one of the larger boulders and laid her hand on it. Any event powerful enough to have reduced Seacliff to rubble would have left some imprint for her to pick up on - some echo of the past, if nothing concrete or useful. Sunny was still pacing around nervously (and the saerulis crystalwings had scattered), but Aela, for once, ignored her. No creature could have destroyed the keep so thoroughly, and any ghost would be strong enough to manifest without her help, given that this was Halloween.
Aela wasn't terribly surprised when Joloran faded into view - after Rilaine, he would have been her second choice to have stayed around. He was solid enough to nearly pass for flesh and blood, except for some faint blurring around the edges, so it was a surprise when he seemed completely unaware of her presence. "I killed her. I killed all of them," he said hoarsely, staring off into the distance.
This was completely unlike the Joloran Aela had known. "I find that hard to believe," she said. "It's like Rilaine deciding to relocate to Synara City. Surely that's not the whole story." Joloran said nothing. "Look, if I can keep your greatest secret without thinking less of you, you can trust me not to judge now." And if Joloran had strayed so far as to be capable of wiping out an entire keep in cold blood, she could make sure his ghost did no more harm.
Aela gave Joloran a few more minutes to explain, but as he refused to speak more than the same two sentences (and always with the exact same intonation), Aela prepared to cast an all-too-familiar spell. "Tell me of what yet binds you to this place, that I might bring you peace," she said, sketching a series of glowing runes with the tip of her wand as she did so.
Joloran smiled sadly, the first expression she'd seen from him. "Too late. Not yet," he said, still gazing over her shoulder. Then, his look of distant sadness changed to one of horror. "Now, run."
Aela turned to get on Aela's back and flee, but it was already too late. She never even got the chance for a proper look at whatever was making loud, tea kettle yowls, and her last thought was hope that her crystalwings, at least, might be able to escape.
When Sunny left, complete with a saerulis escort, her way was lit by a crystal rykeir egg cradled gently in her talons.