After she (and Trinket) were at last laid to rest beside her husband, and the final song to the Dawnfather had been sung, much of the crowd still lingered in and around the castle. Its entrance hall and much of the ground floor remained open, and they had even hung all the paintings of the lady and her family in the hall for her mourners to see.
Noone had seen her two surviving children once the services had ended; word was they'd retreated upstairs. Some scanned for the surviving members of Vox Machina; about them, there was only word that the two gnomes had gone into the city.
As well as all the people of Whitestone, the various events had also been heavily attended by ravens. Some of those who had come from outside Whitestone had shown their confusion about it, and even more at the nonchalance of the city's inhabitants. But by now, even those people had gotten used to them, and nobody was looking at them much. Nobody noticed if one of them seemed to fly a little apart from the others, or looked at everything and everyone with sharper, more knowing eyes than the other birds did.
Keyleth still didn't take the form of a raven that often, and usually only when there were multiple other birds around. She never attempted to talk to any of them, either. It was just that she'd started feeling it as a weird comfort ever since that time when Vax had been captured and tortured and had been unable to send his ravens to her.
There weren't that many places in the hall for the ravens to perch, but Whitestone's inhabitants often welcomed them on their shoulders, so long as they were wearing something thick enough. There were plenty of Pale Guard about still in their pauldrons, and Keyleth landed on one of them, a certain young human man named Flanders, and settled down as he joined another half-elf Pale Guard-Manora, she thought her name was, and another human in front of the portraits. Manora was identifying the various people depicted for her companion's benefit. When she pointed to the painting of Vax, commissioned by Vex shortly after his death, Keyleth looked away. She'd never liked that picture of him.
"And that, of course, is Vesper," she continued. "I think this painting was done when she became Guardian after Cassandra finally stepped down."
"Wonder if she's ever going to step down," said Flanders. "The way she's going she could very well die still holding the Woven Stone, and then who gets it? I assume it's not gonna be her eldest-did he even show up today?"
"He came," said Manora. "I don't know for how long, but I spotted him with the other grandkids. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be Klarus over there." She gestured over to where Danny's Tiefling grandson was speaking to a whole knot of people near the castle entrance.
"A Tiefling?" the strange man asked. "And the townspeople won't object?"
"You're behind the times, Harold," she informed him. "What trouble these people might have given Tieflings when the first of them was born into the de Rolo family was gone by the time she died, having already gone down in history for putting in all the lights we're viewing these pictures by right now, and I've heard she even oversaw the first installations of them in Emon."
"That's right," said Flanders. "My grandmother said to me once that when she was a little girl, before Lord Percival de Rolo died, he and his youngest went to every house in Whitestone to put a light in."
That was actually an exaggeration; they'd had help. In fact, Keyleth couldn't help but feel a little sad Pike's involvement was apparently being forgotten.
But Flanders was continuing, "She told some other tales about Gwendolyn de Rolo, too. Everything from how she designed Rexxentrum's skyport to how she told off the High Warden of Syngorn and completely got away with it."
"I've heard about that one, too," said Manora. "Probably one of her mother's proudest days."
"What, really?" asked a surprised Harold. "I always thought she had better manners than that."
Even in her raven form, Keyleth felt herself shake with the supressed laughter. Manora didn't try to suppress it. Flanders took it differently, though, frowning and saying, "Do you have any idea how they still treat Tieflings in Syngorn? Lord de Rolo is even on record as having said he'd always disliked going there, first for how they treated his wife, and then later for how they were treating his various Tiefling descendants. And I think the twins always refused to go there at all after Leona ended up having two Tiefling children."
"They did," said Manora, "and their parents withstood considerable pressure to make them relent on it. I believe they even hounded poor Lady de Rolo about it at her husband's funeral."
It had been even worse than that. Keyleth had stayed with Vex for a couple of weeks after Percy's death, and she vividly remembered how the two elves who had accompanied Syldor had harassed both Vex and the twins the entire time they'd been there. Syldor hadn't joined them, but he hadn't stopped them either. Finally she'd gotten them both alone and she might have made a couple of threats that had endangered the diplomatic relations between Syngorn and the Ashari, and possibly also just about everyone north of them on the continent. Honestly, Keyleth was glad these people apparently hadn't heard about any of that.
Remembering those painful days, on top of her grief over now having lost Vex as well, was almost too much for Keyleth. She found herself retreating into the raven brain, tuning out the trio of young people for a little while, even tucking her head under her wings and muffling some still sorrowful chirps.
When she finally poked her head back out, Flanders, Manora, and Harold had joined a pair of half-Orcs in front of the most famous painting of Leona and Wolfe, done shortly after they'd turned fifty. They were talking a little quickly, and she didn't try to catch much of what they went over, but it sounded like the general common accounts of their exploits. These days probably more people knew about Leona and Wolfe than knew about their parents.
One of the two half-Orcs, whom Keyleth believed might have been called Leyla, turned out to have a mother who had fought alongside the twins in her youth, and even been friends with Wolfe's second wife. She could tell her mother's tales of what Leona had said to her soldiers before they'd ridden to face the Iron Authority, of the nights they all spent trying to keep warm in the Cliffkeeps, of how they had reacted when they'd received the news of their father's death.
"Is is true," Flanders asked her, "that after they both were killed in their final battle, there was a note found, addressed to their mother and signed by both of them, that asked that she only try to bring one of them back if they other was still alive, that if they fell together, she let them go?"
"I think so," said Leyla. "Mom didn't like to talk about it, though. Everyone who served under Leona and Wolfe were devastated when they were killed. The people they led loved them so much."
Vex hadn't wanted to talk about it much either. That had probably been an even more painful time for her than Percy's death had, especially since Gwen's health had been failing, making it clear she, too, was near her natural end. Keyleth remembered two days before the funeral, finding Vex sitting in the Widow's Garden, staring at the plants she and Percy had spent decades curating, and when Keyleth had sat down beside her, she'd just fallen against her and remained silent for a while.
And then, when she'd finally spoken, she'd said, "Percy was never entirely happy with the path the two of them took, especially with Leona wielding guns the way he used to. He accepted their choices, and he understood why they made them, but it never stopped causing him grief. What would he think now, Keyleth? Would he think we failed as parents?"
Keyleth had assured her he wouldn't, of course, and she genuinely didn't think he would. But her attempts to console Vex hadn't gone very well that day. It had in fact been Danny, who had found her mother shortly after she had, who had brought a smile to her face with his extended stories about his siblings, the reminders that they had not been just warriors.
Danny, whom this little group were now standing in front of. The painting of him had been done when he'd been in his forties, and had really started committing himself to the care and tending of the Parchwood, though Keyleth believed that he drew his power from the city as much as the woodlands. There were parts of the depiction of him that reminded Keyleth all too much of his namesake, but she knew that the way he and his surroundings were drawn was also done to be reminiscent of certain artistic depictions of she herself.
It was not a surprise, either, when her own name came up in relation to his: "Keyleth the Tempest herself mentored him. Although you know, she was lovers with Lady de Rolo's brother, the one who died young and had his nephew named for him. It's creepy if you think about it."
Well, it had been weird at first. That was maybe when and why Danny had really committed to the nickname. Since then, he'd been Danny, and Vax had been Vax, and Keyleth hadn't had any trouble with that anymore.
Manora's comment hadn't bothered her; she was long past being troubled by such chatter. Flanders, on the other hand, angrily snapped, ""Don't talk about either of them that way! She taught him how to protect this city, and it's thanks to what else she taught him he's going to be around to do it even after we're all dead."
That wasn't true, of course. Keyleth knew how to protect lands from elemental rifts, but Whitestone was threatened by different phenomena, and she'd mostly just helped Danny in figuring out how to deal with those. And getting up to the level of druid where his aging was slowed he had completely done himself. She was grateful he'd done it, though. He'd already lived enough of his lifespan first he wouldn't last nearly as long as her, but any friends she could keep for longer were good, especially one from the two she had now both lost.
So she minded less when the other half-Orc (Claude? She wasn't sure), said, "I thought that was Lady de Rolo herself who taught him how to guard the land. She took all five of her children out with the Grey Hunt at least briefly, although only the twins really stuck with it."
"She might have," said Manora. "Sometimes it feels like she had a hand in all the ways Whitestone has grown and prospered and been a place of accomplishments during the past century or so. She had to have monetarily, at least, and this was a woman who never stopped visiting people who were suffering loss or hardship, at much as she could practically manage, whose advice so often made up the Chamber's mind, who presided over every event in the city, became the face of it abroad after her husband's death."
She turned as she spoke to a portrait of Vex, one done about a decade or so after Percy's death. She had really started to show her age then, but this was a painter that made the lines on her face and the greying of her hair increase her feeling of dignity and wisdom. Trinket had been painted with her in this one, and the warmth with which her hand caressed him was easy for the viewer to interpret as symbolizing her kindness to all who had been under her care.
Keyleth had now been on Flanders' shoulder long enough her wings had started to itch, and so she alighted, chirping in response when first he and then his companions called out a farewell to her. Up she went, over the heads of the crowd, meandering her way towards the castle entrance and fresher, cooler air.
As main hall fell behind her, Keyleth briefly looked back. For a moment, she could see all of them there, Vex and Percy and their children, all of them young and strong again, making the world feel like it never stood a chance against them.
Then she turned and flew out into the city they had made together, now starting to stretch in size enough to completely fill her view, and dove down to find Scanlan and Pike, wherever they had gotten to in its bustling streets.