The ill wind blew, carrying with it more than dust and the scent of rotten leaves. Somewhere far away, the last light of the sun was shining above golden trees, posing as evergreen, even though they would not last if the eternal summer was terminated by the slightest touch of cold, the gentle promise of snow. They would then be no different than their diseased siblings. Branches sharp, rising naked and menacing to skies bereft of radiance. The destiny of all life was to perish. It was the untold truth of life, one of the fundamental rules of the cosmos. And come dusk, such would be the destiny of light as well.
Ever since the dead had marched on the northmost of the Eastern Kingdoms, the forests they had forever tainted had never been the same. The miasma of shadow and decay had not faded away. Had the elves tried to cure the land? Or did they wish to live with the reminder of mortal arrogance and the cost of aspiration? Vanity even? If a Prince's crime, coming from the race of man, had been to bring death under the promise of vengeance and once having received a taste of power, an elven Prince's was no different. One promised life eternal through rotting flesh, the other through blood of fel. Both had achieved what they desired. Immortality had been ensured for their names; evil is always remembered. And to it future generations look, eager to repeat the same mistakes.
Sands as if made of ash were embraced by dark waters, black foaming grey. Would fish be found in the waters? Would they be as twisted as the rest of the region? It was impossible to tell in the blur. Everything seemed dead, with no promise to grow. No life, only disease. A land of dark memories, ghosts that would no peace and ever-lasting sorrow.
Light had long died in the Ghostlands. The bits to guide a traveller's way were nothing but a farce. And if death was what it had found in the infected woods, why could this not be the case for the rest of the world?
The flutter of wings was never heard. Only the steps of twigs breaking under a boot's weight. It was not the first time that fiend and mistress were wandering in the home of umbra within the Kingdom, nor would it be the last. Time and time again they would return, as if obeying an unspoken call. Perhaps it was nothing more than the promise of freedom.
"Broken..."
The young elf's fingers reached for the silver prison wherein the Heart far from slumbered. The burden of white eyes was set on her shoulders, but they did not meet her gaze. Hollow, it remained straight ahead as the two silent companions marched away from the path, keeping the beach to their right. The sea was no friend, but its calling was also impossible to resist. To forget a benefactor after all would be most cruel. Under the waves the voice had rung, under the waves its words had become reality a long time before.
"Broken little toy."
To the east spread a long wrinkle on the earth, a crack. For what was the land if not a broken mirror? In the south, the disrepair was veiled by shadow and and decomposition, but in the north, where light did not so easily fade, where the grass was green and the trees healthy, it was impossible not to notice. And under the sun or moon, there was no beauty to be found. For like in a mirror, cracks alter the image, the truth one hopes to see. No one wants a broken mirror. A broken land. A broken anything.
How wrong they were.
It had been a few months since Celysiel had abandoned the various lanterns that used to hang from her fingers, trusted companions meant to do nothing but ward her against the darkness. After all, elven sight was rather sharp even in the dark; she would not trip and fall like a short-sighted human. Besides, the likeness of a monstrous eagle taking the skies by her side was her guide. Her ears, her eyes, the whisperer in her mind. They were one, in the same way that a cracked mirror was still whole. But at the same time, it was not.
"You will never be whole!"
Bringing the darkness' words to mind, the apprentice closed her eyes. Her hand rose to dig beneath the locket, setting a barrier between it and her heart just briefy. Where twisted powers had been allowed to seep in order to relieve her of the Light's curse, the merciless touch meant to end a renegade's life. The cracks had grown deeper. The cost of death had become known. And whether the face of Dyandria Firetreader were true down below in the shrine of death in the City of Gold, it did not really matter, since mother and daughter would never reunite again. All lost she would never see again.
The weight of the Heart's silver prison was vividly felt clicking against her knuckles. Fel-touched eyes opened in the dark. Or would she?
Time and time again had the seas proven their grandeur to the young elf, but she was now eager to turn her back to them and seek that crack with the walking dead had long ago imprinted. As if she had remembered something. To ascend of course would not be easy. Weeds and erroded rocks were willing to get in her way. Even the Ghostlands were not meant for her after all. She was neither as twisted as the accursed and so deeply loathed Ren'dorei, nor one of the restless spirits and skeletons that wandered in the land. With the clumisiness of the livings she was blessed, annoying as it could be at times.
Of all the beasts that lurked in the tainted forest, spiders as large as hawkstriders and lynxes carrying plague and a thirst for blood, none dared step in her way. It was perhaps Krator's presence which warned them to stay away. The fiend had tasted the shards stolen of the shadows' essences when confronted beneath the waves; Celysiel had stolen pieces, without letting them go beyond her grasp. The Overseer's warning regarding fatality had been made clear after all and even her most beloved companion, born of her soul's stray fragment and shadow, was expendable in contrast to the rest of her. Now, the being flew to her side, more powerful than in the reduced state she had left it to when the locket had not so long ago been surrendered.
When eventually welcomed by the sound of running water in the distance, she knew that she was close. Finally, in the distance to her left, she could see the pale ghost of marble, the ruin that was once the Sanctum of the Moon, rise in its forsaken state. And far ahead mounting the hill but concealed by the skeletal forms of diseased trees, the village of Tranquilien. The only thing that separated her from it was black earth laden with broken bones of the fallen and discarded armour.
It was that border which she was after.
Twice before had Surveyor Blackwood brought her there in order to highlight the energy trapped in areas of torment and death such as these. It was after all what shadow fed from, but it had taken Celysiel a long time to understand. It was only last time that she had finally seen the magnitude of it all, what lay below the veil. If she had once, perhaps she could again.
"You are tainted. The stain will never wash out."
She did her best to ignore the memory of the voice; it could only lead her to dismissing her locket in the depths of a lake for once more. Instead, she reached for the ornamented cage hanging from her neck, entrapping the stone within in her fingers as well. Krator's head did not turn. And when its break of a hundred needles opened, no sound was heard.
Into the locket, Celysiel could feel the beating of the Heart. Beckoning, inviting, promising. The power there was hers to claim. Hers to take hold of.
Hence she denied it.
Oathbinder Aurivian had threatened to take her shadows. And though Celysiel doubted that it could ever happen, for as long as despair and fear were present and waiting to be exploited, so would the shadows sing to those eager to listen, she could always be deprived of her locket. Of course, as much as she feared such an outcome, the Oathbinder could not be blamed. The treason of one had cost a lot to several. But in the case loss came, she could rely on the locket no more. For far too long had she been dependent.
Her hands fell to the side in order to be closer to earth, but she did not kneel to reach it. Every other night in past and future she would have, but not this one. Desiring it to be a symbol perhaps, a symbol for the sake of which she would deny herself efficiency. A subject to the Void she would not be.
Magnificent as it would be to claim that the darkness responded to her call as soon as it was made, that power recognized its true mistress and rushed to her aid, it would be a lie. To glorify an apprentice would be a lie. Failure after failure, her attempts offered no promise of accomplishment as long as she denied her locket. But there she stayed, unwilling to depart without success.
Of course, the words spoken beneath the waves were there to utter their judgement, their conviction. That her memory had even successfully replicated the same voice as she below she could not tell anymore, because the more the words were repeated by her own unforgiving mind, the more they sounded like the other. Gone for so long from the reflection, now eager to return. But what was the difference between a twisted reflection and the voice of the depths? They both sought to do the same thing. Break the broken.
"You will never be whole again!" And Celysiel flinched.
"Broken!" And her form started shivering with rage, always born from fear.
"Tainted, broken little toy!"
"Watch me, then!"
At first, it was scattered pieces of the shadows which obeyed, weaved out of the atmosphere's nothingness, of all that was hidden beneath the veil. Drawn by anguish, coming to feast on it, only to be bound by the leash of a summoner's grasp. Success was not instant, nor could it be. To have determination would not make an apprentice's attempt any less difficult. But once the link was made, it was simply a matter of pulling. Testing. Judging when the power called could be a match of that the Heart could have given her for the same task. And then perform.
All that determination could push past was the whispers, silencing them, forcing them back in depths of memory, its darkness corners. Nothingness was soon filled by Krator's icy existence; this time she did not push past it. A broken mirror was nothing without its crack. She let the voice echo in her mind, but never once did she tap into the Heart's power. This accomplishment would be all on her.
"Watch me." she demanded again, to the fiend's white eyes and all those not present to observe.
What had once began as motes of black smoke had now been entwined, forming ribbons of amethyst energy, tendrils dancing in her fingers. The shadows eventually vanished under dark fabric and skin, charging the caster. Below the crimson hood and black flowers sitting atop her mane of snow, Celysiel closed her eyes. With the shadow's favour, her mind pushed outwards into the scar, in the same way that it would if she wished to communicate with that of another. In the same way that Eraevin had instructed her the night she had seen just a part of the world's truth.
It did not take long for her to recognize the discovery that had been made not so long ago, the song of sorrow coming from the choir of a thousand emotions, left by souls that had been defiled, doomed to exist in the last moment of agony for the eternity. Bound to the land, they did not need to be seen. They did not even need to be there themselves. Something would always stay behind. Even if something as intangible as a taste of misery.
Now each and every little shard was caught into the spider's web, weaved by the very same powers the young elf wished to one day master. Potential and power lay before her, but she did not know how to fully exploit it. But perhaps there was no need. It was there the limit would be set. See, but not touch. Know, but do not shape. The fate of those who dared was known after all. Oathforge. Void Elves. And the effects of each action to chase those who were left behind. Brought by evil's golden shroud and those who feared it. By those whole.
Those interconnected threads were before her, wrapped around the remnants trapped in this sphere of reality. She had reached out to them in the past, tasting the power of shadow's truth, but now she did no such thing. The link was merely preserved. Just so she could witness their existence a while longer. The effect of the very power she had chosen. The brief touch of catastrophe in the world and its ever-lasting results.
There was no beauty in shadow. Nor was the immortality they promised as true as it sounded, even if more solid than the one the two princes had found. A curse. Nothing more. But to know? Which mind could be more lucid than one treading in the dark and which mind could be more twisted? Every coin had two sides and every mirror reflected a reality, even if the image did not reflect the whole truth, or a whole lie.
Krator wandered above the Dead Scar, slithering between the threads binding the fragments, while leaving a trail of darkness in its wake. The anguish of all left behind tried to reach, climb. But like a ghost, a herald of death, the fiend of shadow remained untouched by all.
Clinging to her accomplishment a while longer and watching Krator's figure wander amidst all she could see, Celysiel let a sigh escape her lips. She allowed herself no villainous smile to savour her success, solely the sinking sensation of relief as she gazed at the power of the dead, her legacy.
She would never be whole again. Tainted, for her crack was one of Void. She was broken. The time for regret had long passed.
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