Kallian - Storm's Approach

[Kilaana]

Prologue

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"I have never climbed a mountain before and reached its peak. What if I fall? It is a long way down; I can see no end in sight. Not even my shadows will save me."

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[Kilaana]

Kythorn 1362 - Port City of Yhaunn


"There you are."

The small, broad man squints into the sun, its white-hot brilliance at noon momentarily eclipsed by the slight figure pausing at the top of the ship's landing plank before disembarking.

"Made good time, eh. Then again, she be the swiftest around these parts." He gestures a thick arm towards the cobbled buildings huddled along the waterfront, the brass cuffs jangling together above the fat palm. "Come on then, an' mind your step." He looks her over once, then turns briskly on his heel.

The Elf glances to him silently, and proceeds to follow the narrow path he cuts through the sea of men. Swathed in loose fitting clothes of russet brown and old yellow, the worn linen scarf is wrapped over her head and drawn low, revealing only the curves of small, parched lips that has denied itself food and drink for a twoday or more. She melts into the thronging crowd with ease - appearing little more than a thin youth of indiscernible age and gender, easily mistaken for a trade's apprentice or at the very least an urchin who has managed to get by on a stroke of luck.

They enter a dim, low-ceilinged room reeking of cheap ale and unwashed bodies. Daylight glares through a half-round window along one wall, a sliver of unsullied nature in Man's construct, but even its whitewashed intensity is not enough to illuminate the establishment's small interior.

"So...you'll be wonderin' what you were called here for." He leans to slip a silver piece into the low neckline of the waitress's corset. His eyes linger disinterestedly on the milk-white flesh of her bosom before waving her away and turns to his drink. "I'll not beat about the bush. Not my way, an' not the way you'll get around here."

The Elf hunches over her drink, studying the stained woodwork of the table.

The small man makes purchase on his ale, smacking his wet lips noisily a few times after. "There's a bit of a fuss abouts here since the last snowfall. Small stuff, really. I mean...you know how these things go. That was before word got out that them pid'gins never flew them nests. Next thing you know..." He rubs his fingers together as though testing some snuff. "Them's all a-dead an' the mother roosts all a-bother."

Still she says nothing, and merely glances to the window, then to the carnelian drop adorning his little finger.

"There've been worse, o'course. But that don't mean we need t'take this lyin' down." He picks at something in his teeth and squints at it before flicking it away. "Don' want a fuss neither. It'll be an in-out job, won't take a ken of your hour. Jus'....you know...bad water." He leans forward expectantly, smiling.

She breaks her silence then, her voice no more than a low grunt. "None of my business."

He chuckles heartily, the carnelian ring tapping a staccato rhythm against the tin mug. Then he puts his hand into his waistcoat and withdraws something in his palm.

"Don't think so, luv."

He tosses it onto the small space between them, where it clatters across to her like a skittish thing. She does not need to look twice to recognise the blue fire in the gemstone - its twin which sits upon her right ear.

[Kilaana]

The news broke out over the course of the next morning, in candid whispers in a community whose bonds were as easily unravelled as the fishermen's knots that dotted the boats along the coasts of Yhaunn. Blame fell on the dockside runts who didn't know to keep their feet out of the worker's wells. Others shook their heads and muttered a few names that could do without their golden reputation, and yet more simply turned a blind ear and carried on with the day. Life in the quarried city was matter of fact, and the cogs in the wheel had no time nor reason for questions and idle gossip.

Eventually, the men who would spend a tenday in their beds weakened by a hacking cough returned to work, only soon to succumb to asphixation as their chisels broke apart the stone in the narrow tunnels of the hills. There would be a second group that would meet the same end later, and a third, until all twenty-four cells of such labourers surrendered to Fate over the course of two months.

"Off you go then."

The small man slips his thumbs into his low-slung belt, watching a docksboy lift a crate to the next man on the ship.

The Elf hoists her pack further onto her shoulders, pausing once more on the gangplank to look down at her benefactor. Her expression is cloaked in the deep shadows of a new cowl - red like spilled good burgundy wine, and a symbol of Ilmater hanging down her modest gown. She will be left alone by the men on the ship, for they will not want to attract trouble by dallying with a pious widow.

The small man nods to her. "We'll speak again, eh?" He waves her up to the ship, not one for long farewells. She does not look back.

[Kilaana]

Dreams

There is a rush of wind through the leaves, stirring up a great cacophony throughout the forest as it turns into Winter's gale - a murmur that sweeps through that dark wood, echoing through the valley of an empty heart.

She is swift and silent; her skill at outrunning many a foe unmatched in her waking world. But this wind bears down upon her faster than her footsteps can take her, and she is swept off her feet, landing in a flurry of leaves black as the night.

She scrambles to her feet, only to hold up her arms and realize they are covered in the blood of men. Like a hunted animal she stumbles and trips again, as the wind brings with it a shadow larger than a mountain that rises up to envelop her in its embrace.

[Kilaana]

"What becomes of a man when he is stripped of his purpose?"

"I think it depends on the man, or elf."

"Man or elf, they are the same. It matters little to me."

"...Maybe. Many do not think so. I think some find new purpose, and some destroy themselves."

"Then, perhaps, it would have been better were he not to have acquired purpose."

"Do you believe he would've chosen differently?"

"It is not impossible. Yes?"

"Some joy is worth the pain. I think you could go back a thousand times and he would choose the same."

"Foolish for putting a hand in the same flame that caused a mark, Jerek."

"What if it saves a treasure that would be consumed?"

"No treasure is worth such pain. Not one that will not last."

[Kilaana]

The Garden


She awakens with a quiet start, the sort that brings an immediate awareness to the senses, as though one had never been truly immersed in rest. Perhaps it had been too warm, even on the windswept slopes of Vlasta, where a perpetual chill lingered around its lake, for it was Flamerule now - the height of summer. Yet the season's heat means little to an Elf, for their bodies adapt well, and it is a trickling of the unseen that rouses her to leave the bed.

The candle by the window had long since blown out. Darkness welcomes her like the embrace of an old, familiar lover. She smiles and takes a few steps forward, each one bringing her closer to a place that now lies on the periphery of her vision. Yes, Flamerule's garden...with its lone tree that in cold Spring would bear the heady blooms of pale blossoms. She would find her way there, for there would be starseeds and anises and windflowers to gather. She walks towards it now, with her own shadow for company, but it resembles little of her elfin form - a shapeless, swirling entity borne of ash and smoke.

Soon we will reach the garden, she tells it, in the tongue of her homeland. There we will find tranquility. But the form begins to move ahead, and then the darkness becomes all-encompassing, casting an endless cloud over an already midnight sky like that of a rainstorm's coming. Not even a paladin's light here would illuminate the way. The shape swirls around the Elf restlessly, watchfully, as she continues forward - her vision unhampered, as though it was clear as day.

Then it speaks a silent whisper, a tune that turns her head to look its way. It opens its arms to her, and she stands quite still. First a shiver, then a shudder, at the chill pleasure of the first tendrils upon her coppery skin.

Her form begins to flicker. An arm first goes, then another limb, lost unto this black void. The surge of the familiar, a seed of forfeited power.

It whispers beckoningly, a word like a caress upon her heart:

Kal' El-An.

She takes one more look at the garden ahead, where now a sliver of moonlight drapes across its quiet tree. And she tells herself, that the garden can wait...

Yes. It murmurs. It can wait. For we are One.

[Kilaana]

Subservient


Twilight covers the landscape in a shroud of monochrome as her senses stir to awareness from her resting place beside a river. She is encircled by warmth, a reassuring comfort that is still as fresh and new as the moment it arrived in days past, with a strength that is both fierce and gentle as suddenly as the wind is wont to be.

She searches the night with a growing restlessness to her eye, seeking every shade of gray that lurks in the deepest recesses of the trees and in the hollows of the centuries-old land. The colours shift slowly but constantly in her vision - taking on new dimensions as they flit from one point to another, formless yet tangible to her senses as clearly as she would know the feel of her own skin. They exist there, in their own space and time, as the trees and the water and the sky do, harmless in their own right. She understands them, to some degree, and they in turn allow her to walk freely within their midnight void, gathering their numbers like a sheltering cloak upon her back whenever she would.

She turns her gaze upwards then, to the starlit sky, where heavy clouds advance rapidly upon a crescent moon, to herald yet another storm so frequent in these wet lowlands. She closes her eyes then with the intent to return to her rest, but the tendrils of a whisper come, chilling and cruel and greedy, from within the darkness itself, causing her willpower to bend its knee to that superiority:

...only One to stand upon this mountain's peak, and it will not be you.

[Kilaana]

Once, there was a sparrow, small and free.

It lived the shadow of the City, but while it was young, it was cunning and found its way between the footsteps of man. But man as they are, even as children, know not what it is they inflict upon those around them in their haste and in their lust for life.

One fine morning on a fateful day, the sparrow looks out upon a ledge and sees a tree to fly out upon. She lifts her wings and begins to catch the wind, only to fall.

She falls hard and fast and it feels like eternity before her tiny, tiny body hits the ground.

Who has clipped those magnificent little wings? ...We shall not know.

When she emerges one winter's day, she is a creature risen from her own ashes - a black phoenix, bird of winter's fire, never to be brought down again.

Wherefore does she go? Where may we glimpse such wonder?

No one knows.

[Kilaana]

Marpenoth 1362 DR - Suzail, Cormyr

"There you go, darling. Do you like it?"

The strip of cloth, smelling faintly of jasmine, is removed from her eyes. A reflection of an Elf, skin aglow with the natural tan of the Or'Tel'Quessir and narrow pale grey eyes, stares back at her. So familiar, yet so different. She brings a hand up gingerly to touch the braid that is artfully coiled around her head like a crown, then to the loosely curling locks that fall around her small muscular shoulders. A vast change from the miniscule, tightly-bound braids that her fingers have danced along for decades. But it is not the work of the Sunite handmaidens that has caught her attention. The dyed strands are now a muted brown shade like that found on a sparrow's feathers - an ordinary brown that brings back unbidden memories. But the brown, which she could come to love, is tinged with an unmistakable hue of purple that does little to compliment the hair's return to its original colour.

"I...I wanted all of it - gone," she finds herself stammering, her usual confidence rattled.

The priestess folds her hands together apologetically, trying to inject some optimism into the situation. "It is as it should be, my dear. Your prayer to the Lady Firehair did not go unanswered. But...," the priestess pauses and looks genuinely ruffled. "There were difficulties we did not foresee." She tries another approach with the Elf: "If you will consider our offer - and there is no hurry - we shall be happy to blend one of our house creations for you. Perhaps a dusky rose shade? Such a beautiful complexion like yours would go well with something of a pink hue..."

The Elf shakes her head and rises to her feet, a momentary bitter look is cast towards the midnight sky framed by tall windows on either side of the shrine. She thanks them once more, and gathers her belongings to head out into the night.

[Kilaana]

4 Sunrises to Hammer, 1362 DR - Above the King's Forest, Cormyr

Thick frost blankets the valley below, the thin tall evergreens stretching fingers of powdery white across to one another forming a delicate lacework whether seen from below or high above. In the summer, the forest floor would be a carpet of fern and bluedell, the waters of Plungepool to the northeast would carry glistening fish, where the men from Espar would push out their wooden boats armed with hunting spears and high spirits. In the winter, the valley carries a silence that stretched for miles, only broken by the call of great eagles across the sky and the occasional howl of a hungry wolf.

A brisk wind whips at the solitary observer of this valley, its slight shadowy figure sits at the very edge of a cliff, framed on either side by an opening in the cave within the jutting rock. She does not move a muscle - lest she shatters this tranquility so recently achieved.

* * * * * *

~ 1322 DR, Athkatla

Jardhag the Undefeated roared at the crowd, flecks of spittle and sweat flying upwards as he reminded them of his victory with a fist jabbed through the smoke-filled air. The thronging mob shouted back, surging forwards eagerly with a shower of gleaming coins landing at the brawler's sandalled feet. Soon these tributes were lost in the reddened sand underfoot as the large humanoid leered at those gathered. He did not stop to gather the money as two armed men entered the floor to drag the body away. Today, as with most days, no one would die here. They would only be beaten and never walk the same way again. It was so much more exciting than the predictability of death. No, the stakes were at where one could partake in the luxury of pulling back from the very brink. Or better still, you could pick a side and pitch in, and live voraciously.

After all, anyone with at least a little interest in this blood-sport were looking to win, too. They would walk away and say to each other: "I told you so". Being right was important. Being wrong meant you lacked foresight. A man who is wrong is a stupid man, they say, because he did not have the wisdom of foresight. In Athkatla, a man without foresight in the arena was like a man without a wife, because he was so stupid no woman would want him.

A leg of raw venison, thrown down like food for a caged beast, smacked Jardhag on the side of his ankle as the rusted iron gates cranked slowly up. He knew that sound. Another one, he supposed. It didn't matter, not as much as this free meal he could have right here, right now. The coins were a different story. They said he had been lucky to lose just one finger. Had he gathered a few more he would have had to fight with one hand today. Jardhag picked up the meat and roared at the crowd again as he paced in a circle around them, his crooked, oddly-shaped yellow teeth bared as he brandished his prize like a weapon. They fell back from the brute immediately as the gates dropped shut with a clang. For a heartbeat, there was only silence, then someone or something was shoved forth. It stumbled into the center of the circle, catching itself on all fours before rising halfway up into a crouch. It was small and thin enough that the contours of its ribcage showed beneath the coppery skin, its tangled mat of mouse-brown hair fell about its sharp-chinned face, covering its ears, and lending it the look of a wild, mad creature, but its almond-shaped eyes glittered with pale grey intelligent watchfulness. It was also stark naked, with only coarse red sand sticking to its gleaming skin in an unflattering way, but as the figure straightened to reveal the deep curves of breasts hanging like ripened pears, the crowd went wild.

Jardhag the Undefeated was unimpressed. Insulted even, perhaps. He was easily five times of this creature, in weight, height and muscle. It was like a pesky fly to his meat, which he wanted to devour before they took him away again. He didn't care if the pest wore nothing while he had his sandals and a boiled leather cuirass to protect him. The fights were never fair, and this was just another reason the crowds were willing to part with their money. It made the unpredictability that much more exciting. Just like the leg of meat, Jardhag won everything else - everything else that was not coin.

He roared at it, more irritated than anything to be distracted from his meal - a signal that the game had started. Someone in the crowd hurled a heavy pouch jangling obscenely with coin at the two contestants. It hit Jardhag on the back of his head and in a fit of anger he lunged suddenly for the creature, entertained by thoughts of stomping its throat till it couldn't speak - IF it could even speak. That was another thing that annoyed him. Only cowards did not open their mouths, the sneaky silent bastards. He wanted very much to make it scream. Snap its arm, feel its lung crush beneath his foot.

He looked, but it wasn't there anymore. And then the pain - a small, burning blackhole that started at the back of his knee spread like wildfire before Jardhag the Undefeated collapsed in spasmodic jerks, bloodshot eyes rolling to the back of his large head as his rubbery lips worked to form a sound swallowed by the agony. He tried to lift himself to his feet, but his legs buckled from under him and he retched fiercely into the sand.

She stood with dripping fingertips, a victor's smile on her broken dry lips as she bent to retrieve the coin from its resting place. Blood bubbled forth in a thick, dark stream over the giant's leg, and she licked first her lucky coin free of its blood before yanking the hank of meat from Jardhag's stiffened fingers.

* * * * * *

She watches now as the older Elf kneels by the freshly killed deer, and bows her head in quiet respect as the Elder offers a prayer to the Forest Queen for this taking. Behind her, barely a half-step away is a more familiar figure - lean of build with a fighter's solidarity, and sharing of his father's quiet reserved nature. Together they observe as Selvin skins the animal with a skilled precision and puts the hide in a frame to dry.

"It is the boy Lyaruil's day in a few sunrises, there will be a feast held and the meat shall go to Firess to be prepared." the Elder rises and wipes his hands before directing the two to the circle that was cleared of the morning's snowfall. "Now, let us see if you are ready. Show me of what you know."

They dip their heads respectfully, and move into the circle to face each other. He sinks into a half-crouch, a feral look in his eye, and she begins to pace, cat-like.

She lunges suddenly for him. The game has begun again.