11th of Heyannirath, 2789 of Einvierzion.
The vast hall of the cathedral filled with rows upon rows of oak benches, crafted by the very best of high elven kind. Each gleamed in the serene sun light, their smooth surfaces reflecting the warm glow like a still pond on a warm summer day. The colorful, decorative windows depicting the Gods filtered the lights, turning its fiery tender light into a more divine white as the snow, yet warm as the smiles of Venus and or Freyja.
Just like as he remembers, the two rows spanning from one end to another, filled with high elves on the right side of all ages, engulfed in a warm soft golden aura emitted by their exposed complexion. Children at the closer to the podium where the Pontiff of the Cathedral, an elderly high elf with long shimmering hair, silver as the moon on the night sky high, fair toned soft skin with a masculine face, a sign of his advanced age, as he recalls even his grandfather got baptized by Meinolfion seven hundred years ago, give or take a few decades.
Behind the children, sit the what the elves would consider young adults, elves that are hard to tell apart by their gender, with most males at that point still lack defining masculine features to their looks. With each third row the age gap shows, with behind them their parents who already possess those features, males appear somewhat bulkier with a bit harsher faces, females retaining their slenderness, with soft complexions a mark of their tenderness.
On the left side are the moon elves engulfed in a silky snow silvery aura just the same as the high elves in the same order with the youngest generation that can move without aid already sitting at the front. Except him. Somewhat standing out, he stands on the open balcony, listening onto the soothing hymn of his kin below after reaching the corner of the left edge. Thanks to his advanced growth in height, he can easily see over the pure white marble rails, still not as white for his small soft hands to meld into it.
Just like the moon and high elves, the golden and silver statues of their respective Gods separated with the Aesir on the left, the Deos on the right. Why the separation? Why not mix together? This question always bothered him, similarly to how he never understood why not build a cathedral large enough to include the wood elves of the middle realms and the dark elves of the deepest. Were they any less perfect than them?
Then as the hymn stops, Meinolfion steps down from the podium and walks slowly in front of it while holding a grail imbued with Aspect of Aether, resembling an alluring spirit in a wild winter storm. Just in time as the sun focuses its filtered light in a circle at that position, a golden circle with swirling tendrils under his feet hidden by his gaudy ceremonial robes he is clad from neck to toe with the comically large hood pulled down.
The first three rows of children on the right side stand up simultaneously and as they form into a long line, the left side follows. Then he spots her, the one who first awakened a warmness in the taciturn, hollowness of his existence.
Her face seemed to glow with a luminous light possessing delicate and refined features even at her age of twenty, reminiscing him of the moons high up radiating their tender icy light onto his ivory face. Her opaque hair just as white as the largest of the two moons, burning as magnificently as the shimmering scaled body of the Elder Snow Silver Dragons he read so much about. Her silvery eyes sparkled like diamonds while her tender smile, the smile aimed at him that brought this strange at the time, unknown warmth to him, felt like it could even brighten the darkest of nights.
He watched as she moved with a graceful fluidity back to her seat, her lips moving as if she is talking to him, whispering words of hope, filling him with a renewed sense of aspiration. Strangely this time, as her lips started to move, a sound, a song or maybe an ode soothing his soul with a coldness, tender and kind like the embrace of his mother, like the feeling when his body cools down under the scorching heat of the sun on the warmest days of summer.
“Iuvanirh Utsorion, if you’re already awake, could you explain the Law of Temperance?” Utsorion wakes up to the combination of the soft, yet commandeering voice of Magisterios Hilgeril and the small pebble that bounced of his face.
“Over reliance of an affinity one’s doesn’t posses can lead to complete annihilation, engorgement by the wildness of magic.” He bolts up and for a few moments remains silent as he notices the abundance of gazes from the front rows coming from his peers sitting in the lower seatings. Then he gulps as he pushes down gripping feeling of anxiety and with answers the question with firmness.
“Preferrable. If possible, please refrain from dozing off in my class in the foreseeable future.” His muscles tense while Hilgeril remains silent, checking the book right in front of him, then reluctantly compliments Utsorion. As he lets out a sigh, his brother Hidetsuriar pats him on the shoulders, a smile with the warmth of a friendship more than a kinship curving onto his perfectly shaped lips.
“Sorry Brother, I should have noticed Friedriel’s spell sooner.” He apologizes, Utsorion just replying with a smile saying he doesn’t really mind while the voice of Hilgeril fills the hall, everyone’s attention on it as he continues explaining the dangers of one’s reliance on an Aspect of Magic, they do not have an affinity with. Then not long into his continuation, a sweet tune plays through a magical device hanging above the entrance door in the middle, signaling the end of the lesson.
“Want to go home?” As they walk through the corridors, Hidetsuriar breaks the awkward silence not noticing his older brother stopping at the entrance hall staring at the beatifically carved depiction of the Goddess of Magic, Hecate who gifted the possibility of magic and taught the existence of Aspects to early elven kind. Her face, a beautiful elven maiden, even by their modern standards reminiscing him of Sieghildien, possessing a matured gracefulness, wisdom earned through eons and an air of mystique. Her two slender arms, the marble like stone perfectly replicating the softness of them, holding two spherical objects representing the two major Aspects of Magic, Elemental or Nature that makes up all facets of the material world, and Aether, the Aspect of the Eternal, the most divine of the magical aspects that birthed the soul and what makes the intelligent races according to the elven beliefs.
“Are you coming?” The cold early winter air rustles his short white hair, just as soft as the snow of the upper realm of the northern Moon Elves, almost blending in with his skin. “No, me and Aschwinar have to work on our project. I’ll be home late probably.” He turns to Hidetsuriar who is eagerly waiting for his answer. Before they exit, Utsorion takes one last look at Hecate’s statue before closing the door with a sigh before heading to the west wing of the Academy.
**
As he reaches the eastern wing of the enormous Academy, the sounds of swords clashing enters within his hearing range. Utsorion slowly walks towards the source of the noise, the place where his old friend Aschwinar told him to meet the day before.
Not long after changing his trajectory, taking a sharp turn at the wall separating the academy yard from the streets, the sight of a grown up girl, now a matured elven maiden, the epitome of the elven kind one would say. A Blessed of the Gods.
A slender body honed since her mid to late twenties through rigorous physical training, long hair extending down to her waistline, fashioned in the style of the Eastern Moon Elves’ princess with matching beauty according to some as he heard. With each graceful motion, resembling a dance move, her white hair flowed like a river of moonlight, flowing like the Alabaster Oaks of the North Upper Realm of Alfheim. Her face possessing perfect features, the high cheekbones with soft edges, a delicate nose and full lips carved out from the finest alabaster, covered with blackish red inklike lipstick making them even more glistening.
As he reached the training grounds separated by a fence of silver resembling curled up feathers crossing each other, the duel between the two siblings comes to an end, with the victory of the sister. “Brother, you still lack in using wards in close combat.” Her voice soft velvety, and composed carrying an air of elegance, refinement. Her uniform, a soft Ienis satin shirt with hardened folded collars reaching her perfect jawline, dyed in the colors of the royal winter with skirt of the same material dyed black as the night, and thick jacket buttoned out, remained seamless even after an extensive duel where she had to evade the fast spells of his somewhat vicious brother.
In the same vein not a single drop of sweat appearing on her fair soft, almost porcelain like face as she sits down beside Aschwinar, her face that remained icy to this point showing a faint, warm smile as she notices Taumhetrian, even after entering the first hundred of their age, the point where each of them gains the respective features of their gender, still one could tell they are twins.
“Hey, come sit here brother!” The melodious, smooth voice of Aschwinar pierces his ears as the epitome of male elven kind shouts to him while resting on the ground, stretching his tie out. As he reaches the two, one looking at him with a mischievous familial smile, the other with a heartwarming smile.
“I hope you have only just arrived.” Aschwinar says after stopping with tapping the ground between him and his twin sister.
“I’ve already got used to seeing the next Arch-Veneficus of our glorious empire beaten by his sister. But this one may have been the best.” Utsorion says as he sits between the two, his cheeks reddening slightly as his shoulders touch Sieghildien’s. “Eugh. Seems like someone slept through their Rhetorics lecture too.”
“Sorry, I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Anyway, what’s this?” After breaking the awkward silence between the three of them with his apology, he points at strange Rattatoskr shaped buns with perfect lines cut highlighting their fur covered small body, Utsorion started unpacking from his bag. “Recreniur!” Sieghildien quickly exclaims before he could answer, pointing at the deep, rich jam flowing out from the soft bakery perfectly resembling the messengers travelling through the Branches of Alfheim.
Recreniur, a flower native to the Upper Realms, grown in open fields where being exposed to the Sun of Alfheim it grows small berries between its jagged, soft petals of the same blackish red color, having a rejuvenating effect if processed in certain ways.
“Well, on the day I become the Arch-Veneficus, I secure a place for you amongst the royal bakers my friend.” Aschwinar says as he finishes chewing on the sweet bakery, pleasure settling onto his handsome fair face followed by quickly reaching into his friend’s bag to take out one or two more of those sweets. “Then maybe I should focus more on this.” He speaks with a rather solemn look on his face.
“Hey hey, do not slack on your arcane studies. When we find a way to lift your curse, I’ll need someone close, as capable as me.” As he notices the look on his Utsorion’s face, he slaps him in the back of his head while lifting his spirit.
“Anyway, better we go. You two can have your poem reading later!” The shadows start their hardening with the wind slowly picking up rustling the ethereal white golden leaves of the Aetherisk trees. Aschwinar bolts up, pulling Utsorion with him. “Oi!” The two react in unison while their cheeks redden, Sieghildien throwing a small conjured rock towards his brother’s head, missing while remaining in her seated position slowly munching on the bakery while putting away a thin book.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
**
“It’s not just about reading, but understanding. You should read more of those two instead of your tomes.” Utsorion’s voice echoes through the large chamber of the dormitory as the two passes by the Mural of the World Tree detailing the various worlds all placed into the hulking trunk in a colorful mosaic. The leaves of the branches appearing as a divine aura with the various realms of the Gods depicted with their respective ruler holding their arms out in a warm embrace, the bottom roots appearing with creatures of vile magnificence crawling between the Abyssal roots towards the realms of mortals.
“Oh, I know, it’s your way of conveying your feelings to her.” Aschwinar turns back to his friend with a devilish smug smile. “You know that’s not what I meant!” He replies with a sigh while looking down to the warming wooden floor to mask his embarrassment. The ground veiled in hard shadows after the sun shaped disk of a sun turned to lightlessness the glowing stones embedded into the ceiling lit up in tandem, blanketing the whole chamber, and the branching corridors with a few students still marching all over in a golden white light.
“Anyway, we’re here!” Utsorion bumps into his friend while focusing on coming up with a retort. Aschwinar reaches into his bag and lifts out with a clean snow silver sphere of Adriemyte, a strong metal that is the easiest to inscribe with various every day enchantments. A magical rune of opening carved relatively deep into its glistening surface lights up with a golden light as he turns it towards the cavity of the door towering over the two not so small elf.
“Quite the trick, isn’t it?” Utsorion watches like a wondering child as the similarly metallic door liquefies while remaining in the air before sucked into the frame’s gaps. The two enter and Utsorion turns back as the door gains its cold hardness back emitting the sphere that hovers into Aschwinar’s bag.
“Welcome to our Secret Research Room!” Arriving through the narrow corridor, Aschwinar stops sporadically spreading his arms out almost hitting Utsorion in the head.
“And here I expected a better reaction from you. Come on I had to pull a lot of strings just to get this place.” Utsorion remained silent as he stood beside Aschwinar on the elevated part of the room directly at the entrance. His eyes slowly scanned the whole lower part. From the right he spotted the long table tucked to the wall with various glass like containers filled to almost the brim with colorful concoctions, open tomes with depictions for various plants of the Upper Realms.
In the center a similarly long table with metallic bottom and dark wooden top, smooth surface pushed to the wall with great care connecting to the other tables. Various books and arcane tomes laid out, some already opened filled with the hard to read writing of his friend. Close to the wall the recently developed artifice shaped like a cube with hard edges and a line at the end close to the fall emitting an ethereal wall reflecting two images. One of a text much easier to read, the other a display of an elven body stretched out, or on a second look a soul with lines pointing at small notes.
In short, a Sensker device, that is connected to the Partillectio of the Elven Kind hidden by the order of the Royal Family, the masterwork of elven intellectuals made into an ethereal artificial invention holding not just the history of their kind, but even the research of all fields. Through the small orb like object everyone of high status can share or reach all this quickly.
And on the far left, stacks of books piled upon each other forming unhinged spires that could crumble at the miniscule hit of a wind. Between these spires laid out on the table, a gauntlet laid out with two cavities on each finger extension, and one large in the middle each filled with crystals charged with mana and certain inscriptions.
“You did find it.” Utsorion slowly walks down as his sight is fixated on the gauntlet, picking it up with great care, slowly caressing its cold silver surface reflecting his ivory face. “Well, this one needed a lot of convincing to do just so we could borrow it.” Aschwinar follows after him, and then his lips curve into a victorious smile as he witnesses his friend’s eyes gleaming.
“I also found out a few more things in my search. Things that not even the Partillectio contains.” He turns to him, his previous softer complexion shifting to a heavier one.
“Not even in there?” Utsorion turns to face his friend with a questionable look. “Yes, seems like the royals really wanted to keep it under the rugs for whatever reason. Seems like you are not the only one who has been cursed. All three that I found so far matches with symptoms and even events.” Aschwinar continues as he walks to the middle table and picks up one of the books ravaged by the passing of time, clearly dusted off by him not too long ago.
“Mothers passing away during birth, lack of any magical affinity to the point you all could be humans from Midgard, no aura as a result of that, and the absence of dreams.” He opens the book and recites the words laid out as Utsorion walks beside him. “And like you, they were all Moon Elves of the East.” He says while looking up from the book, his silver as the moon eyes staring at his friend, brother looking at the book with a weirded complexion.
“It seems like one of your previous lives angered someone or something pretty bad.” He adds while putting down the book on the table while Utsorion slowly sits down and stares at the ceiling, his face changing to a contemplating look.
“On the latter.” He turns his head down facing Aschwinar searching for something unrelated on the Sensker and starts speaking. “Actually, I just had my first dream.” As he says the words out loud, Aschwinar stops. “You did? Was it during when Friedriel put you to sleep?” He asks with a dubious look, then starts flipping through the pages. “Yes, it was a short one, on the day we first met at the Grand Cathedral. Everything went down as I remember it, but it ended rather abruptly when Sieg started heading back to her seating.”
“Was there anything unusual?” He stops going through the pages after finding nothing, relief settling on his face before he asks. “There was this sound, or maybe a song. Not sure if I’m being honest.”
“What tunes were playing? Was it something you may have heard in the past?” After racking his brain, Aschwinar bombards him with a few questions while carving notes into the paper with his index finger five meters from them, the tip engulfed in a transparent colorless aura.
“No, it was… hard to describe, like it was a song but as if someone was trying to convey a message to me.” With a bit of hesitation Utsorion continues then stops.
“What did they try to convey?” Aschwinar stops with writing the notes and looks up at him with a mix of concern and curiosity. “Patience.” He utters the word, almost like a whisper as his attention is drawn to the soft shadows under his friend.
**
“So how was the day with my Sis? Did you two read poems to each other under the Ambrosius tree?” The two stands outside the large entrance of the dormitory shielded from the rain pouring as if they rinse it from the sky. A smug look on Aschwinar as he inquires the day before, puffing smoke from his Cyanneretee, shaping them into a dragon and gryphon wrestling in a playful manner. His glistening white hair reminiscent of the soft snow knotted into a long tail transformed into a frizzy, tangled mess by the rain giving him a wild look that still somewhat added to his natural, radiant beauty.
“Actually, I helped with her magical studies.” Utsorion turns his head away while answering.
“Under the Ambrosius tree in the backgarden?” The smug turns to a devilish smile, a smile that would swell the heart of any women or men if they could witness it.
“The mind is more receptible to taking in new information in fresh air.” Utsorion counters quickly. “And by cuddling together on a blanket with a basket full of sweets and honey beverage.” Aschwinar says within a second of the finish while flicking the end of his cyanneretee resembling a sad curling worm of ash.
“Let’s just head inside. There is a lot to discuss!” Instead of continuing Utsorion turns around and heads inside. “Right, Brother!” Aschwinar follows after him while slipping his right arm over his shoulders with a victorious expression.
“So did you dream since then?” The two sit down into the two sofas with heavenly comfortability. Aschwinar levitates his notebook to his hands and crosses his legs as he turns to him asking.
“No, the empty dreams returned. Making it all the worse.” He says with a faint pained expression, trying to mask it with little success.
“Did you feel any presence last night, similar to the previous dream?” Aschwinar asks as he puts his left hand over his friend’s temple, sending a feeling of calm warmness into his mind. “I did not.” He asks with a relieved look as the tiredness leaves his body and mind.
“That is a relief Brother.” Aschwinar says with a sigh as he slides back into his sofa. “I searched through books about the vilest curses, but in the end none of the symptoms matched with any of theirs, so I opted for other options. I asked myself what if it’s not a curse, but some kind of abyssal possession, a new way for them to escape the Abyss Below.” Aschwinar starts speaking as he conjures a small package of cyanneretee, lighting it with a spark above his index finger. The sweet fruit scent fills the room as he puffs out a cloud of smoke with rainbow hue.
“Do you think my soul or body is seeded by a demon or devil?” Utsorion turns to him with a worried look on his face. “Honestly, don’t think so. For one the Gods through the church would have already detected it. They have hundreds if not thousands of ways to plant their Nym into us, but they all leave behind traces of Disorder, to hide themselves this well, they would have to change their whole being.” As he hears those words, Utsorion calms down and starts raking his temples.
“And we didn’t even count that your previous lives also suffered from this. So, unless they somehow managed to stay anchored to ones’ soul after their bodily demise, I doubt you are a victim of abyssal possession.” He levitates a book with a demon’s skull on its front, and opens it while haling his cyanneretee. “Well, there is the possibility that it is some Aberration or rogue death entity, but the chance for that is really low. Pretty much you would be the first not just even in our realm, but in all of his creation.”
“So, we’re still on the curse angle.” Utsorion says while processing all that Aschwinar said. “Also, do not talk about this to the Cognitorne, okay?” He turns his head to Aschwinar and nods with an affable smile. “You know I’ll never sell you out.” He adds.
“I know, I said it for your sake.” Aschwinar says with a serious look. “And for hers.” He whispers as Utsorion approaches his side of their Research Room with his own note book already in his hands, getting lost in one of the books he took carefully down from one of the many spires.
**
“Brother is that you?” The door clicks softly, producing a small echo that travels through the hall of the vast mansion following the design of eastern moon elven including pagoda style rooftops, an ethereal stone garden basking in the light of the disk like sun during the day and the moon during the night. The interior adorned with intricate wood carvings, delicate pottery and colorful tapestries depicting the ancestors of the Kaguyaku family that Utsorion and his younger brother Hidetsuriar beside their seven other siblings.
“Is father awake, too?” He turns around noticing Hidetsuriar on the stairs dressed in a white yukata making him appear as a famous spirit of moon elven folklore in the east that possesses a bewitching beauty, and with a hunger for young widows weeping under the crimson shadows of Shinkuei trees, casting their souls into the Void Between Worlds.
“No, he went to rest before the settling of the night. Were you with Aschwinar?” Hidetsuriar asks as he steps down from the stairs, his words veiled with a certain politeness one except when mentioning the name of the High Peritusi of the Upper Realms.
“Yes, I was before the session with the Cognitorne. I’ll better get some sleep so good night brother.” He said with a smile lacking the warmth of kinship before the two, bid good night to each other, Hidetsuriar watching as the back of his Brother slowly got swallowed by the dim shadows.
**
The bed with soft cushions and sheets flailing like ghosts, embraced him like a lover, still there was a hint of unease in his eyes, something still new to him after experiencing dreams for the first time in a hundred years. His thoughts were drifting into the dreaded nothingness that awaited him the moment his eyes close shut.
For the first time now, he understood the looks of pity his friends and siblings glared at him when he first nonchalantly mentioned this fact about himself. For the second now he was struggling, trying with everything to force an image of Sieghildien or Aswchinar or any of his younger siblings. Yet nothing came. There was only the endless darkness he floated in.
He tried to scream, but nothing. He tried to hear, but nothing. He tried to imagine, but nothing. He tried to change his trajectory by moving his arms and legs, but nothing. There was nothing. Even the fear, the desperation he felt moments ago shifted away turning into nothing.
As he slowly settled in with the nothing, it appeared at first as a distant point, a color not of his world or any other for that matter. The weird color gradually grew in size, until finally it took a shape equally impossible to describe. It appeared to be moving, seeing him. Seeing the nonexistent tears flowing down his cheeks, fearing his hunger. It seemed to scream as Utsorion moved without knowing, baring his teeth into the strange shape, tearing its flesh that tasted like consciousness, feeling its pain as if it was his own. And for the first time joy filled him as he sensed the presence singing its ode to him
Nourish.