The snowy vista stretching far into the distance shimmered in the white and grayish colors in the waning days of 1265th of the First Age. The foreboding season of rebirth, self-judgement and the end – the end which in its chaotic nature heralds a new year full of uncertainties mortals plow through with resolve, resolve both unbroken or weak as a piece of rotting wood.
As Mirdbruil stood at the southern gate, watching the back of Priernuss and Sigiwaer who grew into a handsome young man with a mixture of aevhish and human features; ears with sharp aevhen contoured tip; chin tapering yet still softly angular as his fathers’ and Priernuss’s; skin bereft of any blemishes and lastly but not least hair long and naturally lustrous even with its dark color reminiscent of the feathers of crows and ravens – dire messengers of the great Gray Monarch of Asphodai the city where all the dead find their last piece or their misery as Mirdbruil was thought centuries before she migrated from the south.
A south that lingered far in the horizon, brimming with its vibrant colors enriched by the whites, grays and blues of the season’s gifts to the Illius, whilst the towering city of Pyrghos slices across at the center of it in its twisting magnificence. Her old home which she promised to visit with Ulrich, with their children for decades, a thought that twisted her heart, dampened her breathing just like the day Eadwald returned questioning whether Ulrich returned.
Even though the answer was written on her face, welled up eyes; trembling lips; her hands twisted over her bosom with nails cutting into her soft hands, Eadwald could not accept this grim fact. So much so that it took weeks to convince him that another venture into the woodland would have taken him from Mirdbruil, a fact even more hurtful and the one which nearly broke the dam she erected over herself as Amiriniel and Sigi needed her to be strong – and later Eadwald too.
Yet she still pondered whether her reaction, the choice of not crying her eyes out were the right. Was it not cruel of her to not weep like the children, like the parents of Lioba, her siblings, her friends as they stood before the funeral pyre devoid of the corpses of their beloveds? Will they think her love was never genuine?
Questions, thoughts which seemed infectious spreading across her being each night she stood over the empty bed still bearing the mark of his wiry silhouette, each night spent lying sleepless, staring at the spot while the void spread within her, yet her thoughts still lingered. Was it a wicked notion, conviction that she expected the man she loved for only a few decades to pass before her into the city of Asphodai?
A wet clasp echoed softly through the snow blanketed, sloping meadow as she engulfed her small, fair hands in freezing water and slapped her cheeks. “Now is not the time for these thoughts.” Mirdbruil inhaled the cold air bereft of any scent except for the chilling, spicy snows crunching beneath her feet as she turned around hearing the approaching steps of Amiriniel still a small form compared to her younger siblings, one of the blessed inheritance of aevhen kindred – or baleful.
Baleful in the sense that like her own mother centuries before, she too wanted to lock her hands with Amiriniel, but being in her fifties, she now refused like her younger brothers. A choice that hurt equally as it was reassuring as a mother, the first minor sign of independence manifesting within the youth. “Hmm?” To her surprise though, Amiriniel relented and made the first move as soon as the two lined up beside each other. A small kind gesture as unlike her brothers, Amiriniel saw through the façade her mother put up for the past six years.
Unlike the two, she seen her worry many a time when Ulrich set out for the monthly culling of the revenants whose numbers barely dwindled in the centuries. She spent many nights staying awake beyond her curfew, talking with Mirdbruil, vanquishing the notions that Ulrich may never return as long as she could, a gesture that faded after the birth of Eadwald and Sigi, then the latter’s loss of an eye, and life almost.
In each case, before each managed to walk by themselves Ulrich volunteered for simple guard duty, making rounds within the village, or around where the revenant’s rarely wandered thanks to the protection of the Elhyrissiar. And maybe thanks to those years spent free of worry, Mirdbruil would no longer be ailed by the night terrors showing visions of Ulrich’s vacant form merged in the thick snow or walking, infested by the darkness of dusk.
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At least until six years ago, on the day they set out to escort Hevaeck and Eadwald to the monastery where the two should have headed to Vhoragos where a delegation would have took Eadwald back to the capital first. Even the night before they departed, grim visions altered her realm within Oneiron, where before she had pleasant dreams where she spent hours, days with a phantasmal image of her family or reliving the exciting discoveries of maghia from the days of her youth. Visions that stayed on her mind even as she watched their silhouettes get swallowed by the wicked shadows of the woodland.
And it formed a regret that stayed with her to this day. Would Ulrich still be with her if she spoke up, if she told him the truth decades ago or even then that their meeting happened by the will of her former divine patron, the Gray Monarch of Asphodei. Another thought that occasionally flourished since the day Sigiwaer was attacked with Azugh in the woodland, the day since she felt a cold, distant presence in their homestead, directly in his room, one that was familiar from the olden days she spent within the Mhaegriost Circle of the Order of Maghia’s Truth.
**
Right in the center of Vonschneithar stood one of the few structures erected by the 19th Legion before refugees of Virdr and a few southerners settled around it when mostly large tents surrounded it. A structure which at the time served as the headquarters for the top brass of the regiment, now served as a meeting place for the residents and the place where the drinking, cleaning water flocked beneath the meager sewer system. Specifically at the cellar where numerous runes of dawn, time and elements were carved onto the pillars and the alabaster wall.
Unlike the gloomy edifices serving as the homesteads, this Village House was built from limestone mined in the western regions of the north. Polished slabs whitened to the point they meld into the snow surrounding the small square, blanketing its flat roof with steep edges with six pointy corners standing even on the sloping ground.
Amirinial and Mirdbruil stood in the shadow of this towering structure. The latter raised her right hand and knocked twice with her fist infused with a meager amount of her mana. Each soft knock sent soft waves across the entrance hall, alerting the village clerk behind the counter – a tall feline demikin with an ursine silhouette – who quickly but still somewhat smartly rushed towards the gate and grasped onto one of the metallic rings before he opened the gate and welcomed the two in his deep voice.
“Should I escort you two down lady Amiriniel?” He asked with a calm expression whilst crossing his thick fur covered wrists behind his back. “Thank you, but it won’t be necessary.” She said with a warm smile and the two headed for the winding corridor.
Being here for the first time, Amiriniel gazed upon the mannequins clad in the old, ivory plate armors of the 19th Legion; the few paintings of the previous heads of Vonschneithar who inherited the management of the place after the regiment left for the nearest southern fort, the sculptures of all three Elhyrissiars whose every part was chiseled perfect precision, recreating each lock of hair melding in a flawless unity; skin without any blemishes; striking yet still delicate noses; wide, expressive eyes oozing with austerity; a perfect breadth of jawline tapering to the prominent jawline; the faintly draconic bone structure and scales of their draconic heritage and their right to rule and guidance of every race. Features that all drawn her attention, and deep within her awoken envy of these features carved out from her.
“Ah there you… oh you bought little Amiriniel!” At the end where the corridor took a perpendicular turn Shad’Yrg and the elderly dwarf, Beucanor greeted them with a wide smile on his dented face steal bearing deep, burn marks left on it centuries before. A tale he recounted quite a few times, a tale involving his brashness that faded with time and the scorching claws of an elemental beast. With a swift strike, his once allegedly handsome dwarven visage became distorted by the spreading flames, taking his prized beard, a chunk of his bulky nose and right eyes where now his dry, wrinkled epidermis settled after more than fifteen decades. A face that scared little Amiriniel when the two met for the first time.
“Good day to you too uncle Beuch!” Not anymore as she greeted him with a wide hug, a gesture aimed both at the dwarf and at Mirdbruil. “How nice it is to be still this youthful at almost sixty.” Shad murmured to Mirdbruil who nodded with a faint somberness in her eyes, seeing through the efforts of her daughter, still playing along to ease her mind before they leave.
“It is – though if not for these moments, I would think she is some elderly, lone sage forced in the body of a little girl.” Mirdbruil joked as they watched Amiriniel showing this side, the excitement of a sage witnessing a spell they saw the first time when Beucanor held his palm out. Above it, stones formed out from the air and flocked above his palm battered by the elemental beast and the ravages of time, forming into a sphere then reshaping itself into a dancing star and a small figure. The little aevhe’s eyes glistened with excitement as her questions softly echoed through the corridor.
“Those will have to wait. Shall we get to it?” Though instead of answering, Beucanor straightened his stout body and glanced at the two mothers who nodded firmly.