The weightlessness of her legs dangling beyond the threshold of the balcony filled Mirdbruil with a strange excitement instead of an utter terror lacking in the logic of survival. The perfect disciple dedicated to the service of Mhaugreus as her mother said often when she speak proudly about her to others. A trait she disliked utterly as it often led to her teachers placing her above the others, whilst her fellow would-be comrades glanced at her with disgust and envy.
She often sat at the threshold, slipping between the floor and the thick marble rail and stared often at the clouds not far above, and the glistening whiteness and gloomy darkness of the North far, far away. Beckoning her in soft whispers with the sweet promises of a great destiny, a destiny many desire to be written down in the annals of the Empire. Whispers she accredited to Mhaugreus who seemed to favor her over many other of his devotees. A thought that scared her as the Gray Monarch tended to take them as his mistresses in the gray city of Asphodei. An honor on one side to be elevated into such a state of being, but also a curse as it deprived each one from the blessed rest and from entering the wheel of souls, the chance to walk these lands once more.
Though it has been quite a few centuries since he has chosen to elevate a favored of his, since the war came to an end, like his elders he could no longer manifest in the promised land of Elhyrissian. A fact which eased her heart and mind, yet little so as her yearning to leave Pyrghos grew with each year, each decade and each century. By the end she saw herself as nothing more than shackled beast spending her days in the blissful illusion of her endless research, in preparation of another war in the land that promised peace and prosperity.
Yet it provided neither in the two or three thousand years since the first people settled, since the first people earned victory against a foe beyond themselves. Those who fought under the banner of Twilight were shackled just as her, filled with empty promises that they knew shall never be delivered hence why many of them swore themselves to the Beast of Dusk, the favored pet of the Grim Sovereign who claws claimed the lives of millions, destroyed thousands of cities by cleaving the breadth of time in their destined existence.
These thoughts lingered in her mind for decades, evolving to the point she feared voicing them out after the slaves, the pariahs rebellion. Even in Pyrghos many of the enslaved pariahs rose up against their masters, and she recalls the day when the dreaded children of Dusk wreathed the city, the clouds it penetrates in a vicious darkness while by the flapping of their winds, they generated winds sapping the life from thousands. The chaos, the terror of that singular night remained forever in her heart, and led to her yearning turn into a mild possibility.
For many a nights after the revolt, the image of the undead, their malodorous, pungent scent burned into her mind, senses returning in the forms of nightmares. Nightmares that gradually soothed as she noticed a figure regal and pallid, wearing a long cloak worthy of monarchs calling out to her. A warning formed on his dry, desiccated lips of his handsome visage that she could not describe properly, yet she was drawn to it like moths to flames. Each dream supplemented the sprouting, the rebirth of this yearning. Yet they weren’t the reason, but the glue for her departure, for abandoning her forced destiny to become a great veneficiar one day – a destiny that would have led her down the valley of Dusk.
A destiny that was noticed by eyes unseen and inquisitive; hands that were devoid of touch, warmth and cold; and a presence distant yet also present in her life, keeping watch over her, guiding her onto the road that would benefit the whole world. Because of him, the things she valued, the love she held and her desire to be the greatest, to be worthy of the Elhyrissiar were shut behind the jaws of oblivion, and in their place new ones sprouted guiding her to the north with sweet lies, with convictions her own, yet not.
So she went to the North, leaving behind her friends, her family with only a single letter addressed to all of them, recounting her dreams where the Gray Monarch visited her. She told them about how fixing the temporal distortions left by the House of Dusk mattered more for the future of Elhyrissian than her studies, her research on the Greigor Gates’s problem of lessening the passage of time spent in the wormhole connecting them. Two centuries of research abandoned overnight, and all those around her questioning her decision, the existence of these temporal wounds they heard nothing about. Yet these questions, like her ambitions, desires were swallowed into oblivion with each passing day, week and year.
Wearing nothing but her tunic, her high collared robe enchanted with a heating effect so that she could survive the cruel elements. And her staff bearing the hourglass marks of Mhaugreus himself, hewn from Uhar three native to this very north, another sign to her that she was on the right path. Like a vagrant, she wandered the wastes, stayed only for a few days or weeks in the few cities and towns erected by the 19th Legion, she spent decades tracking the and closing the temporal wounds from which wraith of ravaged time poured forth, haunting the locales, taking children and the elderly to amass their own numbers.
A threat beyond the eyes of Empire, a threat meager at that present, but in the future could have led to a dire loss of lives when the inevitable war rears its head. War she dreaded in the past, but with each wound closed she grew fond of in a strange way. Excited even as if she knew, her contribution to it shall be written down in the annals, excited at the thought that one day she shall be able to read it herself. A quite arrogant notion she noted after settling down in Vonschneithar.
Though the locales began to learn of these threats, and through them the 19th Legion itself. And as she expected, though said that it took quite a long while, her name as the Gray Witch of the North spread far and wide in the cold north. When the last one was mended, Gnaeuth and his council met with Mirdbruil and offered her the post of a High-Veneficios – one just a step beneath his own rank.
From the 756th year of the First Age, she served as Gnaeuth’s advisor on arkhaine matters, often sent to hunt down the few evolved revenants proving clever enough to walk past by the protections his grandfather erected against the evils that lurked since the first dawn of Elhyrissian in that accursed woodland. Against the ancient fae of dusk and finality, beckoning foolish mortals to their doom, to be enslaved in an accursed state to forever wander in the shadows of the gaunt trees. Umvraothus whose nightmarish presence twisted the air and fabric of reality of the eastern parcels to the point that high grade protections are necessary to traverse the land, otherwise one may be lost in the realms between, or even the dark realm these horrors originate from. The Crimson Praetoriar who fell centuries before under the sway of the Extinguisher of Bloodlines, thirsting for the material life essence of the living, and amassing an army of the bloodthirsty undead and strigoii, living corpses inhibited by souls tainted by His essence.
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And many others even including the nature spirits twisted by the nekrotic matter pushing out most other primordial energies making up the fabric, rules and possibilities of reality. A place she was not too fond of, but she had to go knowing the will of her true Monarch beseeching for her aid. And so she went, fought numerous times against the horrors lurking in the shadows, bidding their time until the arrival of war, to carry out the will of their true, ancient lord resting in the belly of Dhaugruz after centuries of soaring the astral realms and the skies of Elhyrissian.
A place where her true role in the tapestry of fate, of the Deossos laid cast upon her by her Gray Monarch. On the waning day of his season, near one of the dark, yawning maws spitting the refugees of the Virdr Kingdom out of itself after their arduous voyage. She saw it reflected in one of the refugee’s yellow eyes. Eyes that once brimmed with a noble purpose, a brighter shade, still possessing the austerity of guiders of people. Yet there were hints of pain and shame in the eyes of the young boy no older than twenty, yet the experiences of his short life made themselves visible on his tired, wrinkled face ornated with healed scars.
Still, Mirdbruil knew it wasn’t time yet as she greeted them with the hundred legionariir behind him – a confirmation that their most dire woes came to an end. A notion planted itself in her mind, telling her to be patient as the stars haven’t aligned themselves yet, that her promised mate has yet to be conceived as what shall become him still lingered in the Wheel, slowly rebuilt for his own purpose in the Grand Play of the Deossos, the Almodo and the primordial forces who once reigned over creation.
For now, in the 967th year of the First Age, on the waning days of the His season, she simply held out a hand towards him, drawn a genial smile upon her mesmerizing face while her long, dark hair hung before her bosom, abdomen draped in finely layered robes glistening with the refined sheet of silk as the gray, white and blackish light of the Illius fell upon her form. “Welcome in the land of the Elhyrissian Empire. You have done well.” Her silken voice eased the tightened strings of his heart, and at once the boy let his welled up feeling show for a mere moment as a single tear flowed down his cheeks as he remembered his father’s words before the Black Flames devoured his austere, stalwart form.
**
Amiriniel sat atop a large crate, her legs folded, her hands on her knees. Her eyes closed and bluish white mist poured to the quivering trims as she spread her awareness across the room, and below the floor, sensing not just the flowing underground rivulets, but also the mana twisted around them like coils of tightly knotted ropes pulled by Beucanor. His hands dripped with water as they gained a translucent, fluid texture as he held them down towards the ground and gently swept them north and west, south and east as he beckoned the water.
Occasionally they also gained an earthly composition, paired with the distant, muffled rumblings as the earth beneath their feet rearranged, forming tunnels for easier access to the well in the center of the cellar. “My dear Riniel, soothe the Rage!” As he felt the blood in his veins became thicker, slowed in their flowing and the ecstatic sensation of altering reality slowly changed to a pain that forced him to bite his tongue mid-sentence.
Before her in the darkness she saw lit by branching and curling etheric threads, tendrils moving, dancing around her, she moved her owns’ towards astral outline of Beucanor towered in the shadow of an amorphous beast lacking in true awareness, its maw opened and sharp and elastic needles piercing into the dwarf’s silhouette. Though instead of clashing with the beast, trying vainly to pull it and vanquish it into the void it came from, her threads penetrated Beucanor and shared in his pain, took it upon herself for a short moment where the Beast felt confused and simply vanished out of its own volition.
“Thank you, my child!” She simply nodded her head and focused on the other two still far from attracting the attention of the Beast. Whilst Beucanor’s role was to tame the elements, and beckon them across the village, Shad’Yrg versed in Dawn maghia created a vastly stretching field beneath their feet, cleansing the impurities of the northern land. The motes of poison that found their way into the earthly veins from the roots of flowers – some not even acidic or poisonous in nature – or by the dead left to rot and freeze beneath the snow and earth.
And lastly Mirdbruil who engulfed the room and below in a barrier separating them from the natural flow of time, hastening Shad-Yrg’s spell. A high grade one that otherwise would needs weeks to properly activate without the necessity of her presence. Unlike Becaunor whose dwarven nature resulted in no more than four arkhaine points – four strong ones still – Shad’Yrg and Mirdbruil could hold out and maintain their spells for several hours without awakening the Rage of Acheryoth and the backlash of reality altering them in horrific ways.
Mirdbruil herself also helped in keeping it at bay, by focusing her will on the unseen anima thread protruding from their souls and locking onto the congregation of matters lingering in the air. Though it had its dangers as she practically created miniature vortexes of where time flowed in a much slower pace, halting the spread of etheric scent of Shad’Yrg which would awaken the Rage of Acheryoth. And the same spell extended towards Amiriniel, a feat that made, makes her worthy of being a pseudo-chosen of the Gray Monarch.
“Just hang in there. We’re almost done here.” Mirdbruil said in a gentle tone. Whilst she herself was still far from drawing the Rage of Acheryoth, the muscles in her slender arms held out towards Beucanor and Shad’Yrg burned to the point her saccharine sweat glistened on her fair, unblemished face; a few of her strands of her tied together hair freed themselves from the tyranny of the tight knot and her body began to quiver.
Though she had to endure the scorching pain for two more hours. At last the two spells converged and separated from the Beucanor and Shad, forming into twisted cavalcade of funnels naked to the eye, stretching and branching like a proper sewage system.
A loud sigh escaped her lips when her arms fell onto her sides, trembled when she swept off the sweat swathing her wide forehead. “You should work out more Mir!” Shad said noticing her slight trembling which created waves upon her robes sewn from a linen based material altered and enhanced through maghia.
“Only if we have to do this on a biweekly case.” She said quickly before relapsing into silence as she sat down besides Amiriniel with a bit of aid from the latter who instinctively enchanted her muscles. “Let’s hope that won’t come for years. Seems my arkhaine points began to weaken.” Beucanor said somberly as he reached into his coat and pulled out a vial of thick azure liquid and chugged it down in a moment’s notice, easing the after shock created from the Beast latching onto his soul.
“Probably time to begin training your son.” Shad said as she too drank half of her vial than offered it to Mirdbruil who refused it, still oozing with the ecstasy of maghia – that which eased the pain of her burning muscles. “Honestly, I’m thinking of teaching Husstara. She has a much better affinity with earth and water.” The three looked at him a bit surprised. “Makes sense.” Mirdbruil murmured while staring down pensively.
“Hopefully she also hits it off with Priernuss. It would be nice seeing some grandchildren before the Solemn Lady visits me.” Beucanor chuckled trying to mask his somberness – with little success. “I think that is a few good decades away.” Mirdbruil reassured him, though herself had a foreboding sensation since the day Eadwald and the others returned without Lioba and Ulrich.
“Well that is enough sad talk. Let’s see some light.” The two agreed, and they all left the cellar, though Mirdbruil turned around as she sensed a faint and familiar presence, one that she sensed not since her departure to the north.