Hubris. It was hubris for a mere level 5 mage to think they could take possession of a 9th-level spell cast by a god and control it. At least, it was hubris for a mortal mage to believe it. Dahlia was no mortal.
Delicate fingers brushed across the spell's core, and she quickly worked out the basic concept behind it. While the spell's origin was Divine, Thoth had used the underlying framework reminiscent of spells like Architect’s Dream, Phantom Hall, Unwritten World, and Ephemeral Expanse. These pocket dimensions of varying sizes were usually shaped in one of four different dimensions: the Ethereal, the Astral, Shadow, or for the truly brave, the Void between dimensions.
If Dahlia failed to control the spell, it could be catastrophic. Aelwyth Morghaine could become trapped, floating in the ether, or even inside a sun. The possibilities were myriad, but Dahlia had no intention of failing, so she didn’t let those fears bubble up inside her as she wrestled with assuming control of one of the most potent spells to exist within a material world.
The core of the spell was a convoluted three-dimensional puzzle. While the main core threads of the spell were thick, dozens of other threads of varying sizes ran around the core and stretched out to form a maze around the core. It was this maze she had to delve into, discern the purpose of, and then shift the script into something more pleasing to her. Thoth might be the god of Knowledge and be nigh perfect from a technical standpoint, but he lacked inspiration and pizzaz.
Thoth was rigid, like concrete. Dahlia was more like Amun-Ra. The Sun that Remembers was liquid light, compared to the fairy’s liquid darkness. She used infusions of the Gloam to soften and dissolve Thoth's rigid, uptight influence to reshape the spell into a thing of malleable darkness, or at least twilight. A soft, pleased sigh escaped her lips when the shape of the spell shifted to something more organic, almost lyrical, and pleasing to her senses.
Dahlia brushed a single, delicate finger through the spell. When had her nails become black? It was irrelevant. She gently reshaped the lines of arcane force with the grace of a poet correcting a flawed stanza. While Thoth’s magic was brutal, efficient, and absolute, Dahlia’s magic was complex, whispering, and insidious. Tendrils of the Gloam spread into the spell woven by Thoth, corrupting and infecting it with sorrow, tragedy, and pathos while Dahlia flexed her will.
One final step remained to take control of the spell. Dahlia needed to imprint her essence and will upon it. This required a brush of her identity, an imprint of her lips, a drop of her blood, and an echo of her voice. Her claim to this realm must be absolute but also subtle. Instead, she created her claim in layers and echoes, within shadows and light, and the drama of creation played out between the two.
It required Dahlia to bear her essence, to reveal and shape with her True Name. Xandris, Dahlia wrote into the spell in ciphers and codes so many that she doubted even Thoth could catch the inscription.
One final act remained: one of her obsidian fingernails carved a gash in the palm of her left hand, and droplets of liquid fell from Dahlia’s palm into the spell. If it was blood, it was alien blood, unlike that which beat within the veins of mortals. Rather than crimson, the liquid shimmered like a liquid shadow, tinged with silver and violet. In truth, this was more than blood. This was a tiny fragment of Dahlia’s essence, a binding agent more potent than any sigil—a drop of the fabled Twilight Quintessence from which Lyrindris had been famed.
If one were to lay claim to something, one should make their claim insurmountably strong to the point that no other challengers would attempt to take what was yours. Others would always try to take what was yours; that was the game. It was a game she intended to win when someone foolish enough to contest her claim came along.
The skeletal structure of Thoth’s original spell crumbled like sand, and twilight thorns and spectral ivy bloomed in their place—not in fire and stone but in sorrow and memory.
The spell vacuumed Aelwyth Morghaine from Nantes and shifted it into a bubble deep within the Plane of Shadow.
Where Aelwyth Morghaine once lay in Nantes, a young forest grew. Once, the Gossamer Heart tapped leylines and created elaborate networks of magic. Upon the surface, only a haunting ring of white, highly poisonous mushrooms formed a fairy circle.
Within the deep Shadow, however?
Jagged bolts of arcane lightning vanished from the sky above Aelwyth Morghaine, replaced by ominous clouds that drifted like predators seeking something below. The scalding edges of displacement, shimmering walls of radiant force that ripped the city from Nantes and transferred it elsewhere at the far outskirts of the one-hundred-square-mile domain warped into banks of darkness and fog.
The streets, already a place of curves and winding, were brushed by a new pen. Dahlia liked streets to flow like verses, winding in patterns that only revealed their meaning when walked without intent. Some alleyways led back to where one started, others went to where one needed to be, and some… well, some led to nowhere, to a lost place that left one desperate to be saved and in the debt of your savior.
Some buildings vanished, not because they displeased Dahlia, but because their hewn stone and polished surfaces were better used in elevating another building. Some remained purely for poetic purposes, such as a tall spire frozen mid-collapse. It would hoover for eternity, the fragments suspended as though they couldn’t decide whether to break, reform, or endure.
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Weeping statuary emerged above fountains, around courtyards, and watching over the gates. Their faces—fey, obviously—conveyed the forgotten sighs of lovers, snippets of song from a city once filled with it, and, of course, the exhausted, dying breaths of the betrayed.
“One step remains,” Thoth said.
Dahlia glared at the god before she took a deep breath.
“You are no longer lost nor forsaken. The echoes of what you were shall not dictate what you shall become. The ashes of your past need not be your only lament, nor the sorrow of your fall be your only song.”
Dahlia spoke, not to Thoth, but to Aelwyth Morghaine itself, to the shining jewel of the Fey Races upon Nantes, to the ghosts that lingered there still, and the spirits that only now remembered they could, or should, find their way back to the Soulweald. She spoke to the Gossamer Heart and wrote upon it a new purpose.
“By my will, by the bindings of twilight and lament, by my claim as your beloved Sovereign, I sever the chains of your ruin and weave you anew. You are no longer Aelwyth Morghaine, a city lost in grief, forgotten in time, abandoned by your leaders and citizens.”
With a wave of a delicate hand, each fingernail as dark as void of stars, Dahlia’s words were made reality.
“I name you now—Vesperis Morghaine—a citadel of dusk and longing, a sanctum where sorrow is made beautiful. You are the City of Dying Stars, where the heavens shed their final light, and the lost find refuge in the embrace of eternity.”
Vesperis Morghaine trembled.
A sigil of violet and silver, a twisting thing threatening absolute dominion while simultaneously promising mercy and benevolence, appeared above Dahlia’s head like a halo. It remained perched mere inches in the air above her brow like a crown when she floated higher.
“It seems Vesperis Morghaine recognizes you,” Thoth said. The god sounded almost amused as the fairy tried to shake off the crown that refused to separate from her.
“A place of sorrow, but not of despair. Interesting,” Thoth commented. Then he vanished from the realm as if he’d never been there, without so much as a goodbye or a by your leave.
“Rude,” Dahlia muttered darkly.
“Come,” Dahlia demanded of the Ebon Chorus. One by one, they appeared. Drynthor had missing limbs and was one of those in better shape. Poor Mr. Disapoofer fell to the ground in a heap, oozing blood from the many wounds the Sable Elegy had inflicted upon him. Ruth couldn’t manifest as anything more than a storm of embers—yet despite that, Dahlia could feel the deep curiosity from the fire mage.
There was no sign of the specter of Elyssandra that had formed during the fight. Dahlia made note to investigate the situation.
Not the triumphant revelation of her—their?—her new realm that Dahlia had imagined. With a hiss, she cast Wisp Heal. Repeatedly. By the third cast of the spell, her annoyance had faded, replaced by gratitude for the suffering the Ebon Chorus had endured to ensure their victory.
Thus, it was hours later, when the Ebon Chorus had all their scattered remnants—bits and bobs, limbs, and forms, and fragments of self—that Dahlia and the others journeyed once more into the Grotto of the Gossamer Heart. Suspended in the hush of the chamber, the fabled artifact levitated in the air, its luminous pulse steady and resolute. Already, a delicate sheen of a crystalline shell wove itself around the surface of the heart, a quiet promise of renewal of the protections it once enjoyed.
“Lady Dahlia, you didn’t just avenge Aelwyth Morghaine—you’ve rekindled it!” Ruth exclaimed, her insubstantial yet bright eyes shimmering with admiration. “You reminded its people of the Soulweald’s embrace, and t-t-then you turned it into something new, something amazing! A beacon for generations to come!”
Ruth clasped her hands together, practically vibrating with delight. Despite her efforts to convey her pure joy, her mind whirled with possibilities.
Xeras, ever the stoic and watchful knight, stood at the edge of the group. Gloombough rested lightly in his grasp while Shriekfang floated next to him. A bond of some sort had formed between the Knight and the rapier when Xeras had been forced to dual wield Shriekfang alongside Gloombough—a bond that Xeras had no interest in, but the cursed blade very much seemed keen to investigate. The flickering glow of green spectral energies illuminated his wooden face.
“It is rare to see ruin turned into something that does not beg to be forgotten,” Xeras praised Dahlia’s work.
Dahlia preened in satisfaction at the compliment. Compliments were nothing new; she was, after all, a fantastic fairy, a disciple of Nyxaria, the Inheritor of Lyrindris, a Gloamcaller, a weaver of ruin, and the master of sorrow. She wasn’t a bad singer, either. Yet this was different; this wasn’t like being praised by the people of Riverwatch nor even similar to being congratulated oh-so-bitterly by Deborah for winning another battle for the Luminthistle.
Xeras was not a creature of empty words. As his title as the Lost Knight of Silent Threnodies suggested, he was quiet when others spoke, watchful when others rushed to fill the air with flattery and praise. That he chose to speak at all gave his words extra weight, a heaviness akin to being carved into stone rather than traced in the mists.
Dahlia watched her knight; her violet eyes attempted to peer beyond the wooden armor that he inhabited. Why did his words fill her with warmth and contentment? Ruth’s words were full of emotion and gratitude, so much so that Dahlia knew if it were possible, Ruth would’ve granted her a colossal stack of Glimmer points.
“You almost sound impressed, my knight,” Dahlia noted quietly. Her voice was lighter than usual, the sound of silk being brushed over the edge of a sharp dagger.
Xeras said two words, but only in Dahlia's mind.
I am.
Dahlia could almost see them, the foggy outlines of memory that wreathed Xeras like a mist, clinging to him like twilight clung to the ruined city above them. Whatever past haunted him, whatever ancient, terrible oaths he had once made and now fulfilled by being her Gloamknight, she felt the resonance in him—the echo of something unfinished, something broken yet enduring.
Perhaps Xeras saw himself in the city’s ashen streets and weeping spires, in the sorrow-etched stone and ivy-bound remains. Aelwyth Morghaine had been left to die, forgotten in ruin, but Dahlia had given it a new name, shape, and story. Did the Knight not see that she had done the same thing for him already? Did he lament that he wasn’t yet in a second chance? Was her Gloamknight that dense?
Xeras had given her words—not of effortless flattery nor courtly embellishment, but something real that had cost him to speak. Although, if he weren’t a damned fool, the cost would not have been so significant.
Dahlia sighed. The effects of increased intellect and wisdom seemed hard to ignore and revealed matters that had been easier, perhaps better, to be ignorant of.
Above the group, the lanterns of Vesperis Morghaine flickered, their dim light whispering of something unfinished yet waiting to be written in the City of Dying Stars.