Startled,...her petite frame stood paralyzed at the sight. The devastation that has taken over the Vaerith City Capital was overwhelming. Entry Arches that once towered over all visitors were just pitchforks pointing to the sky haphazardly. Brick walls thicker than a man toppled over in piles of rubble. Wooden roofs gaped open to the heavens with saggy wet edges were
threatening to come down at any moment, and the glockiestien tower with it’s charmful clock is tarnished in ashes and lost its emblem below. Forelongly, a long heavy sigh escapes her,...this was worst than what she thought.
As she walked across the great large plaza center of the city, she stops to peer into the public stone fountain now dry of water and filled only with more caked ashes. The burning of the woodlands made it's final resting place here and it shivered her heart on its fall. This place of limbo world of grey is not as splendorous as it use to. Pedestrians are seen as silhouettes in the distance with shovels digging among the ruins, walking by with carriages and trading what’s left of victuals. They continue life's chores with despair and a thin layer of hope that whispered in the quiet air like the ash...
She stops before a great spiraling cathedral with monolithic stairs gapping open as many people lined up for what’s left of hard bread and ale. Her eyes fall to a man huddled over a bowl of ale and dipping bread in it to quench his hunger. The sight stole her preserved hope and she walked by with a plagued heavy concern frown,...
This was not the boastful cobblestone city she knew! Filled with joy, parties and great festivals! Where did such sprits go?
Rising before her was a multistory fort structure that watched over the Cathedral and Plaza. Recognizable flags of Allied lands hung above by statues of the elders with hopeful yet withered energy. She recognized the checkered blue and white one from Trilutha, the red and white from whats left of the Holy Empire from the outskirts of Belavora, and a few northern mountain canton flags from Veyveux. She had to squint her eyes, but maybe a dwarvish flag too, possibly Koldenvaste? It had black stripes and some symbols, she noticed a lucrative tree emblem looked tattered and torn? (That one must be elven with it's scripture?)
There were many other ones but she did not recognize them, except one. This one that made her heart skip a beat,…torn up in shreds. On the floor at her very dainty feet….
Immediately she knelt before it and clasped it close to her bosom. A once lovely image of a blue flag with the snow-peaked mountain in the center of the lake. It was her home! The Bolvaryian Valley. It has been weeks of travel since she last saw her heavenly mountains and meadows, and it was nice to see that flag, for she missed home….
Her land, a quiet lifestyle isolated by mountains that embraced the valley with sumptuous waterfalls and rivers, with lores of being a river of life from the leylines.
To frolic in them as any other and feel the energy of ancient history, a sacrosanct town among a peace of heaven. She would spent her life living in chalets sprinkled among the meadows of that valley. Herding cows and lambs most of the day, she can still hear their multiple copper bells ringing faintly in the distant memory. The same cumin flowers and lavenders grazed by her cows also gave them distinct flavoring in cheeses and creams.
She missed the smell of fresh cooked cheese in the early morning that clinged to the oak walls. How at the crack of dawn men would pile crates of milk to boil in copper tubs throughout the day. Such a place can not be easily replicated…yet all gone.
A pinch of homesickness prickled her soul, even though it was destroyed, why did she leave her valley to come here? She began to have her doubts looking to the flag in her hand…
She missed the scent of the flowers and herbs, she can feel them in her heart and behind her eyelids of dreams. She missed also scent of logs cut by her father as they were shipped from the Black Forest to crafters of this very city. Long days she walked on those logs pretending to be on a ship cast off to sea. Using stalks of cinnamon bark as swords with her friends. Shaking raindrops off the branches of trees on a slow hot day…
Such wonderous times,…
(Why was this taken from us? Why?...) she mournfully thought.
She remembered her thought about ships and looked over her shoulder at the pier. No ships, no fishing, not even a vessel.... where did they go?
Where did everyone go? She remembered this place being so busy?
At Vaerith City, the cold mountains dwarves would always be here trading their crafted ale and salts, but they weren’t any ?
High elegant elves would come here bringing wine, metals, oils and wax, but they too were not here….?
She missed the halfings who came from the coastal waters? They also came to trade here with their unique furnitures, potatoes, apples and yams. For they too loved their cheeses and butter from Bolvaryia.
But all she saw were desolation. The same as it was in the empty ghostly village she passed in coming here....
(It’s all empty everywhere. I feel so alone and unsafe…) she thought with a frown.
Isolation suddenly clenched her heart and made it shivered cold inside. She closed her eyes and walked forward with this burden against her chest…
There isn’t anything that can’t be fixed, no wall that cannot be repaired and no food that could not be produced elsewhere.
But what of the people? Where did everyone go?
Until this question is answered, she held a tiny fragment of light inside her heart that she wished to deposit towards hope. This light only existed because she was grateful that the flying beast could not overfly over the mountain peaks and wreck havoc as it did here in the Capital of Vaerith City.
The Bolvaryian quiet distant villages were so beyond the mountain ridges, embraced by dangerous pitfalls and vile in deep fog at morning and night. It was possible that the mountains are so high that the beast could not fly over it. It spared it’s wrath on them. Her family still had a home but fell victim to another beast. Famine.
Her valley may seem intact but lost it’s the biggest source of resources from surrounding countries for trade. Like a plague, trading and farming has slowed and fallen into illness as she witnessed here. Fruits were rotten, scarce and varied. Trees that had been burned now surged into rivers and lakes, plugged the river routes with ash and shattered wood. Shipments aren’t possible for a while. Without the roots of trees, mudslides were common and destroyed many neighboring crops. It will be a while til victuals are regrown again….
While her and her father might come to cities like this for new employment, waiting for salvation. They could fall prey for flesh circuses and victims of enslavers…
Who would protect them?....
Was she doomed to live in poverty in wet dirty stone streets of these cities? What about these people? Will she ever live happy in the valley again? The flowers and her cottage? What about her dedication to Inil? She cannot serve empty cities as a healer?
These are very hungry hard times….and it frightens Aleena and her family.
Her father worried he may have to hunt in the Ziverian lands to gather enough food for them,...the snow wastelands for Wild Moose…
But with his age,…he may enter it and never come back…
A frown plagued her face with these heavy thoughts and she looked down to the parchment in hand for her only hope. She had it folded in her hand the entire way like a prayer...
This very letter lead to her arrival at Vaerith today….
She re-read it again…
“ By the tender light of I’nil, help your valley by restarting the new future at the City. Avoid poverty by serving your people. New outposts needed for healers, apothecaries, guardsmen, masonry builders, shipmates, skill trades and nurses for surviving populations of Allied countries. Study how to read and write, learn new skills of your choice and study in safety of the realm. Food and board included and all backgrounds and races accepted. Those who wish to study please see Elrick the Green Wizard of the First Order at the Grand Capital Library.“ –
She folds it away and clenched the flag close to her.. This is what it means to become an upcoming priestess of Inil.
What good is she to sit and do nothing in her father’s wood shop? Trades have stop, they will starve by winter, and what’s worst? she’s another mouth to feed. If she left, it was one less person to worry about,..Bavaria and her family can survive a little longer if she were gone for a while...just a little while...
(this is it, no turning back...)
Her petite figure scaled the monolithic stairs, accounting how many others will do the same as her? Leaving behind the world and join something else for the better?
Once at the top she spots a podium with a signing booklet of listed names but no one around? Perhaps the formality of scribing who enters before entering? She’s heard the Library was susceptible to vandalism with caved in walls and fallen pillars which made it difficult to account who came in and out…
A sign above reads “ Sign thy honest calling and gain entry.”
She dips the pen daintily and scripted her name...
Aleena CloudLily
She cleared her throat and heard it echo around the domed chamber above her. Her eyes panned above at images in awey, blindly discarding the quil away. Paintings of the elders and the wonder of how they were painted there, many smeared and cracked but gazed with ethereal mystery below. Each so different,....
Aleena breaks her gaze and smiled innocently at the diligent knight who towers her as she walks by, he stands at what is left of the archway and indifferent to her presence.
Before she passes the door, she waits for two men to leave who were waving their arms about in protest leaving the Library...
"Vandals! I tell you! Folk want to eradicate our history! Taking our hymes! Songs? And even the LAST copy of the songs of the elders?! Outrageous!"
"...they only took musical sheets? I could not find my family tree and noble parchments…"
"Yes...I blame,...the nomads!! Who else would want to destroy their own heritage! Outsiders of course...Those are sacred songs! They have abilities and spiritual power behind it and I tell you these people are rats!...if they only knew.."
"I noticed they took our lovely paintings of the Ladies of Pasedina of Wyldelands also?"
"...lewd paintings? Sinners! Oil paintings of the flesh..! Memnis only knows where they took them!”
Aleena flutters her lashes innocently and wonders what was that about?
But before she could process the thought, a breath of coolness beckoning her from the hallway behind her. She turns facing a long narrow passage of lanterns swaying with chimes of chains in darkness, territory unknown for her...
She walks cautiously inside....hearing only her footsteps scrapping the dirty marble passages...of the Ruins of the Grand Library...
Where will this hallway lead in her once simple life?
-end-
Daintily, she moved within the mouth of darkness of the hallway, pebbles and stones crunch at her every step. The once vibrant halls for scholars was now no different than a crypt.... The ceiling was barely intact as dust escaped from large cracks above, she eyed them mos suspiciously at potential crumblings. A rod crunches at her feet, pulling back to see a collpased marble fascia once carved to perfection, is but rubble. She frowned and moved passed it... Drippings are heard further inside as streams of water bleed down the walls from unknown water sources above. The scent of moisture soaking artwork, books and shelves permeated her senses but the light ahead of the hall drew her to believe there was life here? She circles around a soaked frame now claiming the floor as it's demise in a collapsed heap, drowning in a puddle was the face of some unknown protrait?... (Such...history is lost here...) she frowned. Perking up, Aleena rose her head towards the direction of muffled voices echoing ahead. Drawing closer, she found the source of conversation was from behind a large set double door, towering double her height. Curiously, she leans in and tried to peek between the door's crack of light.... She identified two male voices? One in a constant parade of discussion while the other murmurs listening and probably not entirely paying attention…
Curiosity gets the best of her as she leans in an ear to overhear their conversation?…
“Why do people want their copy of the noble bloodline,..I will not know. It’s not like they can claim –anything-?? There is nothing left to claim. What are they expecting? ‘I am noble, come and serve me even though I don’t have a coin to spare?!’ I’d like to study if their blood is a different color of a peasant and say ‘well praise the stars! There’s no difference here!’ so they REALIZE that noble bloodlines are useless…” he crosses his arms…”the whole matriarchy needs to be ditched along with this nonsense history, we can never advance in engineering and magicks with them around….”
Aleena squinted her eyes from the cracked door to witness the tirade came from a young male around 30 winters, sharp intellect with large eyes and lenghty flowy robes. He seems to be protesting to another collegue in the room?…
An elder raspier voice replies “…it’s drive by fear Roland, people are clenching to what little they have left. History of what they are and everything they stand for…their identity lost in the burning of our library. People fear losing their heritage and all that they cherish,…”
Aleena hiddenly clenched the letter against her chest in silence...
“You mean gold perhaphs? Where there’s no gold in their pockets, and what good is gold when we need food? It’s what started this whole mess!” the young mage flares a large oversized sleeve upwards while pacing.
“Some lost family members Roland, a name of their sons and brothers on parchment is what brings them solice…” the elder replied trying to trigger some compassion it looked like…
Roland turns and points an accusatory finger at the calmer voice. “I am willing to bet, that dragon came because it didn’t have any more resources or game. Nobles keep ‘owning’ lands and take what isn’t there’s! ”
He pounds his hands against his palm over and over “Every time something bad happens Elrick? It’s because we take too much. No trees, no rabbits, no food for Dragons and Bam!” he slams a fist on the table “they attack!..”
Elrick shook his head stock piling another book away and calmly says “…We can discuss this til the sun sets in the east and rises in the west…But,..” he turns to face him “…there is NO indication, none, as to why the dragons did what they did…these are all assumptions.”
“I still think it’s the nobles fault…” Roland mutters crossing his arms. “they don’t allow science nor progress, greedily take and expect no consequences. Halting everything!”
“Remember what I taught you about assuming Roland? Assume? Ass you me? It makes an ass out of you and me?”
“ Yes,..but sometimes we have to know what was at fault. I don’t want to see another destruction again! Do you?”
“No, but it is in the past now, we need to move on beyond that. Anger solves nothing remember?. Besides…we are being rude at the moment…” gesturing a tender hand to the door…
Roland knit his brows and stares at the door too. Aleena drew red, as she felt their eyes were on her, even though she was behind the door.
Suddenly the door infront of her peeled open against her will, revealing a stone pillared sanctuary of shelves and tables inside. Sunlight pouring over her from the windows straight ahead, making her white hair aglow. There, the two men gaze at her frame with quiet regard. She meekly blushed and crossed her wrists before her shyly …”Bonjour?”
Roland mutters “ Great, a danke-veyveux lady..”
Aleena widens her eyes, “Vhat does that mean?!”
“it means he’s an idiot.” Elrick with a smile rushes to her.
The elder man was poise with a simple blue tunic and large stone rings on each and every one of his fingers! But they weren’t gold. Some were wood, silver, stone, bone? So elaborate and covered with hidden meanings? He had the presence of wisdom and old magick. Beads of wood, quartz, and metalics hung from his neck with respect. He embraces her with such friendliness and smelled of lavender, definitely the sign of a true apothecary.
The elder brighten with a wrinkled grin and with such a friendly affection taking both her hands and says in the most boastful high spirit “Bonjour Mademoiselle!”
She smiles and bows her head faintly “Maester Elrick…”
“ Do not pay heed to my collegue here, he’s an Arcane Engineer” He leans in whispering “… they are all grouchy. Especially this one, this is Roland Betarts.”
(What is an Arcane Engineer?) she curiously wondered?
She smiles politely and nodded his way, and Elrick respectfully. “I am Aleena Cloudlily… tis mon le pleasure m’lords…”
Elrick stands back and observes her, “you are not Frankish hm,..I say you are,..Bolvaryian? Mountainus region, love it there? Very worried? Hungry and lost faith in the I’nil?”
Aleena gazes at the elder fellow with disbelief. “why,..yes, how do jou knowith?!”
He points with an amused smile that pinches his eyes to nothing more than a slith and wrinkles. “You are holding what’s left of the flag…”
Aleena looks down at her hands then grinned sheepishly “oh of course!....it fell ze off le pole. Could not leave it behind.”
Elrick chuckled “of course not! What a beautiful place…Veyveux region and the regions of valley of course..”
“Sacred Valley huh? Now that’s a nice area…” Roland said drawing close, “No nobles there, Farmlands are ruled by cantons right? The entire village speak together in councils on their behalf…”
Aleena tilt her head viewing Roland beyond Elrick’s shoulder,“yes,..we sometimes have village meetings, discussing items to help the elder make a decision we think is best. I don’t understand why people choose to follow a noble who makes decisions without their thoughts?…”
Roland taps Elrick’s shoulder on cue “See! Even THEY don’t want nobles! The hellic with the rich brats and toss the entire bloodline over. Hire a witcher and get their faces hung with that dragon too… “
“Roland you’re the worst……” Elrick sighed.
“It’s the only way we can advance around here without them ordering us around “ Roland crossed his arms..”Arcane engineering will advance resources and we won’t have a damn reptilian dancing on people’s graves…”
“Perhaphs,…” Elrick turns to her “But I am sure Miss Cloudlily didn’t come all this way to talk to a poppycat,….now, why are you here m’dear?”
“ You’re a bloody poppycat….” Roland mutters and flopped on a chair lazily.
(What’s a Poppycat? So many new words in different lands, is he allowed to talk back to the Maester like that?…) she thought
Aleena ignores Roland and finally clears her throat with a renewed smile, she undoes the folds of the parchment politely to Elrick with the scripture volunteer letter….
”I came for thiz….”
- end-