View Full Version : The White Tree Wilding (Solo)
The White Tree Wilding (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycRaZVIYjo&feature=related)
2703
Herein Begins The Chronicle of the Rise of the Hummel
A cornucopia is no cure for this,
No healer has great divine might,
Such squandered time on healing our hopeless,
Yet the Tree is far from right.
Such feelings born, such succulent sights!
Castrated memories falling asunder,
Turn your head to avert the blaze,
Let’s fear His righteous thunder.
‘He sought damnation’ – a hero’s epitaph,
His charred remains his blackened reprise,
Succumb to fear and in fires you’ll die,
Conquer fear and from the flames you’ll rise.
Whilst the people of the surface world went about their day, deep beneath the crust and the mantle, the people of the Under Dark were asleep. With time reversed, night became day and morning became evening. Neither elf nor man, dwarf nor serpent ever crossed paths on equal times. Sometimes, Cydnar wished that the Hummel’s aversion to sunlight were a myth.
“Spare this intolerable whittling…” His brother mumbled.
He wanted it scoured from memory. Some things, especially those engrained in culture, were not alterable.
All the same, he and his sibling sat opposite one another. It was late at night for the Hummel, but the sun on the surface was radiant and inviting. Cydnar would not see it, at the rate their meeting was going, for a century at least. He looked up at the tall ceiling, ornate, ancient, and grandiose, and started to count the glow stones that cast their umbra light across the office. To any other race, the palace was a dark, almost midnight region. To the Hummel, long accustomed to the world below, it was practically daylight.
With a stern focus on resolving his long-winded discussion with his brother, so that he could move on to the next article on his agenda, he repeated his request. He let out a long sigh when Dalasi feigned interest. The glow stones scintillated impatiently, as if they lived in tune with their master’s soul. The study, dark, dreary, and yet somehow homely pulsated with energy and tension. Purples, greys, and blues danced over the polished onyx surface of his mammoth desk. Whites, azures, and every shade in-between danced over the coal-flecked walls.
“I do so wish you would reconsider, brother.” His voice softened so as not to cause too much offense. Whilst Dalasi knew he meant well, the volatile soldier was quick to temper.
Their exchange had echoed back and forth across Cydnar’s study for over an hour. It heated, quick-witted, and full of robust oratory parries. Each time either of the siblings had gained ground, the other undid all their efforts. Cydnar was growing tired, and he eyed the small handle less panel on the lower right section of his desk where he kept his wine. He doubted he could convince Dalasi to change his course in anything less than a period of days. He reminded himself about his council meeting the following morning, and declined to partake…for now.
“You have tried to speak your mind on the matter many a time, and each time, you have only made me more determined.” He glared. “I am not going to sway from the path set out before me, the path emblazoned in the stalagmites of Ict.” With a flick of the wrist, he unsheathed the single-edged, lightweight sword from his right scabbard, and levelled it at Cydnar’s chest.
“Just listen…consider.” Cydnar pleaded.
“To do so here, and now, would be folly.” He crossed his blade in a quick semantic addition to his final word.
As a soldier, Cydnar empathised with his brother’s need to express himself with the one thing in the world that was eternal, constant, and purposeful. The simple steel blade, a single-edged weapon forged by dwarf’s hands and newfound allies scintillated in the glow stone’s array. Even without taking a closer look, the mottled blade, blunt and well used revealed a story of constant struggle.
Cydnar nodded, a glum grunt expressing his resignation. “Very well then Captain Yrene. I believe you know of your journey, and what awaits you when you reach it.” He had every faith he did, given Cydnar had lectured him on the matter many hundreds of times over the course of the last decade. This day, amongst all the days in time, was Dalasi’s destiny. He glared at the sword’s tip, recognising Dalasi’s right to bear it in his presence, and that it meant his brother was declaring his intention with what little officialdom remained to his military commission. Come sunrise, he would be Captain Yrene no more.
“I must go north through the Catacombs, then along the wold to the ruins of Trieste.” Dalasi paused for a moment, to drop the sword to his side and recall the details of his mission.
“Then you will go where, exactly?” Cydnar smirked, as if waiting for Dalasi to trip on his own sword.
“North further still through the spider caverns, the fire caves, and then through the argent, the fossil woods, and then to Yrene’s grave.” A journey, which Dalasi had calculated, would take him under four countries, under two oceans, and into the very frontier of the world as the elves knew it. It would also take nearly three weeks, even under the most advantageous of conditions, and with the most keenly focussed of guides. Dalasi had neither, but it did not sway him.
“To the White Tree, Yggdrassil, and the test of the North Swain,” Cydnar added, his voice repentant, but his heart full of pride for his brother’s moment of glory. Each uttering of the old names for the gods and symbols of his people served as a hammer blow to the temple. Each gave him a rush of blood to the head. Each served as remembrance for the dwindling notions of faith and fervour they were fighting to keep alive.
“It is just a test?” Dalasi chuckled. With a cocksure fold of his arms, he blew away any negativity. “I can best any sword, no matter how old, how wise, and how legendary the swordsman.”
Cydnar rolled his eyes. He sat in the engraved oak chair, covered in red silk fabric groaned with age and servitude. With a shuffle, he turned into his desk and slid the chair forwards. He rested his elbows on the hardwood and pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. It had been a long day, and, the meeting with the Council would make it even longer. Dalasi walked about the vast writing desk, and sat with a slump into the chair opposite.
“I do not, let it be said, doubt your sword arm.” Cydnar looked up, paused, smiled, and let the tension alleviate. His tone implied that Cydnar did doubt something about his brother’s chances.
Although Dalasi was not as well versed in diplomacy, or as skilled in oratory rhetoric, he noticed the distrust quickly enough.
“So what is the reason, or the reasoning, you keep trying to talk me out of it?” Dalasi could not help but raise an eyebrow. “Brotherly love is so far the only consideration, but given how much we have argued of late…” he pressed the matter further with nothing more than a tilt of his head and a coy smile.
As siblings, they had always argued. It had remained in the manner befitting jostling rivalry, and not genuine aggression. Cydnar returned the expression of emotion with a cheeky protrusion of his tongue, before he slid the thick ledger to his right across the well-worn surface.
“You are not the first of our kin, nor the last, to have gone to the White Tree and return…changed.” He made a gesture that suggested Dalasi should take, and open the book, before he leant back into the comforts of the chair. His meagre robes, no more than underwear to the usual regalia of his office bellowed with colour in the soft light of the chamber’s illuminations. His eyes shone red, his hair bone white, and his teeth shot silver flashes of mirth in the twilight.
Dalasi rose curtly, took the book into his confidence, and returned to his own chair.
“What is this?” he asked inquisitively. He waited for a moment, but received no enlightenment. He began to inspect it.
It was heavy, and old, and from what little academic experience Dalasi had accrued over the years, well studied. The spine creaked, as if a tree trunk burnt with scouring flame. The iron clasp that kept its secrets appeared chipped, hammered, and battered. Whatever rested inside had been the source of much envy. He propped his sword against the arm of his chair, and then fumbled with the mechanism. He did not attempt to hide his dislike for words of supposed wisdom. Actions defeated empires and stole hearts, not scribbling ablaze and sonnets eschew.
“It will open only for a member of the Yrene royal household,” Cydnar explained.
Sure enough, the second Dalasi twisted the latch, it fell open, and the cover magically sprang wide. Dust plumes trailed up from the first page, which was an elaborately scribed list of contents.
“Fancy that…” Dalasi mused, with ample suspicion lacing his tone.
“Hence why the writing is penned in the purple ink of our sigil,” Cydnar chuckled, “and why most of it is illegible.” The scribes of the Yrene household had been notoriously clever, but notoriously slapdash with their records.
“What am I looking for?” Dalasi looked up shortly. Cydnar smiled, and rolled his hand in a progressive motion. “I am not quite as intuitive with these things as you.”
“Turn to page forty, to the symbol of the White Tree itself.” When Dalasi arrived at the page, he dropped his jaw.
“By Yrene’s fangs,” the soldier mumbled.
“That is the same sigil as the Salthias heraldry, but, can you notice something different about that particular rendition?”
The book was full of riddles in the artistic splendour of sages long dead. It served as a code, a secret primer to the royal family to hide away the greatest and darkest of the truths about the gods and monsters of the Under Dark. Only Cydnar and the Magister of the Counsel had seen it. Now Dalasi was amongst their number, and the elf only prayed his brother could handle the coming revelations.
“Ermm…”
“Look closer.”
"I still see nothing," he replied disdainfully, though he resumed his examination all the same.
Dalasi studied the swirls of the twin snakes about the tree’s bough. He counted the apples in the olive green foliage, and recited the inscription emblazoned in golden ink at its base. The banner beneath it recounted the previous High Salthias, and all those members of the Yrene family that had died to protect the faith, the temple, and the Hummel.
“It is no different to the banners in the courtyard or to the white etchings on the shield of our brothers…” he keened his gaze, but gave up in frustration. He let the book rest lazily on his jittery knees.
“The banners outside are the same in every way, except that the arrangement of the words on the banner at the top is…” Cydnar paused for thought, “semantically altered.” He tapped out the rhythm of the melody that accompanied their national anthem, and then recited the verse itself. “Today I toppled an empire, tomorrow, a king.” Dalasi nodded in agreement. He knew the verse well. Everybody in the city of Ict, and the frontier towns beneath Salvar knew it. It was part of the pulse of the Hummel.
“Yes, that is what this…” Dalasi stopped mid-sentence. He mouthed the phrase as known, and then repeated the representation on the page. It was different, but only slightly. The word order minutely altered, but in altering something so small, the scribe had painted an entirely different picture of the tapestry, the symbol, and the legend that accompanied it. “Today I shall be king…tomorrow, I shall topple an empire.”
“Who first spoke those words…brother?” Cydnar’s tone soured, dropping in pitch and mirth until it pressed against Dalasi’s good mood and threatened to undo his excitement for the days ahead. “Who ushered in a new era of our people with that speech atop the Ardent…?”
Two centuries ago, in the first days of the Hummel’s Golden Age, the third sibling of the Yrene household had incited a rebellion with them. They meant to inspire a new generation of elves to join the Templar and to worship Yrene with renewed further in the Under Dark.
“Nihjar…” Dalasi said, equally as sourly as Cydnar. “Our brother…”
Many centuries before Captain Dalasi was born, it had been Nihjar’s role. As the eldest of the three siblings, Nihjar Yrene had commanded the army of the Hummel in its defence of the capital city against its innumerable enemies. Leading Salthias against Salthias, and dark elf against the high and light, Nihjar had defended the people to his last.
“I…” Dalasi mouthed.
It was by his hand and stone blade that they had persevered. It was with his faith and fervour that the Hummel had finally found sanctuary from their ancestral precursors. High and dark elf let them slip away into the cracks.
They forgot their bastard children.
When the time came for him to take the same journey that Dalasi was to take, he stood before the White Tree, and fought with the previous incarnation of the North Swain – he fought his own grandfather, a master of the battle-axe, and a devout believer in honour.
“The very same…” Cydnar said softly. It had been so long since he had heard his elder brother’s name.
Dalasi had, in the few times he had heard about the tale, and of his brother, always been lead to believe that Nihjar did not defeat the ghost. He presumed Nihjar had died, perished in the battlegrounds in the beyond, and been immortalised with the words he was supposed to have spoken as he departed for Yggdrassil. Now, faced with a new reality, he was not so sure of himself.
“He died…did he not?” Dalasi strained his focus. “Beneath the tree or at least, that is what father always said.” Faced with the guilt, remorse, and disgust that their child had betrayed them, the parents of the three siblings had woven a tale of misfortune. They had chosen to forget their son, just as the high and dark elves had chosen to forget the Hummel. They tried to erase him from their lives altogether.
The secret gnawed away at their sanity for centuries until the guilt consumed them. Cydnar remembered the day he found their bodies, and the poison. He shuffled uncomfortably.
“Nihjar did return from Valhalla, though his mind was left in the shadows.” Cydnar did not wish to tell Dalasi the truth, but if his brother to succeed where each subsequent generation of captains after Nihjar had failed…he had to be prepared. “They say N’Jal, who had heard of our troubles, interfered with Nihjar’s confidence. She wove threads in the darkness, told tall tales of lies and paranoia. She plucked the final heartstring and broke him utterly.”
“You think,” Dalasi coughed, almost vomiting at the thought, “that I would be as weak as he?” he pulled a face that told Cydnar too much. “You think that I would fall to my knees, beg, and become a withered husk in her service?” Utterly incredulous did not cover his reaction. His brother had been a hero in his estimations. For any elf that went to Valhalla, even if they did not succeed, was a giant.
Cydnar shook his head solemnly. “I am not trying to suggest you would, or indeed, would not succeed in Nihjar’s wake.” In earnest, Cydnar learnt across the desk, and held out his hand. His gesture told Dalasi that he was to return the book, and he did so without complaint. Slowly but surely, Cydnar rifled through the pages, mumbling the titles of each segment as it came up. When he arrived at the passage he was searching for, he nodded repetitively. “In fact, my brother, I am trying to prepare you for the stoic and wondrous success you will encounter.” He set the book back onto the desk, turned it with a firm finger, and tapped the line he was hoping to use as a bargaining tool.
“What now?” Dalasi chirped as he sat up and read the line.
“A son of a snake is as good as a charlatan,” he recited. He read the line aloud several times before he quite got the semantics behind it. “Oh,” he smiled. “You are saying Nihjar…” he sat down again, folded one leg over the other, and glanced up at the scintillating glow stones, “is not our brother?”
Cydnar rolled his head, as if weighing up options. Semantics were his strongpoint, by all means, but they were not Dalasi’s foray. He had to put the point across in terms his brother could understand, without belittling him.
“He is the son of our father. He is a member of the Yrene line and a servant, or at least, a once true servant of the World Eater.” Wrapped in those truths, Dalasi began to unravel the lies about Nihjar.
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.” Dalasi chuckled.
“He is not however the good son of our mother.”
“He is a half-brother?” Dalasi blinked.
“Unfortunately,” Cydnar closed the book, leant back, and crossed his right leg over his left.
“But a brother all the same…” Dalasi mused. Though it weakened his dislike for the new perspective on Nihjar, he remained violently opposed to the fact he had been so weak, whereas he and Cydnar were stoic and strong.
He dangled his dainty hands over the armrests of his chair, and took on a swaddling cloak of intrigue. “My father was not as honest to mother as we might have liked, or indeed, as he should have been to his wife.”
Dalasi curled his lips into a withered pout. “Then Nihjar’s failures are because he did not possess mother’s strength…” the rhetoric highlighted Arbela’s purity, foresight, and potent connection with the very oldest of Hummel traditions. In her youth, she had been a healer, still living in the days of her High Elf origins, treating any and all with the clarity of white magic. She was, for the most part, unsalable.
“A trait he will surely be without forever.”
“So I should be okay?” Dalasi enquired with vigour.
Cydnar nodded with grace. “Yes, prophecy is on your side. I have no doubt in your ability to succeed.”
Cydnar finally gave in to temptation. He leant in to the curvature of his desk, and pressed a small indent on the stonework. It relinquished the cover of its locking mechanism, and from within, a comforting sight rose. A tall, slender, and beautifully ornate bottle glinted in the vermillion light.
“Let me toast to that in fact!” he cheered. He rose slightly to reach into the alcove. He took a hold of two thin glasses, fished them out, and set them next to the bottle.
“A toast I am all too eager to partake in.” Dalasi said, recognising the wine as Valaya – Moon Dew.
“I remain uncertain because of what happens when you take the title of Swain.” He pulled the stopper, poured two healthy measures, and then replaced it as he spoke. “You remain the most diligent, and despite your youth, experienced officer in our devastated military.” The Hummel army was an army that had never quite recovered after the Corpse War. “I fear we will gain much from your ascension, but also, leave ourselves bitterly weak and without direction.”
“I have faith in Captain Eliza’s’ ability to take to the front lines in my stead, Cydnar.” Dalasi took the glass when offered, and drank greedily from it. He smacked his lips before continuing. “If anything, she is a better swordsman than I, and a much more adept geomancer than you.” The military referred to Eliza as the Rock – her ability to smash battlegrounds, and faces, was legendary.
Cydnar had to concede the point. “Quite,” he said, as he took a deep draft of the wine’s heady aroma. Used to the fineries of his title, he relished the vintage before he partook in its peaty, fungal brew. He insisted on calling it wine out of convention’s sake, but it was more like mushroom liquor brewed and flavoured with grapes. “I have one last request of you, as frontline captain, before you leave.” He took a deeper drink, and then rested his glass on his lap. His throat glowed slightly, as if covered with luminescent specks of its namesake.
“Oh?” Dalasi, still impatient, downed the rest of his share, but knew his brother all too well to ask for a second quite so soon. The distasteful expression on his face confirmed his suspicions. “I can but try.”
“If we are to move into Salvar, and then into Berevar, to find the source of the Umber Hulk migration…” he chose his words carefully, though were no easy way to say what he had to say… “Then the time will come for you to do something I have long suspected you fear most of all.” Dalasi was a keen swordsman, by all means, and he enjoyed the sway of battle as much as any man deranged by war – he did not, however, much relish the actual killing. “You will have to besiege, destroy, and obliterate the old colony of Altamira.”
“Cydnar, please, no!” Dalasi said sharply, half shouting, half gasping.
A thousand years ago, when the Hummel exiled from the surface, the High Elf capital of Altamira had been the seat of the elven power on Althanas. Though the countries of Raiaera and Alerar were mighty, even then, Altamira had been mightier still. On the far eastern continent, it still stood, though half its size and all but condemned by the few stragglers that still called it home.
“Altamira serves as a painful reminder, to all Hummel, which we are born of racial hatred and mistrust.” The Hummel had named each of their geode cities after the places they forced to flee. Altamira in the Under Dark had once held the greatest number of Hummel ever known. Now, only Umber Hulks dwelt there. There were hundreds of them in a grand swarm.
“They paid for their crimes,” Dalasi spat. The Altamira sent a massive army to topple the towers of sorcery and high magic – vengeance seldom formed amongst the children of the Under Dark, but it fuelled their wrath, and devastated the surface and under kingdoms. The Altamira in the sun, and the Altamira in the shadows, fell into ruination.
“If we do not tend to the Umber Swarm, and the relic that is sited there is reclaimed…they will have not have paid enough.” Cydnar’s tone dropped, to the point where Dalasi had to concede he was afraid.
“What are you not telling me?”
Cydnar traced a symbol in the air with the tip of his index finger. Dalasi recognised it as Yrene’s mark, a hexagon with a circle in it.
“Centuries ago, the high elves found a way stone. When Yrene died, we thought the entire stones list, destroyed, and forgotten.” Dalasi’s eyes glistened, and he sat upright with slight excitement. When he realised that now he had no defence against Cydnar’s request it did not last long. “If we retrieve the way stone, we can redouble the strength of the barrier that protects Ict.”
If they could do that, they could live indefinitely beneath the surface. They would not have to rise to the world and live in the sun’s sickening glare.
“Why would they take it, though? It is useless to them.”
Cydnar shook his head. “They have been growing their numbers for many ages and slowly but surely, we have tracked down their Queen. It has taken many years, but the city ruins are just a front – their nurseries rest many leagues north of Altamira, in a place we are all too familiar with.”
“What sort of nurseries do those foul beasts need?” Dalasi asked, sceptical that potent manipulators of earth and time needed such primitive vessels to conceive.
“The Umber Hulks are a ferocious breed. They are, however, still animals. They rear and breed like any other mammal. The nurseries are highly protected. We know all too well they are vigorously territorial. They will not stop if threatened.”
Now Dalasi was ablaze with hatred.
“Where are these nests?” he raised a contemptuous eyebrow.
“In Salvar…”
Cydnar nodded. “They have infiltrate, nay, assimilated themselves into Salvar’s geology in a grand exodus that made even our escape pale in comparison. I have received word from my scouts who are based there that, after our theft of the airship with the dark elf Izvilvin, Alerar ventured into Salvar.” Cydnar bowed his head. “My dream with the Umber Hulks ended with the arrival of a Drow garrison…”
Dalasi pieced two and two together and assumed Cydnar was telling him that his dream, once again, was not a dream – Ict would come under attack, and soon and there would be a reckoning for all the elves of the Under Dark.
“Do you think they will win?”
“Winning or losing is not important here. We must defend our home as best we can, for our survival is at stake. The Alerar government foolishly think we are to blame for the recent uprisings. I believe they mean to use a grand show of force to send a warning to Raiaera, and to other enemies, that they are ready at long last.” Dalasi did not need to press his brother for further details. The pain in his voice told him everything he needed to know, even before he said it. “They are ready to start their war.”
“They have been threatening to cross the Mountains of Twilight for centuries.”
“Threats become reality, if they are used often enough.”
“Good god, Raiaera is in no fit state to defend itself, surely?”
After the Corpse War, the elven kingdom was not so much a kingdom. The Red Forest had grown wild, the towers of the guardians had been toppled, and although the swarms of undead, and Xem’Zund himself lay eternally at rest…the cities there had fallen into chaos, ruin, and squalor. Alerar would be all but unopposed.
“It is precisely because of that fact we must act, and act swiftly.” It pained Cydnar to admit that his people were to lend their dwindling strength to the preservation of the surface races. They had lost their god, and their power, and their freedom protecting Raiaera once before. “This will be the last time we turn out eyes to the threads of fate of others.”
“You have said that before,” Dalasi sighed. He held out his glass, uncaring of etiquette after so much upheaval. Cydnar obliged his brother with a larger portion than the first, and refilled his own vessel. “I believed you then, foolishly, why should I believe you now?”
“Ha, you have nothing to go on but brotherly affections. If we do not impede Alerar, be it by a year, or a decade, then Raiaera, as you says, will fall to our dark elf kin. The High elf insurrectionists will use that expansion to ultimately ensnare us trap us below, and eventually…” he shook his head, “destroy Ict.”
“So we should tend to our defences.” Dalasi said flatly.
Cydnar shook his head. “The Alerar army are meddling in the mountains. If they disturb those nests…”
There was a certainty to Cydnar’s voice that Dalasi found utterly uncomfortable. Shadows and dust , as he learnt from a young age, always clouded the simplest of progressions . He curled his lips, tapped the side of his glass pensively, and looked deep into his brother’s eyes. His gaze was so intense it could have torn Cydnar’s soul to pieces.
“So it is imperative I succeed, and that we, together, protect the surface world?” He raised a solitary eyebrow quizzically. He knew what his brother would say, but he had to keep up appearances. In the encroaching chill of the early hours, the cold caused the goose bumps on his neck to bristle, and his muscles to ache and groan in displeasure.
“A task I would place above all others. I would put it even above the trial.”
“Am I to do that alone, as well?” he raised an eyebrow.
“I will be there, every step of the way,” Cydnar replied, with a curt nod, a quick toss of his glass to empty it with a rush of blood to the head, and then set it down on the desk with a sharp rap. “At least, to Salvar…” he sighed, “that which awaits you at the foot of the tree is your adventure and your trial to face alone.”
Beneath the bowls of the earth, there would be no help for Dalasi. He would have only his blade, his wits, and his skill. It took a moment for the swordsman to consider his options, before he settled on pressing his brother for further details. If he had been so forthright and prepared for whatever endeavour lay ahead, then he no doubt had lain out their route.
“How do you propose we deflect Alerar’s advance, anyhow?” he held out his glass for a second time, and when Cydnar gestured him forwards, he refilled it dutifully. He waited to reply, clearing his throat as Dalasi returned to his chair and made his aching body comfortable.
“We must turn Salvar and Berevar against them,” he said. “It provides us with the perfect vessel in which to steal ourselves into the kingdom.”
“You mean to incite war to avert war?” Dalasi said, “That seems hypocritical at best.”
Cydnar had certainly considered that a possibility. He had sent spies, however, months ago, to infiltrate the regions. “We will be nothing more than a battered old trading caravan, heading to Knife’s Edge to deliver a load of chalk. In exchange, we will tell them, for copper ore and cotton sails.” They were two of the primary exports of the lower mill districts, and the mines provided an easy way to access the under city. There, they would find the nest.
“I do not feel adequately satisfied by that idea…” Dalasi rolled his eyes. Cydnar was always the one for lofty ideas. The soldier preferred a direct, blunt, and simplistic approach.
“When the Alerar army enters the tundra…” Cydnar smiled. “Novak duello.”
* Novak Duello - roughly means "all hell breaks loose."
“Admirable, to say the least,” Dalasi said, distrustfully. “If you guide all the streams flowing through the kingdom correctly, it will form flood water.” Cydnar appreciated his brother’s more erstwhile attempts at oratory rhetoric. The metaphor made the elf smile.
Cydnar nodded. He had seen the future himself, but now it was on the horizon, it scared him more than he could ever admit. “
“Our insurgents will be able to get us to the region above the nests. Once there, you, me, and the small team of Salthias we shall take with us will have,” he shrugged, and made shapes his mouth, as if counting mentally, “perhaps two days to put all the pieces together.”
“Then just like that we are before the most dangerous natural predator in the world.” The suspicion in Dalasi’s voice was palpable to treason in some cultures. “No conflict, no loss, and no danger?” he raised an eyebrow, which was becoming an overused expression between the brothers.
“You always cut straight to the chase.” They were still duelling with words and power, even far from the smouldering battlefields of old.
“Dalasi, Captain of the Watch, keeper of the Winterblade…is scared of a little reconnaissance?” Cydnar’s jest went down a storm in a teacup, and his brother glared at him. “Please, you are more than capable. Our task is simple, and our timing is beyond precise.”
“By our timing, what do you mean?”
“We leave tomorrow.”
“Then you already decided we were going, did you not?” Dalasi sighed, again, and relaxed into his chair. There was no point arguing for the inevitable. When Cydnar nodded, they both did a mock toast to the air, and drained their glasses.
“Then here is to a successful ‘little reconnaissance’,” Dalasi tried to smile, but it came across more as a weak, sardonic, and puerile grin.
Cydnar raised his glass for a second time, and then leaned over to clink vessels together. There was some appreciatory smiling, clucking, and then silence. They sat together, face to face, and drained their drinks dry. Cydnar poured another for them both, and the glow stones continued to shine non-chalant overhead. By now, it was growing cold, and soon the city of Ict would burst into life. They had spent all the night ensconced in their exchange. Like all political debate, however, it had proven worthwhile.
“After decades of inactivity and licking our wounds brother, we finally get to show the world who we are.” His eyes, ablaze with a radix of power, shone with irradiating light.
Dalasi could only grow more encouraged. “I feel a good fight is just what I and every other sword in this endless nightmare need!”
A fight was exactly what they would get. War was come, and the White Tree burnt with solar flares deep beneath the earth.
The Ancient Gods roared their lament, as an enemy worse than Nidhogg, or the Tap, or any other darkest nightmare seethed in the Abyss.
The Umber Hulks were migrating.
Skie and Avery
05-03-13, 07:25 PM
Plot
Storytelling - 7
I've seen the long conversation done in threads before, and it usually fails. An entire thread revolving around a conversation and the revelations therein is a first for me to judge. As a drum-up to the epic the boys are about to embark on, this does it's job well. At the end of the thread, I was hungry for more. Almost too hungry, because this doesn't feel quite like a full chapter. It's only a snippet, missing something vital as if I'd only been treated to half the thread. I feel as if there had been more given to me of the backstory of the Hummel or even just the conflicts in the past and the exodus that would have given me that feeling of completion. I can imagine that someone who is not a newcomer to this storyline would not have felt the same.
Setting - 7
Pacing - 6
Despite the fact that the thread was a single conversation, there was a good forward momentum. However, the thread was slow to start, and didn't really pull me in until around post 4 or 5.
Character
Communication - 7
Action - 5
Persona - 7
I feel like I got a good feel for the two brothers and their individual personalities. I would like to see Cydnar fleshed out a bit more. In this sort of thread, the entire narrative should have been dripping with personality. Dalasi ended up really shining as a character. Still, a fantastic showing and the dualities shown is likely what made for such an enjoyable read.
Prose
Mechanics - 8
Clarity - 6
There were a couple of instances of awkard phrasing that I read, and re-read and could never really understand what you meant.
Technique - 7
You wrote beautifully, even if it wasn't in a style that I'm fond of. Sometimes it felt as if your writing style was sleepy, something old and covered with cobwebs just starting to stretch and wake. I didn't dock any points because you did write consistently and the great effort you put in your beautiful phrasing shows.
Wild Card - 6
Total - 66
Cydnar Yrene receives 1584exp and 160gp.
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