Quote:
The high elf walks confidently; she needs not even count her steps any longer. The closeness of an echo is enough to tell her the proximity of walls and objects. She laughs; Troyas has set a trap for her. The vase rests on a podium where the hallway opens into the library; she can hear her footfalls echoing in a sort of diorama of sound collected within the belly of it. She sidesteps, and the thump of her feet on wood becomes the thack of them on marble.
The smell of knowledge in the library is almost overwhelming, simple symbols composed of many inks on various forms of paper, spanning ages forgotten by most. Erissa hears the incredibly high ceilings, and she begins a quiet song to enjoy the reverberation of it against the buttresses, and the areas where it will not echo but is diffused instead by cloth and the uneven rows of roughly bound books of every size. A crinkle of paper catches her ear, and her song lingers in echo only for a few fleeting moments. Erissa smiles to herself as she navigates the back of the library, knowing exactly where her quarry lies in wait. Eyes unseeing, she turns her face upward to the sound of a heartbeat. Her teacher leaps from atop the bookshelves; the air is displaced and she turns to face he who disturbed it.
“Come,” Troyas said, taking her hand only to pull her from the bed; he dropped it when she rose to her feet. "Let us practice.” Erissa followed him as best she could, fighting back the regret of her decision. He led her slowly and wordlessly back down the stairs, letting his feet fall heavily, through the library and out the back doors to the wide, open lawn. She longed for the beauty of the forest, and yet she relished the smell of it, and the sound of the wind in the leaves, the birds tweeting and flapping. “You realize,” he said, “that an enemy can easily disable your sight, or perhaps prevent you from seeing him. What will you do then, Dear One?”
Quote:
The sun shines sweetly on the high elf; there is no smell like that of sunshine and no song as fine as the ever-changing tinkling of the nearby river, and percussion like brushes on a drum, the sound of the whispering leaves. Indeed, summer has a taste beyond smell, the pollen in the air like salt on roasted vegetables.
Her teacher is stealthy; aside from being an elf, he is ancient and a lifelong student of the art of combat. However, there is only so much he can control, and his penchant for fragrant lotion and fine cloth is his downfall. She knows his location immediately; however, his method of attack remains to be seen. The wind is slight, so the ruffling of his robes means he is moving at a high speed, yet his direction is round-about her. Erissa stands in silence and hears his sharp intake of breath, the same he always makes when focusing; the bolt will come shortly, and she hears the crackling energy fly by hear ear as she spins away from it. His smell has moved; no longer is he downwind, nor does the breeze betray him with a ruffle of cloth. The young elf stands in silence once again; in moments she hears what she needs, a gentle grunt of exertion as her teacher leaps and propels himself telekenetically at her. The smell of lotion, the rustling of cloth, the beating of his heart and laboring of his breath, he has committed himself in the trajectory, and Erissa drops to her knees, focusing her own telekenetic energy and adding it to his, causing him to overshoot his landing. He rolls on the ground and she can smell the bruised grass; he has stained his robes with green. Erissa tries to remember the color green.
“That is all,” Troyas says to her. “Your lesson is complete. Heal yourself, Dear One.” Troyas smiles and rings her shoulders with a long, graceful arm. Erissa nods, focusing her power, and in several moments the light and beauty of the world floods in on her. A single tear slips down her cheek.