Private Tales Wrapped in the Wyrms Coil

He sat at a long and wide wooden table. About him were stacks of tomes and scrolls.

Torchlight flickered around him, lighting the area just around him. Everywhere else was dark, and rows of tall bookcases cast long shadows.

He turned a page. Upon, a familiar marking, and a familiar creature. He turned another, and then many more, gazing upon them each with intent. He came upon another marking, this one unfamiliar, and an unfamiliar creature. Upon one page a place, and the next page, another. Spells. Curses. All manner of thing that might direct him on the right path. For hours he lingered there, long enough that the Sun's light peeked through the windows. And then on through the day.

It wasn't until night fell again that he left from the library, but he did not leave from there empty handed.

The answers he sought were proving aloof and difficult to find. And so, he could think of no better creature to aid him in such a task as one who was as equally aloof and difficult to find. However, unlike the former, the latter had a way of knowing when they were sought. It was only a matter of whether or not she chose to be found.

Down into the streets of Annuakat, he wandered. On down a busy street, and then on down one more quiet.

A quiet breeze brushed by, and his eyes were drawn toward...

The quick flick of a tail, then a lazy sway. A gentle purr. A lifted paw, leisurely cleaned. His eyes fell upon a black cat, who he could tell without a doubt had noticed him but took to no alarm. In seemed even, to expect him. He approached it, and only once he came near did its paw fall to the ground and it quietly peered up at him.

It wore no collar, and so the parchment in his hand had no place to be tucked.

He was about to lift it up when the letter dispersed right there in his grasp, wisping away into a black smoke that whirled around the cat and then vanished.

It meowed, and then departed, leaving him there with a half confused look on his face, which soon settled into an understanding grin.

In ten days look to the east.

And in ten days, upon the falling of its night, he did.

A wry smile crept across his features, the sign all too obvious to him. And only him. For none could have expected such a thing, and yes, even he though it a bit.. grand. But there again, was there any other so worthy of such grandiose display?

He thought, perhaps not.

---

Footsteps in the sand, light despite his frame. He appeared in the dim light of the campfire, his eyes upon the dark one just there.

As before, as she ever had since that day, she appeared first to him as a figure wreathed in shadow like fire, with eyes blazing as bloody red. And then with a blink, she was as all others saw her. More to her, than met the eye. Many had always surmised, but he knew.

Somewhere in the middling distance, a deep bellow sounded from seemingly nowhere.

His eyes cast off and away as he drew near, and then turned again to her as he came near the fire, dismissing it as something to be dealt with when need be.

Her presence was far more potent, at present.

"Fieravene," he declared, pausing for a moment of quiet respect, then saying, "thank you for coming. I am..."

Compromised....

"...glad you've come."

"You say that now..." she said.

For an elf, of any sort, Ashuanar was young. Not yet five decades old. But, his had been a life full of experience. He'd grown up quite quickly in his time... and Fieravene had had no small part in that.

"I do," he replied, a resolute and yet respectful tone in his voice. He did not falter, despite her looming presence. He would not be so easily towered over. But in this, he knew, and silently lamented, he still sought to impress. He still sought to prove himself - to her, especially it seemed. Even more-so than Gerra.

More-so than Medja, even.

What was it about her?

She patted the sand beside her, and he hearkened to her. He wanted to, of course, and so he did. He even smiled at her gesture before drawing near.

"Coffee will be fine," he replied, eyeing the pot inquisitively, "although I did not think you enjoyed it?"

Then again, if anyone spent much time in the cities of the Empire, coffee would quickly find itself on one's menu. It was one of their best exports, after all.

"Indeed, one does," he replied, subtly glancing down at his hidden affliction.

He sipped from the coffee. It was not from Kalit, that was obvious from merely its scent, just there before his nose, but still... he liked it. Coffee was one of those things for him. He strayed away from it, for no matter what make it seemed to be, what flavour it seemed to bear, he enjoyed the sensation well beyond the taste.

That held true for many things, it seemed, at times.

"But sometimes what one thinks is good, another disagrees," he sipped again. It was quite hot still.

And he had grown to enjoy the simple pleasantries of life. When at one time he'd have cut to the chase, he instead chose to dolly for as long as she'd allow. No doubt she knew he'd called upon her for purpose, but these moments, in this world, in these times... they were few and far.

He sipped from the coffee.

"Alliria?" he asked.

Far cry or not, he'd not had an apple in some time. He was in fact quite delighted when it fell into his palm. Paired with the small measure of pride that his keen sense had garnered him, a smile lingered on his lips while he set the apple just beside him.

His demeanour dimmed with her shift in tone, the spring in his gestures withdrawn and reduced.

With a long breath the smile on him faded, but he was not exactly dour.

He was not shocked at her perception, but he was surprised at just how perceptive she truly was. But there again, that was why he had called to her. The affliction upon him and even the whole of the Empire was of something... beyond. If anyone could perceive such things, it would be her. This much he counted on.

"Only enough so that it does not bleed," he glanced down at the hidden wound, lifting his arm to regard it, "and still, it does not spread. The draconic curse should have taken me by now, but this," he gestured to the armband on his left, "it spares me, but for how long?"

He did not fully understand what it was she meant, by holding him back.

His gaze fell to the armband then, a look of contemplation etching deeply into his features. If it was not merely sparing him of the plague, what then would it be keeping him from?

Frowning, his eyes lifted meet hers, and then he did away with the wraps which covered his maimed arm. The scar there was closed, yes, but it was far from any natural wound. It was marked clearly with the signs of infection, but rather than the reds and pinks of flesh it appeared greyish and pale, and the valleys formed in the afflicted flesh seemed almost luminous.

And now, spindly lines like black web splayed from its edges, reaching out only so far. But those little details had only recently developed, and were new to his eyes. He said nothing, only peering down at the wound with an odd sense about him.

His enraptured contemplation was skewed, quite literally, by the sudden swiped of a dagger. She'd have ended him then and there if she wanted, so enamoured in what it was that maimed him. He hadn't even noticed the blade until it was upon him.

His reaction delayed, he winced a bit in the aftermath as the blood pooled on his arm. His blood, though it did not quite look as such.

In her strange ways she took from him, and tasted of that which had marked him. He looked on with a stoic eye but within his mind roiled in confusion. But he displayed not his dismay, for in her he trusted, as he had learned to.

It was... ironic. The mark of one godhood stayed by the mark of another. In one hand, the godhood of Gerra in his gift, and in the other, the godhood of dragons. Drakormir had certainly fit such a description, or so his memory recalled - a beast of unfathomable size. And now, even after its "demise," its touch lingered.

You have been marked by a God.

Then her question ground his mind to a halt. Save the Empire?

His eyes fell. His thoughts drifted from one place to another. He saw the lights of Ragash, the hues of Annuakat's blues. He saw smiling faces in plumes of smoke, gathered around hookah, he saw the dancing in the city square during the Divan's quarterly festivals. He saw the emeralds of the one whose hands held his heart.

He stood.

He loved what had been created, and he loved the peace that had once and finally come to his people.

He looked to her, unwavering in his gaze and unafraid, for even if were he must splay his very soul open, he would.

"I will do whatever I must."

---

Emboldened with determination, the burning will in him to preserve what he'd come to hold dear, he'd brought himself triumphantly to his feet in proclamation of his unwavering drive... to sit back down. When it came to these things, he hadn't exactly been known for his timing - at least while off the battle-field. It was why he'd often had himself an advisor or two, to know when to stir hearts and when to let lie.

So he sat, giving her a somewhat awkward look before taking his coffee back in his hand.

He leaned forward some, cup in both hands and elbows propped on his legs. Peering down into the fire first, and then up where he beheld the red in the sky.

"An adventure. You and I?" he grinned, "should be one for the books."

This would, most definitely, be off the books.

---

"Only fleeting memories from long ago, stories I do not remember save for a few bits a pieces..."

His eyes cast down over the ruin, peering from beneath the hood he'd long ago tossed over his head. It was quiet here, and not so much as a breeze passed by them.

And yet he, as he had been all the while they had traveled, was far more content in what most would call the unsettling silence. As they lingered there, he observed what he saw with a wisdom beyond his years, yet it was still hindered by the youth in his blood. He was wise enough to not be too sure, however sure of himself he was. But when it came to places like this, people like her, he was wise enough to know he was far from where his footing was truly firm simply by standing.

He would need to plant his feet.

"...a storied, and cursed place. What else, I do not know."

---

He listened, intently.

As she spoke, memories from his past flooded through his mind. They did not diminish her words, but he saw clearly where the things he had perhaps once understood of such a place were far from what she had told him now to be.

He followed after her in a similar manner, sliding down the dune as casually as any who would call the desert their home, seeming to even make sport of it in his own, subtle way. He enjoyed the momentary freedom of the moment before sliding to a halt alongside his dark elven friend.

He, as a local and natural surfer of these sands, was far less disheveled than she, needing not even to adjust his posture.

"Never have I heard of such a place that... moves, where it whims. How can it be so? This Eldar God has such sway?"

"Cataclysms... like Drakormir?"

He looked to her first, a sense of near amazement in his gaze, and then a look to the ruins before them, grand despite their obvious disrepair. But as he looked, he wondered.

"Yet here it lingers, trapped in this place."

Like he, in his vessel. Like Drakormir, in is. They all had their vessels. But why did this one linger here?

"Does it choose to? What binds it? Or are we even to know..."

His eyes descended to the sands at his very feet. What things could keep such a being in check? What laws, what powers?

He looked to Fieravene.

What had he gotten himself into?