Tag Archives: Ithuryn

After the silence

Posted on by
Reply

[at the Andaleh/Syldithas/N’Vea residence, two days after it was broken into]

Home.

It was supposed to be someplace safe. Somewhere you could go to relax, to be surrounded by your loved ones, to see comfort.

But as Ëlinyr swept up the ashes and shards of metal scattering the basement floor around the printing press, she didn’t feel as safe as she used to in her little house in the Green District. In fact, she felt much the opposite.

The Silence had been here. In her house. They’d destroyed the plates for this month’s issue of the Diamond City Times. (Thank god they didn’t destroy the press itself; Alair would have been devastated.) She didn’t want to think about what could have happened if she were home, or if Alair were. After all, they’d killed Robin, one of the people working with Alair on the paper, because she had a copy of it. Thankfully, she was able to be resurrected, but…

They had been here. In her home. And they could just as easily come back.

At least Alair was safe. Hopefully. He was safe enough to send that coded message, anyway. She hoped the Silence couldn’t find him in Isildar. It was bad enough that he’d decided to stay behind in Isildar after rescuing the Resistance leader. If something happened to him, if she lost him…

Ëlinyr didn’t want to think about that. Couldn’t think about that. She pushed the upsetting thought out of her mind and tried to focus on sweeping again.

And then there was that damned mask, showing up in the entryway with that note about Ithuryn not being done yet with being the Magister. That mask gave her the chills to look at. The one time she saw Ithuryn wear it, when he’d received the note blackmailing him about disclosing his identity as the Magister… he looked intimidating. Imposing. Terrifying. Not at all like the sweet, sensitive, quiet man she knew. It was unsettling, seeing him like that. It scared her.

She had watched it burn. She lit the damned thing on fire herself! Yet there it was, on one of Ithuryn’s work benches, covered with a rag to keep it hidden from sight. How in the seven hells did it come back? Its presence puzzled her, frustrated her, worried her.

She finished sweeping the pieces of the broken printing plate and the ashes of the issues of the Times that had been destroyed by the Silence into a small dustpan, then emptied them into the trash can by the stairs leading up to the first floor. The sound of her footsteps on the concrete floor as she walked, of the metal shards clattering into the trash can, echoed around the room. She found the noise somewhat comforting. The house was so quiet lately, too quiet. Neither she nor Ithuryn were comfortable staying at the house that first night – they slept in a back room at the Adventurer’s Guild instead of going home. With everything going on, she didn’t feel safe leaving the sand dragons alone at the house, so she sent them to stay with Moira for the time being. Snowball and Umbra seemed okay with staying with Moira, and were happy to see her, but Junior didn’t want Ëlinyr to leave. It broke her heart, leaving him behind, and she almost took him back home with her, but she couldn’t bear it if anything happened to them.

However, without the sand dragons, and without Alair’s printing press noisily cranking out issues of the Diamond City Times, the house was so quiet. And the silence terrified her. It would be a little better when Ithuryn came back from his errand – she wouldn’t be alone, and there would be someone else in the house, making noise. But right now, with the house being so quiet… it felt like at any moment the Silence would come out of the shadows and attack her. And she couldn’t hum, couldn’t sing to herself, to break the silence. They would hear. They would come.

She wasn’t surprised to find herself crying. She had spent a lot of time crying over the past few days. Taking a shaky breath, she made her way up the stairs to the first floor and set the broom and dustpan down by the back door before heading outside into the garden. Relief washed over her as she heard the sounds of birds chirping, leaves rustling in the breeze, people out on the streets nearby.

She sat down on the steps outside the back door, took a deep breath, and wiped the tears from her eyes. The comforting noises of the outside world reassured her, helped her feel a little better. Maybe she’d sit out here until Ithuryn came home. At least she would have some warning if the Silence showed up, if the world went quiet. She didn’t know what she would do if they did show up, but at least she would have some warning.

In the meantime, Ëlinyr sat and wondered when she’d feel safe in her own home again. When she would stop jumping at shadows, when she would feel comfortable alone in a quiet room. With everything going on – the Silence, the nonsense with the damned Magister mask, everything going on with Ulchabhán and her siblings and the other Feytouched, whatever worrying nonsense Flint had gotten himself into, and all the increasingly strange things happening in the city – she didn’t think she’d ever feel calm again, or feel safe again.

Chronicle, game 60

Posted on by
Reply

Ëlinyr sat at the desk in the corner of the room that would eventually become her home’s library, leaning back in her well-worn desk chair, thinking to herself for a moment. The past few days had been so busy, with everything going on at the Adventurer’s Guild, that she hadn’t really had much time to set the library to order. The room wasn’t quite as organized as it could be – there were still piles of boxes everywhere, and the bookshelves were still mostly empty. She and Alair and Ithuryn were still in the process of moving into their new home in the Green District, and given how busy the three of them had been of late, the disarray was understandable. The only place in the house that was in any sort of order at the moment was the basement – Alair’s printing press and other newspaper needs were set up almost immediately once they’d purchased the house, as he needed to get the first issue of The Diamond City Times published. Ëlinyr could hear the faint noises of the printing press at work downstairs – it seemed that the first issue of the newspaper was a success, so much so that Alair was downstairs printing out a second run of the first issue to hand out in Victory Square tomorrow.  

While Alair was busy working on the newspaper downstairs, Ithuryn was busy with his own work. He sat in a plush armchair shoved haphazardly into another corner of the library, a small pile of papers resting in his lap with another pile sitting on a stack of boxes being used as an impromptu table. Ëlinyr guessed they might be notes from the murder investigation they’d been working on – he occasionally paused his reading to scribble notes down in his notebook, or to take a sip of coffee from the mug he’d set down on the stack of boxes, but otherwise he seemed entirely wrapped up in his reading. 

Thankfully, Elinyr’s desk was clear of clutter for the moment; her red journal was opened to a blank page, and she’d unearthed her favorite pen from one of the drawers of her desk. Picking up her pen, she thought for a moment about where to begin her chronicle, then started to write. 

Continue reading →

An unexpected reunion

Posted on by
Reply

Prologue

Many years ago, before the Diamond City returned to hover over the desert, before the Great War of Flame ravaged the Jeweled Cities and the Kishari civil war threw the Ruby City into chaos, a young sun elf scholar named Ëlinyr found herself at the Royal Academy, hoping to finally be free of her mother’s influence and schemes. She was excited to learn all she could about magic, and anything else that struck her fancy. 

During her time at the Royal Academy, Ëlinyr found herself in many classes with a thinblooded elf named Ithuryn. They ended up studying for their classes together, and during that time learned a lot about each other. They both grew up in Isildar, and both shared a love of learning and studying magic. Despite their differences in social standing, they found themselves growing very close to each other, and Ëlinyr developed strong feelings for Ithuryn – which was strange for a sun elf, as they experience emotions far less intensely than the shorter-lived races. Ëlinyr was unsure how to express these feelings, as she had never felt quite like this before. She gave him a small token of her affection, a red sash, in hopes that it would remind him of her whenever he wore it.

Not too long after Ëlinyr gave Ithuryn that token of her affection, he disappeared under strange circumstances. He had been talking about trying to find the Night Market, to see if he could somehow purchase the ability to be a fierce warrior like his mother. Ëlinyr tried to talk him out of it, as she had heard stories about the Night Market – “You may think you are purchasing something,” Ëlinyr said to him, “but will end up receiving it in the most unexpected of ways. I do not trust it.” Ithuryn set out to find the Night Market anyway, and Ëlinyr never saw him again after that. She searched all of Kishar for him, and even arranged for someone to look for him in Isildar in case he had returned there for some reason, but it was as if Ithuryn had disappeared into thin air. Ëlinyr was heartbroken. She didn’t know where he had gone, and to mask the pain of losing him, she fell more deeply into her studies, excluding others from her life to the point of near-total isolation for years.

However, the world works in mysterious ways, and sometimes those we think are lost return to us at the most unexpected times…

Continue reading →