10th of First Seed, Year 434 of the Third Era
I have never been especially fond of the idea of keeping something like a diary around. However, in these recent days spent in darkness and study, I often find my thoughts dwelling upon the past, carefully picking over the path I took to arrive at this very moment, searching perhaps for the very moment at which I strayed so far from my dreams—our dreams. I suppose in order to do this properly I should start from the very beginning. From this day forward, I shall share with no other than this parchment the truth of my thoughts and the next paces of my life, as I no longer have a living soul to speak with as freely as I did with my sister.
My name is Etelka, and I was born on the Eighteenth of Evening Star, in the Four Hundred and Fourteenth Year of this Third Era in Tamrielic History. My mother was known as Gasan Annuska, the leader or "Gasan" in my people's tongue of our tribe. I resemble her as closely as a twin—she had dark hair the color of rust, eyes of shining viridian, and a softly tanned complexion. My father is inconsequential. I am sure I knew him at one time, as I knew all members of my tribe, however, Mother refused to marry and relinquish her power as Gasan to a man, and obtained the children she desired through easier, simpler means.
Less than a year after my birth, on the Twenty-Third of Sun's Height in Year 415 to be precise, Gasan Annuska gave birth to her second and final child and called her Svetlana. My sister was fairer than I in the eyes of many, though her resemblances to my mother were paled. She was built with long, thin limbs and golden skin. Her eyes were the color of the sea, her hair like bright copper which as she grew always laid smoothly down the length of her back, her demeanor sweet as tropical nectar. While I stuck close to my mother's side in my childhood, learning everything I would need to know when the time came for my to take my place as our tribe's Gasan, she appeased her unquenchable curiosity with the study of the magic arts. A promising prodigy for the tribe's future, she surpassed most of our people's greatest mages and teachers before age ten, and moved on to study alongside them as an equal.
I suppose I should take a moment here to tell my reader a bit about our people, as they are an extreme rarity in Tamriel. We are known as the Fionncine, and we are the sons and daughters of Fiona, a woman born as an Aldmer on the island of Artaeum of the Summerset Isles. Raised as a Psijic, Fiona committed a trespass against the Psijic Order, the nature of which has been lost in time even to the most learned of my people, which resulted in the exile of Fiona and her accomplices from all shores of the Summerset Archipelago. It is said they were carried to the shores of a mountainous island to the west, summoned as it were by the Goddess of the Spinning-Wheel, known to the High Elves as Ceynir, to the Fionncine, Arnysten. She bestowed upon Fiona's descendants new ears like those of foxes with which to hear Her voice, and gave them long tails to make them able to climb into the high reaches of the steep mountain at their leisure. The island became known as Vizzafir, and its isolated, forsaken people have now lived on their island for thousands of years, eating the bounty of rich mushrooms and berries from the mountain forests and occasionally venturing to the more perilous coast to procure sweet fruits and collect colorful or reflective shells from the sand to decorate themselves and their huts. For all these millennia the Fionncine have devoted themselves to little but nature, the study of the Psijic arts, and worship of their Lady, Arnysten.
It was this world that my sister and I were born into, and it was in this world that we lived for twelve years (her for eleven)—I as an aspiring political and spiritual leader to my people, my sister as possibly one of the most powerful practitioners of the Psijic arts that Vizzafir had ever seen. In the 427th year of this Third Era, our simple time came to an end.
It was the 16th of Sun's Dawn. There was a certain ritual in which myself, my sister and Mother were to summon the spirit of Arnysten on the lawn on the highest point in Vizzafir by the light of the junction of Masser and Secunda, known in Cyrodiil as a blighted omen called the Shade of the Revenant. We danced and chanted as our mother entered a trance to become the waiting vessel for Arnysten's divine Presence, and as time passed, dawn began to approach. We wondered if our Lady would grace us with Her Presence that night at all, and when Svetlana's eyes met mine and we began to wordlessly admit defeat, the earth began to shake beneath our feet. The ground tore apart and a great ethereal Gate rose from the depths of the mountain. We marveled at the sight from a distance, still shaken from the force of it all, and our mother approached and reached her hand through the portal that shone like silver water. Our Lady's voice began to rise in our ears—but it faded, and with it, the warm glow of our Lady's Presence emanating from the Gate.
There was no time for dreading. The liquid silver became a fiery crimson as the sides of the Gate turned black as pitch, and we heard Mother scream. Her wrist was held fast by the hellish portal, and it was pulling her further in. The sky turned the color of blood. Otherworldly growls and roars sounded from the other side of the portal, and my sister and I ran towards our mother.
"Stay back, Etelka, Svetlana! Back! Run!" she yelled at us desperately. More of her arm disappeared, crossed into whatever horrible world was on the other side. She didn't have to stop me; as soon as I saw the terror in her eyes I was no longer able to move.
Svetlana began to pull on my arm, calling at me to obey Mother and retreat with her, and although I could take not another step forward I was unable to turn away either. I watched my mother disappear into that frightening portal of fire, her eyes locked onto mine until we could see one another no more, and even her outstretched fingers reaching for me were gone. It was a vision I would see again and again in my nightmares for years. Even now I am not free of that moment. I couldn't understand. I ponder it to this day on sleepless nights. Had she wanted me to turn away and run as she said, or was she begging for my help in the end?
Creatures the like of which we had never seen appeared before us, first one, then three more, then twenty. There were fire spirits that burned the sacred grass as they walked and lizard-demons with teeth like wide needles, and most frightening of all, great tall shapes of Men or Elves in dark armor with swords and shields. They fell upon us like lightning. My sister and I managed to kill one or two of the creatures before we were overwhelmed and fled into the forest, where waited our kin.
The battle was waged through the dawn. Svetlana was taken by the tribe's Psijic Healers to aid in their efforts and I simply waited, useful as a stone, and watched. Hours passed and the sun rose and set, and still we had not achieved victory. The Fionncine are no military people. There had been many casualties and morale was fading. Gasan Annuska could still not be located, even by the tribe's most powerful Psijics. But just as we began to resign ourselves to death, a stream of fire erupted from the top of the Gate. The demons, though on the verge of victory, began to retreat back through the portal, but few made it as the stream narrowed to a shining red line and vanished altogether. The exhausted forces we had remaining eliminated the fleeing stragglers. Little but rubble remained of the Gate, as well as a large portion of scorched earth in the center of the sacred lawn. In the center was found the bloodied and burned remains of Gasan Annuska with a sphere of rock and cold fire in her still hands.
Fearing and hating the strange sphere, the tribe Psijics forbade it to be touched or moved, and had it, as well as Mother's corpse and the remains of the Gate, buried where they lay under heavy rocks that took several men to move. They claimed the scorched land had been profaned and had rocks lain over nearly the entire mountaintop, and performed cleansing rituals for several weeks over the new raised summit. They asked my sister and I over and over what we had chanted, checked the steps of our ritual, tried over and over to determine what had happened that night. They turned their eyes to us. By the next full moon they had detained us and were deciding upon our fate. Svetlana attempted to reassure me, but I was too despondent at the loss of my mother to listen to her.
It was the 1st day of Rain's Hand, Year 427. Without a word, we were brought to the beach and placed in a boat fashioned with a sail. We were each given a pendant fashioned out of a fragment of the cursed Gate, which were sealed with binding spells to prevent us from removing them—a precaution in case other cultures had knowledge of the black Gates, to mark us as tainted by them. Though we were but children, the wise elders of our tribe sent us to the sea on the whims of the wind.
"Where do you think we can go?" I asked Svetlana.
"Cyrodiil," she responded, calmly.
A strange name, I thought. At this time, I knew nothing of the world outside my island, and by all rights it should be the same for Svetlana. When I asked her about it, she recalled that Mother had told her that was where her father lived, and that it was to the east. Neither of us had ever left our island. I checked our bearing by the sunlight; we were gliding steadily east. I wondered aloud how we were going to locate a lone person we didn't have a name
or face for in a country we didn't know how to find. Svetlana smiled. She had a password, she said... something that her father had told Mother in case she ever was to come to his homeland.
"Greet the new day."