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Part I: „The Soothsayer"
Prolog
Ciriane left her house fuming with irritation. She shut the doors loudly and kicked an innocent bucket unfortunate enough to be left on her way to a curved gate leading out her family estate grounds. They wouldn't tell her! She did everything: cleaned her room, been polite all day and even baked a cake! Well… actually she tried to bake a cake but it's the intent that counted, right? All these hardships she endured, struggling the entire day without a minute of rest and all her parents simply said was that she was too young for such stories. By Corellon, she was almost sixty! All other students of her age must have heard this story by now or could, if they only wished to. But of course she wasn't even allowed to ask around. Not that there was anyone to ask - the events took place nearly a century ago, but it would be nice to have a choice! She shook her head sending her gray-blonde hair flying out of her braid, the ribbon that kept the hay-like mess in a pretense of order falling on the grass. Her teachers weren't any better. They have only one answer for all her questions: 'you don't learn hard enough, if you have time for such useless stories'. As if everything could be solved with learning book after book, filled with nonsense spells like evoking warts, enchanting useless crystals not to break, or divinations!
But… Ciriane stopped finally considering what she just thought. Yes… it would work. A clever smile appeared on her face removing the frown. In this case studying could become handy, though she couldn't believe herself thinking this. If there was something she was good at it was the Divination class, her only real flair. She has been praised few times for her natural talent, but never thought to use her spells outside the Academy. Her grin widened when she realized this way she wouldn't break her parents' ban on asking questions about the topic. She couldn't believe her own intelligence. No one mentioned using magic – parents couldn't hold a grudge against her, and she'd be learning – teachers shouldn't have any problems either. Her plan was genius! ...
…but had few flaws. The young would-be mage began to circle her house waiting for another sudden enlightenment. Components of the spell wouldn't be a problem to get, but she needed to know the precise time and place of the beginning of the event – the rest should continue easily. There were many sources of information in historical archives, only problem being that there were hardly two of them that had at least some vague resemblance to each other. The war could have started in freezing winter of Alturiak or burning summer of Flamerule - possibilities were endless. She would have to do some digging. Cirine nodded, plan slowly formulating in her head. Next, she needed a personal item belonging to the person she would hook her spying spell to. That was harder to overcome. Finding an item used by the famous heroes throughout all of their adventures more than a hundred years ago seemed as probable as a meteor falling down from the sky to drink some tea with her. They changed armor, they changed weapons… Not all weapons, she realized. There was one sword they always carried with them! And she even knew where it was stored!
Her train of thought was stopped rapidly by appearing of her father, walking hurriedly in her direction. She quickly removed any trace of self-satisfaction from her face and made her best to look at least a little cross when he approached. She wasn't much of an actress, but father didn't seem to notice anything suspicious.
"Ciriane! Here you are, child." He handed her a cloak, her favorite pink one, which he always insisted for her to wear, even despite the nice weather. "Mother's been worried sick about you. You can't just run away like this" he put a hand on her shoulder and Cirine redoubled her efforts to look innocent. "I know it's important for you to hear this story, but it isn't a fairy tale and you should wait until you grow up to hear it. I and mother do it for your own good."
"I understand dad" Ciriane beamed a perfect 'innocent child' smile. "I will wait."
She waited patiently for nearly ten days preparing to realize her plan. She even broke her record in staying in library of the Academy. Not that it was overly difficult – she usually couldn't stand in place for more than ten minutes, but her newest research absorbed Ciriane completely. She was gathering the components, checking the dates and additionally planned how to transport everything to her room without anyone noticing. The sword was literally the biggest problem and she had to extend her interests to Illusions and Invisibility spells at least for the next few lessons in the Academy, earning few surprised praises from her teacher. Her carefully built reputation of a slacker, who only got to the Academy because one of her parents was a gifted mage, was seriously injured, but Cirine knew she wouldn't have any problems with rebuilding it later.
She picked the night with full moon as the most favorable to seeing the past. She set a date, which she honestly thought was the right one, and the position – the City of Coins, Athkatla, was agreed to be the place where the adventure began.
On the tenth day the elven girl waited impatiently till the midnight. She said a prayer to Sehanine Moonbow, her patron, also known as the Lady of the Dreams, who would certainly help her tonight, or at least Cirine hoped she would. The incantation of the divining spell wasn't an easy one and didn't guarantee success, but mystic words flowed easily, if a bit carelessly from the girl's mouth. Word by word she hastily exclaimed the memorized verses, her voice only quivering a little. The spell was a more powerful version of the one used at classes and contained the information about the location and time of divination, much further in past than she ever practiced. When it was nearly complete the young elf carefully touched the blade of the sword, its pommel gem and the hilt. She felt a weave of sadness washing over her, rising like a tide. Tears streamed from her eyes and she couldn't stop herself from shaking. An ancient magic of the sword, now extinguished, left its mark on the ornate weapon, like a deep scar full of feelings, but despite being dazzled by the spell Ciriane distinguished more positive emotions accompanying the blade with its many past owners: a sense of duty solid as a mountain, unbreakable will to protect the People, Evereska and… and the vision faded. White flashes of light sparkled and disappeared around her before she noticed what they were.
She shrugged off the feeling of making a biggest mistake of her life. It was, after all, the way this spell was supposed to work. She hid the sword under the bed and left the mess made by the leftovers of the spell components – she would clean it up in the morning. Covering herself with a quilt embroiled with tiny pink flowers and shutting her eyes tightly, she was determined to learn all she could about the Bhaalspawn Wars, the mysterious and evil Shattered One, treacherous priestess of a dead god and the adventurers saving the Realms in name of everything good and righteous.
Ciriane's favorite story came to her in a dream.