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"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends."
― Baltasar Gracián
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"There they are."
Even before the Darkness at her side made the observation, her keen eyes had discerned the moving shadows from the darkness of the night sky above, taking careful note of where the stars were blocked out by the large winged beasts that moved at the Magisters' beck and call. She settled in to wait, her white fur a direct contrast to the black void next to her. A small twinge of satisfaction went through her as he flinched back from the color, though it meant nothing more than that she preferred white fur. It simply wasn't... dark. And anything that wasn't dark had the potential to mean that he had no control.
Not that she'd given him any reason to think he lacked control of her. The invasion of Elvhenan by the Imperium had gone according to the plans Geldauran had given to Darinius all those spans ago: the outer cities and towns, long since weakened by the slow influx of the taint and an increasing number of slaver raiding parties, had fallen before the inexorable march of the Magisters and the Dragon Knights mounted upon their drakes. A populace already demoralized by the unexpected and unfathomable prospect of widespread illness and aging put up only a token fight before the might of the Imperium, and so the already culturally isolated world of the Elvhen grew ever smaller with each passing year as the reach of the Imperium grew proportionally. Finally, the massed might of the Tevene reached the outermost boundaries of Arlathan, that which would originally have been held impenetrable by the keen eyes and powers of the Guardians. Now the Guardians, empty statues as they were, had been claimed as war prizes, taken to Minrathous as proof of Tevene conquest of the Elvhen.
The moment when the last one had passed from sight still haunted Tallathian, but not as much as seeing the empty vessels of what had once been her family.
Still, even with the loss of their first and oldest defense, the greatest city of Elvhenan would yet have taken at least a span of years to finally fall. The Guardians were not, after all, their only defense. Had that been the only problem encountered by Arlathan, it might yet have outlasted its attackers, the Elvhen enduring as they had done for countless aeons before human foot had ever touched Thedosian soil. Yet the shadowy influence of the Darkness and his agents had subtly penetrated far more than just the perimeter of Arlathan.
Almost as if their thoughts moved through the same dark channels - a fear that grew in her with every passing month - he chuckled and moved closer to her, the edges of his aura mixing with her fur and darkening it to a filthy grey. "Your efforts to weaken them were inspired, my dear. Chaos in the Council, the halla not just rendered into dumb animals but driven forth as well, the mages fighting amongst themselves for supremacy, and all the rest jumping at shadows that may or may not harm them." The chuckle gave way to his odd laugh, the very air crackling with its intensity, and her fur darkened further in shuddering response. The voice drew closer, and she could hear the setheneran he constantly created and mended crackling in his proximity, the sheer amount of magic required to keep him even this corporeal plainly enough to kill any mortal that wandered in its path, unless they were already accustomed to the raw power that was a God's presence.
Such as the Chosen of Fen'Harel...
"How did you manage to get them to distrust each other so readily? I can barely tell one apart from another. Different colors, different heights, different hair - meaningless differentiations. It was much simpler with the Minauri." He subsided for a moment, perhaps remembering those for whom he sought revenge, and her thoughts wandered their own path. Her light touch of chaos had successfully managed to drive wedges between the Elvhen based on their vallaslin, so that a follower of June would avoid one who bore the mark of Mythal simply because another vallaslin could not be trusted... or so the rumors stated. Rumors she had started, with her disparate glamours and spells, the knowing winks and outright falsehoods, and the subtle knowledge of the Elvhen mode of thinking she'd garnered from aeon upon aeon of observation.
She shifted, her tail curling up around her haunches, as she flinched away from the thoughts of what she had done these last few years. Where is the Tallathian for whom even a lie was a grievous loss of truth?
Letting the question burn, unanswered, in her thoughts, she looked out over the city once more. Instead of a broad plateau of lights with no interruption save for the quiet beauty of the Gardens, the points of illumination bunched together, as if those who remained in Arlathan and had not already fled the incursion or been taken by slavers huddled together, afraid of their fellow citizens. This separation, almost more than any other sign, showed ample evidence of her efforts over the past few spans. Her eyes narrowed as she snorted lightly. Not so brave when the genocide threatens you, hmm? Hating the thought, and hating more the bitterness and self-hatred that birthed it, her tail twitched as the vague flutter of hope winged through her soul.
The only true hope for the spirit of Arlathan to endure.
For she knew that, in the midst of the maelstrom of the siege, those who bore the ragged brand of the Wolf upon their foreheads - a mark that should have borne the worst of the brunt of the internal hostility bubbling and broiling within Arlathan, a mark that had been liberally applied to even the most unlikely of offenders in those months leading up the siege - now went oddly unnoticed. The Wolf's people moved through the city without hindrance, quietly going about their own business, as around them the ancient civilization of Elvhenan turned against itself. But then, Geldauran had never truly understood the difference between one line of ink and another, save that they weren't all the same, and the apparent anomaly was as invisible to him as it was to the Council. And all she had to do was not draw attention to them, concentrating her efforts on making the Council's collective gaze fall elsewhere, knowing that the Darkness would continue to overlook the efforts of the twins that led the covert forces of Fen'Harel...
Arrogance. As the word echoed through her mind, she wondered which of them was the most arrogant of all.
Still, she was allied with the Darkness for a specific purpose, and that had not changed. And it would not change even now, the night that the siege was due to final elements of the assault had finally been brought down from Tallo's Eye, hissing and snapping as the flame of their breath laid waste the final remnants of any resistance in the rest of Elvhenan. The last outpost of Elvhenan outside of Arlathan had fallen to the dragons only a hand of days ago, and now their unstoppable force winged in deceptive patterns above the city, awaiting the signal for the final attack. The Old Gods and Geldauran would have their revenge against the Elvhen at last, and their human pawns would not understand what it had cost them until long after the price of their folly caused their own downfall...
Arlathan will fall, I swear it. It is the only way to-
"The Archon will be expecting an update."
Startled from her thoughts by his sudden words, her ears quickly swiveled, verifying that they were still alone. Digging her claws into the soil beneath her, she growled in acknowledgement of his words and began to rise, only to be stopped by his ephemeral weight on her back, his implied command far more effective than any physical pressure he could apply. She knew it chafed him that he could not yet fully manifest physically in Thedas, though she only had suspicions rather than factual knowledge as to why this was so. Still, even after all these years, the 'touch' of the Darkness made her skin crawl.
"You must not go like that, little shadow." A dark cloud wafted out and clouded her vision, sinking through the fur to her skin. "And you know I prefer you... otherwise."
Suppressing the inevitable shudder, yet holding on to her resolve to endure for the sake of her purpose, she shimmered into her native form, the white fur becoming white hair and pale skin silvered by moonlight. The vallaslin on her face still shone black - not even the Wolf had been able to restore it to its former lavender hue - but at least her eyes were once again the color of a flower rather than the night. The moment she became fully exposed in the moonlight, she was enveloped by the Darkness, bumps of atavistic reaction to his presence rising along her skin as he claimed her once more, a habit that had been increasing in frequency the closer his ultimate victory came. As he took what he considered to be full possession of her, she closed her eyes and withdrew into that place he'd never been able to penetrate, not since she had allied with him by choice rather than force. As her body reacted to his ministrations and her cries filled the night, her thoughts focused on keeping that last vestige of herself completely free of his influence and holding true to what must be done. She knew he did this to her to test his hold on her, and she could only hope he did not know that the hold was not as total as he assumed it to be.
Hope... To rely on something so ephemeral had once seemed so antithetical to her being, to her self. Yet, as the Darkness relented in his assault and she slowly re-animated her body, it seemed that a fool's hope was all she could rely on.
All else had failed her.
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"Well, there's nothing here, just like the note said," Arahel said sarcastically. "Just a bunch of lavender flowers."
"That is not what it said, and you know it," she argued, then tightened her lips together as he grinned at her. "Just... just go stand over there, or something." Pointedly turning away from him, she regarded the blank spot behind the hedge of lavender bushes to which they had been directed by the latest of the anonymous notes left in their shared room. Her lavender eyes narrowed as she focused, and finally was able to see the very light shimmer in the air that had been detailed in the note. With a small frown of concentration, she brought her hands up and called energy from the Beyond as directed, unleashing it with a precise gesture. Despite the fact that the mysterious notes had never been wrong or harmful, this most recent one was distinctly... odd. "What do you think the rest of the note meant?" she said as she funneled magic into the glint in the air before her, feeling something seize it and absorb it in a passive way. Illusion? I've never seen one so thorough...
"What, about looking for someone with your eyes when the fires glow brightest?" He shrugged. "There's always something odd in the notes, you know that. Although..." The admittance to come was reluctant, as every compliment had to be torn from Arahel with the Wolf's own teeth, "they have proven to be helpful on occasion in the past."
"Helped us never be caught by the Council, you mean. Helped us find books and Gardens we never would have known about otherwise. Helped us learn how to enter the Hall Outside Time without supervision."
"Now that was useful," he admitted. In a way, their early maturity and acceptance by the other cultists was linked to the covert knowledge that the twins could come and go freely from the restricted Hall. "It's a great advantage to know what goes on in there, especially when we can sneak in before a Session and hide. Even if we were forced to learn how ineffectual the so-called leaders of Arlathan truly are..."
Before she could frame a proper retort, a high-pitched sound pierced the air, and the sensation of a spell breaking wrenched her attention more sharply on what she was doing as she cut off the flow of energy she'd been slowly feeding into the emptiness.
"What was that?" Arahel snapped, looking around them wildly to make sure no one had discovered their clandestine activity. Satisfied that, for now at least, they were still alone, he turned and looked at what now stood before them. "What is that?" he whispered. "I've never seen anything like it."
Andara reached out and touched the scarred frame of the tall mirror, feeling the remnants of the powerful magic that had concealed it. As she touched the glass, however, instead of seeing a reflection of her hand, spots of white and grey moved over the surface, and the glass itself seemed to waver and shift. She gasped. "It's a Portal," she whispered. "An Eluvian."
Outside of the great Eluvian in the Hall itself - far too monstrous for any to hope to move - she'd never actually heard of an Eluvian within the bounds of Arlathan during her lifetime. At least, not since the last one was smashed by that mage who went insane shortly after our birth. Though a proud part of Elvhen heritage, the war with the Tevene had seen most of the Eluvians stolen and rendered forever out of Elvhen reach. It had been one of the most crippling tactics used against Elvhenan as a whole, for as each city's Eluvian was compromised, another region was rendered unreachable via magic, and the lack of communication had almost certainly hastened the loss of many of their cities, particularly the remote ones.
At the suggestion of the notes many years ago, she had pursued a lifelong study of the Eluvians through books and by secretly accessing the one in the Hall, but she'd never expected to find one of the original Eluvians intact. And this was one of the originals, the ones that had been made by the First of the Elvhen with the aid of the Creators themselves. Her fingers hovered over the wolves that decorated the frame, scarred and slightly burnt but still visible, and unconsciously traced the pattern she remembered very clearly from one of the oldest books in the library. She shivered as she realized that whoever had crafted this mirror must have been the First of Fen'Harel, all those aeons ago, the one whose name she had never been able to uncover in any of the records in the Great House of Knowledge - no great surprise, of course, considering the opinion most of the Elvhen held regarding the Dreadful Wolf. "And not just any Portal," she added, trying to include her brother on this monumental discovery. "The Eluvian of the Wolf."
His eyes widened, though there was not enough light to show much more than the barest of golden gleams. "I see," he said quietly. "That- No wonder it was hidden by such a subtle spell. Something like this in the hands of the wrong people..." He glanced at the note in his hand, then shrugged and tucked it away. "So, we know that whoever left us this little missive considers us trustworthy enough to be caretakers for what is surely one of the last treasures of Elvhenan. And we know they were quite insistent we take it tonight. I wonder why?" He grunted as he shook his head. "For both parts."
Ever the more pragmatic of the two, she shrugged and gestured to the cart they had been told to bring with them under the cover of night. Since it was going to transport such a delicate object, she sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Wolf that it was full of padding and blankets left over from last night's transportation of refugees to a secret staging point outside Arlathan. Andara expected the Council to call for a general evacuation at any time, and her brother had expressed disgust that the Council had done nothing more than assure the people that they would withstand the Tevene onslaught. Meanwhile, the twins had been quietly moving the more vulnerable members of the Cult outside of Arlathan for months, and last night had been such a night, cloaked in darkness and guided by cleverness, a dash to the distant caves that had been revealed to her in a dream shortly after the siege had settled in around Arlathan. "Bring that closer. It's hard to move an Eluvian, but not impossible." As she moved her hands across the surface of the glass to quiesce it as she'd read about in her research, she felt an odd response, as if someone had said her name from afar. In the distance, she heard a wolf's howl, and her hand pulled back sharply as her eyes snapped instinctively to the empty night sky. "Did you hear that?" she whispered.
He frowned as he dropped the cart, staring at her. "There's nothing to hear. Come on, stop scaring me. You know I hate the night of the new moon - it means the Wolf is at his weakest." He shivered as he looked up at the sky. "Besides, the stars seem to be shifting their configuration tonight. It fills me with unease." He rearranged the blankets in the cart so that they were spread out appropriately for the rather large Eluvian. "The sooner we retrieve this, the better."
She nodded, turning her attention back to the device. Slowly she connected to the Beyond, pulling magic from it to seal the surface of the glass so that no stray touch would accidentally trigger what lay on the other side of its subtle glow. As the light sheen of magic touched the surface, however, a hand suddenly emerged and gripped her wrist. Before she could do more than gasp, it tightened around her and pulled her into the Eluvian.
Her brother's cry was lost amidst a loud rushing noise, her body shuddering in pain as she made a transition for which she was completely unprepared. Her muscles began to seize as the extreme cold gripped her, and her fight for breath meant that she wasn't really paying attention to her surroundings as she felt consciousness slowly begin to slip away.
Her unplanned journey ended with a jarring landing on uncertain ground. She vaguely felt a hand, perhaps the same one that had pulled her in, grip her arm. To her immense relief, her ability to breathe was restored the instant it touched her. As she gulped huge lungfuls of odd-tasting air, the hand changed: from a familiar four fingers and thumb, it transformed into a black covered paw right before her widening eyes, and with a shudder she turned to look at the one who had haunted her dreams and nightmares - particularly her nightmares - since her youth.
Calm eyes of citrine gazed at her from the midst of black fur. Her newly restored breath hitched as they narrowed slightly, and she sat as still as possible while he stalked around her, a low and steady growl filling the air. Somehow he seemed to grow, swelling until he was taller than a halla, and still he paced around her, the air filled with the noise of his apparent displeasure.
Slowly she shifted, changing her position until it was one of obeisance rather than fear, kneeling as she did in her dreams, wanting to watch him in fascination but fearing to upset him with a direct stare. The rumbling faded before her actions, and a deep voice growled, "You're late."
Furrowing her brow in confusion, she ventured, "I apologize, Dreadful One. The note did not specify a time other than tonight."
A hot breath wafted over her as he snorted in apparent disdain. "What note?" he growled. "I talk of my warnings in your dreams, not some scribblings on a piece of paper. I've never found that method to be very reliable."
She kept her head bowed, grateful to hide her confusion from her God. When he had mentioned her tardiness, she had immediately suspected he had to have been the author of the notes: who better to steer the twins along such an ambitious but safe path if not their God? Confronted now with a new mystery to add to the old, she decided to at least tackle the one before her. "I'm afraid I don't remember any-"
His growl increased in volume, and she quickly shut her mouth and bit her lip, not wishing to invite his irritation, much less his wrath. "It doesn't matter. There is still time to do what must be done." Again she felt hot air blast over her as his nose lowered to her shoulder.
Licking her lips lightly, she took a fortifying breath before speaking once more, "What is your will, Dreadful Wolf?"
His great hulk towered easily over her as his nose moved from her shoulder to nose at her hair, and she tentatively lifted her head enough to glance at her environs. She was in a clearing on a small hill. Around her in a circle stretched ankle-deep grass, dotted with daffodils in various stages of their life cycle. At the perimeter of the almost perfectly circular clearing she saw gorse and thistle, gnarled trees and knotted pines, and though it was night, a subtle light shone over all. Daring to glance further up, she saw a large moon - far larger than it could ever be on Thedas and tinged a vibrant red for the harvest, pregnant with the weight of expectation. Her tongue crept out to moisten her lips again, and she almost fell forward in startlement as a huge breath suddenly blew her hair forward.
"My will requires more than your obeisance," came the response, though it sounded not in her ear this time but in her mind. "Tonight Arlathan falls. Needs must I be there, but I cannot do so without your aid."
Even as she struggled with the sheer breadth of the phrase Tonight Arlathan falls, she stammered, "W-why can't you-"
A growl, heavy with menace, silenced her. "That is not your concern."
Heart racing, she bowed her head once more. Exhaling forcefully, she allowed habit and training to take over from uncertainty and doubt. She could never remember a time when the Wolf had not stalked her dreams, and deep down, she had always felt a greater personal connection with him than she could explain through logical means. Certainly he seemed to give Arahel and her much more attention than he did to other members of the Wolf Cult, so much so that they had become the de facto leaders of the order, despite their young age. She had always assumed it was her status as a mage that had drawn his attention more to her than even Arahel, but now, with his breath so close and her body shuddering in physical reaction to his proximity, she began to wonder...
Filled with a sudden daring, she turned and looked up, meeting the citrine gaze with her own lavender one. "I am yours, Dreadful Wolf."
It was as if a chill wind had blown over the tableau, freezing woman and Wolf. For a moment she felt as if she had awoken something, something which hungered... but she sensed it was not prey he sought. For a moment, she remembered the odd rumors, of women who woke after a night of him in their dreams who bore more than memories as their wombs expanded in the following months... Mouth suddenly dry, her hand moved reflexively to her throat, unsure how to react to the sudden surge of longing within her.
The Wolf abruptly turned away, huffing as he paced around her once more, a restlessness she knew she would never understand driving him. "You should call me by my true name," he growled. "You should call me Fen'Vhenan."
Wolf of the Heart? "It shall be as you say, Fen'Vhenan," she responded with surety. And now that the oddness of her initial interaction with him was... well, if not gone, then pushed aside at his demand, she bravely uttered the other question burning within. "You said... Arlathan will fall. Surely not... surely we just need some more time to-"
The growl echoed in the air again, and she quickly bit off her words, sensing his anger. "While it may be common to claim that time is meaningless to the People, it is not meaningless to shemlen, and they mean to use it recklessly - and many of them will spend the entirety of it tonight. Be that as it may, the fate of Arlathan was sealed many spans past, before you were born. Some corruption takes longer to take hold than others, but in the end all corruption can be lethal if not counteracted at the proper time." Again that growl, and she saw his claws dig into the ground beneath his paws, leaving deep gashes in the grass.
He snorted and pulled away, his body dwindling and changing until an elf with black and gold hair and ebon skin stood before her, those piercing citrine eyes seeming able to read her very thoughts. "It is time to return. There are certain matters that only I can attend to, but you will have much to do tonight to ensure that that which must survive is removed from Arlathan before..." He paused, and now an incredible sorrow filled his face, all the more heartrending since it was a face that did not seem crafted to display much emotion. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he held out his hands. "Take my hands. Take me."
She certainly was not going to start questioning him now, not after all the spans of obedience. With only a moment's hesitation, she laid her hands into his, meeting his eyes with the remnants of the daring that yet lingered, and waited for whatever came next.
In the next instant, it seemed, she was stumbling into the arms of her frantic brother, who quickly pulled her into his torso, smoothing his hand over her hair while murmuring meaningless questions into her ear. I wasn't gone that long, she wanted to object. "I'm fine," she assured him, grateful for his support. "I'm fine." For a moment, the greatest fear of all flared in her heart, the fear of losing him. She could face anything except that horrifying prospect. Instinctively she tightened her arms around him, drawing him closer.
This one will do, a voice echoed in her head, and she stiffened in Arahel's arms, eyes flying open in shock. "Fen'Vhenan?" she whispered.
Before she could offer a prayer or do more than wonder at his suddenly intimate presence, Arahel choked a gasp and fell away from her, hands at the sides of his head as he staggered a few steps away. Almost in a panic, she rushed to him and latched onto his arms, telling him it would be all right.
And then, between one breath and another, her brother transformed as his hair lengthened and took on black and gold hues, his skin darkening to match the night sky above them. Slowly he straightened, arms stretching up and away from his body, and Andara gasped and fell back, stopping only when she ran into the cart behind her.
Fen'Ha-Vhenan turned to her, though now instead of citrine, his eyes were a blend of his eyes in the Beyond and Arahel's own golden eyes. Bold amber eyes, shining slightly in the dark, regarded her, and a slight grin claimed the mouth underneath them.
"Come. There is much to do." With a commanding gesture for her to follow, he stalked to the Eluvian, clearly intent on moving it first.
And if Andara noticed the sudden appearance of a red harvest moon far too large for Thedas in the night sky above, it failed to register through the other shocks that had shaken her world already.
Even if she had noticed, there was nothing she could do about the consequences.
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Elvish terminology:
setheneran - "land of waking dreams," a place where the Veil between Thedas and the Beyond is thin
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An explanation of Elven time as kept in Arlathan:
hand - five days
span - 100 years
aeon - 1000 years
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