He stared into the emerald abyss. Until the solid green gave way to a rippling undulating world within the crystal. These "burning crystals" housed some unknown, unquestioned power which had insidiously and entirely usurped the place of the Light and the arcane in the minds of the elves. The magisters' terrace was built around the sunwell; the sunwell was its core from which radiated the fruits of its sustenance. Where once radiated the glory of the sunwell, cold darkness now sat at the heart of the terrace. It was a vacuous space. Most of the elves, at least on Quel'Danas, had manifested the effects of this new power in their eyes. For an entire day Tenemire refused to believe what he had seen in every passing elf's eyes, considering it a trick of the sun, the product of his troubled mind.
These crystals were the fonts of power indispensable now to even the very survival of the elves. Used for any need, from cosmetic enhancement, to scrying, to casting of defensive spells. They were obtuse, unrefined boulders, chained in place, and ever-present. He heard them bolting the chains into the elegant, pristine architecture of sunwell plateau, as if they, like some new race, were occupying the ruins of one far greater than them before, outfitting the strange features which surrounded them with their sources of power.
It had gone unspoken, but was understood by all: the fel, that magic of chaos in opposition to the arcane, the magic of order. The elves once commanded arcane magic with the mastery of near gods, to sculpt the world in their image, as magic's creators once sculpted the cosmos in their image.
It's one thing to pass thoughts through one's mind, to feel the intimations of discovery, to pontificate and theorize in the aether of the mind. It is another to sit and manifest these shadows, known only to their creator, to cross the chasm from mind to reality. Tenemire had passed his time as a student accumulating knowledge, but not acting it out in the world. He was ill-equipped to be the functional caretaker of Quel'Thalas' ecosystem. He had chosen the dead scar as his priority. Tidying outward images was a good start in the cleansing of the whole. How could the elves reclaim their glory with this grave memento cutting their home through its heart? Whatever initial steps he had in place to address the problem were child's play and long-exhausted. The other magisters weren't botanists, no, but they were skilled mages, surely one of them could help. He mentioned it a few times, even requested formal aid. Their responses were all the same: how was he powering his spells? He wasn't a battlemage, but magic was integral to botany, as it was to all parts of their lives, and in all academic disciplines. It was a magic of knowledge acquisition and generation. So yes, he needed magic to fulfil this role he had chosen for himself. He had made do before with what was left after the sunwell. There was a brief time even, when he had reached out to the Light, in the same way he had reached out to the arcane, to the magic of the sunwell. It was a silent failure, one he didn't contend with, one he refused to ever think about.
The first time he was told to use the crystals, it was the first time he had ever conceived of it. He had not even known what they were there for. After this same repeated, impossible solution, he began to resent the crystals, and all of those elves around him, with their green eyes. Resent them deeply.
Curiosity, and desperation, led him to this crystal in one of the corridors near his chamber in the terrace. The long stone halls were empty and he was alone. He looked at it. There were many ways to channel magic from an enchanted object. He did not intend to attempt it. But rather to investigate. Its surface was incomprehensible. Was it solid, or transparent? If the latter, what, then, was within? The green, at least the mind interpreted whatever it radiated as green, was difficult to look at. However, it drew one's attention to it. Once the eyes acclimated, the green filled one's entire field of vision.
He challenged the crystal, and himself, whichever had produced what he saw. For what he saw, if he were to have accepted it, would have frightened him to fainting. Two red spots in the abyss of green appeared. The more he stared, to dispel this illusion, the more it stared back. He looked away, and back, it had gone. He was tired. He accepted it for what it was, a strange, foreign magic to which he was unaccustomed. Surely, such potent sources of magic would have some strange effects.
He stood and thought for some moments in the corridor lit by a setting sun. He glanced at the thing again before turning his back to it and walking thoughtfully some distance down the corridor. He knew he shouldn't have, but he looked back, and in the dark orange corridor of twilight, its long, empty vaults extending before and behind him, the eyes in the crystal stared back, unforgiving, unflinching.
His initial refusal to use the crystals for their magic had been an isolating decision. Over time, most other elves began to ignore him, and even began to wear hostile expressions at his presence. If it were not that he lived with this day after day, one would have perceived a greater sense of danger.
He was suddenly very aware of his surroundings. He looked over at the corner of his desk covered in parchments. Some opened, some not, though he knew what they contained. Sheynathren had sent them. They were not obscene in length or vulgar in excess of emotion. His frequency of writing was not desperate or pathetic. They were friendly, warm, even pleasant to read, expecting little in return, save an assurance of wellbeing on the part of their recipient. Upon receiving the first, he was happy, even excited, and had begun a reply that very same day. But it had gone unsent, and pushed back, and eventually discarded. With each passing letter the life he and Sheynathren occupied and the life Tenemire now occupied diverged. He now stared at the pile forlornly.
Having neither a path forward nor having begun any other ventures in his nascent tenure as a magister, a thought occurred to him, and with delicacy he shut the tomes strewn on his great desk. He collected them and organized them carefully, with respectful attention to their ancient bindings. He extinguished the illuminating flames and left the chamber in a state of having not been used in some time, of his being having never haunted its small corners. The space was clean and scarce; a late afternoon sun shone through the arched windows as he shut the heavy wooden door behind him.
He dismounted the small vessel which had ferried him from the Isle of Quel'Danas. He played a melody in his mind continuously. He hummed it lowly with his head raised to the clouds above Silvermoon. The clouds were a dark grey against a blood sky of twilight and there was steady wind. He walked slowly, adding time to the trek from the city back to his home in the forest. He felt the tension of a man pulled in two. His old life in the forest, his new in the stone, living in the chaos which begets potential. He had resigned to let time revolve around him and bring what it was he was supposed to do to him, and not to seek it on his own behalf.
He felt as if he walked in a cloud of his own reality, itself enclosed by the true reality of the forest around him, a world of which he was once a symbiotic part, never to have imagined he could feel so separated from the trunks' bark, the wild shrubs and flowers which created their own miniature forests at the bases of the primordial towers of living earth, in a fractal of perfect nature. He reached his hand out in front of him. The simplest means of connection. If only he could touch the spirit of the forest.
He was a scientist, after all. Systems don't change unless perturbed. What had perturbed this world? What had taken its leave of their forest, like the very atmosphere sucked away, leaving behind those small creatures unaware previously of the medium through which they walked and lived and loved every day, in a state of shock and terror, before finally losing their last breath, and meeting the true darkness of their reality. Gods know, he tried. He tried to reach back out to it. Perhaps he simply misstepped; he could calmly correct course. But mortals little understand the cosmic spheres that revolve around them, and what an impossible task it was that he was attempting.
Tenemire and Ponaris sat in the latter's home at the base of the exterior of Silvermoon's walls. It was a shack, made of old wood and sparsely furnished. Old, translucent glass let in little light. Their relationship had grown organically, with each more frequently paying the other a visit. Tenemire had identified Ponaris as one of the few remaining priests of the old rite, from before the war. Many of the others had weaponised their light magic, extracting it from its holy context for use only as a tool for the elves' greater collective purposes. But Ponaris held out through a source of some internal strength Tenemire had hoped to identify. He was a significant justification for Tenemire to not have abandoned own his faith, and Tenemire was happy to have found it, having wandered alone for so long.
Tenemire was not fond of Ponaris' home, particularly by the light of day. They would converse usually over some spirit. Ponaris poured the clear liquid into each of the small, chipped glasses. They both tilted their heads back and took down the liquid in one smooth gesture. By Tenemire's prompting, they decided to leave and walk about the forest.
"You know I've never been one to complain that the presence of strife, nor my own presuppositions not being met, nor disappointment in the apparent absence of the Light, was somehow proof that it was not the powerful and compassionate entity whom we worship."
"But..."
"But, while I've always thought that living by the Light and having faith would be enough, while I've tried to remain constant, my actions and thoughts unchanged by the whims of time - even the devastation of the war did not impact the approach to my faith - I look around and no matter my actions, the conditions around me deteriorate. Lately even I've slipped into what I would have before called superstition: 'Fine then,' I said, 'have faith like a child.' I pleaded with the Light directly; and not ignorantly like for some physical alteration, or some grand miracle, but for wisdom, for strength. There are only so many times I can say it's my own weakness and blindness that is the cause of this chasm between me and the Light."
"You've done a lot of thinking."
"I have a lot of time."
"Perhaps if you've stepped back. The gods have given us more faculties than just our intellect."
"I wish I could not think about it."
"So it's upsetting you?"
"Yes, very much."
"I think... this is about control."
"Go on."
"Something made you uncomfortable, so you identified the cause, but as you dug, it went deeper and deeper and expanded, and now there is something so broken in your life that you don't know where to begin to fix it." Tenemire was silent. "So I say, don't try to. Pray for healing, and it will come, in time."
Tenemire had read somewhere once that adversity strengthens the bonds between male elves, a likely adaptation to evolution in warfare. He thought of this when considering himself and Ponaris. Although they had not always been friends, when Ponaris was in the darkness of mourning in the aftermath of the war, Tenemire took notice of this pain, even among his own and that of every other elf. He tried to reach out through the warmth of a smile when he saw Ponaris, as the least he could do. Ponaris had lost something far greater than Tenemire had.
As they walked, they enjoyed the silence of each other's company. Ponaris had confided in Tenemire that while he was a student of the Light, before the war, he had loved an elven woman and wished to marry her. Only after she had perished did he commit to the vows and become a priest of the Light. Tenemire wondered as their relationship grew whether Ponaris knew or suspected the feelings the former had developed. Tenemire appreciated the beauty of the sun's late horizontal light illuminating Ponaris' blond hair, and glinting through his light, crystalline eyes. He tried to tell himself that a deep, platonic bond had its own beauty and was enjoyed by all elven men amongst themselves, but he felt guilty for desiring more, like a greed for this other individual from whom he had no right coveting such things.