Post by Elarris on Jul 13, 2024 11:14:33 GMT
For the first time in 20 years Elarris woke up feeling pretty good.
His wound didn’t hurt as much. His angst was less existential. His brow had fewer furrows. He felt like he was starting to get a grip on life.
He lay on Orianna’s sofa bed for a minute or two enjoying the experience, then clambered off the low couch and, for the first time since staying there, managed to avoid tripping over any of the books, boxes or baubles that shared the guest room with him.
He picked his way to the full-length mirror and regarded himself in it. Same basic Elarris, but somehow with a touch more… rizz. Being chosen, or named, or whatever it was, as a herald by a mighty Archwyrm felt pretty spiffy.
He drew himself up in the mirror and said out loud ‘I am the Herald of Eroshira.’
It didn’t sound quite right. Maybe it was his voice. He’d long given up calling himself by his full name – Elarris d’ l’Etan. In Cormyr, his surname alone was sufficient to make innkeepers quail and town guards step back respectfully.
Since leaving, not so much. And Elarris… he’d not thought it a difficult name but on the road he’d heard more tongues mangle it in more imaginative ways than he thought possible.
Elis, Harris, Elvis, Arseface… although he was fairly certain the latter was deliberate.
He’d have to work on it.
At which point the owl arrived.
Usually, he knew, creatures trying to communicate directions and urgency indicated that little Timmy had fallen down a well. But this owl had a Florian vibe, and druids didn’t fuck about down wells. Mostly. Although, with Florian, it was more than possible but he doubted that even at their most strung out Florian would have got stuck down one.
Which meant trouble of another kind.
--
The Feywild had not been kind to Elarris. To be fair, it was hard to name a place that had been kind to him, but all the same. Bad things usually happened most when he stepped through a portal into the home of the fair folk and this time was no exception.
It was, he admitted, partly his fault. Florian and a possum were escorting two warlocks – Yinmaris and Raine – to the summer court to get some sort of stuff. He hadn’t really been listening. What was very clear as he surveyed the party was that, if it came to hitting things with bits of metal, he was the only qualified operator on the team. He patted the hilt of his sword, remembering the day, which seemed like yesterday, when Eroshira had helped him wrestle control of the sword from the dark magic that polluted it.
Eroshira…
He thought about her might and majesty, about her charms and wisdom, about her kindness and understanding and completely forgot to notice they were passing through the portal into the… ah, shit. Fey fuckery. Hot fey fuckery. Hot fey fuckery with fields of ten foot tall sunflowers.
He shoulda been paying attenshun. Wait, atten… what was the word again? His mind wriggled like a drunken snake escaping a box of frogs… on one level, his clarity was exceptional. On another, he couldn’t remember a fucking… what was the word again?
Florian was talking to the flowers, obviously. The clarity part of his brain noticed an awful lot of sunflower movement that seemed downright… again, there was a word for it. A cross between angry and dangerous.
Raine interjected. “Um, Florian, they can’t speak but if they could they’d say ‘I’m a be firin my lasers at all of you until you be dead.’”
Florian paused. “I heard of that…”
They continued on their merry way, except that they weren’t merry and they didn’t know the way.
And then as if by magic… well, actually by magic… a figure appeared in front of them and, unbidden, words flooded Elarris foggy mind.
“Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Revel Master: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?”
The Master of Revels, for it was he, started speaking. Raine, Yinmaris and Florian spoke back. They all spoke lots and lots of words.
Elarris nodded as often as possible to give the impression he knew what was going on but the only line he really grasped was “I will take you to the Deeper, and incredibly dangerous, Realms of the Feywild.”
At which point the Master of Revels, for it was still he, opened a portal in an oak tree and lead them through.
They were in a forest with paths, large thick trees evenly spaced, and animals here and there but with odd features like a cat with feathers or a fox with antlers and lots of walking fish. Which was fine. Totally fine. It was… sure… it was absolutely fine and nothing to freak out about.
Plus lots of flowers on the trees, plus traces of snow, and in general a vibe as if someone had taken a look at the majesty of nature and said, hey, this is just lacking, I don’t know, some nature? So they added in a couple of gallons of highly concentrated nature and turned everything up to 11.
“This is… very… real…” Elarris managed.
The Master of Revels, obstinately remaining he, pointed down a frighteningly real path and said “make sure you return.”
“We will return,” Raine nodded.
“I mean it,” the Master warned. “The Queen needs you.
“We absolutely will return,” Yinmaris added.
Elarris felt his position on the topic was slightly more negotiable. If he could have spoken he would have said, “I’ll definitely try,” but everything was so in his fucking face that it was all his brain could manage to process the obscenely real things that he knew were merely nearby but felt like they were bouncing on his eyeballs.
Florian was talking to the flower, obviously, when a figure sort of… appeared… looking like a bard sort of musketeer kind of character but carved from a block of Amazing.
“Introduce yourself,” Florian hissed, after the others had. “This is the 4th cantor Acacia.”
“So, I’m, um, Elarris,” he gave what he hoped was his best smile.
“Elarris the…” Florian nudged him. “The Herald…”
“Herald of Eroshira!” Elarris cried and was surprised and a little delighted to see Acacia bow.
She lead them to to a huge circle of trees on a natural rocky plinth.
“It’s not easy to leave to leave such places,” Acacia warned. “You could dance until you die or time stops or your feet fall off or your lungs collapse.”
Elarris wasn’t sure the fair folk would want to keep him dancing once they saw him get started. His style had been labelled D’ad by the court musicians.
--
Inside the trees were in in a perfect circle, so bright he couldn’t keep his eyes open so he blinked, and when he opened his eyes the ring was filled with frozen statues in mid combat or mid dance. They must have been there centuries, for they were overgrown with moss and flowers, forget me nots, wild strawberries, daisies, sunflowers and roses.
In the centre of the space stood a child with long blonde hair and ghostly features.
Her head was turned away from him and a deep terror struck him as the child’s face began to turn towards him. Her eyes held darkness and despair. He began to have the strangest feeling… that he had taken a road in his youth, but the road did not lead where he had supposed; he was going home, but home had become something monstrous. In the half-dark, standing by the black bed, he remembered why he had always feared the darkness as a child, when the darklings closed in around him and shapeless things attended his bedside in the night, their tongues and teeth slurping hungrily through what passed for mouths in unspeakable places,
He felt his vision fade as he clung to the light hopelessly until he saw the child’s face and screamed and fell.
--
The road stretched ahead through an eerie, dark forest. Each tree stood intimidatingly tall with gnarled branches reaching for the obsidian sky. The forest floor was carpeted in a mixture of damp earth and decaying leaves. He saw strange animal tracks in the rich soil and leaf litter - a massive boar's prints following an erratic route before disappearing at the base of a tree which leaned towards him, its leaves like fangs snapping at the air, and a wolf's prints that seemed to shift into a child's foot prints which stopped at a bundle of blankets stained with a colour he couldn’t make out in the gloom.
Moss-covered corpses dangled from the tree branches and, beside the road, the Twins, Eroshira’s children, hung crucified on still living pines.
He could see a castle at the end of the road and heard Eroshira screaming in battle. He felt the darkness from the sword billow out in inky gouts of pitch black, tendrils reach towards the last rays of light in this world, and he fell to his knees and wept.
Then, in front of his bloodstained hands, he saw a flash of colour.
Bluebells. A small clump of the flowers grew at side of the road, as if they were in a spring garden. Their colour reminded him of Adai, the First Star, whose temple was a place where surely Eroshira would be safe.
“I have no magic, no skills, no cunning, no charm,” the clearest part of his mind screamed out. “All I have is strength, the muscle and blood and skin and bones. My mind may be weak but my back is strong.”
He summoned the rage and power that he had felt in the battle to control the sword and felt his strength grow and his body harden and rise. He would carry Eroshira to Adai even if he had to leap through the planes of existence.
And there she was, dead before him, her body limp, her eyes closed. He picked her up, her arms draped over him, and he saw the last dying rays of light which he ran towards as fast as he could through the stench and filth until gradually her arms wrapped around him and she raised her head and whispered in his ear – “my Herald, is it not better to run towards something than run away?”
And then they were all gathered outside the ring of trees, each with a handful of flowers. Acacia guided them to the Master of Revels and the flowers were rings of power which Raine took gratefully. Raine and Yinmaris and Florian were so happy.
And Elarris realised that somehow he’d done something right.
He just couldn’t work out what it was.
His wound didn’t hurt as much. His angst was less existential. His brow had fewer furrows. He felt like he was starting to get a grip on life.
He lay on Orianna’s sofa bed for a minute or two enjoying the experience, then clambered off the low couch and, for the first time since staying there, managed to avoid tripping over any of the books, boxes or baubles that shared the guest room with him.
He picked his way to the full-length mirror and regarded himself in it. Same basic Elarris, but somehow with a touch more… rizz. Being chosen, or named, or whatever it was, as a herald by a mighty Archwyrm felt pretty spiffy.
He drew himself up in the mirror and said out loud ‘I am the Herald of Eroshira.’
It didn’t sound quite right. Maybe it was his voice. He’d long given up calling himself by his full name – Elarris d’ l’Etan. In Cormyr, his surname alone was sufficient to make innkeepers quail and town guards step back respectfully.
Since leaving, not so much. And Elarris… he’d not thought it a difficult name but on the road he’d heard more tongues mangle it in more imaginative ways than he thought possible.
Elis, Harris, Elvis, Arseface… although he was fairly certain the latter was deliberate.
He’d have to work on it.
At which point the owl arrived.
Usually, he knew, creatures trying to communicate directions and urgency indicated that little Timmy had fallen down a well. But this owl had a Florian vibe, and druids didn’t fuck about down wells. Mostly. Although, with Florian, it was more than possible but he doubted that even at their most strung out Florian would have got stuck down one.
Which meant trouble of another kind.
--
The Feywild had not been kind to Elarris. To be fair, it was hard to name a place that had been kind to him, but all the same. Bad things usually happened most when he stepped through a portal into the home of the fair folk and this time was no exception.
It was, he admitted, partly his fault. Florian and a possum were escorting two warlocks – Yinmaris and Raine – to the summer court to get some sort of stuff. He hadn’t really been listening. What was very clear as he surveyed the party was that, if it came to hitting things with bits of metal, he was the only qualified operator on the team. He patted the hilt of his sword, remembering the day, which seemed like yesterday, when Eroshira had helped him wrestle control of the sword from the dark magic that polluted it.
Eroshira…
He thought about her might and majesty, about her charms and wisdom, about her kindness and understanding and completely forgot to notice they were passing through the portal into the… ah, shit. Fey fuckery. Hot fey fuckery. Hot fey fuckery with fields of ten foot tall sunflowers.
He shoulda been paying attenshun. Wait, atten… what was the word again? His mind wriggled like a drunken snake escaping a box of frogs… on one level, his clarity was exceptional. On another, he couldn’t remember a fucking… what was the word again?
Florian was talking to the flowers, obviously. The clarity part of his brain noticed an awful lot of sunflower movement that seemed downright… again, there was a word for it. A cross between angry and dangerous.
Raine interjected. “Um, Florian, they can’t speak but if they could they’d say ‘I’m a be firin my lasers at all of you until you be dead.’”
Florian paused. “I heard of that…”
They continued on their merry way, except that they weren’t merry and they didn’t know the way.
And then as if by magic… well, actually by magic… a figure appeared in front of them and, unbidden, words flooded Elarris foggy mind.
“Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Revel Master: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?”
The Master of Revels, for it was he, started speaking. Raine, Yinmaris and Florian spoke back. They all spoke lots and lots of words.
Elarris nodded as often as possible to give the impression he knew what was going on but the only line he really grasped was “I will take you to the Deeper, and incredibly dangerous, Realms of the Feywild.”
At which point the Master of Revels, for it was still he, opened a portal in an oak tree and lead them through.
They were in a forest with paths, large thick trees evenly spaced, and animals here and there but with odd features like a cat with feathers or a fox with antlers and lots of walking fish. Which was fine. Totally fine. It was… sure… it was absolutely fine and nothing to freak out about.
Plus lots of flowers on the trees, plus traces of snow, and in general a vibe as if someone had taken a look at the majesty of nature and said, hey, this is just lacking, I don’t know, some nature? So they added in a couple of gallons of highly concentrated nature and turned everything up to 11.
“This is… very… real…” Elarris managed.
The Master of Revels, obstinately remaining he, pointed down a frighteningly real path and said “make sure you return.”
“We will return,” Raine nodded.
“I mean it,” the Master warned. “The Queen needs you.
“We absolutely will return,” Yinmaris added.
Elarris felt his position on the topic was slightly more negotiable. If he could have spoken he would have said, “I’ll definitely try,” but everything was so in his fucking face that it was all his brain could manage to process the obscenely real things that he knew were merely nearby but felt like they were bouncing on his eyeballs.
Florian was talking to the flower, obviously, when a figure sort of… appeared… looking like a bard sort of musketeer kind of character but carved from a block of Amazing.
“Introduce yourself,” Florian hissed, after the others had. “This is the 4th cantor Acacia.”
“So, I’m, um, Elarris,” he gave what he hoped was his best smile.
“Elarris the…” Florian nudged him. “The Herald…”
“Herald of Eroshira!” Elarris cried and was surprised and a little delighted to see Acacia bow.
She lead them to to a huge circle of trees on a natural rocky plinth.
“It’s not easy to leave to leave such places,” Acacia warned. “You could dance until you die or time stops or your feet fall off or your lungs collapse.”
Elarris wasn’t sure the fair folk would want to keep him dancing once they saw him get started. His style had been labelled D’ad by the court musicians.
--
Inside the trees were in in a perfect circle, so bright he couldn’t keep his eyes open so he blinked, and when he opened his eyes the ring was filled with frozen statues in mid combat or mid dance. They must have been there centuries, for they were overgrown with moss and flowers, forget me nots, wild strawberries, daisies, sunflowers and roses.
In the centre of the space stood a child with long blonde hair and ghostly features.
Her head was turned away from him and a deep terror struck him as the child’s face began to turn towards him. Her eyes held darkness and despair. He began to have the strangest feeling… that he had taken a road in his youth, but the road did not lead where he had supposed; he was going home, but home had become something monstrous. In the half-dark, standing by the black bed, he remembered why he had always feared the darkness as a child, when the darklings closed in around him and shapeless things attended his bedside in the night, their tongues and teeth slurping hungrily through what passed for mouths in unspeakable places,
He felt his vision fade as he clung to the light hopelessly until he saw the child’s face and screamed and fell.
--
The road stretched ahead through an eerie, dark forest. Each tree stood intimidatingly tall with gnarled branches reaching for the obsidian sky. The forest floor was carpeted in a mixture of damp earth and decaying leaves. He saw strange animal tracks in the rich soil and leaf litter - a massive boar's prints following an erratic route before disappearing at the base of a tree which leaned towards him, its leaves like fangs snapping at the air, and a wolf's prints that seemed to shift into a child's foot prints which stopped at a bundle of blankets stained with a colour he couldn’t make out in the gloom.
Moss-covered corpses dangled from the tree branches and, beside the road, the Twins, Eroshira’s children, hung crucified on still living pines.
He could see a castle at the end of the road and heard Eroshira screaming in battle. He felt the darkness from the sword billow out in inky gouts of pitch black, tendrils reach towards the last rays of light in this world, and he fell to his knees and wept.
Then, in front of his bloodstained hands, he saw a flash of colour.
Bluebells. A small clump of the flowers grew at side of the road, as if they were in a spring garden. Their colour reminded him of Adai, the First Star, whose temple was a place where surely Eroshira would be safe.
“I have no magic, no skills, no cunning, no charm,” the clearest part of his mind screamed out. “All I have is strength, the muscle and blood and skin and bones. My mind may be weak but my back is strong.”
He summoned the rage and power that he had felt in the battle to control the sword and felt his strength grow and his body harden and rise. He would carry Eroshira to Adai even if he had to leap through the planes of existence.
And there she was, dead before him, her body limp, her eyes closed. He picked her up, her arms draped over him, and he saw the last dying rays of light which he ran towards as fast as he could through the stench and filth until gradually her arms wrapped around him and she raised her head and whispered in his ear – “my Herald, is it not better to run towards something than run away?”
And then they were all gathered outside the ring of trees, each with a handful of flowers. Acacia guided them to the Master of Revels and the flowers were rings of power which Raine took gratefully. Raine and Yinmaris and Florian were so happy.
And Elarris realised that somehow he’d done something right.
He just couldn’t work out what it was.
