Chapter Forty-One Point Seven: A Splinter of History

  Selriph’s eyes sparkled as he watched the young elf speak. That admiration was not of the aesthetic beauty of her features, which were accentuated by the soft moonlight of Modoras and Threxia overhead—although he very much appreciated and acknowledged them.

  No, what kept him entranced was the content of her words along with the fervour she’d delivered them. He listened intently to everything she said, an expression that mirrored the expression of the most fervent of initiates during the evening sermons—an ironic echo, which served as a testament to his profound fascination with the topic at hand.

  As the admiring tirade continued, Selriph reached into the pouch that lay at his side, withdrawing his pocket leather-bound tome. As the minutes passed, the loose scribbles on the page began to coalesce, taking the form of a coherent series of notes; one brought about the almost biographical recount of Valdor, presented by the blonde-haired elf before him.

  Selriph’s mind worked to process the information, his voice a hushed whisper every time something interesting about the legendary figure’s feats was mentioned. These were more for himself—half questions, half summaries. As he added his commentating addenda, the scribbles with charcoal on the parchment accompanied his internal thoughts.

  Kela mentioned the date of Valdor’s death in passing, in peace, in his centuries-old sanctum in Kalgurak, having lived a life well fulfilled. Her words shifted quickly to how the magically endowed in Venthar see him as a figure of legend.

  But the date itself stood out in Selriph’s mind like a splinter in the flesh.

  Kela’s voice faded from his attention. Flashes of the conversation at the lodge, paralleled by the murmurs within the Daryth family estate. His father’s intense, hushed whispers with fellow silver, golden, and black-robed figures—all discussing their service on the battlefield.

  The Eldeitian-Ventharian war.

  Nineteen years ago.

  His death, the timing, doesn’t it…?

  A low whispered injection came from Selriph. “Kela…”

  Kela paused mid-sentence, eyebrows raised, mixed with a smile; her enthusiastic musing of Valdor’s achievements paused by the meek, almost inaudible murmur from Selriph.

  Selriph—interpreting the lull as implicit permission— allowed his question to trickle forth, “You mentioned Valdor passed away nineteen years ago.”

  The human youth glanced down at his scribbled notes, as if seeking their reassurance.

  “That would be the year 807, isn’t that when the war between Eldeitia and Venthar reached its conclusion?” his voice a low murmur, as if unsure if his calculations had borne a speculative leap in logic

  Any semblance of a smile faded from Kela’s lips as she took in Selriph’s words. Her face displayed a sorrowful yet respectful expression. An almost personal sadness which was surprising given the elf’s age, being centuries younger than Valdor and having never met the Grant Magus.

  A barely perceptible shake of her head followed the elf’s sigh. “You never let yourself unwind … ever calculating.” Kela’s remark was a mix of respect and playful annoyance.

  Selriph felt a tinge of embarrassment. “Apologies … It’s just. If Valdor was such a legendary figure, why did he pass away at the end of the Eldeitian-Venthar war…?”

  Kela’s gaze traced Selriph’s expression, as if looking for any signs of inflammatory intent in his query.

  Then, she looked into his eyes. “I think you already know the answer to that…”

  The first thought that passed the threshold of his attention was, “He… sacrificed himself? But you said—”

  She shook her head, although it did not reflect full disagreement with Selriph’s statement.

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  “He saved us.”

  Selriph tilted his head in confusion. The Eldeitian accounts of the war had always been sparse, so much so that even Gerey’s archive contained little information. The only consistent detail was that the Eldeitian military had ‘liberated’ the Ironcrag Highlands from a dark magic cult—a narrative Selriph knew held little credibility.

  Then Vick’s voice played in his head, like a distant whisper of a ghost.

  “The Empire is no friend to mages, not anymore.”

  Even with the incomplete information, Selriph had a reasonable conviction in his assumption that he had pieced together these barest wisps; the war was based on a fabricated casus belli, one that allowed Eldeitia to label the mage’s guild as heretics.

  However, the details of the war—particularly regarding military strategy—were kept oddly cryptic. Eldeitia had proudly shown off the sophisticated workings and brilliance of its peerless military. Perhaps the restraint of such details came from a level of prudence, one that could be attributed to the recency of the war and the need to maintain doctrinal secrecy.

  But the runaway youth had come to a different conclusion, one that kept him satisfied with what he knew, or rather, assumed.

  Eldeitia likely fought a hard-fought war with the magic-leaning kingdom to the south. Given that they only gained the Ironcrag Highlands as a concession, a valuable enough prize to fuel their growing armadas. Eldeitia must not have achieved an overwhelming victory—one that would have allowed them to reduce their enemies to a satellite stump state.

  His thoughts drifted to the glass-like orb that the male elf cradled; the magical construct that had nearly ended his life. This, along with the proficiency of the two twins who hadn’t even experienced collegiate magical study, made one thing terrifyingly clear: it would not be a stretch to assume that the birthplace of magic rendered a significant challenge to Eldeitia’s so-called unstoppable legions.

  Perhaps the outlawing of the mage’s guild was a petty act of retaliation for their level of lethal expertise? After all, why expunge Eldeitia’s own arcana sect and leave it a mindless, neutered remnant under the church? The runaway mage couldn’t know for sure; he lacked the precise dates to confirm his suspicions.

  However, with Kela’s passing remark about Valdor “saving” Venthar, that simple answer no longer sufficed.

  “I assume there is a tale to be told. If you don’t mind regaling me with the details, how did he save Venthar?” Selriph’s voice was a calculated mix of formal request and tactful politeness.

  Kela glanced over her shoulder to the male figure wrapped up in a bedroll, as if seeking permission from her slumbering twin.

  She turned back, her expression teetering beyond the edge of reluctance, tentative trust brimming through.

  Then she started, her voice sombre, almost mourning.

  “The war didn’t go well for us; our town fell to those bastards within a week. Father…” her eyes glanced at her twin. “He gave Mother just enough time to escape Galino.”

  “Your hometown…” His intervening remark was met by a minuscule nod from the female elf.

  Selriph did not need to articulate in words his follow-up query; he could easily infer the original owner of the shield that Kaelan possessed.

  “Mother went to the fortress-academy. It was the safest place in the kingdom, even more than the capital, Lirathis,” she stated with a hint of pride in her voice.

  “She thought, as any person would, that Eldeitia would focus on decapitating the capital; the Ventharian Knights and the military had assembled their legions in its defence. “

  The elf gestured to the darkened silhouette of the Greyspire mountain range before them; “The fortress academy was all but inaccessible. Eldeitia’s butchers should not have been able to reach her. “

  Kaelan gripped her staff, her gaze locked on the gem at its tip. She stared into its depths as if it were a window to an image that existed for her eyes alone.

  “Mother thought she—we—would be safe, at least until the war was over; our family could start a new life in whatever was left of Venthar.”

  The elf shook her head, letting out a bitter chuckle. “But those beasts in the sky—they came. Kaelan and I had just entered this world.”

  Selriph’s voice came, in a whispered understanding, “The Eldeitian Airships…”

  “Exactly. An opening volley of charged runepowder and holy lances. The tower of High Mage Padro and the Statue of Fanui fell in minutes…”

  Kela’s voice was barely a whisper. “Master Foltae found me and Kaelan... in the ruins.” The rest went unsaid, filled by the void of a crushing silence.

  “How many…?” Selriph asked cautiously, as if navigating a field of needles.

  Kela turned her head, a tinge of confusion tracing her brow.

  Selriph’s eyes fluttered, and his brows jumped as he realised his error. “Apologies… I should be more specific: the airships. “

  Kela’s crimson pupils met the ocean blue of Selriph’s irises. “Twenty.”

  The youth’s eyes went wide. “Twenty…?!”

  The skies of Caer Eldralis resurfaced in Selriph’s mind. The night of his escape? Just a single one, fresh out of the foundries.

  On the felling of Aurelion’s Blade—a festival commemorating the God of War in the Eldeitian Empire, Selriph saw ten, perhaps a dozen airships in the skies. Their gleaming, silver-coloured hulls cast a looming shadow across the gathered, enraptured crowds.

  For the Eldeitians to gather twenty of their prized inventions of war—creations that had emerged from the ingenuity of their most brilliant, divinely favoured minds over the last three decades—for a single attack?

  It was unprecedented. Such a concentration of military force seemed only appropriate if one intended a titanic clash with the hundred dragons at the beck and call of the Imperia Az’doth to the far west—an isolationist core remnant of lizardfolk and dragonkin of a once sprawling empire in its own right.

  For a mage college in the middle of the mountains?

  It was excessive.

  “That… how did you even survive…? Against those odds, there was no way you all could have prevailed,” Selriph’s voice inflected up in concerned intrigue.

  She replied with an air of mournful reverence, saying, “Because of Valdor.”

  The youth shook his head. “I don’t understand. Did he conjure a barrier and buy you all the time, enough for a Ventharian fleet to drive them off?” The restraint on Selriph’s words all but eroded as his torrent of questions poured forth.

  The elf remained silent, her eyes fixed on the shadowy outlines of the distant mountains.

  The former Templar initiate gazed down at his carefully dictated notes, his mind attempting to conjure an answer in lieu of the elf’s silence. “Did… did he open a portal somehow? Bought time for all of you to escape…?”

  “No … There would have been nowhere to go—the war had all been lost. No fleet, no army could stand up against them.” The sadness in her voice carried in the mist that escaped her lips.

  “What… so how…” Selriph’s eyes darted between his notes and the slender elven figure before him, his mind processing the implications of what he gathered so far, assuming that everything Kela said was true.

  A singular image came to his mind—an elderly mage facing down the armada, with nothing but a staff in his hand.

  And somehow, prevailing.

  “You surely jest. There is no way a single mortal could…” Selriph’s voice was a bare whisper, denial more than rebuttal.

  Kela inhaled deeply, allowing the fog to drift from her nose as she turned to face Selriph.

  What came to her mind was an image—not a memory, but a woven fabrication from the countless tellings of the tale from their adoptive caretaker, their master.

  The twins’ only link to the two unfortunate souls who had brought the twins into the cruel reality heralded by Eldeitia’s conquering ambitions.

  Nineteen years ago, within the walls of the Fortress-Academy of Kalgurak.

  Patch note: The Holy Empire's name has been changed to better reflect my original intent.