The Shattered Oracle - I - In the Refuge of the Azhemyra - Page 8

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I

In the Refuge of the Azhemyra

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- Page Eight -

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Perhaps the murder she gave to my youngest siblings and to my father was a mercy. I do hope they passed quickly and without suffering. She wasn't as merciful when she destroyed all of Oerstav Caelii in her wrath. She managed to reduce the entire city of Neshran to nothing but ruins and ashes in a matter of days. At least, that's what I heard from a scant few survivors in the port cities of the Morthav Highlands when I began this journey here with my students.

I've always wondered what visions my mother saw that would drive her to such madness. What were powers there in that old and musty temple that might turn a mortal woman into such a fiend? What could corrupt her so thoroughly that she would make a pact with a demon and become such a creature?

Despite your continual warnings, I will soon find out. You know that I have not been able to return to Oerstav Caelii since my last day there in my youth. Many of the oracle students I have saved and trained to be here with me state that to return to my home would be suicide. My mother, it is said, still, roams that land in search of Serranos and myself.

I recently sent some members of the Guardian Knights and a few trusted students of sufficient abilities to look into the ruins of the Ullthosian Sanctum and the Temple nearby. They've just returned with shipments of strange artifacts and unearthly stones from that place. The Azhemyra are using those artifacts and stones to create the devices I requested. We will be able to use the energies of those artifacts, along with the post-cognition abilities I have been perfecting, to reach through and pierce into the time that Merithault, my mother, was there.

I will finally be able to see what my mother saw all those years ago. When the enchantments are completed, these orbs will be able to store and hold all the memories of the oracles. We can use these to keep our culture alive when the world dies. I know you doubt the visions of old diviners, but I must assure you, this will come to pass. The horrors that my mother let loose will tear this world asunder. We exist in the calm before the storm, and as such, we must seize this time to prepare.

Please give my love to our children, Isyn and Loelan. I know, it is painful for us all to be separated like this for so long. I understand how hard this must be for our children, as I endured the exact same when I was young. Please know that this must be done. Know — most of all — my love, that this is all we have left.

Keep the children safe. Let them know that I love them dearly and I can't wait to be at home to care for them like a mother should. I miss all of you more than I can ever express.


With all of my heart and soul, eternally yours,


- Maenthrai



As her eyes passed over the last lines of runes, tears began to well up in the inside corners of her eyes. It felt strange for her to cry after so long. It had been over four grueling years since she had seen her husband and her children. In that time she had only ever heard of her family through the many letters her husband sent to her. It was hard for her to think of her young Isyn becoming a man at last. The last time she had seen Loelan was when she was still in swaddling clothes. It had been far too long a separation.

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The Shattered Oracle - I - In the Refuge of the Azhemyra - Page 7

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I

In the Refuge of the Azhemyra

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- Page Seven -

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She gave a long sigh and allowing her will to ebb, the page dropped to the surface of the table, once more. Feelings of longing and emptiness welled up inside of her and were soon corrupted into a sense of impending dread. She let the writing stick fall from her fingers. The object rolled to the edge of the table where it wavered for a moment before finally falling to the stone floor. She pivoted her hips one more time, turning sharply to look over her right shoulder and back into the darkness of her room.

"I have your word — Jephrin — That this missive will reach my husband in two weeks?" Maenthrai lifted herself from her chair, getting up to idly approach the crystalline-windowed doors between the bedroom and the crumbling stone balcony beyond. She rested her hand on the metal trim of the doors causing a popping sound and rusty creak. She kept her eyes focused on the darkness at the other end of the room. "This is very important to me. You know that."

The shadowed figure let his feet drop to the floor with two almost inaudible impacts. The scabbard's metal tip finally scrapped for a moment along the dusty stone. The figure looked up, closing the book in his lap and gave a single nod. The figure of Jephrin otherwise remained silent. That attention and his simple motion were enough to satiate Maenthrai's inquiry.

"Good. I will hold you to that." She gave a lighthearted chuckle and pulled away from the rusty door. A few steps and she was back at her desk where she sat down to loom once more over the table.

She seized the parchment once again and framed it with both of her hands. Her eyes scrolled through the lines one last time, this time reading the missive in full. The runes she had written in her cursive style rolled in front of her eyes as she made absolutely certain that all of the thoughts and feelings she wished to convey were properly trapped within.



My love, Kaisos,

I hear from the lead Azhemyra here at the refuge, that the work being performed on the artifacts I've asked them to create is almost complete. By the time you get this missive, it should be just a few more months and then I can finally return home to you.

If the completion date is as Thaellon and the rest claim, it seems somewhat auspicious that it should be done twenty-two years — almost to the day — since my mother first caused the calamity we must now endure. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel the blood-ridden guilt inside of me for her actions.

Before that fateful day, so long ago, she was always a kind parent. I have no doubt that she loved my father, my siblings, and myself dearly. Because of this, the actions she did when she returned from the Ullthosian Temple were all the more monstrous in contrast.

I always looked up to my mother, you've heard that so much since you came into my life. You know well that I wanted to follow in her footsteps and become an oracle. Not of the Sharr-vhult, as I found those mystics to be stuffy and too familiar in my youth. I always wanted to create my own path, my own way of doing things. I wanted to join the early Authrak Order. Well, I forget, you know this well. After all, you've endured me for so long.

I know you fight me on this, but I hold it to be the truth since the very moment I heard about what my mother had done and what horrors she unleashed on this world. When I had to go into hiding with Serranos, and when your family took us in despite the dangers. To think, the woman who brought me into this world would become such a monster. That she could be capable of slaughtering my family and hunting Serranos and me to the ends of the world-plane. Moreover, that she would dare to purge the world of the oracles who might one day save the world from her depredations.

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The Shattered Oracle - I - In the Refuge of the Azhemyra - Page 6

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I

In the Refuge of the Azhemyra

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- Page Six -

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The previous occupants of this ancient, forgotten, and ruined city had led very comfortable lives. They should have, given that they were all descendants of the first artificers that had given the earliest forms of technology to humanity. They had begun their work in the first centuries of the exodus, right after humanity had left the fabled lands of Hoelv to start anew in this world. They were those of the ancient Morthavi people who remembered how to harness the subtle energies of magic and the commanding energies of nature in equal measure. It was they who crafted the earliest and the greatest wonders that even mundane persons, with no aethyric aptitude at all, could use in the betterment of their lives. Wonders that were slowly becoming lost to the Hoelath people who had followed after them in this faltering age. If it wasn't for the Azhemyra's duties, their uncanny abilities, and their constant demands for perfection, the early human settlers of this world would have surely perished.

The rest of the room sat in the same chilled darkness that it had most likely remained in for all the time since the last of the Azhemyra that once called this place home, had died. That is, to the point in time when Maenthrai and her cabal had once again started to use the place as a refuge. The only disruption in that veil of ancient neglect draped over the room came from the very slight shuffling and rustling coming from the far corner. There, half-hidden in the darkness, with a reddish light setting a subtle contrast to his features, was a man reading a book.

He was covered in heavy leather armor from the high collars around his neck to the worn leather of his boots. He remained still, pushing with his feet and balancing himself on the back legs of another ancient chair. He remained quiet, save for the occasional groaning of his armor or the rustling of parchment as he flipped a page. The book itself sat suspended in his fingers just a few inches above his lap.

Despite his relaxed demeanor, a sheathed — yet readied — sword swung between the arms of the chair and the floor. The sword occasionally coming within half an inch or less of scraping the ancient stones below.

Maenthrai took these moments to dwell on the tired details of her room while she thought out the last few runes she must scratch into her letter. As she did so, her attention was pulled through the crystalline-windowed doors before her and out into the ruins of the city beyond. Much of the city still sat disused and abandoned, yet there was a small spark of bustling life near the center-most area of the city. She could feel the energy there being harnessed by those last descendants and students of the ancient Azhemyra. It was she that had found and brought them here after being alienated for so long from their home.

She had scoured a sizeable chunk of the Hoelatha Empire to find those still skilled in the arts of artifice and enchantment to help her. Although their numbers were few, they were devoted people who had traveled with her across the northern lands to re-settle this ruined city. They jeopardized their safety, knowing that by helping her they faced the same horrible monster that stalked the ruins of the north trying to find her. They had done so much in such a short amount of time and if the news that came to her was true the last of their efforts were now before them.

Maenthrai let her attentions come back into the room. She placed a series of more runes upon the parchment and then pushed herself away from the table. She lifted her right hand limply and in response the parchment raised from the table to float just before her face.

The parchment remained suspended between the light of the candle before her and her eyes, allowing bits of the flame's light to seep in through the fine vellum. Her eyes scanned over the runes in High Hoelatha script. The page was almost filled with horizontal scrawlings, with only the right-most third of the parchment holding much more complicated vertical runes. These extra runes held the notes for her courier who would take the letter to its proper destination. Her eyes, glassy with strain, flowed over the runes while skimming the words contained within. She didn't really take any of the information in, but she felt that it was far more satisfactorily written then her previous attempt.

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The Shattered Oracle - I - In the Refuge of the Azhemyra - Page 5

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I

In the Refuge of the Azhemyra

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- Page Five -

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Maenthrai continued to scratch out her runes upon the parchment before her. She sat at her small wooden writing table at an arm's length distance from the rusted metal and crystalline doors of the balcony. She remained hunched over her desk and took a slow pause to gather her thoughts. Her left hand fiddled with the writing stick; a flurry of activity that seemed to keep the stick held above her long and slender fingers. Her right hand held her head up; occasionally breaking contact with her jaw to rub the tensed muscles and sinews of her neck and shoulder.

The guttering candle that perched at the far edge of her desk seemed to peek over the melted wax cautiously while she mulled over her thoughts for a moment. The light from the candle was adequate, yet — oddly — seemed to be dwarfed by the dazzling light that came in from outside the darkened and otherwise disused room. As soon as her thoughts caught up with her and she returned to scrabbling out more thoughts upon the parchment, the flame hid back behind it's melted castle of wax, flickering once more.

Maenthrai's sharp elbows seemed to dig into and pull on the chipped and aged wood of the table. With every rune, the table creaked and moaned on its carved lion-like legs. The metal filigree around the edges of the desk was heavily rusted, yet each segment held its place with remarkable perseverance. The lacquer that once preserved the rich wood had begun to peel in places, but despite a few chips on the surface, it remained smooth on top.

The chair that Maenthrai sat upon was covered with rich and decadent fabrics. The upholstery had begun to fray and stain in places. Some sections had been gnawed at or worn down by pests who had once called the room home during several centuries or millennia before Maenthrai had occupied it. The stuffing had become brittle, causing Maenthrai to pivot her hips at regular intervals. This strained sort of dance made her all the more frantic with her scrawling. Despite this, she gladly suffered her minor discomforts, much preferring the chair to the alternative of sitting on the chilled, stone floor.

The room around her was a bedroom belonging to a person of some renown who had once lived in the ruined and forgotten city. Despite the harsh extremes outside the room; the churning heat of the magma and the frigid chill of the ice, all the furniture as well as the ancient accouterments, filling up bookshelves and niches, had survived the passage of time quite well. The city had sat abandoned for untold amounts of time, and it was no doubt due to the supernatural skill of the artisans who created the entire city that what was left of it was well-preserved.

Behind her, by a dozen steps, lay the bed she had been using during those few hours she could pull herself away from her studies or her magickal weavings to sleep. The bed was equally as decadent as the rest of the room. The mattress was sophisticated and showed the craftmanship that the previous occupants of the city had used in all aspects of their life. Those supernatural artisans were the esteemed Azhemyra artificers of the ancient Morthavi people. Each of whom had called the ruined city home, once as a place of pride and later as a place of refuge when their Empire ended so long ago.

The mattress had been the first that Maenthrai had ever seen that contained metal springs inside of it, as well as the fine, ancient feathers of the Authroc birds that the old Morthavi had bred as pets and beasts of burden. Those birds, almost extinct now save for a few places in the far-off lands of Jolant, were said to be bred from the truly powerful Authrumokra Phoenixes of old. Those magical birds who could once speak human tongues, weave elemental magicks and live as peers with the Morthavi before they all fled to the farthest corners of the world plane. Perhaps their flight, as old books filled with lore surmised, was due to some long-ago slight the Empire of old had thrust upon them.

The bed, much like the strange feathers within it, was enchanted. It was able to conform to the dimensions of those who laid upon it as well as warm itself according to the conscious desires of its user. The entire contraption had a seducing sort of comfort to it as well; one that Maenthrai had noticed quite early on, which was why she avoided the bed as much as possible.

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