In the foothills just below Soujaseinä's lowest extent, there is a wood both deep and thick--the natural haunt of elves. Elfstone ruins--bombed, dismantled, overgrown--poke through the thick brush on the forest's verge, though they vanish rapidly beneath encroaching trees deeper into the wood.
To those intimately familiar with Nephele(-that-isn't) and the predilections of elves, it would be a natural place to look for one gone to ground. To those without that knowledge but a burning desire to find Illarion--there's help. Iskierka's chief among it; given her head, she'll lead Sleepers straight to the wood (though she sometimes forgets they can't fly or pass through buildings to avoid the fighting in the city). There's also a strange orange-gold butterfly some Sleepers may have encountered before, a creature much better at waiting for those with mortal limitations to catch up to it.
Whether they're led by black wings or gold, Sleepers will eventually find themselves at the wood, then in the wood, on a poor excuse for a path that's overgrown with briars and thorns. It surely has not been used for years--except here and there are undeniable signs of passage, in gold eyes that blink from the trunks of trees and patches of unworldly colors smeared on the undergrowth. At the path's end is a clearing and at the heart of the clearing a tree--a giant of an oak, lightning-scarred and split-crowned.
Around it, in furrows worn deep by hoof and paw and talon, pace a half-dozen skeletal beasts with maddened eyes. They walk endlessly without stopping, predator and prey passing scant inches from each other. The air around them warps and cascades with signifiers of the Throne and one long-departed occupant--the spoor of demons.
The focus of the beasts' ceaseless gyring is indiscernible from afar and indescribable near. It appears, star-shell bright, for anything that comes within a hundred thirteen paces of the scarred tree. White fire and greasy smoke weave its halo; white fire and molten metal form its tongue. Thorns crown and enclose the smear of blood on its altar-heart. No eyes peer out from its flawless, tusked, feathered face.
It is dense to look upon with out-eyes, as a shrike's dense and impenetrable. (As the sad and thousand-fold mutated thing curled around the tree's heart is dense, tucked into his own feathers.) But its voice is singular and without echo as it speaks in tones of klaxon and prayer-bells--as it speaks with a Monarch's voice--
Wait. I will wake him.
The assurance in its tone is belied by its own inaction: It does not move toward the tree. It does not seem to communicate with the dormant Sleeper hidden in it; or if it does, he doesn't respond.
Something else is needed. But first the demons must be dealt with.
1.2 Reunion
To those intimately familiar with Nephele(-that-isn't) and the predilections of elves, it would be a natural place to look for one gone to ground. To those without that knowledge but a burning desire to find Illarion--there's help. Iskierka's chief among it; given her head, she'll lead Sleepers straight to the wood (though she sometimes forgets they can't fly or pass through buildings to avoid the fighting in the city). There's also a strange orange-gold butterfly some Sleepers may have encountered before, a creature much better at waiting for those with mortal limitations to catch up to it.
Whether they're led by black wings or gold, Sleepers will eventually find themselves at the wood, then in the wood, on a poor excuse for a path that's overgrown with briars and thorns. It surely has not been used for years--except here and there are undeniable signs of passage, in gold eyes that blink from the trunks of trees and patches of unworldly colors smeared on the undergrowth. At the path's end is a clearing and at the heart of the clearing a tree--a giant of an oak, lightning-scarred and split-crowned.
Around it, in furrows worn deep by hoof and paw and talon, pace a half-dozen skeletal beasts with maddened eyes. They walk endlessly without stopping, predator and prey passing scant inches from each other. The air around them warps and cascades with signifiers of the Throne and one long-departed occupant--the spoor of demons.
The focus of the beasts' ceaseless gyring is indiscernible from afar and indescribable near. It appears, star-shell bright, for anything that comes within a hundred thirteen paces of the scarred tree. White fire and greasy smoke weave its halo; white fire and molten metal form its tongue. Thorns crown and enclose the smear of blood on its altar-heart. No eyes peer out from its flawless, tusked, feathered face.
It is dense to look upon with out-eyes, as a shrike's dense and impenetrable. (As the sad and thousand-fold mutated thing curled around the tree's heart is dense, tucked into his own feathers.) But its voice is singular and without echo as it speaks in tones of klaxon and prayer-bells--as it speaks with a Monarch's voice--
Wait. I will wake him.
The assurance in its tone is belied by its own inaction: It does not move toward the tree. It does not seem to communicate with the dormant Sleeper hidden in it; or if it does, he doesn't respond.
Something else is needed. But first the demons must be dealt with.