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Monday 17 April 2017

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


I

In the Refuge of the Azhemyra


- Page Seven -




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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