Though it can be used to produce magical effects, Ardor isn’t magical in nature, as proven by the late Frinth Cevarnen when he led an assortment of giants into an antimagic field and found they were no less deadly. May Ember rest his soul.
Vendrethaisen’s Teachings
Evangeline Alrinious
Evangeline pressed her hands to the stone-like chest of Sanfael, reaching out to her magical reserves with desperation. She began to chant in the language of the ancient world. Please. I need you now. Spectral green vines pushed out of her palm, wrapping around the wounds of her friend and began to heal them.
Sanfael’s shaky breathing stabilized, his muscled chest heaving up and down rhythmically. From the ragged sound, he hadn’t had water or food in many days.
Evangeline produced from her pouch a sprig of mistletoe, still chanting in the Old Voice. Ten red berries sprouted along its length. She pulled off three and tossed the rest to Ajin.
“Sit him up,” she ordered, voice shaky. Ajin quietly complied, heaving the hulking mass of muscle and propping him up against his own body.
Evangeline opened Sanfael’s mouth and put the berries in one by one. They quickly melted to paste on his tongue. She placed a gentle hand on Sanfael’s massive throat, resuming her chanting. The spectral vines stretched out of her fingers and went into his neck. A moment later, he swallowed. His breath normalized.
Evangeline threw her arms around Sanfael’s shoulders, pressing her face into his neck as his chest steadily rose and fell. Gradually, she felt his heart beat faster as he came closer to consciousness. There were many advantages to magical healing.
Sanfael Eld
Sanfael’s eyes fluttered open. His head was spinning, and it felt like there was a thick fog in his mind. Was something holding onto him? Sanfael slowly looked down. There was a familiar figure clutching him tightly… and a wide-eyed panther sitting next to her, head cocked.
“Ev…Evangeline?” he prodded slowly. “What… what are you doing here?” Sanfael raised a hand to his head, wincing. His gaze swept across the battlefield. Ruined buildings. The bodies of friends and kin lay dead amidst the carnage.
So it wasn’t one of the nightmares after all.
Evangeline’s head rose from his chest, eyes sorrowful and blinking at the rain. “When I got here-” she choked, clearing her throat. “When I got here,” she began again, “it was like this. I thought you- I thought everyone was dead. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Sanfael looked to the side, briefly noting an armored figure kneeling a few feet away. Sanfael closed his eyes, trying to recall…
Waves of arrows came in whistling sheets of death; a mad scramble to get to defensive positions. Hordes of orangish-gray heads swarmed into the village; a frantic battle. His kin were strong, but there were so many of them. He and his father, driven back, back until they were surrounded; the screams of his sister; the wind in his ears as he sprinted into the house. Heat. Darkness.
Sanfael stumbled to his feet, legs feeling as steady as dried sap. He wheeled around.
He saw his home in ruins. Stones lay broken, planks sundered. Sanfael blundered through the wreckage, faintly able to hear Evangeline call his name. He barely felt her hand on his shoulder. His gaze frantically swept through the debris as he searched.
He found the leg of a small rabbit stained crimson with blood sticking out from beneath a large rock. Sanfael lurched forward, hoping against all odds that she was still alive.
He wrenched a fallen section of the wall away. The body of his baby sister was burnt, mangled, and lying at an odd angle. Eliriana’s torso was ruptured by a broken plank, pierced all the way through. Her face was a petrified contortion of agony and fear, eyes wide and unblinking against the rain that mixed with her blood.
Ajin
Ajin leaped to his feet at the roar. The sound tore through his ears, eclipsing the thunder and downpour by many magnitudes.
He whipped around to face the hulking firbolg but instead saw massive green spirits standing amongst the rubble. Ajin raised Kar’nek in a defensive stance by instinct, the sharp scent emanating from the blade filling his nostrils, but the strange spirits weren’t rushing at him. Rather, they had turned away from him, towards the one Evangeline had called ‘Sanfael’.
Soon, the spirits parted, revealing Sanfael. He cradled something against his chest, eyes blazing with a verdant fire. The firbolg stumbled through the wreckage. One of the spirits followed behind him, head high, lips contorted in a snarl of wrath.
Sanfael marched to a corpse matching that of the spirit, surrounded by fallen goblins. He set down the corpse of the smaller firbolg, and closed her eyes solemnly.
He then pressed two of his fingers against the forehead of the much larger one, clasping the wrist of the spirit that followed him out. The spirit dispersed, and the body sat up, eyes like two sallow green orbs.
Necromancy.
Tromping of boots announced Beylesa, who rounded a corner, followed by the brothers. She started to raise her hammer, but Ajin raised a hand to still her advance, shaking his head.
The wispy spirits of the fallen firbolgs started to dissipate. Evangeline wrapped her arms around the resurrected one, sobbing into his chest.
Beylesa slipped to Ajin’s side, observing the returned firbolg. Her golden irises melted to a milky lavender-white.
Ajin hastily, quietly slipped on his helmet, trusting in mithril’s lead-like impermeability and supression to shield him.
“He’s undead,” she hissed, gazing at Ajin.
He nodded slowly, noting her cautious tone. “Undead, despite what you may have heard, are not inherently evil. Evangeline seems to trust him. This is good enough for me.”
Beylesa wavered, then lowered her weapon. Her irises returned to their usual beautifully gilded shade.
The undead firbolg looked down and, after a moment, hugged Evangeline back for a long while, pulling Sanfael into the embrace. After they let go of each other, the undead jabbed a trembling finger at Evangeline and Sanfael, then pointed northeast.
Evangeline whispered a few words into the undead behemoth’s ear, gesturing to the group. Ajin gave a small wave. For a long moment, the two firbolgs were silent as they observed the four smaller people. Then, Sanfael stepped forward, extending a hand.
“My name is Sanfael,” he articulated slowly as if the words took much effort to say. They probably do, Ajin chided himself. These are forest-dwelling firbolg. Kevar likely isn’t their first language. ”I wish we could have met under better circumstances,” the well-muscled firbolg continued. “Evangeline tells me you are her friends. Would you be willing to go with us to avenge my clan?”
Beylesa nodded. “I will.”
“We will,” Ajin said, with nods from Vyrnamint and Yirnamint.
Sanfael nodded slowly. “Evangeline tells me you are very skilled combatants. That is very good.” He motioned towards the undead firbolg. “This is my father, Olonorin. He was the clan’s guardian. I was training to take his place, and then the attack happened. He has returned as a Sfilaran to kill the leader of the goblin attackers. Together, we stand a chance against them, now that my fallen kin gave their lives to weaken the goblins’ numbers.”
Yirnamint gave Sanfael a deep bow. “We would be honored to assist you in avenging your clan.”
Sanfael nodded. He and Olonorin turned to head northeast. “Leave the dead as they lie. We came from nature, and to nature, we will all return.”
(2nd of) Summerdrop, 1,499 AE
After Ajin, Evangeline, and Sanfael returned from scouting the goblin fortress, the group convened in the forest, a few hundred yards away from the fortress. The “Bholviduur Ilkatsak,” as Sanfael had named it in a growl under his breath.
“We are familiar with this place,” said Evangeline when Ain had fixed the pair with an inquiring gaze. “It’s haunted. Cursed. Various covens of hags and lycanthropes have called that a sanctuary for as long as the Eldar clan has been here.”
Now, Ajin squatted in the dirt, branch in hand, etching a diagram into the moist earth. “They’ve grown lax; patrols are few and far between.”
Vyrnamint smirked, tapping his foot rapidly. “Lucky us.”
The form of the dilapidated fortress began to take shape. “There is a tower. I can get up there, but I will need cover.” He stopped, pointing his stick at Evangeline. “Are you going be up for it?”
Evangeline gave a curt nod. “I can shroud us as we go up.”
“Good. The guard changes every hour. If we time it correctly, that gives us a pretty generous window to work with,” Ajin’s branch dipped again into the dirt. “We will work our way down into the fortress proper. Vyr, you get onto the western wall. Stay low, head for the gatehouse, and remove any resistance you encounter.
“Nami, meet him there with Olonorin using that teleportation spell you’ve been practicing.”
“I’ve only taken myself before,” Yirnamint mused.
“Just hold his hand, put a little more arcana into it than you think, and channel it to your fingers. Once there, make a silence bubble around the gatehouse. Olonorin and Sanfael, kill everyone inside. Spare the commander”
“How am I going to get up there?” Sanfael interjected, leaning on his polearm.
“Did I not explain…?”
Everyone shook their heads.
Ajin rocked back on his heels, brow furrowed. “Vyrnamint, you are gonna take him up the wall with you.”
“What?”
“Vyrnamint, you are gonna take him up the wall with you.”
“I heard you the first-… I’m nowhere near strong enough to drag him up there! And I’m only just starting to figure out warping!”
“Your fog spell,” Ajin reasoned. “You can transform another, no?”
Ajin instinctively glanced towards Evangeline, expecting – no, hoping for – the lighthearted jab about his obsessive knowledge of the arcane.
It didn’t come.
Evangeline was sitting with her back pressed firmly against a tree. Her gaze was hollow, loosely tracing Ajin’s sketch of the fort. Ajin looked back to Vyrnamint, idly rubbing his bird pendant.
Vyrnamint nodded. “I can, though I don’t see how he can get up at any speed. One can only move so fast as fog, especially against gravity.”
Ajin’s grin widened considerably. “You will carry him in a bottle; I thought of that particular trick a few years back.”
Sanfael’s eyebrows arched heavily at that.
Vyrnamint cocked his head in thought. Then he smiled and clapped Ajin on the shoulder. “You fragging genius. How did we not think of that?”
“Then we have that settled. Beyle, I suppose you do not have any armor besides the chainmail? We need stealth.”
“I have a spare breastplate and greaves in my pack.”
Ajin smiled warmly at her. “Good. Wait for the wall group to open the gate and slip under. Make a birdcall to let the wall group know that you are in.
“Wall group, find a way to get down and meet up with Beyle near the barracks. They are placed against the western wall – they probably use the sun to wake them up – so this should not be too complicated. I trust you to sort out the fine details.”
Vyrnamint rubbed his chin, kneeling to regard the diagram. “You planning on us taking out the enemies while they’re dozing?”
“Precisely.”
“My style. I like it.”
“Vangie and I will work our way down the fortress proper, you’ll take out the sleepers and work your way upwards.” Ajin motioned towards the depiction of the tower. “We’ll crush them between us, but make sure to leave the leader alive for interrogation. Any questions?”
