chroniclerelris

[chroniclerelris]

"Well, it's hardly a subject for a first conversation..." but the more that knew of the rings, the safer they all could be. "But If you see a suspicious ring, be wary of its wearer as they might not be of sound mind." Elris had been witnessed to what it did to Abelas, how it drove the other to try and kill him. "Well, yes and no. it is complicated as to why i'm here." or was it? Did Elris feel it was complicated because of the events that led to now? in reality it the reason was very simple.

"You can't speak so vaguely of these researches and not expect me to pester you!" A dragon could be rather insistent if not vexing to deal with and now Fyren was indeed enthralled with what suspicious research this one could be performing that it brought him away from the sanctum. A conspiratorial brow raised, invested, "Is that what has brought you here?" Kossith, blight, something, something.

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There was no need to take offence to Fyren statement because it was correct Elris was a Dalathor but why did it make him question how his family was seen. “Well your warning will be heeded.” Elris liked to think he wasn’t reckless but if the solution to the rings was before him how much would he risk? “The sanctum would be honoured to host you. I am preforming research of my own that may take me from the sanctum but I can make myself available.” Elris wasn’t sure where his pursuit was going to take him but just because the rings were dormant didn’t mean he should stop searching for a resolution. Now was the time to double down.

Fyren paused, this lingering moment before the great dragon laughed heartily and rather loud, "You're definitely a Dalathor." He was delighted, if only because he seemed to possess a similar arrogance of dragons. "I didn't mean to pose you as incapable, just a warning you should heed. Such troubles and horrors add up, you know." Fyren settled only slightly, the pink dragon always quite theatric even when talking about the most simple of things, "I say, I should visit you in Dirthamen's Sanctum, there is much I hope to recover in the scope of dreaming, of the fade; I feel we could learn much from one another."

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It wasn’t all Vals fault as to why they hadn’t becoming acquainted earlier. Elris much preferred written words then spoken and through his childhood he had a nasty pride that made him look down on those who were less intelligent but that had been curbed by his incident. When it and to Abelas Elris was somewhat secretive and if he knew about the rumours he would have made the excuse that he had been Abelas teacher for years. What he and Abelas shared was for them and no one else.

“I wouldn’t do that to the books… even the inaccurate ones.” He caught her tone and meaning right away and meet her with the same humour. “I will make sure I am behind the bows” the last thing he wanted was an arrow to his bad knee. He wasn’t going to lecture her about safety after all with his Injury he wasn’t the bastion of keeping his body safe. “Well i hope to see you on the other side of this.”

A singular brow lifted at his metaphor. Though her smile was soft enough to be considered kind, and not at all sarcastic. His endearing optimism reminded her vaguely of old friends and a lost sister - she wondered why she hadn't bothered to at least become acquainted with the man whose establishment she frequented so often. The answer to her own wonder was easily accessible - she didn't make friends easily - but Elris seemed an inordinately kind and understanding man. If the dog metaphor meant anything, rumours were true that even their Abelas (who preferred creatures over most anything) had attached himself lovingly to the scholar. Either little fazed Elris or he was exceptionally good at managing his emotions. Both were admirable qualities.

"You could always pelt them with books," she suggested, looking quite serious. The vaguest hint of a smile that quirked her lip a moment later was all that there was to mark her words as playful. "I know quite well the hold of your psionic abilities, I'm sure you'll be fine. Just try to keep to the side of the bows." She jerked a chin behind him. "Not mine. I got a little better at stealth since-" Only Elris knew about her former lover now, but Val still side-stepped. "Well, since history. So I'm going to see how far into their ranks I can get with a bit of illusion and some audacity." There was a slight shudder in her shoulders. A general distaste was evident on her face. "And I'm not excited about it."

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“History does change sadly, it is also opinionated, manufactured. Perhaps it might but that depends on a lot. Our stories only live on if there’s someone to read or listen to them.” He knew that all to well because even as hard as he tried the history that he even added to library was tainted by his own option despite how factual he tried to be. But he believed himself more accurate than others. “You know your own song will influence history? Not everyone is literate enough to read what the historians will write.”

"Call it benevolence," Rhys gave a wry smile, but he picked up his tankard instead, intent on drinking the night away if he had to celebrate for longer than just an afternoon. Truthfully, the Vuldak wasn't sure how drunk he could ever get, but he always tried to find out when he was back in Haven. "Ah, I'll be long dead when that happens. Some songs change to match the times. Wouldn't you say history does that anyway? Aurea's name will go down for a long time before someone changes it."

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Elris had no idea of the significance of this man, every time he had visited Eterna, it was to live within it's library. He had heard rumours of this so-called game upon his visits but it had never taken his interest at the time, maybe one day he would observe the game for context as to why decisions are made. "You seem to have a low bar for liking a person." or maybe Elris had to high of one?

Elris took a mental note of the exaggerations, the creative licence that had been used. "I have heard many songs. I wonder how yours will change over time. What bard will make up the words as they go." Words would be changed with the passage of time like everything else in this world. "Its going to be a loud night then." Elris half-cracked a smile at that thought.

Rhys wanted to say he wasn't just a sing on demand sort of guy; he was highly renowed in the Game, wealthy in the Queenset Isles – yet, here he was. He supposed that charity was his next lot in life, especially within Haven, and the Elvhen seemed sincere, so the Vuldak wouldn't bite. "I like you. Fine. I'll give you a little...part. It'll be all over Haven tonight."

"The drums of war were pounding loud, The sky hung low, the moon half shroud. The Arishok stood tall with hate, With blades like towers, hands of fate.

He roared, “Send me your strongest name!” The field fell still, then silence came. Till through the dust and blood she strode... Queen Aurea, with eyes that glowed."

His fingers stilled on the lute, letting the notes fall away, "The chorus and another verse, the chorus again – and everyone will howl Aurea's name."

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It was more than just seeing memories; if Elris didn't detach himself, he would feel the emotions of the other in that moment but he had hundreds years of training with his power as he never shied away from flexing that muscle. "I have seen my share of horror in the pursuit of understanding. I know how to keep myself protected." he knew his own ability better than some stranger, dragon or not. He had seen the creation of the rings themself, the darkness that forged them. What this dragon was hiding surely wasn't as bad as that?

Fyren absolutely adored yapping about himself and it'd been a long decade of keeping things under wraps, hording secrets of himself and his travels. Seeing his memories felt like a cop out, but Fyren would absolutely begrudge the other by repeating said memories aloud! "You should be wary of what you see, Elris," it wasn't a no, but he'd recalled Nyla's reaction to the state of his soul and he wondered how that would differ in comparison to such tangible weave of memories.

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Since that day Elris had alway been somewhat embarrassed by the dead weight he carried. Twisted like gnarled tree branch. As a species they were meant to reflect a oneness with the world, elegance, grace, beauty. He heard once from a drunk in a tavern that weakness was rumoured to never exist in Avalon that there was no such thing as a hideous elvhen. But that drunk had never seen what was hide beneath the fabric of Elris cloths.

Only Elris pride disguised how useless he felt. He was never like Dior, Tainyou or even Ikaros. He never had any claim to athleticism but now he was just a burden. All those book he read to compensate what use were they now? They couldn’t help Abelas in this moment! For all his knowledge and intellect he was useless here.

But he wasn’t the ring bearer, he wasn’t the one constantly waging a war within just so they didn’t kill those insight. Abelas needed him to be strong, needed him to keep wearing that mask of pride just a little longer. He couldn’t burned Abelas. Not now… maybe never. Blood covered hands clawed at the earth to move closer to his love. As the liquid of life trickled down his leg the pain that pulsated was pushed to one side, not because he was strong but because the pain of Abelas distress was greater. He never heard such sounds come from any creature, it was unearthly, it shook him to the core. “I’m here…” his voice threatened to brake into sobs as he reached the other.

The request made only moments ago seemed unthinkable. How could he ever… but now. The tourment the other was going through was clear, with each cry of his name Elris heart snapped into a hundred different pieces. Did he have the strength to carry out the request? If Abelas couldn’t live with killing those he loved how could Elris? What a selfish request to make. Or was it? Did Abelas not know how Elris heart beat for him? Had Elris been too late? To quite? To prideful to tell Abelas that if it was up to him he’d be soul bond to the other?

A hand that trembled like an avalanche reached to framed the others face “I’m here… I always have been.” One tear turned into two and soon enough enough to fill a lake fell from the chroniclers eyes. “I can do it… if it will end your suffering…you have to promise me though, you have to promise to find me in our next lives.” Maybe in them they will realise but for it all too late. A bloody hand print marked Abelas cheek, smudged as the Elvhen pressed the forheads together “I love you.” It croaked just barely as he struggled to find the words and sealed with a kiss as if this might be their last.

Abelas could see the straight path ahead: flaying his lover alive, removing all that beautiful, delicate, mangled flesh that he adored so much to lay with the bloodied sinew waiting for him beneath. It was so beautiful - the thought brought a mad dog's grin to the elvhen's features as the last of his willpower quickly evaporated.

He felt the knife, then prepared to land a killing strike - he'd have his fun when this incessant struggle came to an end. Before the blade could land Abelas suddenly felt warmth from sunlight as it filtered in through the tall - seemingly endless - trees of Abelas in the late spring. He was a boy again, his hands were stained green with crushed leaves and soil as his father, Dirthera knelt beside him, his voice soft and rich:

"I will not see the man you become, Abelas. But I know he will be one who chooses not vengeance, but light. Remember, my son, if a day should come when you somehow feel disheartened, or that you are not enough, set your heart ablaze. Dry your eyes and look ahead. You may feel like digging in your heels, but the wheel of time waits for no one. So long as one leaf remains, the Laurelin yet lives. We are the Light, it flows through us."

Vallas is swollen and barely to the tree line as Abelas watches him struggle - beating his wings furiously but declining foot by foot. When he's close to the ground, he finds Abelas' waiting arms instead and the elvhen wraps him in them.

A flicker and he's standing on an outcropping of rocks as Abelas moved to smack his brother's shoulder in mock irritation, then promptly lost his footing and nearly tumbled. Ikaros caught him without even looking. The memory paused on that brief contact - steady hands, mismatched eyes, the bond between them as unshakable as the cliffs they stood on.

The cry was pitiful, ragged, and wrong. The whimpering sound was no longer muffled by the screams of the bloodied and the dead - Abelas alone the men who'd died from crush injuries sustained by their own armor. Abelas found the cage and tore it open to find the cub of the recently poached mother: his beak twisted from beating it incessantly against the bars of his cage. It took hours of Abelas sitting there with honeyed meat, but sometime before the sun came up, Icarus took his first steps into freedom.

Abelas collapsed backward, thrown off like a drunk stripped of his delusion mid-fall. He hit the ground hard, the dagger clattering to the stone floor beside him, slick with ichorous blood that tinged the air something metallic. His body jerked once, twice, as if something was trying to climb its way back up his throat - a scream, a sob, a snarl. All three in wretched one. “Elris-” he croaked, vision clouded, voice the hollowed and wrung dry. He saw the torn cloth, the twisted scar of that ruined leg, Abelas' arms wrapped firmly around himself as if that might keep him from coming undone- body heaving as tears spilled over his twisted features and muddied with the bloody splatter of the dagger beside him, "Elris-" he repeated, weeping.

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"And age doesn't birth wisdom or intelligence on its own." why was this man telling him this? even if he was a Dalathor that information shouldn't be freely shared. That man was making himself liable to an inquisition of questions. "But there is a way to prove your belief." Elris could see memories, but memories were fragile, changing over the passage of time and perspective. Memoirs could be inaccurate. "I am the son with the gift to see and share memories." His siblings had other gifts that proved worthy of the family. "I am Elris Dalathor, the current chronicler of the library."

"I'm almost as old as that cane, or maybe it's the other way around," Fyren had been reckless about his true dragon form as of late, but within Haven they were surrounded by genuine allies, those who would help retain those who had been lost at sea via the Kossith dreadnought. The fact this one was an elvhen - and certainly a Dalathor - helped Fyren decide to trust them to an extent with his own personal truths. "Though I can't quite prove this to you, you should know I'm equally beholden to the truth," they grinned then, pointing to the elvhen ears that adorned their head when in this form. "You may call me Solon, from Falon'Din's Hollow. If you are Dalathor, I knew many of your ancestors."

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This was not how it was meant to go. They were meant to overcome the darkness of the ring, beat it down with light but it kept coming back like a cockroach. Maybe Elris had been too confident that it all could be solved, treating it like some kind of puzzle to solve. It didn’t feel like a puzzle now the knife was shredding his hand instead of his neck. “No...” Elris wasn’t defenceless and he wasn’t going to kill Abelas… not while there were other options. He never thought he would have to use his power like this, not against Abelas. Elris could cloud his mind with memoires, memories of his father, Icarus, Vallas, Ikaros, anything that Elirs could grab a hold of and shove to the forefront to by himself time. 

And he was given some as the other was dazed by the memories. Like shuffling through mud Elris dragged his dead weight of a leg from underneath from Abelas. His finger could almost touch his cane. He could practically feel the wood underneath his fingers. Inch by inch but just as his blood stained the wood of the Lauralin all he could do was scream out as the dagger that had once been aimed at his throat slashed down his thigh. The silver lining if there was one was that at least it was his bad leg, maybe that was all his love could do to stop it from ending up in the other. 

Elris had never shown Abelas just how mangled his leg was, how it had been crushed and with magic stitched back together looking like a scrunched up piece of paper under the tattered cloth. Suddenly Elris made himself small for the briefest of moments before returning to his normal size. The force of the rapid change sent Abelas' weight off of him.

Abelas' breath stuttered with a gut-wrenching sound of a void tearing at the threads of his will. The dark hand - his hand - moved without cause, possessed and hungry with the euphoric high of violence. His jaw clenched with such force it ached, the back of his teeth grinding like a death knell. Elris’ voice - soft and trembling - cut through the haze like light in a suffocating cavern. Something torn between a snarl and a sob cut from the back of his throat, weeping into the blade he wanted to use to flay his lover alive.

“Please-,” he rasped, voice frayed with pain and shame, as the dagger inched closer with their combined struggle. His whole body shook as the tremors climbed his spine. The scent of blood was thick now, Elris’ blood, dripping from the edge of the blade where it pressed into his hand - a sacrifice to buy time, to buy him time but Abelas was fracturing.

“- Elris,” Abelas choked out, barely more than a whisper, voice raw like something dying. “I can’t hold it this time.” His face was twisted in agony, his features drawn tight with the strain of resisting something ancient and monstrous wearing his skin. "Kill me... I don’t want to watch myself destroy one of the few good things I have left. I can't kill someone I love.” The dagger inched again, the pressure unbearable, his whole body screaming.

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After the last time he had seen her, he was a little shocked that she was so confident, but who was he to judge? He was but a stranger who knew a little too much about her thought process. But since seeing her last, he had been through so much and was able to stand tall. "Well, if I have learnt anything from my times with the mortals, all the history I have been able to absorb is that it's not always the number of souls fighting but the strength of them. I believe there's a phrase about a dog and its size not being comparable to the fight within it."

"Well, I'm here if battle tactics are required. But don't count me as defenceless just because i can't run." He was sure he could trap more than a few kossith in their own mind if it came to it. "I will have to make sure I'm in the right spot to accurately take account of the events that will unfold."

"Better than ever," she proclaimed confidently. There was no hesitation, doubt, fear, or embarrassment in her eyes this day. Even if she felt any of that, there was no room to show it. But Val was too determined to feel anything but concentration; there were enemies to fight, and those under her care from Elune's Veil to keep safe. Thus, she pushed away any thoughts of their last encounter except the fact Elris had proven himself a kind heart and gentle soul. "I heard that at least the young Mordecai was convinced to fight. Still... I don't see how it'll be much easier. We have few numbers. We need much more." And none of them were very acquainted with the Kossith, even the old elves among them.

"How about you? Helping? There are other ways to help that aren't outright fighting." Val didn't know Elris to be a warrior, but she also knew never to discount the training of their nobility. She wasn't meant to be a warrior either.

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To be fair to Seris, the last time she saw him, he had a different gate to his steps. He wasn't leaning so heavily on a cane only twenty years ago. "So you heard of an Elris and didn't even check? There aren't that many Elris' in Avalon Seriswyn." he would stay quietly offended that she hadn't even checked to see if it was him. But even after the Alphas won, the haven was chaotic, but this time for a different reason, so he could be reasonable about not being sought out. "How's your partner?" normally, they weren't far from one another and he was yet to see her.

Aurea had defied the odds and defended Haven. On top of this, she had sent the Kossith back to where they came from with the slaughtering of the Arishok. The days of celebration that followed seemed hard earned. Seris herself had not realized the tension she had been carrying in her shoulders for weeks until it finally eased around a great bonfire in Haven’s center. She was lost in her own memories of how things had ended so differently in Iskaldrik. Her life had changed so significantly, in some ways for the better and in others for the worse. But the change felt especially present in the air tonight.

Until it was disrupted by a familiar voice. Seris turned to look at Elris, an it took a beat to recognize him, to remember him. “Elris,” she said warmly, moving to his side. He was no different than she remembered him, though so much had changed. She had not been seen for decades, and she doubted her family widely broadcasted her fate when they had finally heard from her. “I hope you’re enjoying the festivities. I had heard there was an Elris around, lending their aid, but I had assumed it would be too good to be true to hope it was you, and not some other Elris of Avalon.”

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A small part of Elris’ heart died as he heard the words that the other, a storyteller of history through song made them up. This was how misinformation spread, how gross exaggeration happens. He had always assumed wanting to hit someone over the head with his cane was exclusive to Abelas, apparently it wasn’t. “Well please don’t keep me in suspense, i'd like to hear it from its author instead of a drunk who is going to bastardise your work.”

"I remember the words to all of them. Unless it's too old, then I just make them up." It was mostly a joke, a joke to bards, maybe, but Rhys simply looked up as Elris approached. An Elvhen, one of many who'd come to Haven to help stand beside Aurea. Neither of the Queens had sent aid, but their people had come anyway. Rhys could respect that. "I've gone off it now, the one I've made for Aurea will be sang in Haven for days and days to come. I hope everyone loves it."

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“You think a man with my fortitude could steal from such a family?” Part of Elris interest in the other was peaked but also alarm bells went off in his own head because how did this man know about the cane of laurelin? Only certain members of the family knew of its existence, not only was it from laurelin, but it had survived from the age of enlightenment and that alone would make it a treasure. One that some might protest Elris' use of it. “Who are you to make such bold claims of history?” Elris didn’t like to be cagey about history as it was so very rare to find someone he could talk to about it… or maybe it felt that way because he had been spending so much time with Abelas, who didn’t care for it.

Dragons often got distracted by shiny, bright things; though this sour-faced elvhen was neither, the cane he carried was of such interest to Solon considering it was practically an artifact. "Either you're a thief or you're a Dalathor," the dragon already presumed the latter, though he'd allow the other to speak for himself on the matter. "Many lifetimes separate you and the creation of that," he was spouting truths the other was already, likely, keenly aware of - if indeed a Dalathor- but Fyren was delighted to have run into the other. Though the snarls of the wolf queen and the barbaric counters of the Kossith ruler echoed out into Haven around them, Fyren was far more invested in the Dalathor currently.

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Justin Chien as Charles Sun & Highdee Kuan as Alexis Kong The Brothers Sun | 1.05 "The Rolodex"

[chroniclerelris]

Who: @valshirathelight Where: Haven

Elris had learned a lot about how Valshira saw the world when he looked through months of her memories, what she and that circle had done. But he wasn't going to rely on a second-hand account this time. This is not to say that Valshira's accounts couldn't be trusted; he just preferred his own eyes. He was also worried that they would lose more elves to these kossith, they already had Prince Ikaros, Dior though he could live without him, but it was the principle of a noble being taken. "How is your magic? is it in fighting shape?"