Dawnscroll — Roleplayer Guild

Elysium

Level 9 Realta Hero
21 Khookies

“Did you ever think they would act in such a way?” Elysium asked.

Logos looks down from atop their mountain at the scene before her. Two armies clad in armor stand facing off with one another over a great distance. The soldiers on either side stand alert; this is what they train for—and they are professionals at what they do.

His daughter paced back and forth restlessly along the cliff. “They tear each other apart like wolves. They act no different than the animals, but you saw fit to give them far greater power—power of thought—than any animal.”

The Lord of Order turned to her. “I never intended them to turn out like this,” he declared. “I have grown sick,” he whispered, glaring at her. “—Sick from watching these creatures feed, and destroy, and kill, and ruin what we worked so hard to build!”

“What would you have me do?” Elysium barks. “Would you have me destroy them? I can not find it in my heart to be so cruel.”

“I would have you stop them. If that is what it takes.”

A low rumble draws their attention to the field below. The two armies stomp their spears and shields into the dirt, creating a thunderous echo that fills the valley.

“I cannot govern them,” Logos stated firmly. “They will never grow on their own I do.”

Elysium nodded her head towards the battlefield. “Look at them,” she said, scowling. “They are infants. They are temperamental and they need guidance.” Furrowing her eyebrows, she gave her father a stubborn glare. “You are allowing them to suffer at their own hands needlessly.”

“And how would you make them listen? Through force—through intimidation?”

“Yes.”

Ruffling his wings and turning back to the battlefield, Logos shook his head. “That kind of rule wouldn’t change any of this. You haven’t thought this through.”

Elysium’s eyes narrow. “And you have?”

Logos stared back back at her impassively. “Yes,” he says quietly.

The Realta princess steps back from her tone. She looks down at the two armies about to clash. “I can not stay here and watch this,” she says, taking off into the sky.

Logos watched her go before turning back to the battle, watching the armies clash. He could feel each reverbration of spear upon shield, his eyes looking amongst their numbers for something only he could see, and the cries and yells coming up from the field fell into the quiet hum of his mind.

With great difficulty, he turned his back on the scene and flew to catch up with his daughter. The little realta spurred herself on, increasing her speed whenever her father increased his and keeping a distance between them. Logos gave the faintest of sighs, knowing that the tension that had been steadily growing between them would only worsen now.

He followed Elysium north as the landscape changed to white beneath them. Snowfall blankets the hills and trees, and Logos against the falling snow and cold winds, spotting a village of only a dozen houses down below.

Elysium angled towards the nearby mountain. They always stayed in mountains. The humans of Arcon rarely climbed them, and they rarely saught anything other than the world beneath the clouds.

Landing on a plateau near the top of the mountain, Elysium folded her wings away and walked towards a rock overhang sheltering a part of the cliff from the snow. Logos landed behind her, the snow crunching under his feet, and shook his wings before tucking them to his sides. His daughter didn’t even glance at him, her eyebrows still furrowed together in an ill mood. Silently, he walked to the dry ground, knelt  down, and shut his eyes.

Elysium hesitated back by the cliffside. The buildings in the town down below glow orange through the white snow fog, oil light coming from their windows and lantern light from wooden posts outside their doors. Only a pair of figures persist to work outside in the snow: a farmer, and his son, the father holding an axe and the son placing blocks of wood for him to split on a stump. Both were shivering.
Turning away from it, Elysium goes to rest with her father, who stretched a wing over her when she gets close, sheltering her from the snow. She lay down with a frown, closed her eyes, and tried to fall asleep.

But she couldn't.

She lingered on the border, slipping in and out of consciousness, and she did not know whether it was because of the biting cold or the shouts of the battlefield still echoing in her ear. Shivering, she glanced over at her father to see him resting calmly, his features relaxed and the sternness gone from them.

Something restless stirred inside Elysium. She got up and stepped out from under her father's wing. The sky, darkened with the absence of the moon and stars, let out a low wailing sound as its winds carried a blizzard. Elysium checked the horizon; the sun hadn’t even fully set.

Elysium looked down to see most of the lights in the village have gone out. Only a scarce number of torches remain lit—the windows of the homes they sit in front of dark.

Opening her wings, Elysium flew down to the village, landing in the soft snow of the fields around it. She looks at it for a while, making sure no one is up, before walking towards its houses. The roofs are white—covered in snow—and held up by sod and stone walls.

The Realta wanders to the center of the village and stops to look around. It felt strange standing in a town, even if no one is around. A whistling breeze rolls by, whipping her hair in her face. She walks over to one of the homes with a lantern out front, peering inside a window. Two villagers lie wrapped in each others arms under a large wool blanket.

There’s a crunch of snow—footsteps that aren’t hers behind her—and she turns around to see the farmer’s son from earlier, staring at her and levitating a holding.

“Hello?” he asks hesitantly, looking at the Realta's wings.

Elysium freezes, averting her eyes from his.

“Are.... are those wings?” he persists, stepping closer to her.

“Yes.”

The boy blinks, a grin spreading across his lips. “Oh, I’ve never seen anyone with those before!” he said, smiling at her. His smile faded, replaced by a curious look. “Do you have a name?”

“Elysium,” she answered.

The wind picks up. Elysium looked up at the sky, before noticing the child was shivering. “Why are you outside?” she asks, curious.
“Need more firewood from the crib,” the boy says, his teeth chattering as he pointed to a small shed just behind her. “Blankets aren’t thick enough, and my dad hasn’t been well as of late.”

“Is he sick?”

The boy shook his head. “Just old.” He walked past Elysium to the crib, opening it up and grabbing a cloth sling from inside to carry the logs.

She looked around at the homes. “How many people live here?”

He worked as he talked, levitating logs onto the sling. “There’s the Stones and the Pears, the Waxs and the Smiths—they’re the large family, they own three houses—and the roofer, who never tells anyone where he came from. Some of the kids make up stories, about how he—” The child cuts off. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I need to get back before the fire dies.”

He grabbed the sling by its handles, carrying half a dozen logs in it as he walks back past her.

“Wait,” Elysium calls.

He stops and turns to look at her.

Elysium's eyes glow and the dim flame in the lantern the boy was holding brightened, becoming twice as big and bright yellow. “Use this to light the fire, it will keep you and your father warm.”

The child looks at the lantern in surprise before turning and nodding gratefully to her. He turns and runs back home, almost as if he’s afraid the enchanted flame Elysium gave him will disappear if he doesn’t use it quick.

She flew away from the village incase the boy tried to come back. A warmth filled up her chest and a smile tugged at her lips—the first genuine one in years. Spreading her wings, she turned to fly back to the mountain, the freezing gales pecking at her feathers as she skims the mountain slope, climbing up to the overhang where her father still knees. Snow obscured her vision, but she still knows the landscape intimately from walking it long ago.

Rising up over the cliff she had left, she stopped and hovers, seeing her father standing, his skin stark amidst the white snow.

“Welcome back, daughter,” he said, a ghost of a smirk on his face. “Have a pleasant night time stroll?”

Gliding down, Elysium sees the look in her father’s eye and knows he saw everything. “I met a child of this era,” she says evenly. “I have never really met one before.”

“Well of course not, you aren’t supposed to,” Logos reminded her. “That was my rule, remember?”

“It was, but I grew curious.” Elysium bowed her head. “I am sorry. It was wrong of me to break it... but... the boy, did you see his expression when you gave him that flame?”

The warm vanished from Logos's face. “Yes.”

“Don’t you see how we could help them? Our magic is a thousand times theirs, and we can help them with spells they could not ever dream of concieving. You already keep the moon and sun in cycle, you turn the seasons, you bring the wind. Imagine what we could do to make their lives better—”

“—And you must know that is not the Natural Order!” Logos suddenly shouts. His voice echoed across the hills, rumbling the snow from the mountains like thunder. His daughter stands across from him quietly, unfazed by his outburst. “This world must be stronger than that of my siblings. It must grow, virtue and vice, unhampered by me. I cannot force it."

“No, no we can't. But we can guide them.” Elysium gave him a stern look, like he was the one childish. “You told me to be a mother to them. That has to mean more than just ensuring they live. It means raising them and teaching them.”

“I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.”

Elysium ground her teeth, turning and walking back to the overhang. “I’m finding it hard to trust your judgement in this, but I will.”

As her father went back to his kneel, Elysium breathed a sigh of relief, turning to look down the mountain side. The blizzard is picking up, and for a brief moment she wondered whether the boy she met was warm enough in this weather. The fire she gave him would dwindle by morning and despite the harsh cold, it was still early winter.

“Have you frozen stiff, Princess?” Logos asked from under the overhang. Her father rarely used that title. It was a subtle reminder of his hierarchy. “I will think of something to put your mind at ease,” he conceded in an attempt to soothe her.

Elysium nodded as she walked over to the overhang, but her eyes said she did not believe her. Logos moved down beside her. A aetherial wing extends to wrap around her, and he turns to see Elysium looking defiantly away from her.

“You look cold,” Logos said, trying to meet her eyes.

“Thank you,” she mutters. She shifts her body and rests her head in his lap. “I wonder if that boy will tell anyone else what he saw,” Elysium says, glancing at her father out of the corner of her eye.

Logos tilted his head ever so slightly. “I am in doubt that anyone would believe him.”

“Humans have greatly exaggerated their myths about the winds, the sun, and the aurora. I wonder if we’ll show up in folk tales a few years from now.” Elysium stifles a giggle, nudging her father. “I may have exposed our existence.”

“No harm will come of tales told around a campfire,” Logos said, shaking his head at his daughter’s imagination.

“No, I suppose not,” Elysium says, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

The two of them huddled together in the cold, listening to the howling winds toss the snow about with fury. The night seemed to last forever, and Logos stayed up long after his daughter fell into her slumber, wondering how the people in the village survived in such a harsh environment.

He considered for a moment, using the same fire spell that she gave to the boy down in the village, but he dashed the idea; the cold couldn’t kill him, and the light would disturb Elysium. Yet, it serves as an unwanted reminder of his time spent alone, before the sun, when the world was so very dark and cold.

He thought about shutting his eyes, but then remembered he could never sleep. And so he lay there for hours at his daughter’s side with his wings wrapped around her, thinking, because it’s all he could do.
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