Day 282
I wake in the early pre-dawn light that I once would have found energizing and beautiful. Though it’s still beautiful I have to force myself out of my bedroll. I convey a sense of urgency but not immediate danger to Alder and Miriam and leave them to rouse the rest of the camp and get everyone moving. I do the same for Andstella and ask her to make sure that all the surrounding fae know about the approaching storm and that we get moving as soon as possible.
After a brief but thorough letter to Amytri I pass out again at Andstella’s insistence.
When I wake, the carriage is moving faster and smoother than I’ve felt before. Some sort of mastery of motion is at play here and it is very well done. My letter box is overflowing with responses from Amytri,
- Spell formula and design for a cloak pin for field of warmth
- Instructions for a bow grip for flame arrows
- Instructions for self-warming kettles
- Random scattering of weather magic
- Earth magic for constructing and strengthening walls
And Kadia is sitting beside me also surrounded by papers and design work. She has been working on weather magic but also on plans for shoring up defences around Dreamfall to protect us from the storm. She has been thinking about a potential replacement for a pearl as a casting focus. A pearl is iridescent and reflective but also unique in that it is made up of hundreds of individual layers. Very few other items have that sort of property, not even crystals. Obsidian, perhaps, or some other sort of volcanic rock. She also wonders if Basalt might be able to help us with earth magic if we can reach her via Crag.
The rest of the day passes with intercarriage communication on our various challenges:
- Miriam: How are we going to feed and supply Dreamfall in the dead of winter?
- Andstella: How do we lead and inspire what is growing into an army?
And finally in the evening I slip into the Dreaming once again to convene with Bran beyond our letters. He seems tired and stressed that he’s been unable to reach Whitewater to send word. We try again together to reach Vedrah and then I try on my own to reach Bella, both unsuccessfully. At last I manage to reach Zadiyah at least, though she can’t speak back to me.
Days 283 - 285
Communication from Amytri’s campus trickles off a little as we start narrowing down information that might help. It seems that he’s given my dove to a student doing research on the Barrier who has been making connections between their own work and the magic of the Desolation. I learn a bit about the Barrier from their notes, which is fun. At most though we can narrow the Desolation down to not being a mountain…
Day 286
We arrive at Dreamfall safely, riding into the night with our surroundings lit only by my dawn aura. I remark to Andstella how silly I feel, a dusk fae glowing like the morning sun.
Day 287
The contingent from Drognar arrive bringing supplies and tools from Bran along with ten dwarven soldiers from Torrick. Rina and her party are with them, along with Alrudian, Zidi, and Crag. Nina is not, and she sends me a sealed letter via Bran that tells me she is staying to protect Bran from over-exerting himself in my absence.
Day 288
The storm hits. The front arrives with ice drakes and wolves that penetrate into the grove but we fight them back in waves, taking watches and sleeping like soldiers.
Day 290
It is the early evening when an emaciated fae crashes through the canopy and falls to the floor of the grove. We were in the midst of quietly going over the magic that will let us send the Vanguard back through to our tree but all of that is forgotten as I rush to tend to her.
Andstella and I together carry her to the edge of the grove where some of the outer trees have been damaged near death by the raging storm. As I leave her to drink in the songs of the wounded trees I explain who she is to Andstella. And then she returns, refreshed, and explains what led her here.
She escaped from her swamp with the help of an old friend, an Elder dragon (Darkness) who just happened to be passing through...this is something I may have to follow up on. She went to Whitewater and unearthed the Imperial village on her own, shepherding the villagers there safely to shelter before the storm hit. There is no doubt in my mind that she saved them all.
Magdalena planted our tree a hundred years ago and has been giving it the songs she’s been consuming and saving. All the songs that come from that tree are songs she’s taken - ancient songs from before the War and even further back before the Pruning. It’ll bear fruit in the next growing season.
And here she apologizes. Magdalena guided Andstella to bond with the tree because she knew she would need a young fae to slip through the thicket and reach it. She apologizes for taking Andstella as a child and then leaving her all alone.
So now we will need to bring the fruit somewhere else and plant it. It can only be planted in a grove and it would change all the trees of that grove to be like it. Dreamfall is the obvious first choice, of course, though she doesn’t demand it. With this grove established as belonging to the day and night fae, we would have a secure place to headquarter.
And she gives us more history as well, which is especially new to Andstella.
After the days of the Treeborn, there were still many types of fae that coexisted. Some, like the elemental fae, simply died out because they could not sustain themselves. Others survived but were incompatible, not being able to sleep beneath each other’s trees. The fae of seasons, of day and night, celestial fae, and fae of leaf and vine.
Heart of Song and Magdalena fought over this, she tells us. Magdalena wanted the Heart to let the dying fae change into something that could survive but the Heart said that life would take its own course. Not all songs live on.
The Pruning was a war between fae - a war between possibilities that could survive but were incompatible. Our kind of fae were most feared because the cycle of day and night is endless. We live longer than any other fae will. We’ll approach being Undying and carry a stronger legacy than any others. The thing that brought our kind down was jealousy and fear. At the end of the Pruning there were very few kinds of fae remaining and the Heart retreated because she couldn’t bear to choose between her children, and so all but the seasons fae died out as their groves were destroyed. Magdalena rested during this time but in the following centuries she tried several times to bring back other kinds of fae using new trees. She stores all of the songs she has devoured and has worked to be able to return them to grove trees. Then she produced a tree that could influence the form of others, then one that could let a fae transition from one type to another, and finally one that didn’t begin with a season grove tree. So now we are here, with a day and night tree that we could plant to transform an entire grove into day and night trees and let the seasonal fae transform to be like us.
In her long history of experimentation she said she has only succeeded in creating a lost race once before - the fae of leaf and vine. Their grove was destroyed but the fae themselves somehow managed to live on without their grove. And with a small smile at me - they became elves.
It’s an enormous revelation. We’ve noticed before that elves and fae are so similar save for the size and wings but our lifespans are so different as to be unthinkable companions. The magic involved in a lasting relationship between seasonal fae and long-lived elves is to strip away an integral part of what it means to be a seasonal fae...but knowing that the day and night fae will live just as long as the elves is enormous. If Camellia were to join us as well, she wouldn’t have to use the magic that Magdalena had shown her earlier. We could both sleep and wake throughout the centuries.
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