It’s a complicated letter. Segments of it are blacked out with illusions with a magical script over top describing, in summary, the information beneath. Enclosed within the packet are several dozen other small envelopes, each containing a brief journal-style entry of a fairly mundane but cheerful day. They stretch back to when Tira first arrived at the Keep, though they get increasingly detailed in the latter months, with illusory drawings and landscapes.
My love,
I hear (from a supposedly reliable source) that you are doing things I would be proud of. It was nice to hear, but I didn’t need to be told to know that.
I miss the days when all a letter needed to be was a tether between us when we were what - a few hundred miles apart? The goings-on were so simple that it was more about the contact than the information. This time at least I can trust that Grandmaster can tell you anything strategic or political that you might want to hear about. From me you will have only joy, though it may be complicated joy indeed.
I wish you could see me. Maybe Grandmaster will be able to show you what I’ve become….I can’t bear to craft a packaged illusion of myself for you. Love, I have
wings. I can fly and I’ve danced with dragons in the sky! And the colours…Thalien would be so delighted to see me festooned with the colours of sunset and growing things. I can’t wait to show Doraal my newfound abilities with growing things. Doraal…I’ve heard that he has suffered a grave injury - in a delegation I’m sending a few weeks hence I’ll be sending something I hope might help. I intend to send several military assets (and a political one) as well. I ran into one of Auntie's students this side and together we have put together a care package.
The wings and colours are part of a greater transformation, part of something that has led to a very strange family around me. Fae here sleep beneath trees that sing the songs of their ancestors to them, but there is largely only one short-lived race of fae in this region. No others have been present for thousands of years. My sister, Andstella [
the word conjures a simple illusion of her beneath the night sky, staring upwards] is the first of a long-lost people: The Fae of Day and Night. She is midnight, as is one of my young soon-to-be-adopted students, Dawn [
a similarly simple illusion of Dawn dancing in firelight shadows].
I communed with the tree that created this race anew and found that it had been planted by my own teacher, Magdalena [
an illusion of Magdalena’s elvish form shifts into her fae form]. It changed me into something new; rather, it added dimensions to me. I’m an elf, always, but now fae as well. I hear the songs, I have memories of my ancestors, I remember lives I lived as a fae back when fae and elves were friends. The best of these memories is of a child I had…and in the first generation of new fae I found someone who remembers me as his mother.
So…I have a son, of a sort. His name is Liliales [
an image of Liliales surrounded by our illusory songbirds] and you would love him. He is so quick and gentle! I can just see him hovering around Doraal in the garden.
The first illusion-shrouded paragraph carries the raised script:
Good news, though troubling because it reveals that our memories of someone we love have been erased and may cause you to feel guilty or bewildered. The person is found and safe.
I’ve also brought another young one into harbour in a way. I agonized over how to describe her or whether I should at all. Again, I rely upon Grandmaster for some of this to make sense to you. Her name is Mystery, though Grandmaster tells me she chose the name Trillium before her memories of her time in the Empire were sealed from her. I don’t have any memories of her either, nor does anyone but Grandmaster. I imagine you won’t either, and that is to be expected. She has your knife and a pendant from Doraal, though it was clear long before I saw those keepsakes that she is your daughter. When I saw her in a snowstorm I thought perhaps you’d gotten sick of the distance and had cut your way through the Barrier to come find me. [A moving illusion of Mystery striding out of the storm, then us finding her knife and pendant, then drinking together on my bed]. What is important is that she is here and safe and extraordinarily loved. And she takes after all of us - we recently had a spot of trouble with someone who picked a fight with me. When I wrote a letter to ask if she was alright she told me she had obliterated three armies and wanted to know if they were after us for something or just being terribly annoying.
The rest of the familial reports I must condense for the sake of brevity, though I could ramble for pages about them.
[Each line is accompanied by a simple illusion of the family member doing something particularly evocative of their real nature. Caravel is teaching, Dal/Lyssa/Alder are all cooking and baking.]
- I personally collected Caravel from the care of a young girl several months ago. He is well, and I hope to send him home along with our delegation if he will let me.
- We rescued Dal from a snare he’d gotten himself into. He is well, and serving as advisor and chef to a newly minted dwarven king I’m quite fond of.
- Lyssa is as electrifying as always, in several ways. She has made strong ties amongst dwarves, including a shield-bearer named Randall who I quite like.
- Tira will be leading my delegation back across the Barrier along with her partnered dragon, Haze. He is very sweet and loves hiding games; I think you’d like him.
- Bran, Thalien’s human apprentice, is truly growing into himself. He is engaged to Vaneilli and ought to wed this summer.
- Alder, my assassin and shadowmage, is accompanying Tira back home. I think I am not supposed to tell anyone this yet but I don’t particularly care - he and Tira and Knotrael have become an item. I think I will have to ask Doraal if I can have Knotrael for my own family…
- Hella, my human apprentice, has bonded with the Osyr imperial sorceress who helped us those 200 years ago before rescuing Lord Ikshafael. Her name is Kadia, and the two of them share a body and will be returning to the Empire at the Empress’ instructions.
- Camellia is a fae of dawn, and currently a knight. You would love her tea; she has been taking good care of me.
- Zadiyah has only just arrived in the city where I am stationed after being apart for many months. I’m so proud of her and glad to have her with me - a good foundation for a strong military leadership on this side.
There are a few others who are not yet sworn but who I intend to bring into my outer family as soon as I can corral them all in one place. Dawn, I’ve already told you about. Nina and Miriam are both human youngsters from the same village as Hella. Nina is to be married and crowned soon, and Miriam will be going back to the Empire to continue her studies.
And he may not be family, but he is worth mentioning - I met a travelling merchant unlike anyone I’d met before. I think he is Carthian, judging from his marks. But the story is more complicated than that. I entrust Grandmaster with the responsibility for telling you anything you need to know about the Collective and what drives them; I have learned much here that is not actionable until we are reunited, but the time will come.
The second illusion-shrouded paragraph:
My guesses on the origins of Rabiya, someone who I believe to be Carthian. While it does not sway my opinion of the Collective as a whole, it nurtures the seed of hope that individuals might one day be persuaded away from them.
I looked at his past and saw his mother, a Carthian, fleeing through the Collective’s territory. I can only conclude that racially he is part Carthian and part of one of the Collective races. Other visions of the past and what little I know of the Collective’s origins make me believe that those races are people who once swore an oath or accepted a binding. I have no mercy in my heart for the people who continue to wage war against our Empire but maybe one day in the distant future I’d like to imagine unbinding them, or at least offering a choice. It’s a slim hope…still one worth sharing.
I know you will feel the difference in my magic via the stone I have enclosed and some of it warrants further explanation. Arcane magic, blood, songs, dusk, all are pieces of me that you know (or at least, that I can marginally explain). But I have grown into a Hand here, and it is hard to admit that such a thing happened without being able to share it with you. In one of the places I now know as home there was a shard of the Empress left behind after the end of the last war. She called me before her and after our conversation she sent me forth as her Fifth Hand.
This Empress is different from the Empress we know. She is colder, more severe. I am told that this is how she was in the war, but it is not my story to tell, nor do I even know all of the details.
The third illusion-shrouded paragraph:
A complicated story involving the Empress’ history. I remain as devoted as ever and have come to know a new side. I want to share how it has affected me, but I can’t tell her story for her.
I harboured that shard of the Empress for weeks as I continued to travel until finally we were able to complete a working that let her walk outside my body as an elf, though she returns to me to rest for much of the day. As the Empress of Old she was not kind, but she chose to be something new when she stepped outside. Like Hella and Kadia I now share my energy with Kaide, an Osyr master jeweller and fellow student of Magdalena. She is kind and a little bit uncertain of herself, fiercely protective of me, somewhat adrift. Also a sight to behold with a sword - you would like her. It is important to both of us that she is not a fragment of the Empress but her own self. I don’t quite know how our Empress will receive her
The more I learn here, the less I know. Home and the war seem so very far away and I know that both are in good and capable hands. I am so proud. You are so loved. I miss you more than oranges.
[The script here shifts if you stare at it. It is hundreds of the same words overlayed and only one drifting to the surface at a time]
I love you always.
Heiassa
Presented in the small postcard-style message are images from memory of the Keep, the Temple of Seasons, the Crystal Spires, Wellspring, the statues outside the Weaver's Village, Deldrin, Four Boots, the Tuskan people set against the Desolation, the Unfreezing Sea and the Longing overhead, the Ziggurat, the canyon Amytri showed me, Solace, the stone structure of New Whitewater, Shaelie, Puddle's pond, the spring in the Village of Lost People, the Celestial Grove, the cottage in Dreamfall, the city of Deep Refractions lit up by its streetlamps, the view from the dias that raised into the sky, Wayin's tree, Sandstorm and Shale's statues.
Quick, candid memories of Lyssa and Alder cooking, Randall going down the steps of the Ziggurat, Hue dancing in the air with Jerun, Dawn and Andstella flirting, Kadia growing trees amidst the Unfreezing Sea, Tira teasing Alder and Knotrael in a pile, Bran ruffling Hella's hair, Zadiyah kneeling and being swept up in an embrace, Amytri the way he looked when I first met him beside the corpse of an enormous beast, Caravel teaching Nina, Torrick and Nina glancing at one another, Dal and Lyssa immediately after we rescued him, Liliales and the other fae children hearing stories from Magdalena, Wayin's special spot in his branches, Haze and Alder playing hide-and-seek, Camellia emerging as a fae of dawn for the first time, Kadia when we went for dinner with Torrick, Miriam after her first haircut, Kaide fishing for the first time.
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