#(but with adar it’s like…peers almost?)

[malkaleh]

for things I'd like to see you write - adar in gold cages verse? uh i have proof of concept? golden cages verse, tw for sauron behaviors (stalking, captivity, implicit offscreen creepiness) and dissociation

Time passes like melting syrup, in drips and drops. A day there, a week there. He's losing time. It's not new. Adar has lived this before.

He walks the perimeter of his cell. He puts his hands on the walls and tries to imagine he can feel the footsteps of his children quaking through them. He sees shadows on the wall that do not exist, hears phantom sounds, as he had chained on a cliffside long ago. Unlike then, he sings to himself, the memorized geneologies and tales of the past keeping him grounded even in his isolation.

Mairon stops being bored with him eventually. The new fortress Mairon rules is staffed by Adar's children and humans alike, and it is only humans who scrub him down, humans who chain him per their lord's instructions. He is not sure if he is relieved or afraid that he has not seen another Uruk since his children turned on him in the forest.

The collar and leash are meant to be humiliating. So is the tunic that is cut too low, hemline too high. Mairon taunts him about them. Adar makes out jokes about loyal dogs and biting the hand that feeds you through the buzzing in his ears. He cannot find it in himself to feel anything more than tired about it.

He's lead to a plush bedroom that smells like flowers and rain. There are other prisoners there. The taller one has a face that makes Adar's memory stir; the other's face is like a lightning bolt.

(Adar had seen Melian once, from a distance, when she had laid out her girdle to protect Doriath. LIke all other Maia he has seen, her beauty was imprinted permanently in his mind: just as he would know Mairon in any body he wore, he'd recognize Melian's eyes in any face. Would recognize Luthien's grace, seen from the edge of a banquet hall, in the limbs of the elf moving to face Mairon, voice rising, snatching away the leash.)

You can't -

He destroyed Eragi - venge? - what you want to him -

Fine! I'll take -

Mairon seems satisfied to leave him with the elves, then, after stealing a kiss from Melian's scion. A lock clicks when he closes the door.

Adar waits. (he is aware of what elves think of him.) (he will endure it all until he can find his children again.) (His mind, cruelly, looks at Melian's scion and thinks, he is so young. The elf must be at least a thousand years old, given what little Adar remembers of Doriath's royalty. ) (He would not defend himself here, knowing Mairon's eye is always upon him, but that tender piece of him that has survived since Utumno thinks my child, my child, you shouldn't be here. It is hypocritical; Adar knows the two of them had near fought to the death months before. This elf has killed his children, wrecked his plans. Some wretched instinct still thinks, hide behind me. )

Melian's scion bids him to kneel before the bed. He and the other elf (nine-fingered, clumsy, hair gold-brown like a rabbit) whisper to each other before coming to some conclusion that Adar barely hears through the screaming in his ears.

He's not a threat now - but he could be later. Are you sure -

He cannot destroy my city a second time. Look at him. He's like us now, isn't he?

...He is. I wish it was not so. I wish one of us could be free of those clutching hands, even if he was our enemy.

You are the healer. i will cut the apples, you see what you can make of him?

The nine-fingered elf settles on the bed. Melian's scion pats his knee, and Adar settles before him. Adar lets him tease a straw to his lips and sips cool water at his command. Adar watches as an apple is sliced to pieces and fed to him bit by bit. It is a struggle to not lick fingers, not fawn, not show the worship that Mairon had trained into him -

Melian's scion, eyes glittering like dew at dawn, hair like the sun rippling over a dark-pebbled riverbank. The armored elf who had faced Adar in battle, armor golden, skin olive, mouth jagged like a snarling bear and attacks equally ferocious.

I don't think he is lucid right now, but he's docile. I hadn't expected the father of the Uruk to have been brought here to break like we have been. I'll check his injuries when he's responding to what I say. I think - I think, he may be our ally. Why else would Sauron give him to us daring us to harm him?

Adar allows himself to be tugged onto the bed, settles at the foot of it. He can wait. Once again, they will see the stars.

This is so good and chilling and heartbreaking I am going to FLAIL FOREVER (also if you or anyone want to write/create stuff in this verse I will perish of delight just let me know so I can flail).

“You are too soft hearted, both of you - my little nightingale and my jewel. Too beautiful and too kind for the world to have any rights to either of you. And you would give mercy even to this one, would you not?”

Sauron speaks softly, his hands in Elrond and Celebrimbors curls, gentle but decidedly possessive. They are treasures, Adar thinks through a haze, too much in his body but not in it at all, but there is as much horror in Saurons gentle sincere love as his other works - even as he does not harm them he harms them.

Perhaps this might have been his fate once and Adar shudders in a kind of strange pity. Though perhaps not - he does not know.

“I should have simply told you that if you wished any of your children to live and breathe that you would be a loyal bed partner.”

It is a whisper in Adars mind as he watches Mairon kiss the two elves with such affection.

[acornsandoaktrees]

Into Tall Grass (And Webs)

Squirrels Arc

word count: 1.1K

summary: The princes and Tauriel go where they should not.

glossary:

iônnig = my son

adar = father

trigger warnings: spiders, brief claustrophobic themes

Laerion hoisted Legolas up, grunting under little boots on his face until Tauriel had hold of him.

Finding purchase in knitted branches, Laerion climbed up after them until he too perched on a wide bough crowning the hedge.

Dutiful, Tauriel held Legolas' arm so he wouldn't fall as he peered over the edge, eyes wide with vertigo.

Voices approached the screen of wild plants currently hiding the elflings from sight. Their caretaker's intonation was clear and bell-like amongst them.

Laerion dropped to the bed of vegetation on the other side; grass brushed his waist. Fresh dirt showering from her boots, Tauriel kicked up moss clinging to the branches in her clumsied hurry to descend; trusting his elder brother to catch him, Legolas bravely leapt. Feathers in his arms, Laerion bent his knees to set him down.

Legolas' shoulders matched the height of the grass here, tiny ellon almost swallowed by the forest. Laerion had to search for his hand a moment in the dewy depths so as not to lose him entirely. Tauriel ran ahead, batting away obstructing vines.

Cast by the high hidden sun above the canopy, shadows cooled reasonably the spring warmth. Dew still slicked laden branches, drawing dark streaks on the elflings' tunics as they walked. Though the sky was blue and cloudless above their heads, eternal twilight reigned this side of the hedge, everything caught in a fragile quiet just before birdsong wakes. Flowers quivered expectantly; odd things rustled in bushes.

Laerion escorted his charges deeper within the bounds of the forest, ignoring the wariness swirling in his stomach, warning him to be afraid of the unknown.

Every so often, Legolas and Tauriel strayed from him to examine strange plants. Tauriel chatted to the younger about animal tracks visible in the soft earth. Legolas listened intently to her, though sometimes far-off calls or rustling leaves distracted him.

Caving to their questions, Laerion knelt in the grass to see a grounded bee.

Torn wings working furiously, it struggled in a frenzied buzz of noise. Translucent string clung to its body, matting pinstriped fur and stealing the sweet brazen pollen on its legs.

Laerion's heart dropped into his stomach. He tracked the web up into interwoven arcs wound taught over shrubbery; the strange cloying smell hanging in the air explained itself.

"This is far enough."

Tauriel raised her voice to protest. When Laerion rounded on her harshly, she shrunk back, sullen. Eyes watery, Legolas tugged on Laerion's sleeve.

"This isn't home," he whimpered, "I want to go home."

Quietly agreeing with him, Laerion picked him up. "Come, Tauriel."

The fiery-haired elleth sulked, but waded through the wilted grass alongside them nevertheless. Indignant, she kicked a pebble out of her path. It disappeared into wild ferns and rolled away, catching in webs.

>---|-

They descended in a horrible chittering fracas.

>---|-

"Legolas!" Laerion screeched, kicking desperately in blindness. "Tauriel!"

It took him only a moment to realise his limbs were bound, his body entirely cocooned. Spiders hissed and trees cried in his ears. Huge shadows passed over his veiled vision time and time again.

Everywhere; they must've been everywhere. Laerion screamed for the little elfings again, and this time Legolas whimpered in response.

Wriggling in vain attempts to free himself, Laerion clawed blindly at the webbing encasing his body. So tight it hurt to breathe. Strident shrieks in his periphery, huge legs prodded him back and forth.

As long as they focused on him: as long as they left Legolas and Tauriel alone. A sob escaped him. Those sweet children were going to die and he could do nothing.

Catching on his fingertips, thick string stretched then tore. An opening -- a pale crack of grey light. If he could just reach the knife sheathed at his belt...

Muted sunlight burst across his eyes. Starved of the freshness of the forest, Laerion gasped in stale air. He caught a branch as he began to fall, hauling himself up.

Dislodging lingering webs, Laerion threw up his knife just in time to bury it between the many black eyes of the spider charging at him. Its momentum drove it forward still, pincers relaxing, Laerion's heels scraping on brittle bark.

Others crowded him, hissing vile complaints. Branches groaned under their weight as they bore down upon him with awful speed. Large and looming, the air shivered with their fury.

Raising his tiny blade, Laerion managed to draw in a shallow gasp and swung at the closest spider.

It recoiled with a sharp cry: the sound gurgled then died abruptly as its head flew from its body.

Overspilling with dark tar, the lone thorax tipped forward and crashed through low branches.

Singing righteously, many arrows swept through the gathered spiders, falling like rain into their midst.

Dropping one by one, the beasts' furious racket dwindled until all that remained was the dull anticipatory thrum of the sick forest. It was over in seconds.

Wiping clean her sword on satin robes, the Elvenqueen bridged branches to stand before her son.

Above them, Liatan joined the gathered band of elves, holding Legolas to his chest and Tauriel to his side. Both elflings clutched his tunic, faces hidden, webs clinging to their clothes.

Laerion shirked under his mother's glare. Her disappointment stung.

Thalanes extended her hand. In her open palm, the boy placed his bloodied knife.

"Consider yourself lucky," Thalanes said, a storm on the horizon. She turned away, clutching the knife to her chest.

Another elf placed his hand at Laerion's back, herding him after the hunting band towards warmer shadows.

>---|-

Feathers brushing her ears, Alphes reached up to readjust her slipping crown as she peered around the corner.

Earlier, her brothers had stolen away Tauriel while she had been stuck in the hold of her linguistics teacher. When a great fuss arose outside, he had been gone fetching new scrolls from the library, which quite stupidly gave Alphes the opportunity to slip away. They could never trap her for long.

Now, she hovered at a shadowed nook overlooking the throne room, out of sight of guards that would snatch her up and carry her back to her teacher.

"Iônnig."

An ant far below, the prince turned back to face his father.

"They are only young, and the forest has become perilous. You must be more careful," Thranduil said, rigid. The deep thrum of his voice echoed grandly throughout the cavern.

Laerion dipped into a low bow. "I understand, Adar." Alphes thought his light voice shook just a little. It might've been the hollows of the walls.

[dashesofink]

New Life

Drabble: “Request. Thranduil x Fem!Reader. Giving birth to his child, a girl this time ; a few months after the Battle of the Five Armies. And then, the reader/mother gives the child to Thranduil and he holds her into his arms for the very first time.” @anilynsworld

Pairing: Thranduil x wife!Reader

Word Count: 1258

Warnings: none

Word had spread quickly around the realm of Mirkwood that the King was now father to yet another beautiful child. The handmaidens to the queen were bustling around the halls of Mirkwood, excited grins placed on their faces as the chatter of the news spread like a wildfire. Thranduil stood patiently outside of his queen’s chambers, and even though he had stated he would no longer live within the realm of Mirkwood, Legolas was placed besides his father, his lips pulled into a tight line as his keen eyes stared at the door in front of him.

“Do you think he looks like you, Adar?” Legolas’s voice pierced the thick atmosphere like a hot knife to butter, his father's concentration being broken as he looked up from the floor. Unbeknownst to either of the two Ellon’s, Thranduil’s wife had instead given birth to a beautiful Elleth, her eyes matching that of her father while her thick hair came from her mother. Despite the calm exterior of the king, his insides churned with anxiety and a hint of fear as they both waited to be allowed in.

“We will know soon enough.” Anticipation heavily laced Thranduil’s voice as he clasped his hands together behind his back, and almost as if the Valar knew of his words, the door to your chambers was unlocked and opened to reveal a dark-haired elf. The handmaiden smiled timidly at the two royals in front of her, and she gave a small wave of her hand before stepping back and holding the wooden door open for the two to come in. Thranduil didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he stepped into the room, his chest falling with a heavy sigh as he spotted your figure lying against the headboard of your bed.

“Mell nín, how are you faring?” Thranduil was by your side in an instant, his fingers reaching out to brush aside a strand of hair as his lips found their place against your forehead. Your lips pulled into a loving smile as you looked from him to the bundle in your arms, your fingers gently pulling back the velvet covering to reveal the face of your baby to your husband. Thranduil unintentionally fell to his knees and his eyes widened as he caught sight of his newborn child, his heart racing with excitement and joy as he went to stroke the child’s delicate skin.

The sudden contact of cold fingers against her face caused the child to squirm in your arms, her lips pursing for a moment before she let out a tiny squeal before settling back down into your arms. “We are doing fine, my love.” Your words were soft as you balanced your baby in your arms, but you could see the twitching in Thranduil’s arms and fingers as he looked down to his new child with love, and you set a hand on top of his fingers before you went to hand him your child. “Come, hold your child.” Thranduil allowed you to gently guide the bundle into his arms after he came to sit next to you on the bed, your fingers correcting the position of his arms a few times before you slipped the sleeping child into his caring arms.

You couldn’t help the laugh that fell from your tired lips at his reaction to the baby, his eyes filled to the brim with a love and a joy you haven’t seen in him since the day of your wedding. You watched as his slim fingers reached down to once again stroke the child’s face, her little hand immediately latching on to her father's fingers as she gurgled in her sleep, to which you smiled at before you looked around the room.

Legolas stood by the door, and though he too was smiling gently at the babe, his features were laced with hesitation. “Tolo, Legolas,” Your hand was outstretched before the Elf, the same smile you had when they walked in gracing your features once more as you waved for him to come forward. “Come see your baby sister.”

“Sister?” Thranduil’s keen ears were quick to pick up your words, his eyes wide with surprise as he looked up to you. You nodded your head ecstatically as Legolas came to stand next to Thranduil, his blue eyes peering down into the resting face of his baby sister. “I-I have a daughter?” His voice was almost a whisper as he spoke. Thranduil has been waiting for months to meet his new child, one which he vowed to protect with his life if need be and to care for as long as he was alive. He was so caught up in thinking that he would have another boy, as he had the first time, the thought of having a daughter completely evaded his mind. But now, as he sat surrounded by his family and as he held his beautiful daughter in his arms, his heart swelled with a love that was not possible when having a son. Though not in a bad way, this love was different.

“You do.” You grabbed a hold of Legolas’s hand as you nodded in response, your fingers giving his hand a warm squeeze as you smiled at him kindly. Legolas’s heart churned as he looked to his new sister, and for a moment he felt compelled to stay behind instead of leaving to meet with the Dúnedain, to stay and protect his sister. You could see the contemplation in his eyes, how his heart longed to stay in Mirkwood for the time being instead of going off as he had originally planned, and your fingers once again squeezed his hands to get his attention. “You are welcome to stay with her, Iôn.” You spoke kindly to him, your eyes starting from his face to look back to your daughter as Thranduil continued to gaze down at her. “But I respect your decision to leave if you so chose.”

“They have already been alerted of my coming,” Legolas’s voice was tight with emotion as he looked away from you, but as he felt the warmth of your hand continuing to wrap around his own, he felt a strange peace within him. You gave an understanding nod before you looked away once again, another gurgling noise coming from your daughter pulling your attention away from him. “I will come visit, if I am permitted to do so.”

“Of course you are.” An odd reassuring tone laced Thranduil’s voice as he finally looked away from his daughter to address the prince, his usual cold eyes being warmed at the sight of his daughter. Thranduil stood to his full height, the bundle of new life held securely in his arms as he gave a nod to his son. “My daughter will need her Muindor, will she not?”

Legolas’s eyes widened for a moment, his breath being caught in his throat as he looked away from his father down to the baby in his arms. It felt like a dream, he had to admit, to look down to a baby that was somehow related to him. Never in a thousand years did Legolas believe he would ever have a brother or a sister, but as he looked into the face of the sleeping child, his heart burst with love and a fierce desire for protection suddenly sprouted in his veins as he gave a solid nod. “I suppose she does, yes. As she will need her Adar and Naneth.”

“She will need all of us.”

[ncfan-1]

Tacenda

Upon hearing of a Sith holocron loose somewhere in the plains around the Enclave, the Exile and Mical go looking for it. They find the past along with it. [Fanfic written for Fictober 2018, prompt: “Impressive, truly”]

[Also on AO3]

[CN/TW: Trauma; PTSD; suicide; suicide ideation due to a malevolent outside force; mentions of debt slavery; disturbing imagery]

-------

Kalani had been raised with tales of the damage that could be wrought by misuse of even a Jedi holocron. She didn’t know of any initiate taken into the Jedi Order after the days of Exar Kun who hadn’t been. Those below the rank of Knight were only permitted heavily-restricted, heavily-supervised access to the Order’s holocrons, and this was one of the few things true of all Temples, all Enclaves, in a time and a galaxy where the Jedi Order was yet decentralized and the different communities could almost call themselves completely autonomous. Even Jedi Knights contended with some level of restriction—oh, how Atris had complained when she ran up against those restrictions herself.

The Jedi holocron was a wellspring of knowledge. It was wondrous and wonderful, and also dangerous. Caught unawares, they who opened a holocron could find their mind flooded with more information than it could process. The brain might ‘overload,’ the way a droid would if overtaxed, and the slow recovery from that was the least of what could happen to you. Open your mind too wide to the holocron, and it might just cause your mind to splinter.

Exar Kun was not the first Jedi to turn after delving too deeply into a holocron, and Kalani had the weary feeling (if the Jedi Order was ever reconstituted, if any holocrons were recovered, if any of them were meant to survive this), he would not be the last. Too many people equated knowledge with wisdom. Too many people, upon being exposed to the true scale of the universe, lost hope.

Sith holocrons, Kalani had not learned of until much later. The Order did not teach of them, except to warn its members never to open one, and if they found it already open, to by no means listen to anything it said. Her ignorance had not served her well when she had found an abandoned temple on Dxun full of glowing scarlet holocrons. It had not served her men well.

She didn’t like the idea that there was one lying in wait somewhere in the fields of Dantooine, just waiting for a hapless farmer to stumble across it.

“And we are certain that it is a Sith holocron that Kaevee found, and later discarded? Could it not be that it was a Jedi holocron, corrupted by some outside influence?”

Kalani shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of a Jedi holocron being corrupted before—though I suppose it’s possible; maybe if you synced it with a Sith holocron…” She tried to remember how the interface worked, how new information was uploaded into a holocron, before dismissing it as irrelevant with a shake of the head. “But there is one thing that makes me certain that it was a Sith holocron she found. She said it spoke to her.” Kalani twisted the pen she had been holding in her hands; if she slipped enough, harsh voices speaking no language she understood, and yet knew the words to anyways, echoed in the back of her head. Whispering of power and madness and death. “No matter what else is true, a Jedi holocron does not speak. It has no will of its own.”

To this, Mical nodded. Kalani could practically see the gears turning behind his blue eyes. “Yes, that is true,” he murmured. He glanced out of the window of the small, disused office in the Khoonda administrative building Administrator Adare had given him the run of, glancing out in what Kalani knew to be the direction of the Enclave. “A Jedi holocron is meant only to instruct, not persuade or corrupt.”

Something about his tone caught at a thread in Kalani’s mind. “You told me yesterday that the Republic let you study a Sith holocron.” She peered intently at Mical’s face, a frown stealing over her mouth. “What exactly did that entail?”

In a tone that reminded her of nothing quite so much as Atris, a very long time ago, after being told she didn’t have the clearance needed to look at something in the Archives, “I may have misspoken earlier; I don’t think I can really call the access I was allowed study. I was permitted to look at the Sith holocron, the better to be able to identify one in the field, if need be.”

“Just look at it, then?” What was the name of the man who had opened the first ghastly red holocron they had found on Dxun? “Not touch it?” How had he died? “It wasn’t open when you examined it, was it?” Had it been the long drop from the pinnacle, or the swift end of a lightsaber plunged into his own heart?

Mical seemed to guess at none of what was passing through Kalani’s mind—or if he did, he was very good at schooling his face always into neutrality. “The holocron was shut when I was shown it, and now, I wasn’t allowed to touch it. The Republic knows how dangerous such tools are; the holocron is typically contained within a sealed durasteel crate, and was shown to myself and the other researchers sealed in a transparisteel display case.”

Well, at least some good had come of that horrific episode on Dxun. “Good,” Kalani mumbled. Her eyes strayed to the map lying out on the table between them, all the Xs and circles Mical had drawn, with the Enclave at the epicenter. “Now, these are the spots you think Kaevee’s most likely dump sites?”

“Yes. I’ve heard enough reports to know the strange influence a Sith holocron exerts over its bearer. Kaevee would have been drawn to a place with some power in the Force.”

Kalani narrowed her eyes. “You know a great deal about Dantooine’s local ‘hot spots,’” she said slowly, watching his face carefully for any sign of reaction. The morning sunlight pouring through the window made the air in the room hot and still and close.

If there was anything to give away, Mical did not let it slip. “As I have said, I am a historian, one who specializes in Jedi history and traditions. I did my research before coming here.”

And perhaps that was all there was to it. The information Kalani had just mentioned was restricted—under normal circumstances, you would have needed to be a Jedi to know it—but after the emptying of the High Temple, the Republic government likely took charge of the Coruscant Archives and databases. Mical was given access, however brief and however restricted, to a Sith holocron. A certain measure of access to the Coruscant Archives didn’t seem so far-fetched in light of that. And yet…

But that was not Kalani’s primary concern. “Even so, we have no guarantee that the holocron is still at the initial dump site. It might have been carried off since then.”

“And it’s a lot of ground to cover.” Mical leaned back in his chair, shoulders sagging as the prospect of a long, long search settled on them both. “If it were something less dangerous, I would say that we need to organize search parties. But a Sith holocron—“ he waved a hand wearily in the air “—it’s just too dangerous to the unwary mind.”

“And we don’t want word getting out that there’s a holocron here.” Kalani couldn’t even look out the window without catching sight of a crater; the one closest was still ringed with massive clods of earth and stone, the broken bones of Dantooine left to bleach and dry in the sun. “I think Dantooine has had enough unwanted attention to last until the end of time.”

Mical smiled sadly—and that sadness struck at something inside of Kalani whose name she couldn’t quite recall. “That, too.”

They sat, a bit too tender in that heavy, weary sadness to say anything, the sadness paralyzing them too much to go on. It hit Kalani all over again what had become of the home of her childhood, and she wished she could leave this place and never return, and let the memories of the broken shell of the Enclave become less real than her memories of the place whole, even as she knew she was going to have to lay eyes on it broken open again today. Whether or not he was being entirely honest with her, the fellow-feeling that shot up between them was real. The warm, soft sadness that rolled off of him was real. It might have been naïve—it was definitely naïve—but she couldn’t believe he meant her or her crew any real harm.

“Oh, hell.”

And then Kalani remembered something.

Mical’s eyes snapped to her face. “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

Kalani pressed a hand to her mouth and groaned. “Yesterday, when I was first heading towards the Enclave, I passed by a camp of salvagers. One of them said he had a holocron for sale. I thought he was just running some sort of scam, but if he was telling the truth…”

Mical nodded decisively, suddenly much firmer than the young man Kalani had known for a little less than a day. “There’s only one way to know for certain.”

-0-0-0-

“You certainly seem to know your way around.” Kalani had let Mical lead the way, just to see what would happen. He led them towards the Enclave with such surety that the idea that this was only the second time he had been there grew more and more ridiculous with each footstep.

“I was given very detailed maps,” Mical told her airily. “I studied them diligently before I arrived.”

“Liar,” Kalani muttered, and trusted the wind howling across the grassy plains of Dantooine to drown out her voice.

The little spires of smoke from the fires in the shantytown the salvagers called a settlement came into view before the settlement itself. Again, there was that fetid odor of sweat and feces and rotting food, but this wasn’t Kalani’s first exposure to it, and she had smelled far, far worse in her time—she was inured to such odors. A glance at Mical caught him wrinkling his nose, and no more. She smiled at him in spite of herself. (And told herself not to ignore the way her memory was pricking at the front of her mind.)

The man who had claimed to have a holocron for sale was hardly difficult to find again; Kalani and Mical found him half-advertising-to, half-harassing one of the locals who sold the salvagers food. Mical’s eyebrows shot up as they watched the poor Twi’lek try to extricate herself from a conversation about the supposedly wondrous baubles the salvager had scrounged from the Jedi Enclave. “He certainly knows how to make himself popular, doesn’t he?” Mical murmured.

“He’s potentially about to become a lot more popular,” Kalani replied, “and I don’t think he’d like how that feels. Come on.”

The Twi’lek, her black-dappled blue lekku twitching irritably, stormed past them as Kalani and Mical neared the salvager and his little “stand.” “Good morning… Ralon, wasn’t it?”

Ralon’s narrow, weather-beaten face lit up at their approach. “Ah, you have returned!” the eagerness in his voice was equal parts hunger and desperation. Maybe desperation was stronger, and Kalani wondered uneasily if it had been absent yesterday, or if it had been there and she just hadn’t been looking for it, because she was convinced he was just a scam artist. “Have you rethought looking at my wares?”

“Yes, I have,” Kalani said firmly, if significantly more quietly than Ralon’s bombastic tones. “Specifically, the hol—“

“Ah!” Ralon’s dark eyes darted around the camp; he understood some need for caution, at least. “Say no more, madame! If you and your companion would follow me?”

Under other circumstances, Kalani supposed she might have been concerned that this shifty man was leading her and Mical—who, while capable enough at evasion to reach the Enclave sublevel unharmed, had yet to give any indication of what he was like in close-quarters combat against an intelligent opponent—to a tent at the far edge of the camp, a position that would be difficult to escape from if need be. But she was armed, blaster pistol and vibroblade both, and if it wasn’t safe (for multiple reasons) to use the Force here, she could say with confidence that she was feeling much stronger in body than she had when she woke up on the Peragus mining station. A cause was good for that. She wasn’t feeling worried. Just a little impatient, and better not to let Ralon see that.

The interior of Ralon’s canvas tent didn’t smell any better than the rest of the camp. If anything, the close quarters and lack of air flow made the tent smell worse than the rest of the camp. A flutter of movement to her left, and Kalani looked to see Mical visibly struggling not to gag as they sat down on an overturned crate.

Careful, she mouthed to him, nodding to Ralon, who stood with his back turned to them as he rummaged through a crate full of odds and ends.

Mical quirked a rueful smile, and mouthed something that might have been I am trying.

At last, Ralon pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth and sat down on the overturned crate opposite them. “Behold, my friends, the rarest find imaginable from the Jedi Enclave, an intact holocron, and it can be yours for a mere one thousand credits.”

With a flourish, Ralon whipped off the cloth and showed them the “holocron.”

Kalani heaved a sigh. Eyebrows raised, she looked into Ralon’s entirely too eager face. “Impressive, truly,” she said tiredly.

“I know. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I went through to—“

“Again, impressive.” Kalani fixed Ralon in a flat stare that saw him wilt slightly, even before going on: “Looking at this, I can well believe that you have at least seen a Jedi holocron at some point in your life, which does suggest some things about your background. But this?” She jerked the “holocron”—a lovely recreation, really, but cold and lifeless in her grasp—out of Ralon’s hand and held it aloft, frowning first at it, then at him. “Is not a holocron.”

Sweat began to bead on Ralon’s forehead. “I assure you, madame—“

“It isn’t real.” It was Mical who interjected this time, and though his voice might have been soft, there was a steely certainty to it—so he, too, could tell at just a glance?—that made the words die on Ralon’s lips. “As she said, it is a good forgery, but a forgery is all that it is.”

Ralon had nothing to say, this time—judging by the way he was starting to shake, he seemed to realize he’d been had. Mical took the fake holocron out of Kalani’s hand and actually started to go over the inconsistencies one by one, while sweat began to drip down Ralon’s face in earnest. Kalani, meanwhile, pulled the scarf draped over her head a little closer—it was not warm in here, for all that nervous sweat—and began to think.

All she had needed was to look at the holocron and not feel the Force flowing through it to know that she was looking at a forgery. Mical might have been allowed to study Jedi holocrons as well as Sith, but given just how quickly he, too, had become convinced the holocron was a forgery… Given how quickly, he had likely seen—and felt—just what Kalani had.

But more than that, they were no closer to their goal than they had been when they set out this morning. They’d gone looking for a Sith holocron and found the simulacrum of a Jedi holocron, and wasted daylight doing it. And there was something else she needed to deal with, in here.

“Who are you people?!” Ralon burst out at last. He eyed each of them in turn, his face twisting in something close to a snarl. “You’re not Jedi, are you?”

“No,” Mical said in decidedly clipped tones. “I am a historian working for the Republic. I was tasked with taking stock of Jedi sites; as such, I am well-versed in distinguishing real artifacts from false ones.”

“I am no Jedi,” Kalani murmured, “but you, Ralon, do you know what a holocron is?”

“Well, I…” Ralon squirmed in his seat, sweat bathing his face so that it looked as if he’d dipped his head in one of the aqueducts near Khoonda. “It’s a… The holocron’s…”

“A holocron,” and Kalani worked to keep her voice soft, keep it measured, because this was important, “is a repository of knowledge. Not simply on matters of the Force—though there is plenty of that; they are tools of the Jedi, after all—but also star charts, planetary maps, lexicons, starship blueprints, books of medicine and poisons, historical data, and more.”

A weak giggle escaped Ralon’s mouth. “Is that what it is?”

“And do you know, also, that with the Jedi gone, their holocrons are highly sought-after? By the Republic, by people of wealth, by bounty hunters and crime lords and assassins? That there are people in the galaxy who would stop at nothing to possess one?”

“Of course I do!” Ralon protested, and Kalani supposed it was just as well that he had missed the potential implied threat in her words—it would be easier to make her actual point. “Why do you think I wanted so much for it?”

The silence that followed could have felled a rancor.

Mical blinked once, twice, three times. “…You… truly do not understand the value of a Jedi holocron, do you?” came out in the sort of tone as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he was being scammed again.

Kalani had to resist the urge to tip her head back and groan. Once she trusted herself to speak calmly—this really was important—she fixed Ralon in a piercing stare and asked him, “So you understand how dangerous it is even to claim to have a holocron in your possession? You understand how many people might come looking for you and your prize, what kind of people they are? And what they would likely do to you once they discovered the deception?”

“I…” Ralon jutted out his jaw. “I do.”

“Then why take that risk?” Kalani pressed. “I don’t think you’re doing this purely out of greed. Why take such a horrible risk when there are other things you could sell, other ways you could make your living?”

There came another charged silence, and from the way Ralon’s face contorted, Kalani wondered if she hadn’t miscalculated. But then that sweaty, strained face crumpled, and Ralon hid his face in his hands. “You don’t understand.” His voice was muffled, but Kalani would have recognized the quality of despair even if he had remained silent.

“I might. Tell me.”

He tried to straighten, though with his shoulders still sagging couldn’t completely manage it. There were tracks on his face that Kalani couldn’t tell if they were from sweat or tears. “Okay. I… Before the bombardment, I worked in the Enclave as an electrical technician. You wondered where I’d seen a holocron; that’s where. When Malak came—“ he licked his lips, eyes going white and wild as memory coated the present day “—when Malak came, my family and I lost everything. I can’t get proper work; guilt by association,” he said with a grimace. “Salvaging’s the only way I can get any credits.”

“That’s not all there is to this, though, is it?” It couldn’t be. It didn’t cover the breadth of his desperation.

And sure enough, Ralon shook his head choppily. “I… I borrowed some money. Trying to get enough to get off-world, but they hiked the passenger fare right after, so we’re stuck.” His hands were shaking now, and his voice listed between high and low. “If I don’t pay off my creditors, my wife and our daughter, they’ll be…”

Sold. That much, he didn’t have to say aloud.

Kalani sighed heavily and leaned back on her crate, thinking. She had an idea of what to do. She’d catch it from Kreia later, and probably from Atton and Mira, too. But it was like Atton said of her all the way back on Citadel Station—she never could turn a deaf ear to a sob story. Even one that she knew could be a lie.

“Alright.” Kalani drew up to her full (not at all impressive, but the effort counted) height and stared firmly at Ralon. “Here are my terms. I will not pay you a thousand credits for that box. It is a pretty recreation, but a recreation is all it is. As it stands, I certainly don’t have the credits to pay you the true value of a real Jedi holocron. I’d be surprised if any individual person on this planet does.

“What I will do is pay you the money you need to pay off your debts, and take your family and leave Dantooine.” Kalani frowned sternly at him. “And do not lie to me.”

She was definitely going to hear about this from Kreia later—it wouldn’t be any use hiding from it; she would just know, as if she had been here herself. Likely something about weakening this man by saving him from his troubles instead of leaving him to struggle out of them himself, and strengthen himself from the results of conflict. Atton would complain—and truth be told, Kalani could hardly blame him—about what the sudden loss of the credits would do to their finances. Mira… It was hard to tell with Mira. To an extent, she was very much a “you made your bed; now lie in it” sort of person. But needless callousness and cruelty were things that just seemed to disgust her, and the potential collateral damage of this matter…

Oh, well. In the end, this was her decision to make, and she couldn’t regret it.

They worked out a figure of five hundred credits, and given the way Ralon’s lips kept twisting, Kalani suspected that if he had exaggerated, it wasn’t by very much. All the while, Mical watched them in silence, watchful and frowning thoughtfully, as if he was a teacher evaluating some sort of verbal exam.

Before they left (with the box; if someone came looking for it, at least Ralon could claim truthfully that he had sold his “holocron”), Kalani spared a last line of questions for Ralon. “Where will you go, when you leave Dantooine?”

Ralon shrugged. Credits in hand, he seemed much calmer than he had earlier, though the shreds of nervous energy still clung to his back and shoulders. “I… I haven’t really thought that far ahead. Everywhere nearby’s gone to hell and I was just concentrating on getting anywhere that wasn’t here.”

“Have you thought of Telos?”

“Telos?” Ralon laughed incredulously. “Lady, Telos got fragged straight to hell in the war. There’s nothing there but poison and dead bodies.”

So Kalani too had thought when she first laid eyes on that world. Death had reached out to her mind and screamed in her bones, and it hadn’t drawn back its hooks until she went down to the surface and stood in the Restoration Zone. “There’s Citadel Station,” she said, instead of suggesting the Restoration Zone. “The Telos Security Force is short on personnel; so long as you don’t tell them about…” She held the box aloft again “…this, I don’t think they’d blink at your application. It’s not the safest work in the world, but it’s honest work, at least. Something to think about!”

And they emerged back into air that was not fresh, but at least promised to become such once they were well away from the salvagers’ camp. That was how far they walked, before Kalani and Mical stopped to decide where they would search next.

“I’m surprised,” Mical said softly, as they pored over the map they’d taken from Khoonda, “at how you handled that man. There are many who wouldn’t have shown him nearly as much patience—or compassion. After discovering he had tricked us, you could have just walked away.”

Kalani shrugged her shoulders, looking at the map rather than his eyes. “I… It’s difficult to explain.” Certainly, Kreia had tried to make her explain herself more than once, and she’d never been able to find an explanation that satisfied either of them. “When I see someone in need of help, if there is anything I can do to help them, I do it. It’s… You may think it naïve, or meddlesome, but that’s how it is with me.”

“I’m not complaining,” Mical told her hastily. “There are so many people in the galaxy who care for nothing beyond their own good; it’s refreshing to meet someone who cares for others in need. But I am curious. You really could have simply walked away after the deception was revealed. And I think we both know he could have been lying.”

Kalani shrugged again, if a bit more easily. “If he was lying about everything, about being in debt, about having a wife and child who would be sold—“ her lip curled “—to pay for his debt, it’s still true that he was in danger of being killed by anyone who came looking for the holocron he claimed to have. I don’t think he was lying, though, not about everything. And if he was telling the truth, then if nothing else is true, it’s certainly true that Ralon’s wife and child don’t deserve to pay the price for his poor decisions.”

“They don’t, no.” Mical smiled at her then, but it was not a happy smile, not exactly. It was something wistful and nostalgic, something old, something familiar. Something of this place, and Kalani was certain he didn’t know he was doing it, because there was no effort made to wipe the look off of his face.

-0-0-0-

In the end, their next choice ended up being made on account of Mical’s curiosity. There was a site some distance from the Enclave, but still within reasonable walking distance of their own location, that had been heavily bombed when Malak attacked Dantooine. Mical thought, and surveys of the area seemed to back up the idea, that that particular site might have been more heavily bombed than the Enclave itself.

The site was a mystery to Kalani. When she had lived in the Enclave, Jedi had been forbidden to go there unless ordered by the Dantooine Council. She knew nothing of it, and that combined with the moratorium on travel, well, she would have been lying if she said it didn’t pique her curiosity as well, just a little.

“Let’s go there, then.”

As they walked, the day was silent but for the howling of the wind over the grass and the occasional gnarled, wounded tree. The kath hounds and kinrath (and Kalani was still trying to puzzle out what possessed the later to leave their haunts during the daylight hours) didn’t seem to want to go near this part of the planes. The brith that Kalani had been so fascinated by as a child were gone—all dead, or else gone seeking greener pastures, where there was nothing to shoot them out of the sky.

Even when you discounted the bled-dry wreckage of the Jedi Enclave, Dantooine had been wounded nearly unto death. The scream echoed in the minds of the residents who had been here when turbolasers cascaded upon the landscape, and even among those who had not been here, the scream sometimes emanated, more faintly, as if it was just beginning to take root there. The craters that marred the horizon were like the pitted holes in rotting fruit, but there was still life here regardless, clinging to dry earth watered only with tears. It was difficult, telling whether vitality would ever truly return to Dantooine, or if it would die by inches until it was empty, and the wind traveled forever, and never met anything with the ability to leave a lasting impression upon the surface.

What can anyone do against something such as this? When the wealthy can be persuaded to lend their aid and the powerful actually care to do something, then there is a chance, but when it’s the poor scrabbling against the tide of entropy and everything seems arrayed against them, trying to knock them down and scatter them into nothing, what are they to do?

I suppose Kreia would say this is the test of their right to exist, or something like that. Kalani pursed her lips, and wondered what it was that had so thoroughly convinced Kreia that offering or accepting help in matters such as this was an evil. What it was that had convinced her that the only way someone could become truly strong was by becoming strong alone, without help from anyone else.

She could worry about that after they had found the holocron and disposed of it.

As they neared the site, jagged spires of broken stone reaching up to the yellowing sky like pleading fingers, Kalani and Mical both stopped, standing very still as they stared down at the mounds of rubble.

This had been a place of great power, once. She did not need to read a report or listen to Kreia telling tales of Dantooine to know that. She could feel it in the air, the echoes of that power, mostly gone, but still present enough to carry a charge. It sang to her, and though it sang with no words that any mortal ear could have discerned, she knew what it was saying, nonetheless.

Not this again.

And beneath it, there was something she knew entirely too well.

“You told me your name, yesterday.” Mical’s voice came to her as though from far away, though she could not hear the wind in her ears, and she doubted he could, either. “You said that it was Kalani Nuna. Now that we’re here… You, you were General Nuna during the Mandalorian Wars, were you not?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded like nothing she could ever remember coming out of her mouth before.

“You were the infantry commander for the Dxun campaign. There was an…” He paused, brow furrowing and mouth working, like he was struggling even to get words out. “…An incident on Dxun related to Sith holocrons.”

“…Yes.”

“…What happened?”

Kalani took a breath, having to fight against the air to draw air in. “If you know there was an incident, you should know the particulars.”

“It’s buried under redactions, and I don’t have the level of clearance necessary to know the whole story. But you… You did encounter Sith holocrons on Dxun, did you not?”

“I……… Yes.”

Another long pause, and Mical struggled to even speak. “You… Are we in danger?”

At this, she laughed, but it was a bitter, hollow sound. “Oh, yes. But so is everyone else, if it is not disposed of.”

She walked down the slope towards the ruins. She didn’t tell Mical to follow her. She didn’t signal him to follow her in any way. But she could hear footsteps against the grass anyways, and she didn’t bother telling him to stay back. She didn’t think he would have, and of the Sith holocrons she had contended with on Dxun, she had never been able to figure out just how far their influence stretched. It had varied. She had no guarantee that he would have been safe at the crest of the slope.

Every step down the slope was a step back into the past. The grass grew longer and longer, pulling on her knees, then her waist. The air grew closer and closer, became charged with static electricity and thick with rain and suspended condensation. The smell of water and earth and blood and oil and ozone filled her nostrils, and Kalani thought she heard voices that were right in her ears, and yet were faint and whispery, as if coming from far off. She clutched at the hilt of her vibroblade and realized only when her hand clutched at a hilt that felt very different than it should have that she was clutching a vibroblade, and not a lightsaber. She reached for her blaster instead.

The spires of stone cast long, dark shadows across the ground that bled from dark brown to black with scarcely any effort. They made it difficult to see the ground, see if it was grass there or stone, if the ground was smooth or broken. That feeling that had buried itself inside of her, that undercurrent of bitter cold grew stronger the deeper Kalani went into the ruins.

“Do you see light?” Mical was whispering to her. She didn’t know why he was whispering, didn’t know why whispering felt right to her.

“I…”

She didn’t, not at first. She looked ahead of her and saw only shadows. But Kalani blinked once, twice, three times, and she saw light winking at her from some thirty feet away. Red and flickering and pulsing with a power she recognized immediately.

“That’s it.” Her voice was choked. “And I think… I think it’s open.”

At this point, Kalani would, in retrospect, reflect that she really should have told Mical to turn back, even if the likelihood of his listening to her was slim to none. In the moment, she barely remembered he was there as she stepped forward, towards the source of the light.

In her nightmares, the holocrons were always bigger. Sometimes they swallowed men whole, and for that they needed to be bigger. They were twisted, distorted things that pulsed and writhed and sprouted vines with which to strangle everything that crossed its path. They needed to be bigger for that.

In her nightmares, the holocrons were always bigger, and it had been more than ten years since she had last laid eyes on a real one. So when she found this small pyramid of a box, glass and metal and a glowing red core, slightly open, it was a shock. Of course it was. She didn’t expect it to be so small.

It was open, the holocron was open, and that had its consequences. It had a voice to speak, and that had its consequences.

Last time, Kalani had not been among the first targeted—it was probably the only reason she was here to freeze before an open Sith holocron now. She had had other duties outside of the abandoned temple, and had sent teams in to survey the area and determine if it was fit for habitation. And the men she had sent in, they hadn’t succumbed immediately. The holocrons had yet to glut themselves on death and grow powerful enough to have immediate effects. But there had been signs. There had been…

There had been…

It spoke to her. They liked to talk, Sith holocrons, they had begged and pleaded and berated as she ordered them packed into a crate and fired into the sun.

Behind her, there was a dull thud like something falling, but she couldn’t imagine what that might be. The voice of the holocron filled her ears and it spoke of death, gloried in the death that clung to her like a noxious veil. There was a way out of everything she was feeling, it told her, a very simple way out.

Her arm lifted the blaster almost of its own accord.

There was such a simple way out, and she could have it right now if she just—

The holocron exploded in a spray of glass and shards of red light, and Kalani knew no more.

-0-0-0-

When Kalani woke up, she wasn’t in the ruins anymore, but lying flat on her back on the slope leading down to it. The scarf she had been wearing over her head had been folded and placed under it as a sort of pillow. The sky was a dark, ochre yellow, tinged ever so faintly with red. Her head hurt terribly.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Mical’s voice, taut and a touch unsteady, filtered to her after a moment of confused disorientation. “That’s… That’s good. Here.” A hand slid between her shoulders and pushed her upright. “Sit up. I need to check for a concussion.”

Kalani frowned at him. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long; about a quarter of an hour, I’d say.” That hand moved to her shoulder, and it was impossible for Kalani to miss the way it shook. “It’s not really good practice to move someone who might have a concussion, but I didn’t think it wise to stay in the ruins. I…” He licked his lips. “…I was afraid it would have certain effects.”

They went through the process of confirming that no, Kalani did not have a concussion. This was not her first go at having to reassure an anxious medic that she hadn’t sustained a brain injury, and the process of proving (out in the field, anyways; in a more formal setting she knew there would have been a lot more tests) that had not become any less tedious in the last ten years. It was over very quickly, despite the fact that Mical kept tripping over the steps, which was a small mercy, at least.

When this was over with, Kalani drew a deep breath, tried to center herself. She’d had training to ignore pain, move past it. It had been so long ago, but surely she hadn’t forgotten all of it. Some things were ingrained too deeply in the body to ever be truly forgotten. And she did remember, after a while, and if she didn’t remember all of it, she at least remembered enough to get the headache down to manageable levels. Enough to ask questions.

“Alright, so…” Kalani forced her mind back—only a few minutes, really, but such a struggle regardless. “I believe I shot the holocron. Perceptions can become distorted around Sith holocrons, so I would just like to confirm: did you see me shooting the holocron?”

Mical leaned back on the grass, scrubbing at his forehead as he apparently struggled to remember. “I… believe so. I came to just after it was destroyed. The holocron had been shattered, and there was a scorch mark on the ground where it had been consistent with scoring from a blaster. At any rate, it is destroyed, and…” His face twisted. “Though I would have liked the chance to study it, that was always contingent on its not having been opened before I found it.”

Kalani nodded, and immediately regretted it, even as the pain was starting to die down. “They really are too dangerous for anything and everything in their proximity. If you had been around it long enough for it to get its hooks in you, you would have regretted it.”

“I suppose.”

They sat on the hillside for Kalani didn’t know how long (it couldn’t have been that long; the sky was darkening to orange, but never went completely dark), catching their breath and their bearings. Kalani supposed she should check in with the Ebon Hawk—she’d never been terribly clear on when her crew could expect her back, and someone was bound to come looking for her if she wasn’t back by the next morning—but she couldn’t find it in her to activate her comm. They weren’t that far from the spaceport. And there was something else she needed to do first.

“You and I,” she said heavily, “we have met before, haven’t we?”

There was a long silence, and she didn’t look over to him, didn’t look at Mical’s face. She could guess at the way his face twisted, could practically feel the way his face twisted. “Yes.” She could barely hear him over the wind. “We have.”

Now, Kalani looked over at him, and the sight of his face wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. No mask of agony here, just the soft bitterness of nostalgia and paths that don’t lead where they had promised they would. “Here?”

“Yes, here,” he said softly. “Long ago, I was an initiate at this Enclave. You guest-taught at one of my classes; the normal instructor was away from the Enclave on a mission. It…” He laughed ruefully. “…Your teaching and your example made an impression. One that has lasted to this day.”

And when she thought about it, she remembered one of the classes she had guest-taught—there had been more than one, there had been a need to keep a Padawan who couldn’t keep a master occupied—and remembered a young boy who had followed after her when the lesson was done, peppering her with questions. It was such a long time ago.

“So you left the Order?” It wasn’t framed as an accusation, nor even meant as one. By the end, Kalani wasn’t certain she would have stayed on as a Jedi, even had she not been exiled. The Order… The Order had not been what it once was. It no longer held true to the principles it had proclaimed when Kalani was young. It no longer held true to a great many things.

But Mical shook his head. “I washed out. I came of age still an initiate, and there was no one willing to take me on as their apprentice. I had to make my way on my own, and that led me to the Republic.”

“Wouldn’t that have been difficult, though? You must have had some training with the Force, and going about half-trained, exposed to the war…”

“You can forget those things, you know.” His voice was very soft. It had often been very soft, but now, there was some quality to that softness that made Kalani take notice of it, separate it out as something different. “It takes work, but you can forget the lessons you learned, forget how to feel with the Force. It can lie dormant within you, and fall into a deep sleep, and it can eventually be as if it’s dead, though if the stimulus is strong enough—“ Mical stared blackly down at the ruins, where the shattered remains of a Sith holocron glittered brightly enough to catch the dying light like stars “—it will awaken again, for a time. That is…”

“Deeply unpleasant,” Kalani supplied wearily. When the Force had first reawakened inside of her, it had been agony beyond anything she had ever experienced, agony beyond Dxun, agony beyond Malachor V.

The jittery laugh that hit the air confirmed that she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “It felt a little as though my skull was an egg, and someone had cracked it open and poured boiling water inside. Though that may simply have been because the stimulus was something of the Sith.”

And maybe the difference for them, why Mical only felt that way when it was something of the Sith and Kalani had felt that way when the stimulus was something far more neutral for that, was something that originated in them. Maybe she wasn’t whole enough anymore to feel anything normally anymore, so that when the Force that she would have sworn was dead and not sleeping reawoke inside of her, it was a rebirth so agonizing that there was a moment when she wished for the death that should have been hers at Malachor. If someone told her that, she wouldn’t have been too shocked. She wasn’t certain she would even have been offended.

“And now?”

It was, perhaps, not the question to ask. Perhaps it was better to leave it unsaid, leave it in the interstice and let it stay amorphous. Curiosity had always been one of those traits to get Kalani in trouble, though, even if it wasn’t in her in as great amounts as it had been in Atris. And she felt as if she owed it to the past she had left behind. Something to put it to bed.

In the deepening dusk, it was difficult to make out what passed over Mical’s face. A shadow, perhaps; a cloud, perhaps. “Now, I think I can best serve the Republic as I am now. Perhaps that might change, but for now, I do not think it would do any good.”

How things had changed. The Kalani Nuna of twenty years ago would have been horrified by that, to hear someone who was clearly strong with the Force refuse training and listen to them as they regarded it… Improper, perhaps, or inappropriate? The Kalani Nuna of twenty years ago had known only one alternative to being a Jedi, and didn’t understand that there were so many different ways to perceive the Force, and that only a few of them were purely Light or Dark. Now, she nodded in weary acceptance, and tried to bat away the guilt she felt when she thought of “made an impression, one that has lasted” and the ways that might have influenced him, might have led to where he was now, might have done ill.

Overhead, the sunset and advancing twilight were not as Kalani remembered them from years ago. Even the beauty of Dantooine’s sunsets had died away, leaving only a dull, russet red like dried blood to carry the world into darkness. That darkness was a shelter for so many things, and it provided enough shelter for her to ask, faintly, “When the holocron spoke to you, what did it say?”

Mical sighed. “Nothing I can put into words.” He tapped the lid of his first-aid kit with his fingertip. “Nothing I care to recall.”

Kalani knew that feeling. He was going to fit right in on the Ebon Hawk.

“Come on. Let’s go back to Khoonda before it gets too dark.”

[arwencuar]

Where My Heart Belongs

an Arwen x Aragorn drabble

The sun was what woke her.

Arwen blinked as the late afternoon rays poured in through the window. She’d slept longer than she’d intended; then again, she’d needed it. Mortality was something to get used to, especially after just having a baby. The former Lady of Rivendell had never felt so tired as she had these past few weeks.

She closed her eyes and stretched, then sat up to peer over the edge of the Elven crib beside her. The tiny Prince of Gondor still slept soundly.

Arwen’s heart leaped. He looked so much like his father, though his slightly pointed ears served as a reminder of a race almost gone from Middle Earth. She placed a kiss on his fuzzy head and stood to look out the widow onto the dazzling white marble of Minas Tirith.

She felt a familiar pain as she thought of her dear Ada. She missed him so! Tears still lined her face at times, and even now, her eyes glistened with them.

But she knew her decision had been right. Aragorn and the little Eldarion were her life now, and despite the place in her heart that would always belong to the Elves, Arwen never regretted her choice to live out her days among the race of Men.

She moved to the waking baby’s bedside and picked him up tenderly, his long white and gold velvet blanket draping like a waterfall in her arms. She held him close and spoke to him softly in her own Elvish tongue.

She carried him out onto the balcony overlooking the White Tree and Pelennor Fields. Aragorn was just returning from a hunting trip, and the sound of his laughter blended with the clip-clop of Brego’s hoofs as he parted ways with his fellow huntsman.

“Thír, ha na-cín adar!” Arwen held the bundled Eldarion up as if to let him witness his father’s return, but the baby’s eyes had closed again. She hurried inside and downstairs to greet her husband, her footsteps quick and soundless with the gracefulness of Elves. She stopped in the doorway of the entrance hall where two servants were assisting the King with his hunting gear.

Aragorn's appearance was not at at kingly. His hair was windswept and damp, and the dirt and sweat on his tanned face made for a rather grimy complexion. He stood now, removing his quiver from over his shoulders.

Arwen felt her heart swell. She loved this man. And if she was honest, this was how she loved him best: rough and trail-hardened, wild as the Northern forests, and rugged as the Eastern moutains.

True, she had married a king… but her heart belonged to a ranger.

[therewithasmile]

btw if you were interested here’s my character’s backstory 

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The day she was born, Elduin Tathvir’s beaker – yet again – bubbled over, overflowed, and all but oozed onto the elven wizard’s hands. All things considered, he was relatively unfazed. This has been happening as of late; he simply emptied the remainders back down the drain, twisting the tap to rinse out the failed contents of his would-be potion. Business as usual. What he wasn’t expecting, though, was the familiar of one of his apprentices – a small bird, not the first choice of most magic users – fluttered to a stop on his open windowsill, which was left so exactly for occasions like these. Elduin didn’t need to turn to know what the message was. He’d been the one to send off his wife to the healers, after all.

But it was then when his first child, Rhystael, roused from his slumber. The young elven boy uncurled his spot on the couch, mess of gold-spun hair an indistinct halo around the crown of his head. “Father?” he mumbled, and when his father turned, a dazzling smile pulled on the wizard’s mouth.

And with a voice that was nothing but sheer joy:  “my moon, your sister is here.”

.

Her name was Ilistrae Tathvir. After the goddess Eilistraee, was her mother’s explanation. A drow goddess. Sorisana Tathvir was always forthcoming about the nature of her daughter’s name, but her sympathy for her shunned elven sisters and brothers was also no secret in Silverynoon, where the Tathvir clan resided. A diplomat by nature and profession, Sorisana’s (perhaps naïve) optimism about the drow race was quite peculiar, even for – or perhaps due to – her own identity as a high sun elf.

She cradled her new bundle to her breast, miniature gold-spun curls decorating her newborn child’s head. She was nothing like the drow goddess for which she was named, but that was the point – if Eilistraee could be a good Drow, then all Drow could be good.

Sorisana knew this.

She always did.

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When he was old enough, Rhystael’s free time swiftly became occupied with his studies. A good student by nature, he found his time once spent with his other sun elf peers stolen by books and magic. There was never any true ill will behind his parents gentle nudging – he knew the legacy that fell on the Tathvir shoulders, and so he studied diligently, and when he did, he quickly proved his aptitude to magic. His father was proud of his child’s quick studies, pride that the wizarding practices would live on to the next generation of Tathvirs.

If Rhystael was like his father, many had told little Ilistrae that she was much like her mother. Almost as soon as she learned to walk, she fell into a swift love affair with knowledge. Reading was her forte, and even then, her research capabilities were endless. But that wasn’t to say that Ilistrae didn’t know the value of family. When the sun fell down and their nightly meditation sessions began, she’d ask her mother for her stories, sometimes about the Drow, sometimes the policies that her mother was so involved with, but then, one time, a relatively innocent question: “How did you and Adar meet?”  

It was a question that threw Sorisana off. She was used to her inquisitive, always curious Ilistrae asking about something more substantial. But a warm smile spread on her lips as she recalled how she had met him. He was an adventurer, on his own quest, having stopped by Silverynoon for a mission. It was then they had met – she’d never once stepped foot outside of Silverynoon, as a Tathvir she was never allowed to. Her path had already been set out for her from the beginning: like her mother, and her mother before that, a diplomat, on behalf of the modest Sun Elf community within their city walls.

So Elduin, quite the adventurer back then, regaled her with tales of his adventures from back in his day. He was enthralling, endlessly charismatic, and had experienced so much more than her. They had fallen in love. And she wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to settle him, but she did – and it was all that mattered in the end, because they loved each other, and they – all four of them -- were family.

Family, Ilistrae repeated, and it wasn’t until she had settled deep into her trance did Sorisana finally leave Ilistrae’s room, a warm feeling buzzing in the deep cavities of her heart.

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As Ilistrae grew older, it wasn’t long before her studies began to include diplomatic tendencies. Just like her mother, were the whispers that once had said the same things, but about her brother and father respectively.

It was true. She was good at understanding policy. Her thirst for knowledge equally complimented her swiftly developing diplomacy. More, more, more – she grabbed for more books, for more understandings of this world. She asked frequent questions. Why did the history record it this way? What happened during the spell plague? Why were the Drow portrayed as enemies, then?

Her mother always had an answer, and Ilistrae would walk off, satisfied, to return back to her studies, only to come back when she had another question.

… or so she had her family think.

On her way back to her family libraries, she heard a sound. And she stopped. Opened the door just a crack. Watched as her brother flipped his long mane of golden hair over his shoulders, as he flicked his fingers, a fire ball went hurling into the long-charred spot in the wall – a bullseye, so perfectly in the epicenter of the burn that the tendrils of red hot energy spread nearly identical to the everlasting black ash underneath.

No, Illistrae did not return to her studies that night.

She waited until her mother finished planting the kiss on her forehead, waited until even her mother believed she was undergoing her trance before she cracked open an eye.

She flicked her fingers, like her brother. Always like her brother.

But nothing happened.

Ever since she started trying, so long ago, nothing ever happened.

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The first time she’d spotted him, it was on her way home, after watching one of her mother’s council meetings. It was easy to spot him, his dark skin amongst the pale, his locks of midnight blue hair a startling contrast to the common reds and ambers and spun gold. No one made comment. As it should be, said the diplomatic side of Ilistrae.

But she asked about him anyways -- to her mother, who always seemed to know the answer. “Drow,” Sorisana would eventually conclude. “Like-“

“-My name,” Ilistrae finished. Sorisana smiled.

“Your name, yes. Because there are Good Drow. Like Drizzt Do’Urden. I met him once when I was little,” she recalled fondly. “And that man may be too, you can never tell Ilistrae. Not until you meet him.” With that, Sorisana moved to leave the table.

“Mother?”

Sorisana paused.

“If the Drow can be Good, why do the books portray them always as Evil?”

Sorisana took a long breath, thinking for a leisurely moment, before finally answering. “The books are written by winners, my Stars. Who’s to say what’s true, and what’s good?”

It was her last phrase that made the most lasting impact on Ilistrae.

“That’s our job to decide.”

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The next time they spotted him, Sorisana noticed Ilistrae had too; and her eyes met his – a startling red. Red was not a common eye colour amongst the Ar-tel-quessir. He’d given Ilistrae a smile. Naturally, her daughter gave him one back.

They met once more after that, he’d made a gesture to her, just a small crane of the neck. Ilistrae turned swiftly to her mother, but Sorisana knew how to deal with these situations – it was as natural as her Tathvir blood. She gave him a slow nod, and he approached.

“Sorisana Tathvir,” he said, a rich baritone, almost breathless. “Va’ar Undyn. Pleasure to meet your acquaintance –“ he was almost breathless as he spoke. “I just, I’ve always wanted to thank you. For your work for my people.”

Sorisana’s smile was genuine. “Va’ar, quenya. Knowing I can be helping your kind is all the gratitude I need.” She rubbed the top of Ilistrae’s head. “My work does not end with me. This is Ilistrae.”

His red eyes widened. “Like the –“

“-Goddess. Yes,” she finished pleasantly. The drow’s eyebrow raised, before another smile crossed his lips. He did a small flourish with his fingers, small sparks forming and showering over her daughter’s lithe body. Prestidigitation. A mere parlours trick, one she was used to seeing her son perform effortlessly. Ilistrae was similarly accustomed, but to her credit, her eyes widened. Ever the diplomat, the courteous curiosity that could so easily be mistaken as real.

“Such a beautiful namesake,” he said. “I am very happy to have met you, Sorisana, Ilistrae. I look forward to your continued contributions.”

He shook her hand first, then her daughters.

“Happy to be of service.”

“Vora,” he said back, always, and Ilistrae’s eyes followed him longer than hers, much longer than Sorisana was able to notice.

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It was becoming habitual now, to wait until her mother had left her chambers, before Ilistrae stirred. The image of the drow flickered behind her eyes. His eyes, beady, red, made shivers run down her spine. She’d read about the Drow, heard from her mother. But that was her first encounter with such a type of elf, and the sparkles that he’d produced were similar to what she’s seen before, and yet different. She couldn’t tell how. But it was.

The thought of trying it out flirted in her mind. It joined the ever mounting urge to try something – sparks, firebolt, something – but she knew the outcome. It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed once.

Instead, Ilistrae unfurled the note she’d kept stubbornly tucked into the sleeve of her dress.

To the namesake of my goddess,

I sense a thirst for power, a thirst for knowledge and magic and understanding. Your studies betray you. You are meant for more than diplomacy and politics. You, who are named after a goddess, have a place amongst them with us. They have told me.

I can show you.

V

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When she first set out to meet him, there was a lot of early misgivings. Yet she knew she was a Tathvir, her father a decorated wizard within Silverynoon as a whole, mother a wellknown diplomat. Brother training to be a Spellguard.

Ilistrae just wanted to live up to them.

Their first meeting was in daylight. And they didn’t do much, nothing she wasn’t comfortable with, Va’ar had promised her. At first, she didn’t want to attempt magic. It may have been childish, as if she were twenty years younger than her true age. But she didn’t want to fail.

So she asked him for stories. Asked for his experiences. And she learned a lot – about Drow society, about their hatred for the surface elves, about their connection to their pantheon.

It was fascinating knowledge.

She came back for more.

And more.

And then, no longer meek, but confident: “I want to learn.”

“Learn about what?” was the response, a smooth silky baritone, like music to her ears.

“Magic. You had offered.”

Va’ar’s eyebrow raised. “You never asked me once, Ilistrae, I’m sorry, I assumed I was wrong, your father – your brother—“

“—You weren’t,” she cut him off. Ilistrae sat back down in a huff. “You knew from the beginning, yes? That I can’t do magic.”

Sympathy twisted the drow’s face, a look she had so often seen on her mother’s when it came to the drow, a face she never wanted to see directed to her. From her mother, at least. From Va’ar, there was something almost comforting about it.

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Ilistrae responded quickly. “I shouldn’t have misled you.”

“You didn’t,” he said, and then with a small laugh that was like liquid honey, “not intentionally, anyways.” Va’ar paused. “I am a warlock. You know what that means, yes?”

Ilistrae nodded. “You have a patron.”

Va’ar hmm’ed in response. “I wasn’t lying when I said there’s a place for you amongst the Drow gods. You, who share the name of their brethren.”

“Eilistrae betrayed them,” Ilistrae said almost immediately. “She betrayed them, they hate her. That’s what the books say.”

Va’ar’s sympathetic smile only deepened further. “And what do they say? What do you say?”

“That it’s my job to decide,” Ilistrae said, as her mother had, so many years ago. “So why do they want me?”

Va’ar reached out a hand. “Why don’t you ask them?”

.

His hand was cold, but the sudden chills that ran up and down her body were doubly so. It was black – black and thick and dark and cold. Ilistrae didn’t think she much liked that feeling.

And then there was something else. A pulse, like a heartbeat. For a second, she wondered if this tiny bead of life was what she was looking for. She reached out, grabbed that small bud into her small, small, hands, and it pulsed –reverberated all through her body.

It was ice, fire, electricity all at once – up and down her veins. Through to her eyes, her ears – out her nose, through the tips of her toes and fingers. Each time every sensation spiked, heightened, spilled out through her scalp and fighting to explode out of her skin. And then – stillness. But a small ball of energy in front of her – if there even was a front, or back, or any direction at all – and she understood if she reached out, accepted this, there was no turning back.

Her fingers dug into this small ball of energy, and it splintered into small fragments, no bigger than pomegranate seeds.

She put them to her lips, and then onto her tongue.

Ilistrae opened her eyes.

Va’ar’s gaze was endless, and his whole body shuddered, heaving for breath. Like he’d experienced the same thing she just had.

Ilistrae was suddenly, viscerally, aware that she was shaking.

And before either could speak, she loosened her hands from him – and flicked her wrist to the side, could only revel as a fireball exploded from her fingertips.

.

His daughter was also a wizard.

Elduin Tathvir discarded another failed potion, the ooze nearly staining his workbench.

But he hardly cared.

His daughter was also a wizard.

They had a celebratory dinner that night, inviting all of his acolytes and apprentices, familiars and all. Ilistrae was delighted – she’d always loved the bird familiar, so peculiar, so unlike the rest of the magical companions that often accompanied them. And the equations she’s meticulously studied, so much more than her brother, had finally made sense. She demonstrated it to them. And it was wonderful. Claps erupted from their dinner table. His Sun and Moon nothing but proud.

He was too.

Even though he could tell something was…different.

But it was his daughter’s moment. His daughter, who he’d seen practice and practice when she thought no one was watching, who studied magical formulas and spellcasting with twice the enthusiasm that Rhystael ever did. She had explained that a drow, Va’ar, as his Sun had told him once before their trance the night they’d met, had helped the missing pieces of her puzzle. Pinpointed what her mental block was, and had unlocked her capacity as a Wizard.

Elduin suspected it wasn’t fully the case.

But he hardly cared.

His daughter was happy.

And so he was, too.

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Ilistrae thought she was sneaky, and in many ways, she was. But when they had whispered that Ilistrae would turn out so much like her, well, Sorisana couldn’t help but believe it, too. Because the way her daughter snuck out at night was identical to how she used to, once. To meet with Ny’eth.

Her lover, from a lifetime ago, before Elduin.

A drow.

But she found her body mangled in the river, blamed for a crime she knew Ny’eth never committed. How she sobbed over her body, over the cool blue skin she loved and twilight tresses she once relished between her pale fingers. How she thought she could never love again, until Elduin arrived in Silverynoon, so opposite from Ny’eth, but perhaps why she felt the stirrings in her heart nearly a century later.

She wondered if her daughter was in love with this man. Va’ar. Perhaps love was the wrong word. Fascination, adoration – a means to quench that thirst of knowledge.

A role that Sorisana was so used to fulfilling.

She watched as her daughter slipped from the front door, watched her embrace the drow, before their hands connected, and she’d close her eyes. Then their hands parted, and they darted off into the dark – but she’d return completely unharmed in the morning, just in time for breakfast, sometimes with a new advancement in her magic.

How could she, of all people, judge?

Ilistrae – it seemed like her drow name was a little on the nose, Sorisana thought to herself, and she dismissed her family’s confused looks when she chuckled to herself.

.

It was black, dark, cold.

But that didn’t make sense. She never felt like this until she took his hand. Closed her eyes. Let him speak to her.

There it was, that ball of light.

She reached with outstretched fingers.

But then it twisted. And she was holding a knife.

The handle was oozing.

Ilistrae snapped from her Reverie.

She said nothing about it when she ate breakfast. Said nothing as her brother pulled her into their casting room, laughed as they tried to connect some harmless spells to each other. Said nothing after she was knocked to her feet, grasping Rhystael’s warm, warm hands to pull her upright.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice snapping her from her thoughts.

“No,” she said quickly. “My back hurts, Rhys!”

“Well, Ili, gotta figure it out fast cuz-“ but before her brother could finish his sentence, he found himself lifted by an invisible force, before being thrown against a wall. “-ow.”

She couldn’t stop the peals of laughter that bubbled when she took in her brother’s face. “Brother dear, you’re never going to make Spellguard if you let your guard down like that.”

“That was cheap, Ili!” he complained. “Did the drow teach you that too?”

“Va’ar wouldn’t give me a chance at a speech first,” she taunted, and her brother only rolled his eyes before he went for her again.

.

She was holding the knife, except it was oozing, and there was nowhere to hold but the blade.

It should’ve sliced into her fingers. But nothing came from there. Ropes of black vicious liquid poured out instead, like her body wasn’t a vessel of blood, but ink.

Spilling, spilling.

She was drowning.

.

The night air was crisp, the sounds of a dusky city quiet in her ears. His hands were cold.

But that was it.

Until now, that was never it.

But she pretended like it was more, as she gripped his fingers harder, looking – searching –

“Ilistrae.”

His voice was quiet in her ear.

She opened her eyes.

For a second, thick, black ooze pooled at her fingertips, dripping where their hands connected.

But then it was gone, and Va’ar gently took his hands from her. “Are you okay? You were gone for a long time.”

Ilistrae swallowed. “Fine. He was just – ah – showing me some things.”

For a second, something like jealousy spiked Va’ars tone. “Like?”

“Half visions,” she lied easily. “Blackness. Pomegranate. Warmth. You know. It’s never clear.”

“Never,” he responded, and then whatever was playing at the edges of his red gaze dissipated. He gestured into the woods, where they’ve been practicing magic for the last several years. “Ready?”

No.

“Yes,” Ilistrae said obediently.

Her hands were still black.

But when she wiped them away, her pale skin stared back at her. And so she followed him, the smell of the end of summer crisp in her nostrils, her white dress entirely untainted as it played in the breeze.

.

She was already holding the knife.

Black pooled at her feet, swallowed her dress, staining the pure fabric into something else.

What are you trying to tell me?

As if in response, small lacerations marked like rope burns up her arm, making their way slowly towards her, towards her chest –

Ilistrae snapped from her reverie, panting, chest heaving, cream arms shaking as they wrapped around her knees.

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“Va’ar.”

The silhouette froze, robes still in the dead of night, hood pulled heavy over his head.

“I know it’s you, Va’ar.” Ilistrae wasn’t scared, or surprised. In fact, she’d always known.

Slowly, the figure turned.  “Ilistrae,” he finally said, and it was his honeyed baritone, thick with intention, but Ilistrae saw through it.

“How could you, Va’ar? I was a child.”

Maybe, deep down, she felt something. Remorse, confusion, betrayal – all childish emotions, ones she had to swallow away, lock deep in her heart when she realized what he was up to.

What He had always been warning her about.

“You were lost, and I saved you,” was his easy answer. So layered in his voice – but his Charm wouldn’t affect her anymore.

“Is that why you hold that letter of confession?” Ilistrae said, and she allowed steel to edge her words. “That I’m not a wizard, but a warlock, in a pact with a Drow god?”

She saw his fist tighten – she knew these tricks well before he knew she did. This was how it all started, wasn’t it? When he’d passed her the note the first time, so inconspicuous he thought he was. But Ilistrae knew him, He knew him, and knew this would happen.

“You never saved me. He did,” she said coolly.

Va’ar clicked his tongue. “All I ever was, was a recruiter. I hate that I recruited you. That He picked you over me.” His voice went high, near hysterical. “It was supposed a hilarious joke. That the one named for our betrayer Goddess would be bound to Him. He wanted you more than anything. And I gave you to him.” He narrowed his eyes.

“And now He intends of ridding me.”

“Wrong. He’s protecting me. From you.” Ilistrae straightened, and her fingers buzzed with power – just the thought of those eyes she once trusted, a smile she once felt safe with, only made the magical surge grow stronger.

“Is that what you think, Illistrae?”

His voice was always honey. Honey and warm and so convincing.

If anything, she so desperately wanted to believe.

“It’s my job to decide,” she said quietly.

She flicked her wrist.

“Alas Va’as Ghaunandaur Tevenir.”

Ghaunadaur will greet you in Hell.

.

She burned the note, along with his corpse.

.

Ilistrae stood at the precipice, and so many thoughts swirled in her head. Half were heavy, black and dark and she didn’t know if they were hers. How long has it been since things were hers? Her path was always set for her. If not a warlock, then a diplomat.

She never really had a choice.

Yet she found herself at one, when she held a lit match to a spot behind her house, straw and meats from the kitchen and locks of her gold-spun hair arranged in such a way and ready to catch flame. It was close enough to her house. They would smell it immediately. They’d see her shoes first. Then the outer edges of her hair.

Her mother would cry.

No, her mother would be hysterical.

She would sob and sob and scream why it had to be Ilistrae, why her daughter and not herself –

Her Father would summon all the clerics to try to save her, but it would be too late, for her corpse would be too badly burned, but it’s not her corpse, at all –

And her dear brother was supposed to go to the Spellguard initiation in a few days, she couldn’t do that to her him, he’d be too broken –

One by one, those childish, childish emotions fought to the surface. She thought she’d locked them away, when she looked Va’ar in the eyes when she did it, watched the life drain from his face…

She pictured her funeral. How much they’d mourn. Silverynoon would feel the impact of a lost Tathvir. It would be forever changed.

Drow would never be forgiven.

Drow shouldn’t ever be forgiven, said another voice, a newfound hatred, with such venom that it didn’t stir her in the slightest. Edged with darkness, oozing with poison.

She blew out the match instead.

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To my parents, my brother,

Va’ar’s sudden passing was a wakeup call to me. I must find my own path. It’s what he would have wanted. I have more to learn of the world. I was always told I was like you, mother, and in another life, if I never discovered magic, I would walk your road as a Tathvir. But perhaps I am more alike Adar than I realized, and magic was only the beginning. I feel the call of adventure. To learn more. I hope to return home one day, to Silverynoon, to you, to Rhys and his new position within the Spellguard. I wish you nothing but health and fortune, and I will write when I can in between my studies.

I am ready to start my journey. It’s my job to discover the world.

All my love,

Your Stars and Sister,

Ili

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Fourty years passed since then. She passed the age of 110 in isolation, in a quiet tavern in the dead of night. The only company was the still of evening and the dark ooze that permeated through her body when she closed her eyes.

Gaunadaur protected her. He’d shown her things she barely understood, until they came to fruition later. A dead deer. A slaughtered house. Blood dripping from the ceiling.

He’d never treated her like a recruiter, not like that horrid drow. Not at all like him, and for that, she was thankful.

But fourty years of isolation, of brief meetings then briefer partings, had begun to blur her thoughts.

Which were hers, and which were His? What was her will, and what was his own?

If she’d faced it, she’d realize she didn’t know.

All she knew was that she was completely – utterly -- alone.

She had swallowed down those feelings. She knew she was the stain on Tathvir’s name. Overtime, she’d come to embrace it. She knew she wasn’t doing good things. But when had the world been good to her? They didn’t give her magic to begin with. Ghaunadaur did. They didn’t offer her protection from evil. Ghaunadaur did. It was Ghaunadaur. Always Ghaunadaur.

Always…

Always –

And out of nowhere, her family popped into her mind.

Her mother, Soriana, kind and patient, a great answer to every question she had.

Her father, Elduin, a spectacular wizard, several acolytes over frequently for dinner and tea.

Her brother, Rhystael, with a proud gold-spun ringletted mane, a smile that was always genuine, clad in Spellguard robes and enchanted armor.

They had asked her for her name – this group of adventurers, a human male, a gnome sorcerer, a Halfling trying to keep them together. They were quite boisterous, the kind she once tried to avoid, in case they would somehow recognize her, spill her secret. Even though all traces of her former life was gone – she possessed none of her fineclothes, her fortunes left behind, even her golden hair dyed black – all, but a small ring, hidden in the seam of her satchel. Childish it may have been, but something about these children -- their energy, despite being more chaotic, reminded her of home. Of Mother, of Father, of Rhys.

“Lyss,” She found herself responding.

Ilistrae was no more.

And in her mind, the picture of her brother she adored – missed beyond belief -- smiled.