[Danderfell]
- Never Enough -
Danderfell Kalamir, lord of clan Kalamir and purveyor of his expanse of a domain had old, weathered eyes, a look in them that he'd never be able to mask from public viewing. Despite his name holding quite the similarity to a well-known center-point of the Guardians, Cyril Kalmar, he was in fact not related in any way to the father figure of the Vigil's chosen. Actually, he took quite the offense to such claims. What he did share in common, was standing by the man's side on that fateful morn centuries ago. Like many others, the two lost the initial conflict against Aedraxis Mathos, who opened the world to the corruption of the death rifts and fractured the fragile ward that protected Telara from the planar lands. This was all exposition to tell a simple truth that Danderfell was an old fool, and he felt all the more aged with each passing day. Not physically, of course, his body stuck in his early thirties, practically in peak prime as he fought to secure peace in Mathosia. One of many benefits to Ascension.
Under the dim flicker of candlelight, quill was put to blank paper, dark ink spilling scratches into the pages that held no meaning to anyone other than the writer. Danderfell's thoughts were his own worst enemy, and for them to fall into the wrong hands would spell a dismal future for the cleric. When not building his clan of one of greater status with his various schemes and business endeavors, he spent his free hours reading, which in turn leads to an introspect on what he had mentally consumed that would be jotted down for longevity.
The Blood Storm had been a consistent focal of his studies, as they should be considering just how prevalent a threat the sextet of planar dragons were to Telara, no, to all aspects of creation. Like many topics, his interest waned on them in his travels, finding new harbingers of oblivion with every bit of earth overturned. The Ascended were akin to the gods, though not quite, of course, they were rather the children, raised above crippling mortality to serve a higher purpose. In this Danderfell questioned if there could be a step beyond what had been achieved through holy intervention. The Vigil had been able to alter mere mortals into near divine creatures of immortality. Death for an Ascended came rarely, and only under the most extreme of circumstances. His investigation came to a crux, and then stagnation which is where the elder man now stood, or rather sat in contemplation.
With a sigh, he placed the feather back into the inkwell and closed the leather backed tome before pushing out of his chair. So well-worn was his seat that the oils from his skin had left visible oxidation into the metal arms of the furniture. All of the books scattered haphazardly around the room, how many of those were codexes of his own, how many years had he dedicated to cataloging his adventures and curiosities? Surely this trove of information would be invaluable to historical archives around Telara. The shelf next to his curved desk were all neatly stacked together in row after row, labeled on the binding with the insignia of his clan and a numerical value next to it. In his gloved grip one more addition to the collection. The journal snug in its corner section, Lord Kalamir let pass a tired expression to his features as he stepped away from the confined space to stand before an even larger bookshelf for even more literary volumes.
It was nearly time.
Lately, he'd been plagued with the disappearance of his wife, though that was a tentative word. She was but a stand-in meant to look the part, a pawn to gain title by brokering into her family through marriage. Not that he particularly needed a woman by his side, but the company had been a pleasant change of pace to his usual solitude, even if it cost him a figurative arm and a leg in a dowry. He had taken her during his wedding night as was his duty as her husband, but clearly, it had not been the life she had wanted to live and fled shortly thereafter. He couldn't understand it, but Danderfell often did not care to emphasize with the feelings of others. Under normal circumstances, Danderfell would have been keen to cut his former spouse off as a loss. What Pfifer, Phi Phi to her betrothed, had done to garner his continued attention was burn down her entire village. Everything Danderfell had carefully constructed in regards to her as now a pile of ashes. Fitting perhaps, as that was as much weight that their marriage carried in the first place and what he would have been fine leaving at were she not a tarnish to his relatively good name.
Wasting far too many valuable days and nights, he'd donned his old Inquisitor garb to hunt down a witch, so to speak, but that trail ran cold fast and so too did his desire for confrontation. One day she'd come back to him he assumed, or not, as their brief moment together had long since passed.
A lever by the bookcase, in its appearance the mechanism would be unnoticeable without scrutiny. When pulled, the ceiling high furnishing slid out from its position and settled against the side of the staircase. A secret opening; the decor shifting from warm wood and cloth to ancient stone, a faint dusting of sand on the flooring. It was as though this hidden chamber had been here far longer than the structure built around it, even a simpleton could tell at a glance. The distance traveled was short, only a few steps before the narrow hallway leading to a cramped mausoleum of sorts, though void of any tomb. Instead, there was a strange device composed of blood red crystals and ancient Eth technology encompassing the back wall, and a pedestal before it appeared to be a console of some kind. The combination was generating a fluctuating portal of energies, stabilizing only when Danderfell held out a firm hand to an orb atop the carved rock table in front of him.
As if putting the entire collection of artifacts in their proper alignment, the small enclosure quickly filled with a translucent haze of purple and the flux of the portal settled into a constant state. Unintelligible whispers crowded an otherwise clear head of the lone male. His memories drifted to an encounter in the far reaches of Tarken Glacier. An angelic beast who seemed to command the armies of flames that were close to overrunning the icy continent at the end of reality. Samekh had been their name, and then after a close defeat by the cleric, whom he later learned to call a Tenebrean, left with a cryptic message that laid clear the path that he traipsed now.
"After all, you should know better than anyone that this is not the way to kill an ascended."
An Ascended with the power that they wielded was unheard of, altering the fabric of the cosmos itself. That is what Danderfell set his sights upon, and nothing less. Distancing himself from the control crystal broke whatever plane the gateway had connected to, the room returning as it had been moments before and giving off just the hum of magical generators. Running strong, but shaking digits through slicked back golden locks he turned away as though unable to even look at the contraption another second.
Leaving, he shut the entrance to the alcove with a flick of the lever. There was much work to be done still.
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 12-05-2014, 08:38 PM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 12-06-2014, 07:12 PM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 12-06-2014, 07:39 PM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 02-27-2015, 04:56 AM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 03-29-2015, 01:14 AM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 03-29-2015, 01:14 AM
Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 07-08-2015, 12:34 PM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 10-28-2016, 06:56 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 10-31-2016, 06:11 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 11-13-2016, 04:19 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 11-13-2016, 04:26 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 11-14-2016, 03:52 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 11-28-2016, 03:35 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 01-10-2017, 06:09 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 05-23-2017, 02:04 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 09-19-2017, 03:52 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 09-19-2017, 05:38 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 09-24-2017, 04:19 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 09-26-2017, 02:53 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 10-19-2019, 04:01 AM
RE: Ghostly's Things and Stuff [Read-Only] - by Ghostly - 04-15-2020, 03:23 AM