22.6 Clans and Families

General Summary

Day 376

The family departs from Dreamfall, leaving behind Andstella, Dawn, Miriam, and Haze. I imagine that Haze will spend some time with Crag and Alrudian and they will all be better for it.   It will be the first time Andstella and I will truly be apart since I found her and while I may be accustomed to travelling far from family it will be new for her. Still, as we move away from Dreamfall I can feel her swift heartbeat at the edge of my senses; I can feel her moving around in camp until we are so far apart that I can no longer distinguish the details of her motion.   Miriam packs us trail snacks and Dawn hugs me tightly before we leave. She says this seems like the place that she will call home for a long time and she hopes I'll be back soon.   We hike for many hours through the slushy, muddy landscape and all present elves complain about the persistent sunlight reflecting off the icy landscape. Even Camellia in her dawn glory admits that it is too bright. Almost on cue Alder conjures a shadow over all of us. It lasts about an hour and I can see him concentrating on it until he lets it go, exhausted. Tira chides him for tiring himself out and I am reminded of how little Alder has had the opportunity to practice applying his magic aside from his trips to and from our Tree.   For now he will need to learn to control his magic and sustain himself, a feat of focus and concentration. Tira, ever-prepared, produces a metal puzzle from her travel bag and hands it to him. I take one from her as well and we pass the next few hours in silence as we engage in mental combat with these two nightmarishly tricky dwarven puzzles.  

Days 377 - 379

For the next several days we travel peacefully with no issues.   On evening we find ourselves cooking and making camp with everyone falling easily into their regular role. I'm idly plucking at my instrument when Lyssa, busy over the campfire, turns and calls for Dal, then pauses and looks up directly at Alder.   I laugh - how many times have I nearly called Bran 'Thalien'? I can't wait to have all of these people together again. I fully expect a cooking contest between Lyssa, Dal, and Alder. Tira and I will judge.   The rest of the evening passes easily with more stories and entertainment. Camellia makes tea for the evening and mentions, almost casually, how happy she is that she can still remember how to mix tea. This is, apparently, one of the things that was tied more strongly to her mystic cycle and she was concerned that she might lose it upon waking as a knight.   Such things had not even occurred to me and I while I might understand losing my dusk mystic magic if I wake in a different cycle, I have to wonder what would happen if I woke and then slept as a wizard. Would my elvish arcane knowledge grow to include anything I learn and produce as a fae wizard?   We also finally have the opportunity to hear more of Lyssa and Randall and ask questions as a group about the Valley.     As Lyssa recounts rescuing Randall from an elemental storm of conscious lightning I have to smile at the thought of her wading through a storm to rescue someone herself. While Randall's personal magic is all in luck and concentration, he gained his own elemental lightning magic from his exposure to the storm and Lyssa has been teaching him to control it. Again, I have to smile.   They went to the Valley together with her intending on getting him adopted into a Clan that would welcome him. He is from an Amerri family in the Dwarven Domain. Amerri are not allowed to train their magic, a law that is mostly respected. Occasionally a talented individual might be adopted into a Gondali family to let them continue but more often they are punished or even stripped of their personal magic using a particular poison which strips the magic and often reduces the person's intelligence and mental functioning as well.   As horrifying as this is, the alternative is worse. The Ventarri have a device that can strip a person's talent and bestow it to another. Lyssa has met stripped dwarves before in the Valley.   When they finally arrived in the Valley, Randall refused to be adopted into a Valley family and instead insisted upon sticking with Lyssa. It became rapidly clear that their magic was so similar that no one else would be able to teach him as effectively as she.  

We were at a 'Masters ranking fair', a competition where all the students of master wizards compete in a tournament. Dwarves are very competitive and for a master, producing a student who can trounce all the others is a prime accomplishment.   Anyway, there were 60 apprentices duelling and Randall got to talking with another apprentice and formed some sort of rivalry. Of course they ended up at opposite ends of the tournament bracket and they had this great story of beating each contestant and meeting in the final round.   Randall won the entire tournament and as his teacher that means I effectively beat all the other master wizards. They don't consider me a master wizard since I very specifically told them I couldn't do anything but lightning but still...there's some respect there.

  Lyssa herself has become a familyless member of the Star Ascendants Clan, the current leadership of the Valley dwarves. Throughout the course of the storm she became so involved in leading that it became necessary to give her a formal position.   As the conversation turns to dwarves and the hierarchy I know we must eventually dismantle, I produce one of my journals. It contains the careful sketches and recordings of all the inscriptions from the cavern in Afan.   Tira pores over it. The magic is intricate and complex and as I explain what it is her expression changes. This is the root of the dwarves' bondage but also our own sworn nature. It is where both races came from, in such different ways but from the same place.   This is the Empress' magic and it is asking a lot to have Tira, brilliant as she is, reverse engineer it. Still, I know it needs to be done and there is no one better.