13.7 Until You Ask

General Summary

Day 157

In the early hours of the morning we prepare to leave Magdalena’s swamp. She tells us that the. changing of the trees is faster around her location and that as long as we are headed away from her, we should make it out safely. Still, she’ll give us a pillar of light to orient ourselves as we travel.   She leaves us with many gifts before we head out, mostly locations that she expects us to visit to get a sense of the history of the older races:

• Council Rock: A plateau where the Covenant of Ten Nations was formed. This Covenant, she tells us, is the one that the Empress broke when she formed her bond with the elven people. Pact magic here is strong and oaths made here are not easily broken. She warns us that stone guardians likely still guard the area and that they are smarter than typical stone warriors. She tells us that they used to be stone wizards but that time may have ravaged their sentience, making them hard to communicate or reason with after all this time.
• Urna'low: Named by the trolls and translated as the Unbridled. It is a valley where trolls could not bring harmony. She says that fae songs are meant to record and tell their stories, but troll songs are about shaping the world. The trolls found that Urna’low could not be shaped, and so they gave it to the elves to tend to and love for what it was. All elves are bound from birth to the Empress, but the elves who live in this valley have been here the whole time. Maybe only 2 generations of elves but they may not know anything about the Empress or the other side of the Barrier. Magdalena warns us that the magic of this area encourages things to grow far larger than usual, including the fauna.
• Dreamfall: A place the fae sacrificed. They drew the Empress’ forces there and then fled to attack her elsewhere. Now it is a destroyed Grove but Magdalena tells us that roots grow deep and what is destroyed on the surface may not be gone entirely.
• @afan: Named by the dwarves as ‘Endless’. It is a place that shouldn’t have been made at all - the place where the chains of the dwarves oaths were forged. It is a place of binding and servitude, and she warns me to take nothing from this place but knowledge.

  And lastly she gives me a material gift - a heavy dark cloak fastened with a brooch depicting a wreath of leaves transitioning between the seasons. As I don the cloak and feed it a bit of my magic, it transforms into a set of fae wings - brilliantly orange and bronze. These are a relic of a time when non-fae lived amongst the Grove and needed a way to travel amongst the trees. They’re tiring and can only be used for a half hour or so, but once upon a time they would have marked the wearer as a friend of the fae. Magdalena notes that people may not recognize them anymore, given how long it has been.   And then we leave. With promises to return on the way back and tell her stories of our own. In particular, when I have been up to for the last 100 years, and how I came to be here.   It takes us the rest of the day to emerge from the marsh and we end up camping in the same site we used just two nights ago.   As the campfire dies, Bran settles down beside me to talk. Her thread, he tells me, is one of the truly deep ones - so connected to everything else around it. And what’s more is that he sees hers tangling with my thread time and time again but he doesn’t know whose thread is pulling whose. This time, at least, he felt her course shift when mine tugged at hers.   Still, though, he was unnerved by her. There is so much pain and loss along her course but she was so kind and gentle to us. She cares about me, clearly, and he asks very simply “Has she been good for you?”   She has. She’s taught me things I needed to know and shown me ways of thinking that I needed. I wonder at our relationship the same way I wondered about how I could build relationships with humans whose lives will flicker out so swiftly. Does the nature of love change when you know just how finite your time together will be?   Bran has been having more dreams of us facing the Collective, apparently. They’re clearer, but there are still so many possibilities that he can’t focus on one clearly. He tells me of one that feels lighter than the others - me and two others in a boat, sailing towards an island that is set apart from the storm surrounding it. My hand is on the rudder, and he wonders if the large figure in the boat might be himself. My eyes mist over when I shake my head - that’s Doraal. And Mistress.  

Day 158

Morning finds Camellia restless, as she has been for the last few days. I settle in beside her with some tea, as I have for the last few days.   She tells me that Magdalena asked her if she would return to me after sleeping. And then she gave Camellia a piece of knowledge that would let her choose her path when she woke - scoundrel, mystic, wizard? The price is that she must only use it if she has decided to return to me.   I watch her muse aloud - she knows she wants to serve my cause but will she do that best at home in the Grove or at my side? She’s never thought about what to be before…that’s a question for when she’s woken and seen the answer already, not for hoping before sleep.   She seems troubled by Magdalena, but confused. My teacher sang her old songs to carry back to the Grove - songs of people she had devoured. “She admired the people she killed, even as she devoured them. She was sad for them,” Camellia says quietly, “The opportunity to be different was never there for her. Not that she regrets what she is, but she never got to choose,”   I have a brief vision of the Collective choosing to be different…and shake it free.   “And she said that if the fae aren’t careful, some might wake up like her…what does that mean? And that if she had to end, she would do what a daughter must. She also said that the Empire was too small for her to stay in for long and that she had others to touch…”   And then I watch her resolve come together.   “She told me that if I was brave enough I would just ask you what you needed from me,” “I won’t give you an answer until you ask,” I tell her.