Magdalena's History Lessons

“Who were my people?” I ask her.   The Fae of Leaf and Vine had a different lifespan than other fae - linear and not cyclical. Where other fae would sleep and wake in different forms we would go from seed to sprout to growth to flower, with a sleep in between each stage. She remarks to us that we were more like trolls than fae, in a way. We were planted, sprouted, grew, and eventually knew to plant a new seed to let life continue. Our grove was destroyed by a volcano (yet another reason to dislike the Ingan, I think).   All the fae in the Growth cycle worked to sever our racial ties to the trees, though the seeds, sprouts, and flowers died out. The magic they created dispersed our racial bond to all growing and flowering things but without a grove we were no longer truly fae. The next generation had no wings or songs.   She tells us that this first flightless generation of fae-elves bonded with the dragons, who disapproved of the Heart’s refusal to take in these lost fae-elves as her own. Amongst the dragons (and now the Kindred, I assume), a destroyed clan’s survivors are always taken in by another clan. She tells us of a ritual that she’s never found that binds together a dragon and rider. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll send out our two riders to train together and re-establish this ritual or create it anew. I’m sure Tira would find it rewarding.   So for a while we had our glorious City of Turning Leaves, now in ruins on the outskirts of the Northern Grove. This must be the city I see in my memories - elves, fae, a few dragons. Fae who could live as long as elves using the binding magic that Magdalena taught us. But the court outlawed this magic and it broke anyone who loved someone of another race. The elves left rather than stay and watch their friends die in what amounts to the blink of a long-lived eye.   She also tells us that something happened between elves and dragons at this point, but she doesn’t know what.   And at this point Magdalena met the Empress and started teaching her on the basis of two agreements: The Empress would take care of the elves as though we were her own people and she would capture at least one grove for Magdalena. It would seem that only one of those agreements came to fruition until now. Magdalena understood that crossing the Barrier and trying to steal a grove again would be too much to bear, and so she released the Empress from that promise. Until the conflict with the Collective became inevitable.   And here I transform again from an enraptured student of ancient history to a commander looking for a weakness. She knows so much of the Collective, having encountered them on nearly every continent she’s walked.   The Collective came from elsewhere, but they have some sort of magic that lets them travel great distances and appear when you least expect them. They worship the Ingans as divine. My spine tingles recalling Ikshafael’s coded words about this. He certainly does love mysteries to the point that I am quite annoyed with him for not sharing this information in the midst of our war. Not that I know quite how it might have helped...but it’s more the principle of the matter. Ingans taught them to blend their racial magic like stones melting into a pool of magma.   Here I pause to think for a moment about what Ikshafael did tell me. ABout how it was impossible to kill them but only to imprison them beneath the surface or separate them from their power by flying them out to sea. What had once seemed like an impossibility now seems merely improbable with the allyship of some of the Kindred. I don’t even know if I truly managed to kill the Ingans that I fought with my particular brand of self-sacrifice. Magdalena says that she isn’t quite sure how that rite works but that she could recommend some teachers, though not people she’d recommend spending a lot of time with.   When I ask about the human ‘gods’ she laughs. Once they were Zephyr, which I had suspected myself. The Zephyr ruled the skies so that they could rule everything beneath them. They would appear as prophets or divine beings, bestowing magical gifts upon the races that worshipped them. And then all at once they seemed to scatter and eventually regroup elsewhere. She thinks they are trying to move between celestial bodies (this, in my mind, was another thought about the Ingans...if I simply move them far enough away that they freeze…?)   But the Six landed amongst the humans and have continued to meddle and play god. She refers to them by name and theorizes that Sitka is being held hostage by Talmen and Isarus while Erak is a peacemaker and Sella keeps them organized but not really on track. My vision of a designated elf to yell at the human gods every century or so doesn’t seem that unlikely now...knowing that they’re simply bestowing magical gifts upon the population by producing saints or prophets every so often and not actually offering any guidance.   Individually they are like the Empress - more powerful than a normal individual of their race, though Magdalena doesn’t quite know why.  

• Talmen the Candlemaker
• Isarus the Fisherman
• Erak the Sentinel
• Sella the Silver Duellist
• Mora the Red Duellist
• Sitka the Weaver
• Master
• Beast

  The Master and Beast are different, though. Older than Magdalena and certainly not Zephyr like the Six. The Beast is native to the Dreaming and was pulled out into the waking world somehow, preying on early humans until the Master chained him to prevent the humans from dying out. The Master himself is more akin to the Storm or the Heart of Song than any of the Undying. She says that he likes playing chess and using the mortals as pawns on a board, like Drakken.   And finally we spend some time designing the future of Dreamfall, whose name may need an update, I think. She wants to build a network of woven spires that reach into the sky, leaving the forest floor clear and allowing the fae of day and night to see the sky and share it with the flightless elves. Nowadays of course, we will modify some of the design to provide more shade beneath the spires, which I hope will also make them more structurally supportive of great weights. They need to be able to support a dragon living amongst the trees. The vertical gardens of the Empires can grow up the spires, speckled with enchanted lights and sky bridges. This is where these traditions of gardens and fountains came from, I gather. It is, of course, an enormous magical undertaking that will have to wait until the storm has passed. But it is nice to pore over architecture and not battle plans for a little while.