Letters from The Empire - Part 4

*Letters folded into origami dragons litter the realm. Each painted with an impossibly red kiss and treading a little glitter when opened. Inside would be more of the world unveiled for those who find it.*

To those who find life beautiful, in any form, and wish to know how to preserve it,

I find this most recent letter the hardest to write. When I set out to keep the realm informed of the happenings, I never suspected, I never thought, for a moment, I would come across the horrors I have.

The battles wage near daily. The dreaded Dracolich Lyrid'rosvilmirev terrorizes the battlefield. Swooping down on us at every chance where we have any breath. As though keeping us on our toes and knowing just what she’s doing.

She’s distracting us.

I had to know more. When I first came to these lands, Fae’run, it was the first time in all my long life I’d ever beheld them up close. Long ago, I peeked out of the Mounds of the Fair Folk, but I remembered raging lizards who breathed nothing but fire and didn’t know language. I didn’t fear them, but I had no idea what wondrous beings they would become with the beauty of evolution.

Now, in 1494, they glide through the skies like celestials, watching us all. They give and grow. They provide wisdom with their long lives and intellectual ways. They provide a need in all of us to know more. More of them and their majestic ways, more of the world they’ve seen, more than even an old Fae whose long past her slumber.

Not all are so grand, I’m sure. But I have rarely met one I couldn’t find virtue in since coming here. I found my heart in one.

And at his feet, in the lair he lets me lay in, he told me the story of Lyrid'rosvilmirev, the dragon turned Dracolich, turned against her own Thran, turned against all that many dragons in this world would call moral and good.

I listened to an Ancient Ebon repeat to me the story of her rise and fall… and I leave it here for you.

*A gem would be inside, with it would be the recording of a smooth but guttural voice, speaking softly and clearly:*

"Lyrid'rosvilmirev was a troubled child. Her hunger for power stood above all other ambitions, and she shied no means to attain it. We dragons are prideful and ambitious creatures. Sometimes too ambitious for our own good.”

“A while ago, I had meditated and asked the Chronicler for insight. After a while... he flooded my mind with her history. She.. was in his time. When he lived and was the High Dreamweaver of Isk'Waere. He took her under his wing, seeing how ambitious and studious she was. Her curiosity and passion... was about the knowledge of the true font of power. She shared that knowledge indiscriminately with her fellow Oathsworn, never one to mind how questionable or controversial a topic may be - To her, knowledge was knowledge and not something that was to be sealed away."

"The Founding Mother, the first Zaneun, saw great potential in her, having high hopes for her and all the elders, along with divinations, hinted she was destined for greater things. But.. divinations aren't always what they seem."

"When the first Zaneun's life ended, becoming one with the Prime, Lyrid'rosvilmirev changed.."

"When our people went to find her.. to ask why she did not attend the final sending, they were only met with anger and resentment. Words on how the first Zaneun was weak and unworthy for accepting the finality of death. These words rooted in her head, making her believe she was destined to rule for all time. No one... could convince her otherwise."

A projection screened out of the gem. Imagery flooded the mind, as memories of what he saw flashed before you. Lyrid'rosvilmirev, as a dragon, weaving necromantic magic raising mountain monsters after slaying them. Visions of the dragoness trapping souls within crystals and consuming them. Her eyes seem shrouded in darkness... she turns away from you and disappears.

"When the war against the Elven Kingdom broke out, Lyrid'rosvilmirev disappeared from our lands. Isk'Waereans feared she had been killed or taken captive and searched for her across the realm and neighboring lands, but not a trace of her could be found. Until... she made her presence known. Upon a cloud of miasma and death descending upon the elven communities of the Twilight Forest, she had changed... cast off her mortality. Her former body had not decomposed so to the point as you have seen her with your own eyes, but there was no mistaking it. Lyrid'rosvilmirev had embraced Dracolichdom, and she had mustered an army of her own. A swarm of undead assailed the outlying Elven communities, indiscriminately dragonkind - Oathsworn or not, and the peoples of the kingdom, were made soldiers of her grand army... the devastation was... immeasurable." 

The second projection of a vision flashed: The memories of the visions that surfaced. A slideshow of what looks like black and white drawings upon vellum paper. They artistically depict slaughter, with Lyrid'rosvilmirev's baneful eyes glaring upon the fleeing living, a single outstretched black dragon's paw commanding the horde to kill them all. 

"Her assault on the realm.. made the elves accuse Isk'Waere of her deeds, turning all the people against us, no matter how much the Elders tried to convince. There was even fighting from within. Dragons turning on each other in rage. This is when the Elves enslaved our people. The Elders... were at a loss on how to move forward. The Chronicler… was deeply troubled on how to move forward."

Another projection came from the gem. Again, imagery of dragons fighting among themselves, where many of them bind their own souls to phylacteries, die in battle, change bodies and commit cold murder of their elders to claim more powerful host bodies flash before your eyes. Even the total desecration of the First Zaneun's resting site.

“She trapped her own kin. Used them for her own gain. Turning us against them.. and letting those not under her control suffer from it. The Younglings... the Elders... all of them. Even those passing through weren't safe from this slaughter."

"Lyrid'rosvilmirev and her cabal of newly turned Dracoliches were exiled from Isk'Waere and declared enemies of our sovereignty. The laws in place today within Isk'Waere were forged in the wake of her betrayal and coup to claim supreme power over the Flight with her /perfect/, immortal self." He spat the words.

"Lyrid considered herself the legitimate heir to the title of Zaneun by her absolute power over life and death. The decision to exile her and her cabal, making her an enemy, by the High Circle, was a dear one. With no aid from the Elven Kingdom, our people were at war with at the time... Isk'Waere's fate seemed to be coming to its end. But, fate preserved us once Vlorrisfarne gained its footing and the Empire prevailed."

 "I've tried to meditate to... perhaps be given a hint or... history on how she was defeated before. But the Chronicler is never quick and he speaks in riddles at times." 

"After that day in the Fallen Settlement, my bones ached. My heart was heavy. Her name was oddly familiar... but strange. At the time, I didn't understand, so I asked to know why. And what I just told you.. is what was revealed to me. She is the very same that Isk'Waere faced so long ago. Our fallen sister in the skies again after falling into the clutches of the scourge we now face, lured by the dark promise of power to end all her enemies. And to finally get what she desires. Isk'Waere."

"If she gets what she wants, these mountains will fall into an era of darkness. It has been written, that we will face her. Isk'Waere's children standing to face her again, just as their ancestors."

*The gem visions and guttural voice would fade with a growl.*

I watched an Ancient Ebon break that night from the visions of a past that he and so many of the Thran of Isk’waere still suffer under. The reminder that one of their own, a sister, a Thran member, would turn on her kind, murder them, and use them as puppets.

She has come to finish what she started. Though I suspect she’s no more than another pawn of Ra’altherus’s, she is a dangerous one.

If we’re playing a chess game, she is the Queen to his King. Once she falls, we can move to checkmate and finally end this horrific war. Finally put to rest our dead in the fields and at home, eventually properly grieve all that we’ve lost in all of this.

Because of people who couldn’t stand the thought of leaving this world, because of people who couldn’t accept the most remarkable thing they were ever given; Mortality.

They didn’t look at the short times they were given and decided to fill it as much as they could while they could. They didn’t make plans to make a future worth growing old into, or others to preserve their memories so that they could live, truly, forever.

They stole. They stole from their people. They stole from the world. They stole from us. 

We go to face the Dracolich soon, and soon we will take from her what she so willingly took for herself, her precious immortality. The theft from the innocent will be repaid.

Now, it is our turn to steal from the thieves.

Signed,

The Shinemera

*A doodle at the bottom shows a great, grand Dracolich being pummeled with arrows and stones. In the next pane, they're throwing water, or possibly acid, on her because a voice bubble above her head says, “I’m melting, I’m melting!”*