#ebonlight | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lord-archon · 2 years

Text

Nyassa Ebonwind, Pt. 3: The Cleansing at Ebonlight

This story actually begins in Tirisgarde Sound. I failed to mention it in my last entry because.. well.. there were other things at the forefront of my mind. At one point early in our telepathic communications before I regaled the Countess on the subject of a dream I had, the topic of why a mage such as myself didn’t carry a channeling staff curiously came about. I of course educated her a bit more on my atypically scrappy and up close and personal combat style that didn’t warrant a terrible amount of casting, though she knew that already from our first meeting. She’d seen my blades: one of a rare few I’d shown them to that I wasn’t already planning on killing first. She’d charmed me on the day we met, and.. well obviously I’ve already told you that story. Anyway... we’re delving off topic again. The conversation on the staff took an unexpected turn, however. She claimed she had a spare I could have that required having corruptive magics cleansed, which isn’t the part about this staff that I found alarming. I’d cleansed staves of single malignant corruptions before using a method my parents invented (appropriately named The Stillwater Method), and taught me once I’d graduated from the Dalaran College. What alarmed me was whom the staff’s former owner was: Nyassa’s fallen fiancé Elaine Emberlight.

You can imagine my apprehension after that revelation’s gleaning. As already mentioned Elaine Emberlight was the fallen beloved Nyassa had taken me to the unmarked grave of during the Day of the Dead celebration. Or more accurately describe in that case: a moment of mourning. At the very least I agreed to inspect the staff and maybe even cleanse it, but knowing whom it once belonged to? My taking it after only knowing the Countess a short while felt wrong, like I was robbing another woman’s grave. Which is of course a bit ridiculous since Nyassa was giving it to me freely if I could cleanse it of the corruption, but.. it still felt like a rather significant gift to just be given practically on a whim. I still entertained the idea. It would be several days until we found the time for it, and even over that short time the Countess reminded me of that I’d given her my word what I said I would do. Unfortunately there were times where I was busy with other avenues of work, and all I was able to do with regards to inspecting the staff was to have Nyassa perform the inspection herself. She knew the item better than anyone, so it felt appropriate, and my trust in the Countess was well enough that I felt she could perform the intuitive study for me beforehand. Then the day came, and it was decided there was only one place this ritual could be safely performed: Lady Ebonwind’s estate at Ebonlight.

As with everything to do with Nyassa Ebonwind I’d not really known what to expect, and even with unsettled expectations I was still surprised by what I found. Unlike Windthrush in the metropolis of Stormwind, Ebonlight was on the opposite coast of the Eastern Kingdoms, in a dark and aptly gloomy part of the continent that is technically considered part of the Blasted Lands surrounding the Dark Portal. However, life had somehow returned to this part of the world, and it seems enough so that trees took root and establishments founded.. one of which was of course Ebonlight. Granted in the earlier days before Nyassa the lands were called Emberlight, but I digress.

As with every other instance of performing this ritual I inquired again with my beloved on the subject of the stave’s corruption and what magic(s) pervaded it and needed cleansing. Normally there’s one dominant source of corruption in an item (at least in my experience), but Nyassa claimed that this staff was imbued with fel, void, necrotic, and blood magics! I don’t know if you could envision something more sinister, and ordinarily I would suggest the safe destruction and disenchantment of the corrupted item rather than cleanse it. But my elven mage ego demanded I try anyhow. By this point in the Countess and I’s friendship, the two of has had grown close. While there was a sexual aspect to our relationship early on, an emotional bond blossomed (perhaps on my end moreso than hers, frankly I’ve not thought to ask). I was courting Nyassa by this point, and knowing my startling record of failure with anything pertaining to marriage and romance, I was not doing a good job of not falling for the Countess in expectedly fast fashion. The reasons I’m saying this is that I so very much wished to give her all of me that I could without professing hastily attained feelings of endearment... and as well wished to give her the best effort I could. Nothing about this seemed easy for her. Aside from the corruption within the staff there was a noticeable unease just from the moment she laid eyes on it. This staff meant something... this staff was significant to the Countess of my heart.

Setting up for the ritual didn’t take very long. Nyassa obtained the staff and brought it out to where I’d started setting the stage with the appropriately corresponding runes, setting up four small circles in a diamond pattern with a more intricate rune set in the middle for the staff’s placement. After due diligence was done and all possible safety measures were taken, the darkly imbued staff; crimson in hue, was placed in the center rune. Wards were put in place around each of the siphoning stones so that the corrupting magics that needed to be wrought from the staff wouldn’t radiate beyond the stones themselves while still being drawn to the stones. To keep Nyassa involved in this process; I taught her how to make these wards for herself. I’d been teaching her some magic up to this point and what would you have it: this was an ample teaching opportunity. After the wards were all set and mana was invested in to the runes themselves, the ritual began.

Where Nyassa and I stood was outside the greater rune inside a completely separately drawn set. This would be where I would channel the spell from, dig deep and draw directly from the ley lines if I could. This ritual that my parents coopted and passed down on to me was always a ritual meant to be undertaken by two mages, and I was only one. Yes, Nyassa is one of the fabled Mage-Priests of Thalassian legend, but her magecraft was (and still largely is) fledgling by comparison at best, and therefore I would largely be performing this ritual on my own. Even in hindsight this was incredibly stupid and dangerously reckless of me to think I could pull off a ritual requiring the mana and efforts of two skilled magi as just one, but what can I say? Love costs even the greatest minds moments of rationality. I’ve no doubt if I’d still been in the Kirin Tor that my actions would’ve warranted disciplinary action, especially since there was the hypothetical potential for political conflict for involving Stormwindian nobility. Pride and a desire to prove my worth overcame any good sense I had, as such would prove to be the case when involving Lady Nyassa Ebonwind. (Gods, even today I still struggle with knowing my worth to her no matter how often she states so plainly the gravity of her feelings towards me, and the strength those words carry now. Perhaps I am a much more fragile creature than I often show myself to be.. always with her do I have my most vulnerable moments.)

To the uninitiated or those unaware with the Stillwater Method of cleansing and why it requires two mages to perform, there are two things to consider. One is that the spell starts with a crude disenchantment of the staff. I say crude because you don’t break it down in to its base magical elements: simply break the staff, shatter it even. This is performed by one of the two mages. The second mage then creates a small time anomaly in the center rune where the shattered staff is suspended: now a mosaic of broken pieces. See.. the reason why I perform this ritual on my own rather than with another is because of the timing required. The moment the staff is in pieces the time anomaly needs to be placed and held. A monumental task, but I had no one available to me who could perform such potent transmutation in such short order and with the practiced timing, therefore justifying my actions in my head. Well needless to say.. it was almost more than I could handle. Holding a time anomaly in place like so is an incredible strain on mana reserves and resources, so much that it nearly drained me completely just to maintain the spell while the siphoning stones did their work in drawing all the malevolent magics from the staff.. which is not nearly as quick a process as I remembered it being. The intertwining of magics meant that those magics also had to untangle themselves before being drawn away from the shattered channeling staff. Now.. I never told my beloved this next part, but if she hadn’t have been there, if I’d made her stand outside the protective rune she would’ve watched me spend all my magical lifeforce until I was an empty husk. I wouldn’t have died, no, but gods I would’ve been close if she didn’t place her hands on my chest and core, and allowed me to siphon from her own mana pool to sustain the spell. Somehow I had persevered long enough for most of the magics to untangle and drain into their respective siphoning stones, therefore Nyassa was essential to carrying the last of the spell to its conclusion. After the last of the magics was siphoned in to the stones, I reversed the flow of the small time anomaly around the staff, reassembling the cleansed staff back in to its renewed form.

Then I safely unbound the anomaly, and collapsed in to my beloved’s waiting arms. The ritual was complete. The staff that had been a blighted blood red hue at the beginning was now a shimmering blue and crystal white, with the cracks of the reversed disenchantment glowing gently against the perennially dull atmosphere of Ebonlight. As we’d previously planned, Nyassa called a pillar of Light on each of the siphoning crystals to null and void those corrupting magics forevermore. My Countess then mustered whatever strength she had to carry me back in to her home. She might have utilized her telekinetic sorcery to aid in the task, but frankly I was only lucid enough to feel her hands and arms on me, though I swear I could feel her heart thumping in her chest as she started tending to me. I don’t know if there is a good and proper way to describe the exhaustion I felt, not even the pride of knowing I’d almost entirely pulled off a ritual that required my mother and father’s efforts combined to complete. I hadn’t done it entirely alone however. I too only succeeded because of someone I now love. Nyassa recovered the staff from the runes now forever burned in the earth at Ebonlight - a permanent marker of our combined efforts- and handed me to completed tool. She gifted me this staff for my efforts, simply because she could. Or so I was under the impression of, at least. After this remarkable woman fed me, she told me something... something that I can’t risk repeating even in these private pages. All I can say is that the actions and events described and detailed in what she’d done just to learn the location of this staff to begin with were unexpected in the worst way. I... even today I still find it hard to fathom, but I can’t for a minute believe she’d tell me these things if they weren’t true. Maybe I’m biased, or maybe I just wished to believe that she trusted me enough with such a mortally ruining secret that it simply had to be true. I choose to believe the latter, naïve of me though it may be. There was a lighter half to the secret of how she’d obtained the staff that I can say: in that she outsmarted the unwitting owner of the staff and won it in some sort of bet. She was fearful of how I might react to the first earth shattering secret of which I will never detail to another soul living or dead, and I won’t lie to myself in these pages: for a moment, I doubted her. It was a fleeting moment. What I didn’t say with regards to the secrets of this staff I now keep in my possession is that Nyassa went through a personal hell to obtain it... for someone she loved. The staff was once meant for her now fallen fiancé Elaine Emberlight. The woman’s life depended on Nyassa doing everything against her gentle nature to find this item to save her lover’s life. Biased towards her though I truly am, I can understand the desperate means one goes through for love. So I expressed as such for my Countess.

And.. as much as I enjoy the entanglements I have the privilege of partaking in with the esteemed Countess, I will refrain from describing so now. The memory of that day was another turn of the key towards unlocking the cage I kept my heart in.. and oh how close I was to giving it all to her that day, and by the end of that day.. I’d say I almost would have. But for now I must rest, and pass in to the pillowy dark of sleep in the arms of my beloved Nyassa Ebonwind, keeper of my heart. - Knight-Archon Shakiena Auvelia Stillwater

0 notes