The island of Iltharim floated in the sky above the sea.
Concealed by clouds, this glimring paradise was unknown to the world outside those who claid it as ho.
The dark elves had never needed friends.
Not since their expulsion millennia ago.
They lived and thrived alone, their clans bound together by ancient blood and older grudges, free from the reach of the world below.
The rivers that ran from Iltharim’s heart, a vast glacial lake, fed their fields, their beasts, and their cities of obsidian and pearl.
They had no need for trade.
No want for outside knowledge.
Only the lessons their ancestors had carved into bone and song, and the mories carried by the eldest among them.
Yet even here, in the smoke-lit council hall of obsidian and bone, the world’s tremors reached.
The chamber was a circle, its walls carved with glyphs that told of their exile and survival.
Each elder wore a mask of their clan’s spirit-beast: spider, hawk, wolf, serpent, each carved in blackwood and ivory.
A ritual of silence opened every gathering.
The councilors struck their spears against the floor three tis, then bowed their heads to the dark fla in the pit at the chamber’s center.
Only when the fla hissed back into stillness did the first voice rise.
"They co again," rasped a councilor, his face half-hidden by the long fangs of a spider mask.
His voice echoed as if spoken from beneath the earth itself.
"Whispers from Elorath. The Synod would have us convene. They beg, and they flatter. Always the sa."
Murmurs stirred among the half-circle of elders, each from a different clan but bound together by Iltharim’s necessity.
So scoffed openly. Others leaned forward, listening with the patience of hunters watching prey circle closer.
At the center, raised upon a seat hewn from the fang of so lake-monster, Eladria rested her chin on one hand.
Her eyes glead amber in the torchlight, bright and cruelly amused.
"Elorath would not reach out to us unless he was desperate," she said at last. Her voice was smooth, her tone iron beneath velvet. "But make no mistake... he isn’t cornered. Not yet."
She let the silence hang for a mont before continuing. "If the Synod is reaching across the void now, it is because they are afraid."
Another elder leaned forward, rings clicking against the haft of his spear.
"Afraid of what? Their forests still stand. Their spires still gleam. They have their god and their gilded armies. What threatens them that they would crawl to us?"
Before Eladria answered, others cut in.
"Let them grovel," sneered a wolf-masked elder.
"The Synod cast us out, spat on us, nad us cursed. Why should we now lend them a hand? Better we watch them wither."
"They would not grovel without reason," said a serpent-masked matron, her voice low as running water.
"If they crumble, the tide that drowns them may yet sweep toward us. Best to know what drives their fear."
"Bah," spat another, a hawk-masked hunter whose mask feathers rattled when he shook his head.
"This is a ga. Light elves love their gas. They sow rumors to bind us to their cause."
The council fractured into overlapping argunts, their words clashing like steel.
Eladria listened with sharp patience, letting the discord sharpen the mont before she struck.
"The world below changes," she said, cutting through the noise.
"I hear the sa whispers you do: that the humans gather under one banner. That a human boy who bears the blood of the Architect drags his kindred houses behind him like oxen in a yoke. That the Queen of the Shivering Sea has wrapped him in her coils and nad him favored."
The hall shifted uneasily.
Even here, far from Submareth, the na Thalassaria carried weight.
Old legends rembered the tis she had dragged fleets into the deep, or shattered cities with storms.
To think she might have chosen a champion, worse, a human, unsettled more than one dark elf heart.
Humans were despised and feared in equal asure.
They often considered themselves the highest of beings, arrogant, ignorant, and violent beyond reproach.
That they had not destroyed themselves in the millennia since the Exodus of the Eidolons was a miracle in itself.
For most of history they remained fractured into petty fiefdoms, each ruled by a house of magi lords who declared themselves sovereign over their own tiny dominions.
Alone, they were little more than gnats.
But united? United, they were cunning, patient, and terrifying.
The Orcs raged and burned, the Trolls crushed and devoured, but humans sched.
They laid roads, forged chains, built walls that lasted generations. Even Iltharim’s elders could not deny the danger if such creatures turned their ambition outward.
For Thalassaria, sovereign of the abyss, to favor a human lord consolidating power among his kind, this was sothing to stir the world below indeed.
"They say," murmured another councilor, his serpent mask glimring in the torchlight, "that his house has already bent the Heirs of the Crucible to his will. That fire sings for him, and now even the sea lends her voice. If that is true..." He did not finish.
Eladria did, with the satisfaction of a predator naming prey.
"Then the balance shatters. Elorath feels the tide rising. The Synod knows that if humans consolidate, if they bind their guilds and armies into one, then the light elves’ gas of ritual and ceremony will crumble. They reach to us not because they want us, but because they cannot face the tide alone."
She rose then, cloak-tails spilling across the black stone floor.
Every movent was deliberate, commanding.
"They would have us fight for them. They would have us play pawns in their holy war against change. But we are not pawns."
Her gaze swept the elders, sharp and burning.
"Iltharim has endured while empires fell. We bowed to no Synod, no god but the Void, no sea-queen, and no beast who calls herself the sovereign of winter. And if the world is changing, we will not cling to the past like frightened children. We will shape the change, or break it."
The silence after her words was heavy, thoughtful.
Elders exchanged glances. So nodded, others frowned, but none spoke against her.
Still she pressed.
"Send word back to Elorath. Tell them Iltharim hears their pleas. Tell them we will... consider." Her smile was thin, cruel.
"If the Synod crawls to us now, let them crawl further. Let them prove how desperate they are. Until then, we watch the tide. We wait. And when the world finally tips..."
Her hand closed in the air, fingers curling into a fist. "...Iltharim will not be found begging. We will be the storm they forgot to fear."
The torches guttered. The shadows deepened.
For a heartbeat it felt as though the whole island leaned forward, listening.
The council dispersed slowly, whispers following each elder as they filed from the chamber.
So muttered of caution, others of opportunity. Masks hid their expressions, but not the weight of their steps.
Eladria remained. She walked alone to the open balcony carved into the mountain’s face.
Below her, the glacial lake stretched like a mirror, silver mist curling over its surface.
The night wind carried the scent of snow and jungle blossom both.
She stood long in the silence, her amber eyes fixed on the horizon hidden by cloud.
"Let the Synod beg," she whispered, a private oath. "Let the humans play at empire. When the storm breaks, Iltharim will ride it."
Her cloak flared in the wind, and for a mont she looked less like a queen and more like the shadow of sothing older, sothing patient, sothing waiting.
---
The chamber of the so-called Engine humd with low light.
Rust-red filants pulsed along the ribs of the cavern, tracing sigils half-eroded by centuries.
Caedrion bent over his parchnts, sketches of runes and circuits spread like a battlefield map before him.
The girl of light stood across from him, her twin-tails drifting as if stirred by so unseen current.
Her voice was sharp, patient, almost imperious as she corrected him.
"Not like that. Your kind thinks in terms of lines, edges, and the crude grammar of ’spells.’ But what you call magic is no such thing. It is rhythm. Entropy pressed into order. You must feel the pattern, not copy it."
Caedrion exhaled, scraping away another failed sigil with the edge of his knife.
He looked up, and for an instant her form flickered, eyes widening.
She tilted her head toward the ceiling, as if listening.
The air shifted, faint whispers brushing through the cavern, voices that were not theirs.
Echoes of words traded across distances no mortal ear could catch.
Her mouth curved in sothing colder than a smile.
Barely audible, she breathed:
"Even now the power of those bastards still plagues this world... I’ll have to do sothing about that once I’m free..."
Caedrion frowned. "What was that?"
Her head snapped back toward him, expression smooth again, eyes burning like furnace doors.
"Nothing." She waved one delicate hand, dismissive. "Focus. You’re still thinking like a child with chalk. Again."
He bent back to the parchnt reluctantly.
She leaned over his shoulder, her presence warm and oppressive, and jabbed at a half-finished glyph.
"Here. Feel the current under your skin. Do not imagine a fla. Imagine the principle that makes fla possible."
Her tone softened, almost indulgent. "That, boy, is power."
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