A Dream of Empire Ch. 027

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Princess Faranya XII of Tor Remilla

Imperial County of Falinor

9^th of Dawn's Light, 1283 D.f.

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The company you keep can illuminate the darkest night. It can turn a day's march into a dance, and silence, into song.

The sun following Faranya's debaucherous exposition of her magics certainly had a tune. Sure, they were marching, and Talos forced them to a brisk pace, but Alanna was never more than an arm's-length away, and was oft wrapped in Faranya's arm instead. With a soul so adorable showing her so much attention, it was impossible for Faranya to think of anything but joy.

Their hike today took them deep into the hills of Falinor, away from the valley floor and through an endless canopy of pines. Soon they were following a river that was frozen on either bank so only a small stream trickled between the sheets of ice. Besides Alanna's giddy conversation, and the snow that crunched beneath their feet, that stream was the only source of noise for miles around.

"And what's the Codex say about that one?" Alanna cutely inquired, pointing up at a nearby mountain and the white-stone ruins perched upon it. Faranya posed the question to the magical tome she held; a tome that was seemingly omniscient of everything Falinor was and is.

"That complex, dear, was the summer residence of the King of Sardonia," Faranya answered, reading the words that the tome conjured without quill.

"Huh. And that one?" Alanna childishly continued, pointing at another ruined tower jutting through the sea of pines. Again, Faranya asked her Codex.

"The summer residence of the Archduke of Ophelia, it says."

"Huh. Faranya, I don't get it," the enchantress frowned. "You said your family owned all of Falinor. 'Twas the King's wood when they reigned, was it not?"

"That is correct, dear," Faranya smiled.

"So why did all these other lords put their palaces here? Why wouldn't they be built elsewhere like, I dunno... their own lands?"

Faranya pulled Alanna closer to her, ruffling her blonde hair as she did.

"Think of it like a microcosm of the High Kingdom itself. My family owned the valley, true, yet we granted our subjects parcels of the land to enjoy. Just because it was ours did not mean we could not share its bounty. This, in turn, provided an opportunity for our subjects to mingle during the summer months."

"Like a summer fair for highborns?" Alanna mused.

"More than you might think," Faranya nodded. "The kings of old dared not come to Falinor empty-handed, after all. How else could they impress their brethren? So it was here that they brought the musics, magics, philosophies and inventions from the previous year, ideas which then spread throughout the realms that served my family. Most of them had some sort of specialty; Santaria is still known for their wine, for example."

"Gods yes they are," Alanna enthusiastically agreed. "And did your family have a specialty? The High Kings?"

Faranya glanced at Talos, walking about twenty paces ahead of them, and answered loudly enough to ensure that he heard as well.

"Lovemaking."

"You're teasing!" Alanna giggled.

"I am serious," Faranya grinned. "I do not know all the details, but there are many of my kind who place blame on my family's debauchery as the reason for our collapse. Tales are told of massive orgies, with a dozen-dozen royals participating."

Alanna's eyes widened like saucers at the very mention, and did she ever grip Faranya's arm so tight. Faranya knew she couldn't contain her excitement for long.

"Lovemaking with a dozen-dozen people!" Alanna excitedly squealed. "Doesn't that sound neat, honey?" Talos spun on his heel to reply, despite the icy ground beneath him.

"Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me," he shrugged, now treading backwards. "Elves are too boring to partake in so much fun."

"An interesting belief to hold, considering the magics you witnessed yesternight," Faranya retorted.

"One perverted elf doesn't change the truth," he smirked.

Faranya shot him her own smirk. She then playfully asked, "So you believe elves come into the world despising pleasure? Or, do you think it a by-product of our upbringing?"

Talos shrugged again. "The latter, of course. Doesn't make it any less true."

"And if I were to further say that elves weren't always so puritanical? That even we once enjoyed sex just as we enjoy wine and dance?" Faranya continued.

"I'd still think it hogwash. Trust me, I've plenty of experience with elven maids," Talos dryly boasted. "You put in weeks of courtship all to earn a kiss on the cheek. It's disgusting."

"Can we at least pretend these orgies happened?" Alanna cutely chimed in.

"They did happen!" Faranya snapped. "The elves you know now, dear humans, have little in common with our ancestors. Cultures change, tribes adapt, entire peoples reject the old ways for the new. How is that so difficult to comprehend?"

"Fine, fine, then I'll raise you one," Talos playfully replied. "Let's take your sexy elves of yesteryear for the truth. What of the babes sprouting from said orgies? I can't imagine the nobles of Elvendom would take kindly to bastards."

Faranya waved the question off, teasing the warrior. "Why, that is obvious; females of our kind grow pale when they are fertile, so they would know not to partake. The blood rushes from their cheeks to their lips and eyes, causing both to redden."

Talos rolled his own eyes. "Right, right. I'm sure they grow fangs, too."

"How did you know?" Faranya giggled. "The real solution is moon tea, I would hazard to guess. Same as it has always been."

"And are you gonna hold orgies when you're queen, Faranya?" Alanna inquisitively asked. Faranya beamed, glancing at Talos before replying.

"That depends; would you take part?"

"Well-" Alanna started to reply.

"Cass wouldn't let me. And I won't let her," Talos interjected. "So, no."

"Ha! Now who are the boring ones?" Faranya giggled, nudging Alanna's arm as they hiked.

Rather than reply, Talos waited for the ladies to catch up to him. He then unceremoniously snatched the Codex from Faranya, checked its map again, then hastened his steps to get away from the flirtatious girls.

Alanna snuggled up alongside Faranya once they were given space. "He's the boring one," she whispered mischievously. "Know that I'd join in a heartbeat had he not laid claim to my parts."

"You have no right to whine, dear. You let him ring you," Faranya teased, wrapping an arm around her.

"Mm, yeah," Alanna giggled adorably, raising her hand as proof. "Love is a burden like that. One day you're free, the next, poof! You're property. May you learn from my awesome, sparkling fate."

"Hm!" Faranya smiled. "Talos gave me an idea one better than marriage. He suggested that as a queen I should be relatable, but unobtainable. No rings should grace my hands, for with its existence die the hopes of every male in my realm."

"I suppose that's true. That is, if you limit yourself to one ring," Alanna winked.

Faranya laughed at that. If she'd dared to be more honest that moment, she would have told Alanna that there was but one ring she'd ever allow to grace her hand; a ring impossible to obtain while Kian'ra still took on mortal form. Instead, she replied that going ring-less was a simpler prospect than maintaining the egos of multiple husbands.

"It'd be a lot of work," Alanna concurred. "Still, the nights just might atone for it. Just imagine all of the... attention."

"Just sounds like more work," Faranya chuckled, teasing one of Alanna's stray locks. The girls were so engrossed in one another, in fact, that they almost bumped into a now-stationary Talos. His gaze was flickering between the Codex in his hands and the empty land before them.

"Why have you stopped, man?" Faranya asked of him.

Talos took another gander at the Codex, then again at their surroundings. "Book says we're here."

Faranya scanned their immediate vicinity. The near-frozen stream burbled just a few paces ahead, but other than that there was naught but trees and snow. There was evidence of elven ruins another distance up the mountain, but only a pair of ruined towers even then.

"Nothing's here, honey," Alanna said for her.

"I'm aware of that," Talos irritably replied. Once again he looked to the Codex. "Book, tell us again where the Remillan crypts lie."

Faranya only allowed for a half-minute of silence before snatching the tome from his hands. She then posed the same query, albeit in the Dragontongue; Issayamomosherservishay.

Before thine feet, the Codex wrote without quill.

Faranya frowned at the words. "It is quite adamant that the crypts begin here."

Talos took a peek over Faranya's shoulder just to confirm that statement's veracity. "... Alright. Lana, check the area for any obfuscation hexes. Faranya, see if you can extract anything of actual value from that thing. I'm gonna," he nodded up the hill, sighing, "look up there, I guess. Be back either way."

With his orders given, Talos trudged off, allowing Faranya to turn her thoughts inward.

Before thine feet. Faranya pondered on those ornate scribblings, wondering why the Codex decided to write them in that manner. Before thine eyes, now that could be reasoned with, but feet meant something else entirely. She then remembered Alanna's words of yesternight; that the world's greatest secrets were hidden in plain sight.

"Wait on, Talos," she murmured.

Faranya shut her eyes. She dreamt of the tendrils of life all around her, knowing intrinsically that they were inhibited by the winds of winter but still writhing in anticipation of spring. She granted them a hundred years of life, all pressed into a single moment, and commanded that they show what laid before her feet.

The ground trembled. A thousand roots of a hundred trees slithered beneath her, pressing through the dirt but not through the stone that laid just before her feet. She told the roots to spring forth; to rise up through the dirt, and push the ground away like wooden hands tearing open a sack of grain. The ground had no choice but to accept, and soon revealed a secret that it would have kept for a thousand years had Faranya not demanded otherwise; a flat stone surface, with an etching of a crescent moon in the center. The symbol of her family.

The princess exhaled, opening her eyes. She found Talos gazing on her with jaw hung low, like a schoolchild learning that classes had been canceled for the week.

"I know, dear," Faranya smirked, dropping to her knees to place a palm upon the stone. "You are easily amused."

"That was easy?" he groaned.

The newly-exposed stone was hexed with an ancient seal, but Faranya already knew how to defeat it. Alanna had told her just yesternight, after all.

I am Princess Faranya the Twelfth, she thought. Daughter of Prince Simohil the Fourth and granddaughter of King Tilarion the Defender. I am Tor Remilla.

And like the ground did just a moment ago, the stone trembled, shook, and split open from the center, as if it were the double door of a great subterranean keep. Steam then shot up through the snow in a thousand places simultaneously, some close by, some very distant, and a gust of hot air buffeted against her as the stone gave way to her will.

It revealed a staircase that seemingly dove straight into the world itself, one so long that darkness concealed the bottom.

"The crypts are underground," she heard Alanna whimper.

"Like most crypts are," Talos coolly replied. He nodded towards the passageway, giving Faranya a coy smirk. "Ladies first."

She squinted at him. "I will be the High Queen of all Elvendom, Talos. You go first."

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The downward steps delved deep into the world's crust, and darkness overcame the party not two minutes after they began their descent.

Faranya summoned a swarm of torchbugs to light the way forward, while Alanna did the same with a small flame bursting from her raised thumb. It was only a few minutes later, when Talos warned the ladies that their magics might trigger the crypt's defenses, that they were snuffed out and replaced by mundane torches.

Talos wasn't wrong, of course. Faranya knew better than anyone that elven structures bristled with magical and physical defenses. Sorceresses traveled far-and-wide to construct golems tasked to protect these places, and mundane engineers did the same, albeit with deadfalls and spike traps in lieu of magic. These defenses were only to be empowered once a complex was abandoned; the thought process was, if humanity must take the land of the elves, that the land should at least take some humans in turn.

The threat of these traps made advancement slow. Talos had to lead the party through the dark corridors and towering halls, double-checking every nook and cranny for the presence of a tripwire or soul gem.

And then, there was light. Not a plentiful amount, mind you, but enough to remind those who entered here that the sun still reigned outside. Faranya looked up to locate the light's source, finding small slits built into the ceiling which ran all the way to the surface. She couldn't see the sky directly; all of the openings were tilted towards the east. She made a mental note that these crypts were likely better-lit during the morning hours.

The party nervously continued onwards, still on the lookout for traps. Fortunately for them, though, no golems were to spawn this day. No trapdoors had to be avoided. No dummy chests tested their avarice, and no disintegration beams had to be disarmed. After six chambers or so, Faranya and Talos came to the conclusion that these crypts weren't defended at all.

Everything seemed to be progressing smoothly. So it came as no surprise that, upon entering the next chamber, Faranya noticed a nonsensical riddle written upon the wall in silvery letters. The words shimmered in the torchlight, their magical origin made obvious by the way they danced upon the marble.

From cloud to star, from stone to sand. Either willed by time or the creator's hand.

Faranya rolled her eyes. If nothing else, her ancestors certainly held an appreciation for cryptic poetry. "Talos, dear?" she called out, nodding towards the wall. "Your hand, if you would."

Talos meandered that way. He tried making sense of the riddle, but like Faranya groaned after a second or two of thought. Muttering an insult to all Elvendom under his breath, Talos laid a hand against the marble.

The crypt instantly reacted to his gesture.

The walls around them rumbled. The stone cracked and crumbled. Then, as Alanna rushed towards her man and as Faranya raced away, they were all enveloped by a heavy blast, throwing the party to the floor.

Everything was progressing smoothly; until they were all consumed by what they would later learn was a Greater Obliviation Curse.

-=->??? <-=-

A pounding headache forced Faranya from slumber.

"Ugh..."

With magics she tranquilized her throbbing head, only for it to be filled by a thousand-thousand questions. What was she doing lying on the floor? When had she gone to sleep? Where was she, anyway? And why was she wearing so many uncomfortable layers?!

Slowly but surely, her memories started to return. She recalled the two humans that had invaded Dun Aysla. She remembered the cave-in that they idiotically caused by stomping about the courtyard. The collapse must have caused more damage than Faranya had first realized, for the hall she was now in was utterly filled with rubble. She tried to get her bearings, but couldn't recognize where she was within the fortress.

Faranya had been fifty yards away when that human had fallen through the floor. Perhaps the collapse was so damaging that it flung her into this so-far-unseen hall? It didn't make much sense, but Faranya's back was in enough pain for it to be the truth.

Suddenly, her keen senses picked up hushed whispered coming from the next room. Silently, she treaded that way. It wasn't long before her swiveling ears could make sense of their words, words fortunately spoken in Elvish - the common tongue shared by all civilization.

"Last thing I remember is walking into some dingy tavern back in Chance," a man said. "Some, uh, two-cop town deep in the Borderlands."

"That's right, the tavern," a nervous girl spoke up next. "I-I was there too. In Chance. I was going to... no, wait, I did have some wine. But I can't remember a thing after that."

Faranya was now close enough to see their faces. There were only two, a man and a girl. She first noted the man's long, dark hair, then his chiseled features, and lastly his green eyes, eyes which glimmered brightly in the torchlight even when no other light was lit. The girl she could see less clearly, but Faranya could still guess her age by her rounded cheeks and flawless skin. These souls were familiar to Faranya... but from where...?

"Could've been bad wine," the man mused, more to himself than anything. "Really bad wine."

The humans! The man and the girl from the cave-in! Faranya pressed herself against a collapsed pillar and listened in on their conversation, steadying her breaths so to not be discovered. She would strike when the humans were most vulnerable.

"No. I know what must've happened," the man then gruffly said. "We obviously met each other back in that tavern. Perhaps things went well. Shared a few drinks, mayhaps. A few stories after those. Then, you drew a fancy towards me."

The man took two beleaguered steps away from the girl before he suddenly spun around, his finger raised accusingly.

"And rather than let me walk away, you enchanted me and stole my memories!" he loudly declared.

"What?! That's ridiculous!" the young girl thinly denied. "If anything happened, you drugged me and stole me away!"

"Right, right, 'cause I drug little babes," the man laughed.

"It stands to reason! That's why you won't let me read your thoughts."

"I won't let you read me, mage, because you'll just enchant me again. I know your type. I know your game."

"What type? What game?! You're the one that kidnapped me, and now I'm-" the girl raised her hand at him, her scowl transforming into a look of sheer terror, "and now I'm wearing an engagement ring!"

"So?!"

"I'm not engaged!" she cried. "Nor do I have blonde hair! What in the hells have you done to me, you pervert?!"

"Me?! Please. Like you're worthy of such an elaborate scheme," the man chuckled derisively. "Bimboed Catrionans are a cop a dozen. You're not special, no matter what you've conjured in that pretty little head of yours."

"Ah! You would call me a bimbo?!" the girl squeaked. "I'll have you eating those words, you churl!"

The girl aggressively advanced on the man, eyes thinned and fists raised, but he disarmed her with a simple, tired sigh. Then, he looked about the room.

"Or... maybe it's not our doing. Maybe it's this place that stole our memories," he reasoned a bit more calmly. "Maybe something here has made us dumb. There are spells like that, right mage?"

The girl dropped her fists. "Um. I think so?" she asked herself.

Faranya shook her head, finding this show of feigned idiocy absurd. She decided to step forth from the shadows, summoning a swarm of firebugs to dance around her to shield her mind from enchantment.