Lyric looked down at the naked steel sword resting on her lap, marveling at the viridescent striations that snaked throughout the silvery blade; the verdant lines casting the blade in a faint green hue, which was probably how the sword had gotten its name “Green Trust.” She remembered this blade as the one always carried on her Uncle Ispin’s hip every time he came to visit, and she had often wondered how many giants and goblins had faced off against its razored-wrath in his hands. The sword was perfectly balanced, impossibly sharp, and it seemed to hum with a palpable energy and, while it was incredibly lightweight, at the moment it seemed absurdly heavy, as if the sword had somehow absorbed all of the massive enormity of the grief that had brought the blade here to her now.
The fact that Green Trust now resided in her hands meant that not only was her childhood friend dead and gone, but Donnie had perished as well, burned to death on the beach during the Battle of Vogler along with so many – oh so many – others. While she hadn’t known the shadowy elf long, he had reminded Lyric of her mother: the grace with which he moved; the tactical lethality of the way he fought; and the ease with which he seemed to slip out of sight so completely that you almost forgot he had been there at all, as if slipping from memory as well as space. She had been wracked with jealousy when Donnie had been given custody of the Green Trust after Ispin’s passing, but he had seemed to be the most capable to carry on the iconic man’s legacy and so the decision had made sense. And now that burden was hers to bear, and Lyric sincerely hoped that she could live up to it.
She slid the blade back into it’s worn sheath and hid the hilt under her robes, before standing and stretching to ease the myriads of injuries and pains that she had accumulated these past few days. Gods she hurt; was it possible that her entire body might be just one giant bruise? A long soak in a tub of hot water was just what her aching joints needed, but when she peeked into the side room where Arnie was submerged up to her chin in the steamy bath and emitting contented sighs and clearly showing no sign of getting out of the tub any time soon, Lyric knew that she would have to wait quite a while for her turn in the soothing waters.
She needed to find something else to wile away her time and distract herself from her aches and pains. DD was hard at work studying the defenses of their bunk room, checking the windows for their security despite them being a hundred feet above ground. While she admired his dedication, this seemed like overkill to Lyric – I mean, what could possibly climb this high to get to them, or would even want to if it could? Then again, some of the creatures that attacked Vogler had been able to fly, so maybe this wasn’t overkill at all.
Still, bolstering their defenses did not strike Lyric as a great way to pass the time until she could take Arnie’s place in the bath – the water of which was cooling by the minute, she realized with chagrin. She thought about talking with Eros and trying to get to know the enigmatic man a little better in an effort to find out just how he was able to channel the divinity of the gods into his magics, something that was believed to be impossible. Eros, was easy to find, the masked man was laying faceup on a hard bunk and either meditating, praying, sleeping, or otherwise not engaging with the rest of the group. He had been fairly silent since they had escaped Vogler, clearly distraught over something - his inability to save Donnie, Lyric supposed. He had been the one to find the elf’s body and retrieve the Green Trust after all. Better to leave him to his isolation, Lyric figured as she turned to look for another diversion.
The only other person in the room was the newcomer to their group, Doodle. Due Doll? Deuxdahl? A soldier in Vogler - a great one so he claimed, absent any sense of modesty – he now spent his time staring into a mirror admiringly, pulling down his shirt collar a bit to reveal shiny silver scales on his skin and letting out a groan of disgust and turning away abruptly, only to eventually return to the mirror and repeat the whole process again. This had been going on for the better part of an hour, Lyric guessed. The shiny scales were new, the man had claimed, having no idea how or why they had formed on his skin during the assault on Vogler by the Dragon Army. Lyric had initially thought that the scales looked rather fetching, like an intentional ornamentation or something but, given the man’s apparent revulsion to them, she now wondered if it was a disease of some sort, like rockscale or something equally horrible, and chose to give the man a wide berth until the affliction could be cured, making a mental note not to sit on a bunk or chair after him until it was they could find a cure.
After peeking in on Arnie and seeing to her dismay that the kender was showing zero affinity towards getting out of the bath any time soon, Lyric sighed and pulled out her writing quill and paper and began to pen a letter to her parents. In her neatest Elvish penmanship she scribed:
Hi Ma and Da,
I am doing okay. I am not sure what you have heard from the goings on up north here, but I am good. I passed the initiation fine, with the help of another student, and now I am in Kalaman, you know I always wanted to come here, my favorite place up to now. I have to meet with someone here and find out how to proceed with my training. I have made some friends, so I am doing well, but I cannot wait to see you both again soon. I am busy packing up my things so I will write more when I can.
Love you both,
Lyric
She looked at the letter for a long moment thinking about what else to say and not sure whose eyes would rest upon the note before it got to her mother. When she read through the letter several times, she got out a second sheet of paper and copied the wording of the note exactly, this time subtly changing a few of the letters into the script of her people, a language her mother called Undercommon. The lettering and syntax of this language was similar to the common tongue of the elves of the world above, as the two languages were believed to have originated from the same cultural origin but had evolved so differently having been so completely separated by thousands of years.
Lyric had hated language lessons even more than the constant fighting training, and her familiarity with Undercommon could be called halting at best. It wasn’t until her mother had shown her how to hide messages in her writings using this language that she learned to appreciate the language classes. The two of them had made a game of it, by writing a note in Elvish and subtly switching some of the letters to Undercommon, they could relay secret messages to one another. While this had been a fun game and a clever way to get Lyric to enjoy the otherwise dry lessons, she never thought that this skill would actually come in handy. But, like most of her mother’s teachings Lyric found a real world use for this lesson as well - a fact that was becoming annoying in how often it was happening lately.
Hi Ma and Da,
I am doing okay. I am not sure what you have heard from the goings on up north here, but I am good. I passed the initiation fine, with the help of another student, and now I am in Kalaman, you know I always wanted to come here, my favorite place up to now. I have to meet with someone here and find out how to proceed with my training. I have made some friends, so I am doing well, but I cannot wait to see you both again soon. I am busy packing up my things so I will write more when I can,
Love you both,
Lyric
Danger. Rumors true. More Soon. Pack Up.