[Dragaera] Submitted for your Consideration

[Jonathan Carey, CHRL via Dragaera]

This is my very first attempt at fanfic.  So hopefully you all don't hate
me after this.

Josan felt his legs burning.  It was true, he thought to himself, he was
not particularly accustomed to physical exertion.  It was also true, he
continued, that the pain associated with this endeavour was worth it, so he
pushed his legs to continue.  Step.  Step.  Step.

If he had only known the place a little better, he could have teleported.
Heh.  The story of his life.

Well, his most recent life, anyway.

For the last two thousand years or so, he'd become increasingly
interested--though, to be fair, his friends unkindly used the word
"obsessed"-- in the history of those beautiful conjunctions of art,
weaponsmithing, and magic that were known to those in his academic circle
as The Bastions, but which less informed individuals typically called The
Great Weapons.

He'd devoted much of his own personal wealth in tracking down stories from
their history, and spent a great deal of his personal time separating what
was fact and what was fancy.  People could hardly be blamed if there was a
little hyperbole every now and then. When describing the events surrounding
The Bastions, superlatives often seemed the most accurate terms to use.
Naturally, he discounted almost out of hand anything those filthy Teckla
said--what wasn't exaggerated to the point of impossibility was baseless
superstition, as proven by the Teckla accounts from any number of battles
where Bastions figured (and whenever Bastions and Battles happened in the
same place, the Bastions almost invariably figured prominently).  Their
accounts varied wildly from accounts of the soldiers and other civilians of
better stock that witnessed and survived the events with their souls intact.

But even with the Teckla, there was the occasional morsel of information
that turned out to be, if not factually true, then at least a good lead
upon which he could follow up.  He felt his manuscript was nearing
completion; just this one last interview and he could publish his
findings.  It was almost inevitable that such a work would be well received
by his peers.  Despite their importance in the history of Dragaera,
precious little reliable information existed about the nature, abilities,
personalities and political dynamics of the 17 Bastions of the Empire.  He
remembered how it was his discovery that Blackwand didn't particularly like
Nightslayer that first drew his interest to the subject.  How it was even
possible that a piece of metal had any opinions about another piece of
metal was just deliciously enticing.  To call them weapons was almost
criminal, which is why he and his circle referred to them as Bastions
instead.  After all, they protected the Empire, regardless of who had made
them, and for what purpose.  He got shivers just thinking about how
beautiful the Bastions were.  Perfectly balanced, in literally every sense
you could care to think of.  Balanced as weapons; balanced as powers;
balanced as soul-grafts...their beauty was...

He shivered again.  Hmm.  Perhaps it was the wind.  It did seem to be
picking up.  The cold wind brought him back to where he was, and that
brought him back to who he was going to meet.  It was true, he had kept
this interview until last. But he was driven by his sense of duty.  He had
a duty to make sure that his manuscript was as complete as possible.  True,
it was often extremely difficult to track down wielders much less get them
to talk about their artifact.  But he'd done it on no less than 3 separate
occasions, and it wouldn't have been possible without his good friend,
Magwin.  Issola could flatten any ruffled feathers.  And his interview
questions usually ruffled quite a few feathers.

It made him nervous that she wasn't able to be with him today.  She had
begged off of this particular trip--indeed, she'd begged HIM to forego the
trip as well.  But it wouldn't do if his piece had only 16 chapters.  He
chuckled at the unintentional pun. Magwin would have chuckled along with
him, he was sure.

His eye caught something unusual and he did a double take as he realized he
was looking at a door.  This was not the door he was expecting; he wondered
whether or not he should proceed to the one his contact had told him about
or use this one to get out of the wind. Magwin would have recommended the
one where he was expected.  Except, he wasn't expected, Magwin wasn't here,
and regardless, Magwin would have recommended not coming here in the first
place.

He turned towards the door, clapped and waited. He clapped again, to show
that he could be polite and deferential just like any Issola, and then
opened the door.

He needed this for the manuscript.  For the manuscript.  He stepped through
the door.

----

He checked the time again.  He'd been in this cursed place for over an hour
and a half, and felt no closer to finding her than when he first started.
He opened the door into many rooms, called out a hello, and moved onto the
next one when met with silence, room after room after room.

For such a large residence, he thought, there should be more staff.  Even
Tecka were better than nothing.

He noticed some light coming from down a hallway.  Light was a promising
sign.  He followed it, and found that it was a stairway with torches set
into the stone.  It turned out to be a long and winding stairway.  Stairs
outside, stairs inside.  It would be a dozen years before he wanted to
climb any more bloody stairs. The damn cycle would turn before he wanted to
see another set of stairs.  He stopped and rested.  If he had kept on
going, who knows?  He might even have lived.  Probably not, though.

It was as he was seated that he noticed, set into the wall at an angle, a
pathway carved into the stone.  It was almost invisible and he was staring
straight at it.  He examined it from lower on the stairway--from that
angle, it WAS invisible.  No sorcery; just expert natural camouflage.
There was no way he was not going down it.  He was a Hawklord; Hawklords
LIVE for secrets like this.

So he walked down the path, away from the stairs.  He didn't consider if he
could find his way back.  If all else failed he could always teleport out.
The walls of stone around him were black, and reflected the light from his
light orb as it floated next to his head.  They looked like obsidian, or
onyx, or volcanic glass perhaps.  Or maybe all three.

Something blue winked at him as he passed it.  He stooped to inspect it
more closely--which itself was an achievement, given how cramped this
walkway was.  It was a precious stone in the wall. Big, too.  At first he
thought it might have been a sapphire.  He was no lapidary, so he couldn't
be sure.  But since he stopped, he began to notice veins of the gem lacing
through the rock.  Even if they were only sapphire, there must be thousands
of imperials' worth in this rock face alone--and he began to suspect the
stones might even be diamonds.  He'd seen a blue diamond once, about the
size of his little toenail.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  These stones
could easily be cut into gems the size of his thumbnail, if not his thumb
knuckle.

He shook his head and returned to exploring the path.  Eventually the path
opened up and became, almost with no warning, a large, hot room, glowing
somewhat reddishly.  Yes, indeed, there were holes of bubbling lava
periodically throughout the room.  He cast a cooling spell and an air
purifying spell.  It was then that a piece of the darkness moved, and
became the side of a face, and continued to move, turning to face him,
until in front of him, not more than twenty feet away, was a head, tinted
slightly red.  He'd heard rumours that the lady was undead, and he was
relieved to see, though not surprised, that they were just that much more
superstitious nonsense.

"Good day, Lady.  I apologize for intruding upon you unannounced.  I am
called Josan, and I am a Hawklord from the University.  I would beg an hour
of your time, if you are available."

"Indeed?  Have you come to sell me something, perhaps?"

"Oh, gracious, no, not at all, madam!  I am a renowned researcher, and I am
compiling the Empire's first guide to the Bastions of the Empire."

"And what are the Bastions?" asked the Lady.

"Ah, yes.  You may know of them by another name--and I'm certain you do,
since I believe one of them is even now in a sheath at your hip."  He
presumed the face had a hip, though, for the life of him, he couldn't see
her body.

"You mean this?" She opened her cloak slightly, and a blue stone sparkled
purple in the reddish light.

"Yes, indeed, milady. I believe you call that 'Iceflame', do you not?"

"That is its name, yes."

Josan got out his manuscript, which contained the entirety of his notes on
all the Bastions he'd tracked down so far.  He excitedly opened to the
sparse section for Iceflame and said, "And how would you describe its
personality?  Do you know who it was before it became a Bastion?  What
would..." he interrupted himself. "You perceive, great Lady, that I am full
of questions."

"What is that you have in your hands?"

"This, lady?  This is my pride and joy! This is my manuscript.  It contains
many notes and interview details of mine, including historical accounts
ordered by reliability, from 'confirmed' all the way to 'superstitious
fantasy.'"

The Enchantress of Dzur Mountain cocked her head to one side.  "How came
you by such a book?  None such exist in the Empire."

Josan preened a little.  "I daresay, Lady, that it was no small feat!  But
I assure you that this is the most academically rigorous compilation of
lore pertaining to the 17 Great Weapons, as they are popularly called, in
all the Empire.  Maybe even Dragaera."

"Well, that would make it a singularly valuable item.  And since I have
found it just lying on the floor in my very house, I believe I shall take
it upstairs to my dining hall and look it over before adding it to my
collection.  You will, of course, join me for a meal."

"I would be greatly honoured to dine with you, my Lady, but I do not
understand your statement about it lying on the floor.  As you plainly see,
it is in my hands, and not on the floor.  I hardly..." he trailed off into
mumbles, and then silence as Sethra continued to hold eye contact with him.


Ever so slowly, the manuscript slipped from Josan's fingers and fell to the
floor.  Sethra levitated the immobilized Hawklord, placed the book on his
chest, and proceeded upstairs for a meal.  He'd come uninvited into her
house, so it was only fair, she thought, that he should pay for dinner.




Regards,

Jon Carey, B.A.(Hon), CHRL, CHRP