[hr][center][color=A25833][b][h2]A F A R E N E[/h2][/b][/color][/center][hr]
[i]You must reconsider your stance on the damned and the undying, for there is no one I know more fit to show the world that the survivors of New Anur are prepared to reveal their unwavering courage to confront the spectres of our forebears. For if we leave the problem exclusively to humankind and others we would be committing treason against our moral and ethical responsibility to not the world but ourselves. You are one of the last members of our generation’s Saethydd— I implore you to begin showing that you have not forgotten what the word Saethydd means. [/i]

A wry smile formed on the side of the grey elf’s face, her cool cerulean eyes looking over the parchment that contained her brother’s letter; a letter that she had re-read an amount of times that had by this point been lost to her memory. Afarene Taranau felt the unease in the camp, ‘the calm before the storm’ as the human expression went and looking over her brother’s correspondence had just been an additional remainder about the sheer amount of weight that she was about to willingly take on. The damned and undying, eternally forsaken, and that of which posed a threat beyond the trappings of race, class, or faith; a threat that everyone had spent almost forty years fighting and one that Afarene had tried the hardest to ignore and avoid due to its connection with the death of not only thousands upon thousands of innocent elven people, but especially so for the loss of her mother, whom there was no individual she idolized more. But her brother was eloquent, charismatic, and most of all correct in his assertions. As far as she thought about it, she actually hated how right he was; for if he wasn’t then she could’ve accepted the world’s fate until the undying would consume them all.

So here she was, at the Greater Cardinal War Camp on the eve of an effort that was as foolish as it was hopeless attempting to ignore that fact— but her brother had convinced her of its worth so maybe it wasn’t as hopeless and foolish as she believed.

[color=A25833][i]I doubt it, but there is little point to turning back now.[/i][/color]

From her placement in her tent in the back row of the north-side of the encampment, Afarene took a heavy breath as she made sure her equipment was all on-hand. She wasn’t sure why she was being so meticulous about it when she knew that everything was as it had been the previous night and the night before it; but perilous anxiety was rarely sensible and this was no exception. Her hand moved forward to the trinket that hung from her neck, holding it between her fingers to give some sort of ease to the anxious alacrity that she felt; an old affect made of elven craftsmanship that her mother had given her when she graduated to the role of a Saethydd a few years before the Fall of New Anur. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make her at ease— it was one of the few items that could. As she did such she could feel her emotions dull for a moment and released it as she grabbed a nearby cloak in a rucksack on the ground and threw it over her armor and clothes that were on her back, pulling the hood up to obscure herself. With her quiver, bow, swords, and pack all sorted upon her person it was time to leave her tent and get to her commanding agent of this whole “blessed crusade”, Duchess Aina Stormsparrow.

[color=A25833]“O deued dydd pan fo awelon, Duw yn chwytu eto dros ein herwau gwyw.”[/color] She muttered underneath her breath, a passage of words from the elven language and more specifically the spoken word of faith— a prayer. 

‘Bring the day when God's breeze blows again over our withering acres.’