[hr][hr][h1][center]E S K E L   R I N D A R I U M[/center][/h1][hr][hr]

While he waited for them to bring Naivara to him, Eskel could not help but allow his thoughts to return to the past. 

It was strange, it had been years since they had last spoken, but to Eskel it felt like yesterday. How could it not? He was reminded of it everyday, as he laboured alone at the task they should have all taken the burden of. This was not the first time he had asked Naivara for help, she had been perhaps the closest thing Eskel had ever had to a true friend in this world. They had worked together for years, he had thought that they were kindred spirits in their quest for greater knowledge, greater power, the very secrets of the universe. But after the final battle at Pherora, when Octavia fell, she had refused him in his time of greatest need. 

Eskel's fist clenched at his side. He would never forgive her for that. 

But it did not matter now. So what if the others all betrayed Octavia? So what if he was left by himself to work at a thankless task, despised by the world at large. The work progressed regardless. One day he would be ready. He would bring her back, even if it took the rest of his life. Damn the rest of them, damn the consequences. They owed it to Octavia. 

The sound of the carved oak doors of the Guildhall opening broke his reverie. Eskel turned to face the new arrival, silhouetted in the light that streamed in from the outside. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw it was her. Navaira Amakiir, his old friend, face to face for the first time in years.

He hardly recognised her. She was dressed immaculately, in the finest silks dyed in the hues of deepest blue. The dress itself was a exquisite and bold piece of tailoring that complimented her elven complexion, as well as her tall and slender physique. Beyond the fabric itself, the dress was embroidered with a king's ransom of silver thread. It was strange, the Naivara he knew had been much more at home in plain unitarian robes or travelling garb. 

It was at that moment Eskel realised how he must have appeared to her. Tired and dishevelled, several days growth of stubble on his unshaven cheeks, lank hair unwashed for even longer. The dreadful unfamiliar scar he had acquired in the final battle against the Eldritch Dragon, one that he now considered just part of himself, vivid against his deathly pale skin. 

He tried to summon a grin to show that despite the circumstances they found themselves in, it was genuinely a pleasure to see his old friend once more. But rather than reassuring, it came across stiff and forced, like the rictus grin of skull, permanently force to smile through its own demise.

"Naivara, you look well. Politics agrees with you." 

As much as he hated to say it, it was true. Naivara was thriving... and he was... he was...

"Oh and of course I trouble the so-called 'Arch-Mages' of the Guild Association." He drew a pair of quotation marks in the pair with his fingers as he spoke. "I'm more powerful than most of them put together, and that frightens them. They don't like things they cannot control. You're the same, powerful I mean, it's why they sent you instead of daring to show their own faces."

For once in his life, Eskel wished he could simply talk banal pleasantries with his old friend. That they could just complain about the career politicians and bureaucrats that inhabited the upper ranks of the leadership of the Mage Guilds and Magic Schools of Bradena. That they didn't have anything else to do. That fate was not bearing down on them like avalanche once more. That the weight of their collective grief and tragedy did not exist. 

But that was fantasy. The past was the past, and the future could not be denied.

"Look Naivara, I didn't come all this way to talk Guild politics. Truth is, I had a most distrubing visitor recently... and I didn't... I didn't know who else I could turn to."

[hr][hr][sub]Characters mentioned in this post: Naivara Amakiir [@Abstract Proxy][/sub]