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Prologue: The First Age

“How dare you defy me?”

The flower nymph cowered back from Olbar’s rage, stepping backwards, but mustered up a hint of defiance. “I didn’t defy you, Olbar. It was just… he was just a cute mortal, that’s all. It was just a fling. It didn’t matter!” Standing in the darkened room, she felt a frisson of fear. She was an elemental, a member of the Court of Wood. Even if Olbar was one of the Solar Exalted, even if he had enslaved her for over a century, he couldn’t actually destroy her without arousing the ire of the Celestial Buerocracy. But suddenly, she felt a moment of worry that he did not remember this.

“Didn’t MATTER?” Olbar took another step forwards, and Amaryllis stepped backwards again, conscious that another step would bring her up against the wall. She really should have remember that Olbar got like this, the mortal hadn’t been anything important, she had just been so bored without Olbar around. Too late now. Standing in front of her, his orange hair bleached by the golden light pouring off him, Olbar clenched one fist around the hilt of his daiklave, as though to draw it. “You are MY property, nymph! It is MY decision whether or not something matters, and I do not tolerate betrayal lightly!”

“Betrayal??” The nymph stopped retreating, suddenly annoyed. How dare he suggest that? “Rederen Olbar, you know better than that! I am not a simple nymph of the field, I am a mistress of flowers, and it is in my nature to be active. You keep me cooped up in this drafty tower, with only a tiny garden for company, and you’re never around! Maybe the servant that you WANT is something that is less spirit and more automo…um…” Belatedly, she snapped her mouth shut on her complaints. Olbar got funny when he thought people were talking back to him. Which, if truth were to be told, she had just done. Nervously, she waited for his reaction.

For over ten seconds, Olbar just stared at her, so shocked by her outburst that he couldn’t respond. Behind him, his companion waited nervously, glancing around the dark and dreary room. A chamber of a Lord of the Earth should be open to the sky, but this room was below the ground, the lowest level of the tower Olbar had raised with his sorcery. Outfitted with the bare essentials, it served, usually, as a storage room for Olbar’s trophies.

Finally, Olbar spoke, and his voice was icy cold. “What I want is a servant who will know proper respect for her superiours. Obviously, you are not such a creature. It’s a shame. I was beginning to think that you might outlast the others.” He raised one hand. Amaryllis squeaked as he grasped her forehead, and she tried to squirm away.

“Olbar, please. If I’m not the proper servant, just go look for another one…”

The smile that he gave her chilled her to the bone. “Oh, I will, my little flower. But first, you must learn not to be so… quick to act. Perhaps some time to reflect will suit you better.” As Amaryllis struggled to escape his grasp, he spoke words of power, Essence coiling around him and surging across the gap between the two. “Until the Sun next kisses your lips, you will remain as I make you. I hope that it will teach you patience.”

Amaryllis screamed once as she felt stone wrapping around her, transforming her. She collapsed, as Olbar released her grasp, folding in on herself, gray seeping away the colour of her skin and rough textures destroying the lines of her features. Then, where she had stood, there was only a single rock, rising out of the floor. Satisfied, his anima winking out, Olbar turned and nodded to his companion. “Good help is so hard to find. Come, let us go. The Deliberative is waiting.”

The two strode from the chamber together. For a moment, lamplight shone on the stone that stood there alone, and then the door closed, and there was only darkness.

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