Dimitryi/ElisPrelude
Eli's Prelude
The musty air in the small study shimmered from only a single light source, which seemed to battle with the oppressive darkness of the room. The soft white light ebbed and flowed like a breezy tide, and twinkled as if it were a constellation of stars caught in a stained-glass jar. Its source was no lamp or lantern, nor a sconce, nor even one of the wondrously crafted glow-globes owned by the wealthy and Dragon-Blooded. The pale glow rippled from the slender body of a young man, who sat hunched over a ledger desk, his chin in his hands, his eyes far away. The aura looked like a vision of a starry sky, but with motes of all sizes, shining in a fuzzy white tinged on the fringes with a burnished gold.
Eli sat there in the darkened office, seeing by the glow emanating from his own body, but his mind was far away and racing. So much had happened today, so much had changed. This aura, and the glowing mark on his forehead, a golden disc inside a golden circle, had marked him and changed his life so rapidly and so unexpectedly. He knew what they meant from the stories. He was Anathema now and would be hunted down. So here he hid, in a small, unknown office owned by his family near the city proper of Great Forks. Afraid to return home, and unsure where else to go, he sat here in the dark.
“Tell me about your Exaltation, Eli.”
Eli turned around quickly, his brow furrowed deeply in confusion and concern. In the dark, her features shadowed deeply by his softly flickering aura, stood a tall and noble woman. Deep shadows fell along her sharp features and played along her lightly tanned skin. Her hair was held in a tight bun, but a few errant strands of chestnut-colored hair slipped down to frame her narrow face. Her eyes were dark and stern, but showed signs of a matronly compassion as she regarded Eli.
“Mother?”, Eli whispered, more in an acknowledgement of his own astonishment than as a real question to the person before him. He had never known his mother, as she died during his own childbirth seventeen winters ago. The expensive portraits that graced her private shrine in his family’s estate manor had been his only evidence of her appearance, and that image, the one that now stood in front of him, had been in his dreams for many years.
“I would like to hear the story, child. What happened to you today?”
He did not understand what this apparition was before him, but he felt compelled to speak. Perhaps because the events of the day had been so overwhelming and confusing to him, that he had to get it out of the confines of his mind to begin to sort through it. And there was no other person right now he would like to tell the story to more than the mother he always wished he had known. Perhaps that was why she was here, because she needed to be.
“I don’t know the reasons, Mother, but I can tell you the setting. I was at the Golden Hall today, accompanying Father to a meeting with other merchants and various spirit-residents of the city. Debate had been loud between the merchants and the spirits lately in Great Forks, so much so that a strike had been nearly imminent, and this meeting was an effort called by the Three Spirits That Rule to come to some sort of agreement between the parties.”
“The spirit-residents of the city had been calling for more and more holidays to honor them, as it is worship and honor that feed and cloth the spirits, and these things mean as much to them as jade and bread do to us. But more holidays mean less work, and the trades that can not rely on slaves have suffered in production. Father was there representing the vintners, whose flow of wines had been drying up due to workers constantly on religious holiday. I was accompanying him, as Father wishes me to someday take up a post in the bureaucracy of Great Forks, and he was hoping I’d see more of how it works by coming to this meeting.”
“But this example of bureaucracy in action wasn’t an appealing one. The merchants and the spirits were at an impasse. The spirits would not give up their holidays, demanding the respect due their stations in the Celestial Bureaucracy. And the merchants refused to continue giving up their workers, whom they needed to do business. The Three Spirits That Rule were loathe to make a declaration in either direction, as taking up a side in this issue would alienate the other crucial portion of the city.”
Eli sighed deeply and shrugged his narrow shoulders, his eyes widely taking in the apparition of his lost mother. “The two sides ranted and screamed at each other, though I remained silent as expected of my station. But I could see it, Mother, I could see it in my mind. The reasons why they should reach an agreement and the method by which they could were so clear to me. How could they not share my vision, the unity of Spirits and Man that made Great Forks so wonderful? How could they not understand that in each making a compromise they would enrich the whole?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. When he opened them, his mother was gone. In her place, sitting on the floor cross-legged, was a frail, dark-skinned, young girl. Her skin was darker than his mother’s, as was her hair, which was braided in two long braids down her back. Her name was Maelysa, and when Eli was only thirteen summers old, he had been deeply in love with her. But here she was still thirteen summers old, appearing just as she had in all his boyhood dreams, while years had passed in reality, and she and her family had moved away from Great Forks to seek new opportunities in Nexus.
“Did you tell them about your vision, Eli? Did you?” She bounced impatiently the way she always used to, the way she would when she’d ask Eli to tell her stories of his family’s trips to the vineyards of the Far East.
“I did” Eli smiled, for the first time since he’d retreated to this dark study, “but I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what got into me, but the two sides were yelling at each other blindly, and some voice whispered in my head, its stern whisper loud in my mind even over the din of the room. It told me that my vision was bright and strong like the sun, and that it should shine over the room, and so that I must speak it. And I did. I told the assembly of merchants and spirits how their actions and attitudes only besmirched the power of Great Forks. I painted a picture with words for them, a picture of the city at its zenith, with the little gods and spirits working hand-in-hand with the mortal men. I reminded them of the foundation of Great Forks, when three disparate tribes of men, each led by a powerful spirit, joined together to compliment their strengths and build this city that we now enjoy.”
“And they were all silent. None of the men, and none of the spirits, uttered a word. Their eyes were wide and their mouths agape, and they just stared. I stopped my speech, my cheeks flush with embarrassment at my outburst, and I stood puzzled at the reaction. My interruption had been abrupt, but not enough to silence this crowd. Then I noticed that they weren’t silenced by what they had heard, but rather by what they had seen. They were all staring at the aura that had flashed around me, the white and golden light rippling across the room.” Eli gestured at the air around him, the anima that clothed his form even in this dim office.
“I’ve read enough of the Realm’s histories to realize what I’d become. Anathema, the demons that the histories say corrupted the world, until the Realm’s Dragon-Blooded warriors hunted them down and defeated them. I fled from the assembly in fear and confusion and embarrassment. And I came here, the only place I know to hide, where the Dragon-Blooded may not find me.”
Maelysa was quiet for a moment, then she grinned and responded. “You are right about what you have become, Eli. But Anathema is just a name for them, created by the Realm that warred against them. Others know them as the Solar Exalted, and they are not the demons they have been painted as.” Her words were too confident for her age, and spoke with a wisdom that did not fit her appearance. “But you can not stay here in Great Forks, the Wyld Hunt will be looking for you. They can not suffer to let a Solar Exalted live. Travel south, Eli, the Realm is not as present there. But avoid the Walker’s Realm at all costs. Good luck, Eli, you will see me in your dreams, as you always have.” Maelysa stood and placed a light kiss on Eli’s cheek. Then she turned and exited the office, leaving the new Exalted to quickly ponder his fate.\\ \\ \\ \\
From a nearby alleyway, the little girl that appeared as Maelysa watched the Solar Exalted leave the office, his glowing aura now subdued to invisibility to mortal eyes. Behind her, an old man in road-worn leathers chuckled deeply, his eyes twinkling. “Do you really think he will make a good student?” The young girl turned back to the old man and tilted her head. “No, Talespinner, he likely will not. However, he will make an important ally of Great Forks someday.” The young girl smiled brightly and left the alleyway, blending into the cosmopolitan crowd of the city.
