"Silvanesti, once the most powerful and ancient kingdom of elves on Krynn. Now reduced to the land of nightmares." So Ghyreian mused aloud as they stood on the far bank of the river Thon-Thalas and gazed across into the mist beyond. She caught the eye of Ghwynn. "No hard feelings, I hope? Well, then, you'll be showing us the way in."

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Edwin looked at the mist with an blank face, but it seemed to him if this was a land of nightmares there could be anything attacking them trough the mist any seconds all tough it was not like that and he knew it.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

They waded into the river. Once clear and rapidly moving, it was now muddy and stagnant. Ghyreian felt as though they had stepped through another world. The trees of Silvanesti, once lush and carefully tended by House Woodshaper, were now bent and twisted.

Come... come...

A faint voice on the wind, and Ghwynn disappeared into the forest beyond. Ghyreian and Edwin exchanged glances. Together, they stepped into the nightmareland of Silvanesti.

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Edwin stepped into the mist and lost vision, he walked forwards trying to find something solid with his staff and soon hit something. His vision began to clear as the mist cleared slightly, Edwin almost screamed as he saw the body of his father and mother. Edwin tried to calm himself down and think that their bodies just couldn`t be there, he was just dreaming, just dreaming...

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

The trees loomed over her, skeletal and forbidding. Ghyreian stood tall. "You will let me pass," she commanded. And then she was falling, falling...

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She was called Lady Ghyreian, then. Mistress Ghyreian. Distant niece of the Speaker of the Stars Lorac Caladron and cousin, though not by blood, to Alhana Starbreeze herself. She was the adoration of her parents, their lovely silver-haired daughter. She had servants and suitors to last a lifetime, and had even went as far as to fall in love with one elflord. But that was before she had found out about Lorac's dragonorb. She had openly opposed him, scorned his idea of harnessing the power of the artifact. And that was when Nuitari began speaking to her. He came to her subtly, caressing her with the his magic until she became awash with power. He set trials for her, all of which she had passed.

But before he could claim her for his own, there was one last test...

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Ghyreian stumbled through Silvanesti blindly. Tormented by visions of her past, she fell...

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Ghwyn stopped, panting heavily. She looked behind her and saw only trees. Trees, twisted and tortured, screaming in agony and endless pain. She remembered how beautiful they once were, how sweet and gentle the flowers were, how soft and green the grass was. She looked back once more at the tormented forest and began to weep.

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Edwin looked back at the bodies that were now blankly staring at him, which made edwn scream out openly from horror as they began to talk few words all over again.

"Why didn`t you save us?"

"Why didn`t you help us?"

"You didn`t even care to find our bodies!"

"Traitor! Selfish traitor!"

Edwin jumped over the bodies beginning to run away from the bodies only to end up at the door of his parent`s house that had burned, Edwin didn`t go in as he saw it on fire and a red dragon staring at him. Edwin was sweating and closed his eyes, it was only a dream and his parents were dead, the dragon wasn`t real since only Bloodbane was supposed to be there. Edwin could hear air sucked in and he ran into the house for last bits of cover he could find, so he fell and fell into the dark as the flames were all around him...

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Allow me to pass," Ghyreian said to the sentry posted outside the door of her parents' bedchambers.

The warrior of House Protector recognized her and bowed low. "As you wish, lady."

The young elfmaid of House Royal stepped inside the bedchamber, shutting the door behind her. The room was peaceful and bathed in the silver moonlight of Solinari. The moonlight glistened off the high arches and delicately shaped trees that adorned the Nightsong palace. The sleeping forms of her parents and baby brother were at the far end of the room.

Ghyreian cast a cone of silence upon the room, shutting out the sounds of the wood outside and shutting in all noises within. Graceful as a shadow, she moved to stand beside the bed. Her parents were slumbering gently, her father's arm looped around the shoulders of her mother as always. They heard nothing, suspected nothing. The elfmaid's face betrayed nothing of her intentions. In her eyes was an apathy, a cold dispassion that none in Silvanesti had ever seen before. Closing her eyes, she began chanting the words of magic.

Lightning bolts shot from her outstretched fingers and struck the chests of the sleeping forms. Her parents screamed, writhing in agony. In moments all that remained of them were charred masses that could hardly be called bodies. Ghyreian felt not satisfaction, not remorse. She felt nothing but the will of her god and the determination that she must pass this trial.

Her baby brother was crying in his cradle. Crooning softly, she bent down to pick him up. She spoke soothing words and stroked the small face. Her brother, recognizing his sister, stretched his small arms to embrace her neck. Thus the infant, in his implicit trust, never saw his sister's hand reach for her spell components. He never saw the lightning bolt that struck his heart and stopped it like it had stopped the hearts of his parents.

The corpse of the babe dropped to the floor and lay forgotten. In the corridor, the sentry greeted the daughter Nightsong with a bow and a salute. Outside the cone of silence she had placed, he had heard nothing, suspected nothing. Ghyreian closed the door of the bedchamber behind her, and without a backward glance, was gone.

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Edwin opened his eyes and found himself on a dark floor made out of stone or marble, he was in somesort of a hall and he didn`t know, if he was alive or not, in the dream or not.

But soon Edwin sighed as he saw the bodies of his parents again staring at him blankly only standing this time, Edwin`s sigh was like he would just want to die, but why shouldn`t he? There was none who cared for him, but he still fought on, why? Not for his goddess, not for the balance of the world, not for himself and not for anyone. There was no point, but he had to find out if there was a meaning for him and Edwin tookout some incredients.

"I can`t run from it forever..."

After a moment Edwin shot a fireball towards the bodies of his parents, which burned with painful faces and Edwin could feel a small tear going down his cheek. Nonsense! Edwin hmped, he cried for now reason, which was a weakness. Or at least Ghyreian thought so, Edwin looked at the dark roof with a dreamy face. She would never learn the cleansing effect of tears probably, well... that was the path of a black robe...

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"You thought it would be alright? How could you think such a thing! You let your sister run right in front of a wolf and then you let her be eaten? Why didn't you do anything?"
Ghwynn gulped, knowing that the story was different, but chose not to say so. In fact, it had nothing to do with wolves.
"Get out!!" her mother ordered. "GET OUT!!"
Ghwynn looked at her, horrified. "Mother...you can't do this to me! I-"
She quickly left her house and ran for her life, feeling more betrayed as ever.

Ghwynn regained consciousness. She could now almost see the tower. She ran until her legs ached, and looked behind her. Suddenly, she saw nothing. She collapsed onto the ground with her head spilling blood all over the dead grass...

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Ghyreian brushed the tangled branches of the trees away from her face. Through the mist, she could distinguish the dark shape of the Tower of the Stars. Once beautiful, ethereal. Now...

She stood in a darkened room. The Speaker of the Stars faced her, his eyes burning with anger. "She is no longer one of us..."

No longer one of us... No longer... Blood, her own blood, the blood of the trees, stained her robes. And still she ran. Something like a skeletal hand brushed across her neck, and she screamed....

"...banished from Silvanesti, Ghyreian Nightsong... dark elf... want nothing of you ever again..."

Banished. Dark elf. The gates of the tower loomed before her. She tore at them wildly, flung herself against them.

The whip, tearing into the flesh at her back. Three strokes...

The scars, the scars were still there...

Bound, blindfolded, dragged to the border of Silvanesti like an animal and set free on the other bank of the Thon-Thalas.

The gates swung open before her. The Tower was there, the holy tower of E'li and Mishakal. She ran, faster, faster...

...how her tears had fallen then. How, when beyond the sight of the forests of Silvanesti, she had thrown herself on the ground and drowned herself in her grief...

Through the open door. The open, inviting door of the Tower. Beckoning her inside. The stone was cold against her feet as she stumbled down the black corridors...

...and she emerged from her despair belonging of Nuitari, body and soul... and vowed she would never cry again...

The haunted faces of her past, before her. Every step on the climb up the tower was torment. Make it end, make it end... Her final step, and she collapsed on the stairway and ceased to move.

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posted by Lady Dark Moon since keyo can't think of anything good to post (hehe):

Silvanesti, the Silvan Land, the pride of the elves, gone. The trees of Silvanost, the trees the elves had so lovingly tended and nurtured, dead. And everything Ghwynn had ever loved, everything she had ever cared for, had faded away into nothingness. Blessed E'li and Quenesti Pah... Why hadn't they come? Why hadn't they come to lay their protecting hands on the land of Light, their beloved race the elves?

Ghwynn staggered to stand before the Tower of the Stars. The emblem of the land. The embodiment of the soul that lay in each elf... wasting away.... She fell to her knees and let her wail sound like the tormented scream of a dying animal. So the land was a part of her, and as it died it cut a void into her heart that no healing could cure, an endless labyrinth of grief. Ah, gods... ah, gods... Where were her people? Where were the Silvanesti elves? Ah, gods... How long had she been out of her homeland?

She knelt there for a moment, an hour, an eternity that spanned eons. And when all the blood of her soul had poured out, she dried her tears and stumbled into the Tower of the Stars.

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Her eyes were dark and haunted as she climbed the last stair. She caught sight of Edwin backed up against the wall, staring at something only his eyes could see. Without casting a further backward glance at him, she gathered the folds of her cloak about her and set her foot on the second set of stairs.

"They're gone," she murmured softly to herself, then proceeded to ascend the stairs.

The corridor at the top was lost in perpetual darkness. "Shirak," she spoke the command as a soft globe of light appeared in her palm. She felt a pair of eyes watching her as she moved like a wraith down the stone passageway. It was as if she had stepped into another time, another dimension. The Tower of the Stars, the tower she had visited so many times as a girl. She knew nearly every corridor, every hallway. Now she walked through a dream. The facets of her childhood loomed before her, horribly black and disfigured.

She caught sight of a soft green glow at the end of the corridor. She took a breath and started towards it.

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Ghwynn saw a hazy form of a black robed elf walking down the hallway. It seemed to her that she knew her way around this tower better than her...

She struggled to keep up, but she did nonetheless. She gasped for breath every step of the way, and she felt herself getting light headed, and she felt the blood from her head streaming down her face. Who had hit her? she wondered. She saw an eerie green glow that glowed as beautifully as the moons in the night sky...she gasped at the dragon orb, sitting there as though it were peaceful in its place that it was given. She could walk no more. She fell to her knees, and could only watch Ghyreian as she moved closer to the aurora of light.

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^post above made by Keyodie. we're on the same computer and evidently she forgot to log me out...

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I think we'll wait for Curunir to post first before we meet Cyan Bloodbane lol


Ghyreian heard a stirring in the shadows. The sense that a pair of eyes increased by a tenfold. She whirled around. It was the elfmaid Ghwynn, on her knees behind her. Dismissing Ghwynn as trivial, Ghyreian gaze strayed to the comatose form of the Speaker Lorac Caladon. Her lip curled into a sneer. The ignorant imbecile. She had warned him, but apparently the warning that sprang from the supposed fantasies of the "foolish daughter Nightsong" had not been enough.

The sense of being watched intensified. Green, hungry eyes stared at her from the shadows. How had she known that? A sound. The slithering of scales on smooth stone. Ghyreian searched frantically for the source. Heart hammering, she slowly began to back out of the chamber.

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