Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52 Year, Spring
Time is not a straight line for the Architect; it is a tapestry that I have spent eons unraveling and reweaving. While I wrote about the Drokka princes pace their “gilded cage” in the summer heat of the 52nd year, my mind drifted back to the spring of that same year long ago. To understand the “Wrath” that is coming, one must first understand the “Silence” that preceded it.
Before the iron boots of Barkla and Brega ever bruised the silver-wood of Arbola, there was the elfess’.
Nathily—the adoptive daughter of Regent Rian and Fara. To the world, she was the would-be Azora trainee with a troubled heart. To me, she would become the unaccounted for variable – a mirror that would eventually reflect the light of Emcorae Azop, the one mortal whose destiny slipped through my spectral fingers.
The paths of the stone-sons and the elf-maid were destined to cross, for they were both searching for the same thing: a reason to believe that the world had not already been sold to the shadows. But while the Drokka sought their salvation in a lost mountain of the north, Nathily sought hers in the quiet, treacherous corners of her own soul.
Let us look back to the early rains of ’52. Before the summer when the council met with Barkla and Brega. Before Emcorae arrived back in Arbola in the Fall. Let us look at the moments when Nathily was training on her own – and having a tough time of it.
The Glade
The morning air in the northern sector of Arbola was thick with a silver mist that clung to the bark of the ancient firs. Nathily sat perched thirty feet above the forest floor, her body pressed so tightly against a rugged branch that she seemed to be a natural growth of the wood itself.
Now on a mission, she was geared accordingly. Over her buckskin breeks and calfskin shirt, she wore a toughened leather vest, padded strategically to guard her vitals, while iron gauntlets and greaves protected her extremities. Her most prized accessory, however, was the wide cowhide belt cinched at her waist; its bronze buckle was embossed with the image of a woodland owl—a tribute to Master Hoobab—and hidden within its lining was a pouch of seven-tipped steel throwing stars. For this trial, she remained shrouded in her reversible cloak, the dun-colored side turned outward to mimic the parched bark of the fir. Though she carried her ash short-bow slung across her back for the mission, it was the weapon at her hip that defined her. The Falcone—a two-and-a-half-foot, single-edged curved falchia—hung in a dark buckskin scabbard. A gift from her mother Fara, the blade was a masterpiece of tempered iron with a cutting edge coated in a diamond-like substance so sharp it could cleave through full plate or fell a small tree in a single stroke. Its gilded pommel was fashioned into a falcon with wings flared wide, a symbol of the deadly speed Nathily visualized every time she gripped the cordovan leather handle.
Mastering such a weapon had required a unique, internal discipline imposed by El-Janus. For two years, the Mysstro had forbidden her from even drawing the Falcone, forcing her instead to sit for hours in silent meditation, mentally visualizing the blade’s weight and arc while she practiced with mere wooden substitutes at the Glade of Gazza. This mental forging had created a psychic bond so profound that when she was finally allowed to unsheathe the iron, the saber felt less like a tool and more like a natural extension of her own limb.
Now, as Nathily crouched in the canopy nibbling on wayfares and sipping green tea from her canteen, that same discipline was being tested through the lens of stealth. She had spent six days tracking this camp, inching through the brush with the agonizingly slow movements of the “Silent Stalker.” She knew that a single premature lunge would render her weeks of patience void. “Patience is a virtue few possess,” she whispered to the shadows, “but without its restraint, the foolish go where even the gods fear to tread.”
As things stood now, she was a mess of forest grit. Sticky pine sap was smeared across her cheekbones and the backs of her hands, acting as a natural adhesive for the bits of dried lichen and crushed needles she had pressed into her skin. But to find success in this required a commitment: to the Azora, the forest was not a place to hide behind, but a garment to be worn.
The technique was an ancient Amorosi art, designed for the “Ghost-Walkers” of the Fifth Age. It relied on the Moi-Ra—the synchronization of one’s internal rhythm with the environment. To master the Shadow-Stalk, a warrior had to learn to breathe with the swaying of the branches and to time their heartbeats to the rustle of the leaves in the wind.
Nathily closed her eyes for a heartbeat, visualizing the invisible threads of the forest. Somewhere miles away, she knew Emcorae was likely practicing the same discipline. They were twin arrows shot from the same bow, separated by distance but bound by the same grueling “Way of the Azora.” He had once told her that the hardest part wasn’t moving unseen, but believing you were already part of the shadow.
When dusk came completely, she moved again — taking up station in the canopy about ten feet from the last tree line around the clearing of the opposition’s campsite. Below her, the target sat in the center of a small clearing: a crimson flag planted in the dirt outside a temporary barracks. Four sentries—Amorosi veterans in light scout-armor—stood in plain view, their eyes scanning the treeline with predatory focus. Soon she knew she would have to put the final stage of her plan in motion quickly lest her window of opportunity pass. One chance. That is all the opportunity I shall have to claim my prize. That one attempt must be successful, else I shall be captured. I will not fail. I will not fail. She coached herself, visualizing success.
At last, when the gloaming wafted slowly away, Nathily began her descent. She moved with a fluid, liquid grace, her boots finding silent purchase on the mossy bark. She dropped to the forest floor and began the belly-crawl, using the “Creeping Vine” maneuver. Every time the wind gusted, she moved; the moment the air stilled, she became a statue of mud and needles.
She was soon just paces from the flag. The nearest sentry, a tall blonde warrior named Raison, turned his head. Nathily froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs—a frantic, rhythmic thud that felt loud enough to shake the trees.
Release the arrow, she told herself, echoing El-Janus’s constant refrain. Don’t think. Be the wind.
The flag was within reach. She could see the fraying silk on its edges. Raison’s back was turned. This was the moment—the split-second window where she needed to spring, seize the prize, and vanish into the brush. The dense forest of Arbola provided the perfect cover as Nathily made her move. Her plan, executed with the grueling patience of the Shadow-Stalker, had worked perfectly. She had timed the rotation of the sentries, moving only when the wind-stirred leaves masked her rustle, until she was a blur of sap-stained leather crossing the clearing.
With a surge of adrenaline, she snatched the yellow flag unfettered by it’s guards. Nathily’s heart hammered against her ribs—not with fear, but with the intoxicating heat of triumph. As she dove back into the safety of the northern brush, she could hear the frustrated shouts of the warders behind her, their torches flickering like dying stars in the mist.
Just an Azora? she thought, a grin spreading across her dirt-smudged face as she sprinted through the familiar roots. No. The best Azora who ever—
Smack!
The world tilted violently. Nathily was thrown to the mossy ground, the air driven from her lungs in a sharp gasp. She rolled instinctively, coming up in a flash with Falcone drawn and leveled, her eyes blazing.
But her breath hitched as she beheld the figure standing in her path. El-Janus stood silhouetted against the silver dawn, his dual rapiletti drawn and pointed with terrifying precision at her throat. Hanging from the tip of his right blade was her prized yellow flag, fluttering mockingly in the morning breeze.
“El-Janus! I… How did you—?” Nathily stammered, the fire of her victory turning to the ash of a flabbergasted defeat. She slowly lowered her saber to her side as several trailing guardsmen, led by Raison, arrived on the scene.
“Azora brothers,” El-Janus began, his voice as cool as the mountain spring, “I do believe this is yours.”
With a flick of his wrist, he flipped the flag into the air. The torn pennant floated for a heartbeat—carrying Nathily’s fleeting dreams of success with it—before Raison reached out and snatched it from the wind.
“Thank you, sir,” Raison replied, looping the flag around his belt with a look of profound relief.
“You must needs keep a better ward than this,” El-Janus admonished the sentries. “In but six short days my pupil here has penetrated all the way into this glade, moving unseen at every turn, only to make it here to this remote outpost and capture your team’s marker. What say you to that?”
Raison bowed his head, his emerald eyes reflecting a envy for the young amora before him. “I apologize, Mysstro. I thought we had our sector well patrolled. None before had managed to move so deep within our confines. Amora, for today you have bested us.”
The other guardsmen offered begrudging congratulations to the elfess’, but El-Janus raised a hand, cutting through the praise.
“No, my sons,” he said. “No Azora yet is she. Nathily has much time left to train before she can lay claim to that title.” He turned his piercing gaze to his pupil. “For starters, she must needs learn one of the most basic tenets of any successful achiever—be it on the grand field of combat, or among the battlefield of your own psyche: NEVER look back to rest upon your laurels. Remember them well, yes, but always forge resolutely ahead with your next goal firmly in your mind’s eye.”
He smiled benignly at her, though the lesson stung worse than any blade. “Would that you could have remembered that lesson, my pupil, and maybe it would have been more difficult for me to have caught you. Instead, I had merely to step out into your path to trip you up without any effort at all.”
Nathily remained silent, her jaw set. The thrill of her “conquest” had been stripped down to a cold reality. She realized that if this had been a fight against Nektar’s minions it might have been more than just her pride left in the dirt. She had had the goal in her hand, yet she had lost everything because she let her mind dwell on the victory before the journey was over.
As the warders escorted her and El-Janus back to the outpost, Nathily’s mind drifted back five years to a conversation with Emcorae that had once seemed cynical, but now rang with prophetic clarity. They had been returning from a cross-country endurance race where neither had placed in the top three. While Nathily had argued that the joy of competition and personal bests were what mattered, Emcorae had stopped her with a frustrated sigh. “In the real world, there are winners and there are losers,” he had warned, towering nearly a foot shorter than her at the time. “We are training to be warriors, Nat. If you make an incredible pass with your sword but lose focus at the last second, you don’t just lose the point—the enemy thrusts back and you die. There is no second place on the battlefield. If you’re gonna make the effort, you’ve gotta make the play!”
At the time, she had laughed off his theatrical demonstration of a mortal wound, teasing him to join an acting troupe. But standing now in the cooling shadows of Arbola, the weight of his mantra, “make the play,” finally settled in her heart. She had spent six grueling days crawling through thorns and kneeling motionless behind boulders, maintaining a singular, iron-clad focus that had brought her to the very precipice of glory. Yet, because she had allowed herself to savor the victory a mere second before the journey was complete, she had handed El-Janus the opportunity to trip her.
The rueful smile she cast toward her silent master was one of hard-earned wisdom. She realized that Emcorae’s “play” wasn’t about the arrogance of winning, but the discipline of the finish. Her effort had been monumental, but her lack of follow-through had rendered it all for naught. And when El-Janus signaled the end of the exercise, Nathily looked at her empty hands. The “Silent Stalker” had been found, and the path to becoming a true Azora seemed farther away than ever.
The Duel
The weeks following the flag incident were a whirlwind of focused aggression. Nathily had taken Emcorae’s “make the play” mantra to heart, pushing herself until her muscles screamed and her leather armor was permanently stained with the salt of her sweat.
In the sun-drenched Glade of Gazza, the air rang with the sharp, melodic clatter of practice blades. Nathily stood in the center of a ring of trainees, her Falcone replaced for the moment by a weighted wooden saber of identical balance. Across from her stood Raison, the young Novitiate who had captured her in the woods. He was fast, but today, Nathily was a storm.
Although still just an Azora Pupil, Nathily moved with a fluidity that drew a rare, silent nod from El-Janus, who watched from the shade of a nearby weir-tree. She parried Raison’s high strike, transitioned into a low sweep, and with a sudden, explosive burst of speed, stepped into his guard. Before he could recalibrate, the tip of her wooden blade was pressed firmly against the center of his chest.
“Point,” Raison exhaled, dropping his guard with a grin of admiration against his will. “By the Goddess, Nathily, your speed is… frightening..”
Nathily lowered her blade, her chest heaving, a surge of fierce pride warming her blood. For a moment, she felt invincible. She looked around the glade, half-expecting to see a familiar shock of dark hair and a cocky, human grin among the spectators. She wanted to catch Emcorae’s eye, to see him wink and say, “Now that, Nat, was making the play.”
But the space where he should have been was empty and the realization that he was gone hit her like a physical blow. The high of her victory evaporated, replaced by a dull, aching vacuum.
“Nathily?” Raison’s voice broke through her trance. He was holding his hand out for a ceremonial clasp, but she was staring past him at the forest – towards the northern road Emcorae when he left for home.
“I… I’m sorry,” she stammered, her grip on the wooden saber loosening. “I lost my footing for a second.”
“You didn’t lose your footing,” came a voice from the shadows. El-Janus stepped into the light, his eyes narrow and unreadable. “Your blade may be fast, Pupil, but your mind is still like a kite with a frayed string—one moment soaring, the next drifting toward a horizon you cannot reach.”
Nathily looked down at her gauntlets, the shame of her distraction burning hotter than her earlier pride. She had bested Raison for today, she had begun to master some of the forms, yet she felt more lost than ever. She was technically improving and emotionally hollowing out, a warrior who could win the duel but was losing the war within her own psyche.
“Go to your kaza,” El-Janus commanded, his voice quiet but brook-no-argument firm. “When you are reading, you will return with me to the Training Boughs. Until you can stand in this glade and see only the glade and not ghosts, you are a danger to yourself and your brothers.”
High in the Training Boughs
The scent of damp moss and jasmine was usually a comfort to Nathily, but today it felt cloying. The warrior elfess stood on a high bough in the canopy, tens of feet above the ground, her wooden practice-saber trembling slightly in her grip. She’d taken a backwards step in her training – returning to some earlier lessons to try to find her mental footing again.
Across from her, her master El-Janus was a shadow among shadows. He hadn’t drawn his weapon. He didn’t need to. He stood with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his grey robes, his diminutive frame radiating a stillness that Nathily found maddening. As it turned out, the lesson was over before it ever started.
“You are thinking of the wasteland again,” El-Janus sighed. It wasn’t a question.
“What do you mean?” Nathily wondered.
“You are wondering if Azop has decided to return.” The mysstro averred.
“I am thinking of the kata,” Nathily lied, her voice tight.
“Hoooot!” Nathily’s faithful friend, Master Hoobab the wood owl, shifted on a branch above her, his golden eyes full of insight.
El-Janus continued. “The Amora speaks of kata, but her feet speak of flight. You cannot plant a tree in moving water. And you cannot master the Azora blade while your heart is elsewhere.”
Nathily lowered her saber, the frustration boiling over. “He is gone and I am here… balancing on branches and fighting ghosts.”
“If you can’t find the best part of you,” El-Janus said, stepping forward with a grace that made no sound, “then you have already lost the battle. An Azora must be whole in mind and body, Nathily. Not a fragment lost in someone else’s shadow.”
He gestured toward the path leading down back to the village. “Go Home. Do not return until you are clear on why you want to be an Azora – IF you want to be an Azora.”
The silence that followed El-Janus’s ultimatum was heavier than any blow he had ever dealt her with a practice stave.
Nathily stood frozen on the high bough, the wooden saber hanging limp in her hand. Below her, the forest floor was lost in a sea of ferns and mist, a dizzying drop that mirrored the sudden hollowness in her chest. She looked at El-Janus, hoping for a flicker of his usual stern patience, but his face was as inscrutable as the bark of the Great Weir-Tree. He wasn’t just dismissing her for the day; he was dismissing her from her own destiny.
“Master…” she started, her voice cracking.
“No more words, Nathily,” El-Janus said, turning his back to her. He began to adjust the ties of a training target, his movements precise and dismissive. “Words are the rust of the spirit. Go.”
Nathily didn’t sheathe the wooden blade. She couldn’t. Her fingers were locked around the hilt in a white-knuckled grip of shame. She turned and began the long descent, moving from the high, sun-drenched training boughs down into the deeper, darker layers of the Arbola canopy.
Every step felt like a betrayal. She passed other trainees, but kept her head down, her golden hair falling forward to hide the hot prickle of tears in her eyes. She felt like a fraud wearing the leather bracers and the tunic of a warrior.
“Hooo-ut,” Master Hoobab glided down, landing on a branch just inches from her head as she reached the suspension bridge leading toward the residential vales. “Amora carries sorrow. Drop them or bridge will snap.”
“Not now, Hoobab,” she whispered, her voice thick.
Once on the ground, she soon reached the village outskirts, where the familiar sights of home usually brought her peace. She saw the smoke rising from the communal kitchens and heard the distant, melodic laughter of children playing in the root-hollows. But today, the beauty of Arbola felt alien.
She stopped at a small forest pool, looking at her reflection in the still, dark water. The girl looking back didn’t look like an Azora. She looked like a ghost—pale, uncertain, and hollowed out by a longing for a man who had chosen to leave.
Was El-Janus right? Did she even want this path now? Or was she only trying to become an Azora for other reasons? The realization that her entire ambition might be a secondary orbit to someone else’s sun made her knees weak.
She sat on a mossy stone. For the first time since she had been a child, Nathily didn’t know who she was. She wasn’t an Azora, she didn’t know why the thought of Emcorae made her heart ache, and she didn’t know what the future held for her.
She stood up and began the final walk toward her mother’s cottage. She was going home, but she felt like a stranger returning to a place she had already left in her heart.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 