Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Summer
The Breakthrough at the Pool
The center of Arbola Forest was a masterwork of natural geometry, where the massive silver-barked oaks spiraled upward like the pillars of a forgotten sky-palace. Some time later Nathily walked until the sounds of the village—the distant chime of wind-bells and the rhythmic thrum of weaving looms—faded into the deep, rhythmic silence of the ancient wood.
She reached the Pool of Whispers, a perfectly circular basin fed by a hidden spring that bubbled up through quartz-veined roots. The water was so dark and still it looked like a sheet of obsidian dropped into a bed of emerald moss. Here, the air was several degrees cooler, smelling of damp stone and the sharp, clean scent of crushed pine needles.
Sitting at the water’s edge, as her doehide shorts pressed into the soft moss, Nathily looked at her reflection. In the dim light beneath the canopy, her blonde hair looked like spun silver, and her blue eyes seemed too large for her face.
A bird with two nests is never home, she thought, echoing wisdom her friend Hoobab had shared with her days earlier. I have been trying to live in Emcorae’s world while standing in Alyssa’s. No wonder I can’t find my footing.
“The water only reflects what is on the surface, little bird,” a voice rasped. It was a sound like dry parchment sliding over stone.
Nathily jumped at the unexpected intrusion. From the hollow of a massive, gnarled root system emerged Dallegheri. The oldest of the Amorosi looked less like an elf and more like a part of the forest itself. His robes were stained with the dust of old libraries, and his clouded eyes seemed to be looking at something a hundred years in the past.
Just then Master Hoobab flew down from the canopy, landing on the scholar’s bony shoulder with a respectful hoo-ut.
“Nonni,” Nathily exhaled, her heart slowing. “I didn’t hear you. I thought I was alone.”
“In Arbola, one is never alone,” Dallegheri said, leaning heavily on a staff made of petrified weir-wood. He sat on a root beside her, his movements slow and methodical. “The trees listen. The water remembers. And the old ones… well, we simply linger.”
He looked into the pool, his reflection joining hers. “You have the scent of conflict on you, Nathily. Like a sword that has been forged but not yet quenched.”
“I’m trying to be what the Goddess wants,” Nathily admitted, looking down at her hands. “But I feel… divided. Mother says I’m tethered to…that which cannot be. El-Janus says I’m a fragment. I just want to be whole.”
Dallegheri turned his clouded gaze toward her. “Your mother speaks of the tragedy of time. She is right. But El-Janus speaks of the blade. A blade must be tempered by both heat and cold to be strong.”
He reached out a withered hand and touched the surface of the water, sending ripples through their twin reflections. “Do not fear the division, Nathily. Use it. The Azora are not warriors because they lack emotion; they are warriors because they have mastered them. If your heart is on fire, know that it can heat the steel. But let your devotion to Alyssa be the water that cools it. One provides the edge, the other provides the strength.”
“Hooo-ut,” Hoobab added, his head swiveling 180 degrees. “Forge Sword. Fear Hammer. Uuuuniiiiite.”
Nathily looked at Dallegheri, perhaps seeing the weight of his own secrets in the lines of his face. “Is that what you do, Grandfather? Do you use….secrets to stay strong?”
Dallegheri flinched almost imperceptibly, his gaze drifting south toward the centuries old memories of Ramos. “I use my longing to true to the forest. Even we Amorosi needs a reminders to keep us from becoming as cold as the stars.”
Their talk continued for some time. Eventually the lore master stood up, the ancient wood of his staff creaking. “Go back to your training. Not to please the Mysstro. Go back because the world is changing. I feel a chill in the North that the summer sun cannot warm. The Pietromi are coming, and behind them, a shadow I haven’t seen since the Fifth Age.”
He leaned down and kissed Nathily’s brow, then turned to disappear back into the emerald gloom.
Nathily stood, the hollowness in her chest replaced by a low, steady hum of purpose. “I’m ready, Hoobab,” she said, her voice ringing clear through the trees.
“Hoo-ut,” the owl replied, taking flight. “Go. Flyyyyy. Fiiiiiight.”
The Witness from the Shadows
The humidity of the late summer hung heavy over Arbola, but for Nathily, the air had never felt clearer. Over the months, the training boughs had become her sanctuary of solitude. She had followed Dallegheri’s advice, using her heart’s fire as the forge and her duty to the Goddess as the quenching water. She assured herself that her infatuation with Emcorae was just a passing fancy and drove those feelings aside – she didn’t realize she was only fooling herself, her heart would return in full force when she least expected it to.
Nonetheless, when the unusual summons came for Azora trainees to stand guard in the Great Green Hall, Nathily didn’t hesitate. She stepped into her polished leather greaves, cinched her doehide vest, and took up her position in the shadows when the Pietromi envoys made their appearance.
From her vantage point, Nathily watched as the two dwarves were escorted into the living cathedral. Like the rest of the Amorosi villagers, she knew about the strange visitors who had been housed in the Root-Villas for weeks, but now, seeing them for the first time, they were a jarring sight—dense, earth-bound, and clad in clothing that seemed to absorb the emerald light rather than reflect it.
As the one named Brega began his plea, Nathily found herself leaning forward, her blue eyes locked on the “Red Prince.” She expected to feel the usual Amorosi disdain for the “clumsy” races of stone, but instead, she felt a profound sympathy. When Brega spoke of his father, King Hanbull, and the fading light of the Rhokki Pass, Nathily didn’t hear a diplomat; she heard a cry for help from a dying people.
They are fighting for time, she realized, her grip tightening on the railing. They don’t have centuries to wait for the ‘cycles of the leaf.’ To them, every season is a battle against the dark.
Then came the moment of the Great Refusal. Nathily watched her father stand up. She saw the worry in his eyes—the same worry she had seen over the breakfast table—but here, in the hall of power, it looked like stagnation.
Later when Dallegheri and Adarius delivered the news of Akka’s fall and the scavengers of Fubar, Nathily felt the air in the hall grow cold. She looked at her grandfather. He looked so ancient, so detached, as if the death of an entire clan was merely a footnote in a scroll.
“The Amorosi do not march for vengeance,” Rian’s voice echoed through the hall.
Nathily happened a glance in the direction of her mysstro – she felt the subtle shift in El-Janus’ demeanor. The Mysstro remained a statue, but his eyes were fixed on Barkla, who was vibrating with a tectonic fury.
He’s going to break, Nathily thought as he looked at the black-clad dwarf. He’s going to scream at the trees.
And he did. When Barkla slammed his staff down and called them “silk-wrapped statues,” a collective shudder went through the Amorosi audience. The younger trainees near Nathily flinched, whispering about “dwarf-filth” and “brutes.” But Nathily remained still. She saw their wrath not as a sin, but perhaps as a mirror of her own burgeoning turmoil.
As the brothers turned to leave, rejected and alone, Barkla’s gaze swept across the upper tiers. For a split second, his jewel-like eyes seemed to meet hers. In that look, Nathily saw the raw, unpolished truth of their tragic world: it was a place of blood, iron, and a desperate urgency – and she admired him for it.
But soon the heavy oak doors of the Great Green Hall groaned shut behind the Drokka princes, the sound echoing like a lid closing on a tomb. The air in the chamber, once vibrant with the scent of pine and ancient magic, now felt stagnant and thin. Nathily remained perched on the high bough of the viewing tier, her fingers digging into the rough bark of the railing until her knuckles turned white.
The Council members drifted away like autumn leaves caught in a slow current, their voices a low, melodic murmur of “patience” and “the cycle of seasons.” They were moving in the slow time of the Amorosi, but Nathily’s pulse was hammering with the frantic, jagged rhythm of the Drokka.
“They are going to die,” she whispered, the words tasting like iron in her mouth.
“Hoo-ut,” Master Hoobab ruffled his feathers, his large, amber eyes reflecting the guttering torchlight below. “But stiilll iiiiit iiiiisss Liiiife, Nathily. Even the faaaaallliiiing staaaaar haaaaaas aaaa puuuuuurpoooose.”
Nathily didn’t look at the owl. Instead, she stared down at the silver-wood floor where Barkla’s heavy, iron-shod boots had left dark, bruised imprints. The Council saw them as scars upon the wood; Nathily saw them as a challenge.
Every hour she had spent in the Glade of Gazza, every agonizing moment of “the release” that El-Janus had demanded, and every sting of the “Silent Stalker” mission coalesced into a singular, burning point of clarity. She felt the power in her long, muscled legs—the strength to outrun a storm and the agility to dance through the teeth of a gale.
“The Goddess didn’t give me these legs for standing still, Hoobab,” she said, her voice dropping the “whine” of the girl and assuming the tempered steel of the Azora. “She didn’t make me a weapon just to be polished and hung on a wall while the world burns.”
She stood, and for the first time in weeks, there was no hesitation. The “clutter” in her mind—the pining for Emcorae, the fear of failure, the grief for Alyssa—wasn’t gone, but it had been forged into a blade. She was no longer a hollow reed; she was the arrow, and the bow was drawn to its breaking point.
Leaving the hall, Nathily stepped out into the grey of evening. The “fierce girl” Fara had missed was finally, fully back—but she was changed. She was a predator now, one who recognized that the peaceful canopy of Arbola was a beautiful lie. She was no longer waiting for permission from the Council, from El-Janus, or even from the stars.
As I write about this story now I can almost see it play out live – I feel myself watching Nathily from the shadows of the inkwell, her spirit igniting like a beacon in the twilight of the Sixth Age. The Amorosi think thought they were masters of time because they had so much of it, but they forgot that time was a river that could also become a flood.
Nathily was the first to realize that the Drokka weren’t just messengers; they were the first raindrops of a coming deluge. She looked at the empty space where the “Shield” and the “King” had stood, and she understood what the wise elders had missed:
Peace is not a permanent state; it is a momentary pause between breaths.
Like a fool she believed she had been made for the storm—the great, howling N’or’Easter of the soul that was even now gathering its strength in the North. For Nathily, the youthful age of songs was ending. The age of iron was beginning. And as Nathily strode into the gathering dark, I dipped my quill in the blood of the future and turned the page.
The storm had found its first lightning rod and I couldn’t wait to see it strike!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 