Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Winter
As the winter deepened, the walls of Emcorae’s bungalow began to feel less like a sanctuary. In spite of Nathily’s visits, Emcorae began to feel like the stagnant air of his own guilt was suffocating him. Like any young man driven to the edge by isolation, he eventually sought the only medicine that could dull the edge of his pining: the company of new friends who might distract him from his own problems. He found them by a stroke of defiant luck.
Weeks into the heart of winter, Emcorae had been stalking the northern perimeter of the woods, testing the limits of the “Ice Wall” Alyssa had erected. He was half-frozen and snarling at the sky when he heard the rhythmic thump-crack of heavy wood and the unmistakable, boisterous shouting of others. Following the sound, he crested a ridge to find a group of Amorosi in a clearing, stripped to their tunics despite the frost, competing in a game of “Trunk-Tossing.”
A massive elf with arms like gnarled oak and a laugh that seemed to vibrate the pine needles, had been the one to spot him. He hadn’t bowed or offered the formal “Peace of the Forest.” Instead, he’d wiped a smudge of dirt across his brow and pointed a calloused finger at the brooding stranger.
“You look like you’ve been chewing on hemlock, friend,” the Amorosi bellowed, his eyes dancing with a rough sort of challenge. “I’m Giles. We are the Outcasts of Arbola. Well, are you going to just stand there or are you going to pick up a log and show us if those scrawny muscles are just for show?”
Emcorae didn’t hesitate. He’d dropped his cloak, stepped into the circle, and heaved a frost-slicked log with a desperate, lung-bursting strength that earned him a nod of grim respect. That night, he followed the group to their lodge, making friends with more of them and learning they were earthy, rugged, and possessed a youthful vigor that mirrored his own restless spirit.
The Outcasts’ headquarters was a hidden lodge built of massive black pine logs, tucked into a ravine where the Protectorate rarely ventured. Inside, it smelled of woodsmoke, wet leather, and pungent fermented honey-ale. This was a locker-room atmosphere in the truest sense—a place of ribald jokes, heavy-handed slaps on the back, and the kind of blunt honesty that Emcorae found refreshing. It reminded him of his friend Curk back in Monthaven.
“Look at this!” Kaelen roared one night, shoving a foaming horn of ale into his hand. “The Council’s golden boy thinks he can outdrink us, eh? Well know this, Em, Theron brewed this batch with enough kick to wake a hibernating bear.”
The honey-ale bit into Emcorae’s throat like liquid fire, but it felt good. For the first time in months, he wasn’t a “champion” or a “patient”—he was just one of the guys.
His new friend’s also offered him other distractions – a theater for the ancient, rougher rituals of elven life. They spent their nights watching—and betting on—forest sports that would have horrified others. There were high-speed aerial acrobatics where elven “flyers” swung through the rafters on vines at bone-breaking speeds, and stone-hurling contests that required more raw muscle than mystical grace. At other times, usually when the ale took hold, the floor was cleared for rough-and-tumble wrestling. It was a chaotic mess of limbs and sweat, a primal release of the tension that had been building since the first snow fell. Emcorae threw himself into the fray with a desperation that startled the others. He needed the physical pain; he needed to feel the impact of a shoulder against his ribs to remind him he was still alive.
Nonetheless, while he joked and drank with Giles, Theron, and the others, Emcorae’s mind never truly stopped working. He used these competitive games as a clandestine laboratory to hone his Azora skills. While his elvin mates relied on grace or technique, Emcorae began to weave in the lethal, efficient movements he had been practicing in the clearing of his bungalow. He didn’t use the flowery, sweeping arcs taught by the masters; instead, his style was becoming something survival-based. He was faster and more desperate than his companions, his strikes landing with an efficiency that often caught them off guard.
“Where did you learn to move like that?” Theron asked, rubbing a bruised jaw after a particularly intense wrestling bout. “That’s not palace footwork. That’s… that’s something else.”
Emcorae just wiped the sweat from his brow and took another pull of ale, a dark glint in his eyes. “Let’s just say I learned how to stay upright when the world tries to knock you down.”
Just One of the Guys
Emcorae’s new friends often caused him to miss his training sessions with Nathily – although never explained to her why.
The elfess discovered the truth on her own. One day, Nathily had arrived at Emcorae’s bungalow with her practice blades and a rare, fresh loaf of honey-bread, hoping to find her friend in a receptive mood. Instead, she found the clearing empty. Rather than depart in despair like normal, Nathily watched from the tree line for a fit. Soon she saw Emcorae emerge from his hut, not with the heavy, slumped shoulders of a mourner, but with a brisk, secretive energy. He disappeared into the deep brush of the black pines, moving with a purpose she hadn’t seen in months.
Puzzled and a little hurt, Nathily tracked him. Her elven senses were far more refined than his, and she followed his trail through the drifts until the smell of woodsmoke and the rhythmic thump of stone against wood reached her ears. When she crested the ridge and saw a group of rowdy, sweat-stained Amorosi her first instinct was a mix of shock and elitist disdain. She’d heard about the “Outcasts” from Rian, her father complaining to Fara about the rough-edged males who were “wasting their immortality on the trivialities.”Nevertheless, she watched them for a bit, quickly seeing Emcorae laugh—actually laugh—as he palled around with his new friends. A pang of jealousy struck her. He was finding a joy with these “brutes” that she couldn’t provide with all her devotion.
Eventually, Nathily made herself known, stepping into the firelight of the clearing. The rowdy shouting died down instantly. Giles, clutching a horn of ale, squinted at her, his massive chest still heaving from a stone-hurling contest.
“Well now,” Giles rumbled, a slow, appreciative grin spreading across his face. “If it isn’t the Council’s favorite daughter. Come to tell us we’re breathing too loud, little bird?”
Nathily didn’t flinch. She walked straight to the center of the ring and grabbed a horn for herself. “I’ve come to see why my friend prefers the company of boars to the company of an Azora.”
The group erupted in hooting laughter. Giles clapped his hand against his thigh. “A firebrand! I like her. Emcorae, you didn’t tell us your nursemaid had teeth.”
Emcorae, wiped a smudge of dirt from his face and grinned. “She’s not a nursemaid, Giles. And she’ll best every one of you if given the chance.” Then to Nathily he added, “I knew you were following me, Nat, what took you so long to join us?”
Nathily’s face reddened, but she finished the ale and grabbed Theron’s horn to cover her embarrassment. That brought wild hoots of acceptance from the group. Nathily pretended to enjoy herself – much to Emcorae’s delight – though, in truth, her opinion of the group remained low. To her, the lodge was not a sanctuary; it was a den of regression. She found the Amorosi boys crude, their boisterous laughter echoing like the braying of donkeys, and their sports—those bone-crunching displays of raw, unrefined power—seemed a tragic waste of elven grace. The ale, a murky, fermented sludge that Theron brewed in iron vats, smelled of wet hay and a stable floor, clinging to the back of her throat like a thick layer of dust.
But she stayed – and her eyes never truly left Emcorae. She watched the way his face transformed when he was among them—the way the crushing weight of his longing for Lynsy seemed to lift, replaced by a rowdy, masculine heat she could never spark in him herself. It was a special kind of torture to see him thrive in a world she quickly despised – although she pretended to enjoy.
After repeated visits, Nathily had a new problem – she had to endure Giles’s clumsy flirtations and the spray of mud from their wrestling bouts just to be the one to hand Emcorae his cloak when the night ended. She was a scavenger in her own heart, hoping to catch the stray crumbs of his attention—a quick grin shared over a joke she didn’t find funny, or a casual hand on her shoulder as he moved past her to the ale cask.
Soon enough she wondered if he even saw her anymore, or if she had simply become part of the lodge’s furniture, a permanent fixture of his “new life” that he took as much for granted as the stone hearth. Every time he clinked horns with Theron or roared at one of Giles’s ribald tales, Nathily felt a fresh wave of panic. He was building a world here, a brotherhood of distraction, and the more he integrated with these “Outcasts,” the further he drifted from the quiet, intimate recovery she had tried to build for him in the bungalow. She was losing him to the noise, and yet she couldn’t leave, terrified that if she stepped out of the light for even a moment, he would forget she had ever been there at all.
After a fotrnight of this, when the winter air turned strangely still, the group built massive bonfire in the hollow behind the lodge. The flames roared twenty feet high, casting long, flickering shadows against the pines. For a brief moment, the angst seemed to have melted away. Emcorae and Nathily sat on a fallen log, sharing a flask of Dallegheri’s better wine, their shoulders occasionally brushing in a way that made Nathily’s heart ache with hope.
Giles, emboldened by several horns of the biting ale, watched them from across the fire. He caught Emcorae’s eye and jerked his chin toward Nathily, who was staring dreamily into the embers. Giles beckoned Emcorae over for a talk near the edge of the light. Nathily, her elven hearing picking up every syllable despite the crackling wood, leaned in slightly, her breath hitching.
“Listen, Em,” Giles whispered,. “I’ve been watching the two of you. She’s a rare one, that Nathily. Fierce as a hawk and twice as beautiful. I don’t want to step on your toes, mate, but… are you two a pair? Or is the field open?”
Nathily closed her eyes, her soul screaming for Emcorae to claim her, to say she was his, to end the ambiguity of the winter.
Emcorae looked back at Nathily. He saw her sitting there, the firelight dancing in her hair, and in his oblivious, “good-friend” heart, he thought of how much she deserved a mate who could make her happy. Since he genuinely like Giles, he clapped the bigger man on the shoulder, a genuine, encouraging smile on his face.
“She’s the best woman in Arbola, Giles,” Emcorae said clearly. “And no, we aren’t a pair. She’s like one of the guys. She’s a friend—the best I’ve ever had. If you want to court her, go for it. But she’s got a warrior’s spirit so don’t say I didn’t warn ya to be wary!”
Had Emcorae physically ripped out the elfess’ heart and stomped upon it, he couldn’t have hurt Nathily more. Emcorae wasn’t just opening the field; he was pushing her away with a smile, handing her off to another because he simply couldn’t conceive of a world where she was the one he loved.
“Thanks, brother,” Giles grinned, glancing back at Nathily with a new, possessive heat in his eyes.
Emcorae walked back to the log and sat down next to her, oblivious to the fact that Nathily was vibrating with a white-hot, silent fury.
“Giles is a good man,” Emcorae clumsily remarked, taking a sip of wine. “Strong. Loyal. I like him. Er…what do you think of him, Nat?”
Nathily didn’t look at him. She stood up, her movements stiff and mechanical. “I think I’ve had enough of this wasting time for one night, Emcorae.”
She turned and vanished into the dark woods before he could even ask what was wrong, her tears finally falling, hot and bitter, against the frozen earth.
The Surrogate Grandfather
The honey-ale at the lodge was beginning to taste like ash for Emcoare. Nathily had stopped coming to visit – much to Giles disappointment and Emcorae began to feel lonely despite being surrounded by a crowd.
One night, as Giles roared a ribald song and the lodge floor shook with revery, Emcorae found himself staring into the bottom of his horn, seeing a reflection he didn’t like.The stinging scent of the fermented brew triggered a jagged memory of home—of his father, Alboris, and more poignantly, of his grandfather, Alfranco. He could almost hear Alfranco’s raspy voice, a ghost from the Brandonale Tavern, whispering a warning over the rim of a mug: “A man who drowns his sorrows only teaches them how to swim, Em. Drink too much and you’ll find you’ve forgotten the only things worth keeping.”
A wave of profound regret washed over him. He wasn’t like the Amorosi, yet here he was, rotting in a haze of smoke and barley while his life—and Lynsy—lay elsewhere. He set the horn down on a stained table and muttered something about coming back tomorrow but he never returned.
The next day he ventured back into the main village – searching for someone specific: Dallegheri.
He found Nathily’s grandfather at his house – a place of profound silence, smelling of old parchment like always. The old elf was spindly figure draped in robes the color of lichen, peering through a magnifying crystal at a map of the First Age.
To the rest of Arbola, Emcorae was viewed like a political pawn or a failed warrior, but to Dallegheri, he was like a grandson of the spirit. The old scholar didn’t ask about his training or his decisions. He simply pushed a small bowl of dried berries toward the youth and gestured to a stool.
“Things too loud at the lodge, Em?” Dallegheri murmured, his voice a comforting dry rustle. “Oh, don’t worry, Nathily told me enough, but I don’t judge. I was young once too, if you can believe it.”
“I’m tired, Dallegheri,” Emcorae admitted, his shoulders slumping. “I just want to see where the roads go. I want to see a map that shows a way through the North that isn’t buried in ice.”
“Well now, let’s see what I have.” The oldster began to look through his voluminous collection. “And perhaps a story or two might help, eh?”
For hours, the pair sat in a companionable quiet, the only sound the turning of vellum and Dallegheri’s droning story telling. Emcorae found a strange peace here; his love for history was a shared language of “before” that bypassed the pain of “now.”
But then, once night, something happened. Emcorae was searching for a specific topographical map of the Northern passes, hoping to find a shepherd’s trail or a hidden valley the Goddess might have overlooked. He stretch to reach a high, recessed alcove—a section Dallegheri usually kept behind a heavy velvet curtain. As he reached for a leather-bound tube, his boot slipped and, trying to catch himself, he grabbed the shelf. With a sickening crunch of old wood, the structure buckled and a dozen scrolls tumbled to the floor, spilling their secrets across the stone, along with a strange jade carving of a beautiful woman.
“Careful, boy!” Dallegheri called out, scooping up the jade talisman and hiding it in his robes.
Emcorae didn’t notice the oldster’s action and instead scrambled down to gather the fallen texts. Most were mundane records of the Second Age, but one caught his eye. It was bound in silk the color of a fresh bruise—a deep, unnatural purple. As it unrolled, he saw not a map of the North, but a geography of a place called Ramos.
His breath hitched. The map depicted a city of jagged spires in a southern jungle. he saw swirling, violet mists—a place that looked more like a fever dream than a fortress. It was labeled Karkemesh and in the margins was written in a frantic, handwritten script detailing the “Vices of Inanna.”
“She feeds on the shadow of the heart,” the text read, the ink faded but still pulsing with a strange energy. “Where love is twisted into obsession, She finds her throne. Only The Hand of He Who Has No Name can save me now…”
“Inanna…” Emcorae whispered, the name strange to him.
Dallegheri was suddenly behind him, his wrinkled hand shaking as he took the scroll from Emcorae’s grip. The scholar’s face was deathly pale. “This… this is not for you, Emcorae. This is a history of the Dark Divines.”
“Who is she?” Emcorae asked, his eyes still fixed on the purple silk.
“A memory of madness,” Dallegheri said, quickly re-rolling the scroll and tucking it into his sleeve. “A warning about what happens when a soul stops seeking the light and begins to worship its own pain. Forget the name, boy. It is a seed that grows only in the dark.”
But it was too late. The name Inanna had already burned itself into the back of Emcorae’s mind. He didn’t know why—he didn’t know that miles away, King Diked was whispering that same name to a Goddess of Lust—but a seed had indeed been planted. It was a premonition, a cold spark of destiny.
As he walked back to his bungalow that night through the silent, snowy woods, the name Inanna echoed in his head with every footstep. He didn’t know how or when, but he knew with a terrifying certainty that one day, he would see those violet mists for himself. And then – destiny would have its due.
This is Goodbye
The final moons of winter brought a deceptive, velvet peace to the northern bungalow. The frantic, clawing energy that had defined Emcorae’s early captivity seemed to have been smothered by the heavy blankets of snow. For Nathily, this period became a sanctuary of growing hope—a fragile, beautiful thing she tended like a winter rose.
She was privately thrilled when Emcorae quietly withdrew from the rowdy lodge. The smell of Giles’s biting honey-ale no longer clung to his cloak, and the hollow, forced laughter of the “Outcasts” was replaced by a contemplative silence. Even better was his return to the clearing. He took up his blades again, but the jagged, undisciplined rage was gone. In its place was a quiet, focused intensity that made her heart ache with a new kind of pride.
They spent their days in the white-dusted clearing, their practice swords moving in a synchronized dance of silver and shadow. It was no longer a clash of egos; it was a conversation of steel.
“You’re leading with your shoulder again, Em,” Nathily remarked one afternoon, her breath a plume of white as she parried a high strike. “Trust the pivot, not the muscle.”
Emcorae didn’t bark back or storm off. Instead, he paused, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow, and offered her a small, lopsided smile—the kind of look he used to reserve only for his memories. “The pivot. Right. I’m still thinking like a brawler, aren’t I?”
“A very talented brawler,” she teased, stepping closer to adjust his stance. Her hands lingered on his arms, and for the first time, he didn’t pull away. He stood still, his gaze fixed on her with a calm respect that felt, to Nathily, like the first stirrings of a summer thaw.
Their evenings were spent by the hearth, Nathily staying as long as she could before riding home to her parents’ house. She cherished that time with Emcoare, the orange glow of the fire dancing across the stone walls of the bungalow. They shared stories of their childhoods, of the hidden glens of Arbola, and of the legends Dallegheri had whispered. For the first time since the Fall, their conversations didn’t always drift back to Monthaven. The name Lynsy remained unspoken, a ghost that seemed to have finally been exorcised by the biting cold.
To Nathily, the seclusion together was like a sacred interval, a bubble of time where the rest of the world—and the woman who haunted it—simply ceased to exist. She allowed herself the dangerous luxury of belief: that the memory of the merchant girl was fading like a dream upon waking, a thin vapor burned away by the rising sun of their new intimacy. She convinced herself that his pining had been a fever—a sickness of the soul brought on by youth and distance—and that she, with her patient hands and sharp blades, was the cure. Every time he laughed at a story she told, or every time he sought her eye for approval during a difficult Azora form, the roots of her hope sank deeper into the softening earth. Love, she felt certain, was finally ready to bloom in the tracks of the receding snow.
“We could do this forever, you know,” she whispered one night. The cabin was warm, smelling of cedarwood and the herbal tea she’d brewed. The embers in the hearth were dying down to a soft, pulsing orange, casting a glow across Emcorae’s face that smoothed away the scars of the winter. “The Council would grant us this land. We could build onto the bungalow. We could stay in the shade of the pines, where it’s quiet.”
Emcorae looked at the fire for a long moment, his hand resting near hers on the rough-hewn table. His fingers were calloused but steady, no longer twitching for the reins of a horse.
“It is quiet,” he agreed softly, his voice carrying a resonant depth she hadn’t heard before. “I’ve never known a peace like this, Nat. For the first time in my life, the noise in my head has just… stopped. I’m so glad you’ve been here with me.”
Nathily leaned her head toward his, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She could smell the crisp scent of the forest on his skin. In that moment, she was sure. She was sure he was hers, that the forest had become a home, and that when winter’s gates finally, he wouldn’t want to walk through them. He had everything he needed here, with her.
Sadly that dream died the next day.
The Great Thaw arrived – the supernatural ice barriers Alyssa had woven around the borders began to groan. The Goddess’s focus, ever mercurial, had shifted toward the budding life of the deep glens, and the barriers that had imprisoned Emcorae vanished as if it had never been. The air in the clearing turned sweet and heavy with the scent of damp earth and rushing water. For Nathily, it was the scent of a funeral.
The news broke at midday, brought by Raison on a steaming horse. “The Western Veil is open,” he announced, his voice echoing in the stillness, eager to tell his friend the good news. “The mud is drying on the Low Road. The passes to Monthaven are clear. Emcorae, you can finally go home!”
Nathily felt the world tilt. She turned to look at Emcorae, praying to see hesitation, or perhaps the comfortable settledness they had shared for the last moon. Instead, she saw a man transformed. The “dreamy” look was gone, replaced by a cold, terrifyingly sharp clarity. The “ghost” had returned to haunt his eyes.
“Finally,” Emcorae whispered. It wasn’t a cry of joy; it was the growl of a predator who had finally found the door to its cage unlocked.
Nathily realized with a sickening jolt that she had never won. She had merely been a distraction, a way for him to pass the time while the gods held his reins. And now she had run out of time.
Joanne had long since joined him again and he now moved to saddle her. The mare’s leg had healed with a slight, rugged scar—a permanent reminder of the price of his impatience, yet Emcorae moved with a hardened, mechanical efficiency.
Emcorae’s impending departure was slow, agonizing unraveling of everything Nathily had built in the dark. She stood Joanne, the damp air chilling the sweat on her skin, her hands trembling so violently that the leather reins of the horse felt like live coals. This was the moment she had dreaded through every candle-lit hour of his recovery—the moment the world outside became louder than the heartbeat they had shared in the bungalow.
“Emcorae,” she began, her voice thick and fractured, carrying the weight of the thousand words she had swallowed all winter to keep the peace. “You don’t have to do this alone. The mud… it’s treacherous. Stay. Just another moon, Em. Let the roads truly harden. Let your strength fully return. One more moon in the quiet.”
She was pleading for time, for one more fireside evening, for one more chance to be the woman he chose. But Emcorae didn’t even hesitate. He swung into the saddle with a grace that felt like a slap; it was the movement of a man who had already sent his heart leagues away.
He looked down at her, and for a fleeting, cruel second, Nathily saw a smile flicker across his face. Her heart leaped, reaching for a phantom affection—until she realized the nature of the look. It was the smirk of a comrade, the casual, easy warmth one offers a loyal soldier or a favorite sibling. It was a “friendly” smile, and in its shallow kindness, it was more devastating than a scowl. It was the smile of a man who hadn’t realized he was being loved.
The warmth was instantly swallowed by a cold, metallic fire in his eyes—a resolve that felt like iron and tasted of sea-salt and old pining.
“I’ve stayed long enough, Nat,” he said, his voice as flat as a grave marker. He didn’t see the tears tracking through the dirt on her cheeks. “Thank you. For everything. Truly. You are the best friend I’ve ever had, and I won’t forget what you did for me. Let’s go, Raison – race you to the Veil.”
Friend. The word was a dagger, twisting in the very ribs she had tended. He didn’t lean down to brush his lips against hers. He didn’t promise to send word or hint at a return. He didn’t even look back at the bungalow where they had lived a lifetime in the last moon. He simply spurred Joanne forward, the mare’s hooves churning the fresh, hopeful grass into ugly black mud as he followed Raison toward the shimmering barriers of the Veil.
Nathily watched as he rode away, his silhouette shrinking against the vibrant, mocking green of the new spring growth. He was leaving Arbola, and she felt it in the hollow of her marrow—he was leaving for good. He was riding toward a girl he thought was waiting, unaware that he was also carrying Nathily’s entire world away in his saddlebags.
She stood there, a solitary figure in the vastness of the awakening forest, until the rhythmic thud of hooves was replaced by the indifferent, cheerful babble of the melt-water brooks. The forest was coming back to life, but for Nathily, the world had turned to ash. She knew, with the crushing, immortal certainty of the elven soul, that the version of Emcorae she had loved—the vulnerable man who needed her—was gone.
He had ridden into the light, and she was left in the shadows of the pines, weeping not just for him, but for the terrifying blankness of her own future. The “Emerald Cage” was open, but as she watched the spot where he vanished, she realized she was the only one still trapped inside.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 