Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Summer
More than a moon after he’d returned to the forest, Emcorae finally got his audience with The Council.
The Great Green Hall was a buzz with anticipation as the would-be Azora stepped into the center of the space. Yet the contrast the observers saw in the appearance of the human who stood in their midst was staggering. Emcorae’s armor—the silver-filigree plate of the Azora—was immaculate. It shone with a terrifying, mirror-like brilliance, every hinge oiled, every strap tightened to perfection. But his face was a picture of chaos. He looked ten years older than the young man who had left. His skin was sallow, his eyes sunken and bloodshot from a moon cycle of sleeplessness. He’d also lost weight and looked thin and gaunt. In short, he didn’t look like an elf-trained warrior, but more like a man who was barely holding himself together.
“He looks like a corpse dipped in silver,” one weaver whispered to his companion, leaning over a moss-covered railing. “Like the grey of a winter sky.”
“He’s earned that grey,” an Azora scout retorted. “I heard rumors of a Myz here in the East. If that’s true, we’re fools to let him go out there alone. We must help him.”
Throughout the crowd, similar conversations could be heard. The younger elves felt the prickle of action in their own blood. But the elders—those who remembered the charred borders of the Last Great War—shook their heads. To them, Emcorae was a spark in a dry forest, a danger that could bring the wrath of Orkney and the dreaded Myz down upon their sacred canopy.
In the darker corners of the hall, near the root-pillars, the atmosphere was even more cynical. Coins of etched amber and pressed silver changed hands in hushed transactions.
“Three to one says Rian gives him a blessing and a bag of grain, but not a single arrow,” hissed an opportunistic merchant from the Southern Reach.
“I’ll take that,” replied a scholar, scribbling a note on a scrap of parchment. “I say he breaks. He’ll drop that katana and beg for help.”
In the gallery of observers, Alfranco leaned heavily on his weir-wood staff, his knuckles white. Beside him, Nathily felt a cold sweat dampen her palms. For weeks, they had been the twin pillars of Emcorae’s fragile world. Alfranco had spent hours in the dim light of the Archive, coaching Emcorae, refining his words, and teaching him how to appeal to elven logic without losing the raw edge of human truth. Nathily had watched from the doorway, her heart a tangled knot of love and terror. She wanted him to win, yet she feared that winning meant losing him to the meat-grinder of war.
Nathily’s breath hitched every time she looked at Emcorae. “They’re going to say no, aren’t they?” she whispered to Emcorae’s grandsire, her voice barely audible over the din of the crowd.
Alfranco didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on Regent Rian. “They’re going to do what trees always do, lass. They’re going to try to outwait the storm. But this storm… it’s got a name. And it’s standing right in front of them.”
“Lords… Elders…” he began. His voice cracked, a jagged fissure of humanity in the polished silence of the hall. “I stand before you not as your Azora pupil, but as a son of Pennal. I have seen things that no dream should harbor. My beloved hometown, Monthaven, is gone. The people there were good, hardworking people—they didn’t deserve the fate that King Diked laid upon them.”
While the council listened to the plea, the living timbers pulsed with a low thrum. The architecture of the Council Seats remained a marvel—a vertical labyrinth of horseshoe-shaped boughs that functioned as a gallery of judgment—but today, the horseshoe felt like a tightening noose. Regent Rian sat at the focal point, his brown robes almost blending into the darker bark of his seat. Near the bottom, tucked into a nook of roots, the ancient Dallegheri sat surrounded by floating globes of light. To the left, Helena and Ardala occupied boughs draped in shimmering Arbola silk. Adarius, the tall Cavalier, stood on a jutting limb near the edge, his beautiful face looking perturbed. Lorindel, the diplomat, moved restlessly along a middle vines, going back and forth between his colleagues, whispering his thoughts. Meanwhile, the mysterious and diminutive El-Janus remained perfectly still in the upper shadows, appearing as if he was part of the tree’s own bark.
“King Diked didn’t just have his monster burn buildings; he hunted people,” Emcorae continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow reached the furthest rafters. “He hunted… my family. He killed… the girl I loved.”
Here Emcorae had to pause to collect himself. In the the silence that followed, more than a few began to weep. Alfranco closed his eyes for a moment, his chest heaving. He had told Emcorae to use the girl—to make the elves feel the weight of a stolen future. But seeing his grandson crumble under the weight of the words was almost more than the old gaffer could bear. Nathily bit her lip, a single tear escaping to track through the dust on her cheek. She saw the way Emcorae’s hand trembled and she wanted to run to him. As for the council, they showed no emotion, except that the Regent quietly coaxed Emcorae to continue when once he was ready.
Emcorae gathered himself, his gaze hardening as it swept across the horseshoe of judges. “They’re gone. All gone. We can’t bring them back, but we can deliver justice to those who deserve it. I am asking—no, I am begging—for the strength to make things right.”
“We hear your plight. We feel your pain,” Rian said, his voice cautious, layered with the detached empathy of the immortal. “But what specifically are you asking us to do?”
Emcorae straightened his back. “Give me but a hundred Azora, and we can show Orkney that they’ll not get away with these crimes!”
A collective gasp rippled through the hall. A hundred Azora was was the equivalent of a human army ten times as much.
Adarius was the first to snap. “Pupil, would you really have us declare war on Orkney? Such a plan is ill-conceived and reeks of a boy’s temper, not a warrior’s strategy.”
“Orkney is a sovereign domain,” Lorindel added, his silken voice weaving through the boughs. “We Amorosi are not the dominant race upon TerrVerde. We maintain a delicate balance with the human kingdoms. To march now would invite the High King of Meridia to turn his eyes North. Have you considered his thoughts, or is your horizon limited to the smoke of your own chimney?”
Emcorae felt the tide turning. The crowd was beginning to murmur; in desperation he proffered, “Have you considered what it means to have a Myz on this side of TerrVerde?” he countered, his voice ringing with a new, desperate authority. “Countless witnesses confirm that such a monster led the slaughter at the behest of the king.”
The mention of the name sent a physical shudder through the assembly. The Myz were nearly as immortal as the Amorosi; they were nightmares that none wanted to see again.
“A Myz?” Helena raised a hand, her expression one of practiced pity. “Or perhaps the people of your village were confused. Grief can play tricks on the eyes, Emcorae. Maybe the townfolk were… distressed and afraid. Shadows look long when the sun is setting on one’s life.”
“We haven’t had a verified report of a Myz east of the Rhokki’s since the Last Great War,” Adarius dismissed. “You ask us to risk our sons on likely hallucinations?”
“What if it’s true?” Emcorae cried. “Are you willing to take that risk? What if Orkney is the gateway for the Myz to cross the Eastern borders? If you won’t fight for me, fight for yourselves!”
In the gallery, Alfranco leaned toward Nathily, a grim smirk touching his lips. “That was the hook, lass. I told him: if you can’t touch their hearts, squeeze their throats with fear. Surely they will help him now!”
The crowd was buzzing now, many of the younger elves nodding, seeing their elders do the same. But then, a voice drifted down from the upper shadows—a dry, rasping sound like leaves skittering over stone.
El-Janus shifted in his iridescent grey robes, appearing to emerge from the bark itself. “My pupil. May I suggest that you speak of the Myz to stir our fear? Yet I sense that your own heart is in the greatest danger. I fear you do not want to stop a monster, but that you want to become one.”
Unabashed, Emcorae looked boldly up at his former master. “And what if I do? That doesn’t change the danger you face.”
“I taught you the Azora Way to protect the breath of life,” El-Janus whispered, his gaze piercing the dim light. “But you actively seek to quench it. Hear me, Pupil: ‘He who seeks revenge would be wise to dig two graves. One for his victim… and one for himself.’ It would appear you have already started digging.”
The desperation in Emcorae finally snapped. A dry, hollow laugh escaped his lips, a sound that chilled the blood of everyone in the hall. “Only two, Mysstro? If I have to dig a thousand to find Diked at the bottom of the pile, I’ll do it.” He straightened his back, the polished silver of his armor catching a shaft of emerald light. “And as for the second grave… let it be mine. If only I can mete out justice to those who destroyed my people and my life.”
Alfranco felt a cold sweat prickle at his hairline. He had coached the boy to be persuasive—but this? Alfranco felt surge of nauseating guilt. He wanted to shout, to crack a joke, to do anything to break the danger he felt on Emcorae’s behalf, but his throat felt as though it were filled with ash – words failed him.
Beside him, Nathily let out a small, broken whimper. She reached out, as if she could somehow reach across the void to pull Emcorae back. “He’s giving up,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “He isn’t fighting for justice, Alfranco. He’s asking for permission to die.”
It was Adarius who spoke first for the Council. “We are not executioners, boy.”
“It cannot be,” Ardala added, her voice soft and final. “We must consider the Forest first. The roots of Arbola go deeper than the tragedies of Pennal.”
One by one, the Council members signaled their dissent. It was unanimous.
Regent Rian stood, his silhouette towering and dark against the glowing bark of the Great Oak. The hall fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
“Emcorae Azop,” Rian began, his voice reflecting with the weight of centuries. “The Council of Arbola has heard your plea. But our treaties from the Fifth Age hold fast. We dare not interfere in the internal conflicts of the human kingdoms. Furthermore, the Lady of the Woods has decreed that our strength must remain within the Green until the Great Change comes. We cannot give you an army. We cannot even give you a single arrow.”
“The ‘Lady of the Woods’?” Emcorae whispered, the words carrying a blasphemous weight. “You hide behind a Goddess who uses you like her playthings. You sit in your trees—safe—while the world outside bleeds, and you call it ‘wisdom’.”
The crowd erupted at that. The insult to Alyssa was a physical blow to the Amorosi. Those who had been drawn to his cause moments ago now hissed and shouted, their sympathy curdling into outrage.
Emcorae didn’t care. He turned his back on the Council—a final, ultimate act of defiance—and began to walk toward the exit. His polished armor gleamed with a light that felt predatory, reflecting the angry faces of the elves like a strange mirror.
“Emcorae!” Nathily screamed, trying to shove her way through the press of bodies. “Em, wait!”
Alfranco was right behind her, using his staff to wedge a path, his face set in a mask of grim determination. “Move, you long-eared fools! Out of the way!”
But Emcorae didn’t stop. He didn’t look back at the Council, nor at the sea of elves, nor even at the two people who had fought so hard to save his soul. He walked out of the “living” hall and into the cold, starlit night—a warrior who had nothing left to lose but a life he no longer wanted. He was going rogue agent, soon to head toward a horizon that promised only…blood.
So This is Goodbye…Again?
The Regent’s cellar, once a place of whispered recoveries and Nathily’s gentle medicine, had been reclaimed by the cold utility of war. It was no longer a sanctuary; it was a factory of vengeance. Emcorae moved with a mechanical efficiency, his mind a checklist of lethality. Salt for the trail. Arrows for the guard. Steel for the King’s Head. He was packing for a war that had no end date and no allies.
After he’d gathered what he needed from the cellar, he moved up the stairs to finish packing Joanne and a pack mule – their saddlebags quickly bulged, especially upon the mule. In addition to food, Emcorae added all of Azoran specialized weaponry he’d collected during his time: a secondary short-blade of elven steel that caught the light like frozen lightning, several dozen black-feathered arrows tipped with armor-piercing bodkins, a reinforced shield etched with the sigil of The Glade of Gazza, and more.
Although the mule merely grunted as the weight increased on its back, Joanne’s mood was different. The elvish mare’s ears were pinned back and her hooves shifting rhythmically. Joanne knew something was wrong. She felt the unease in her friend’s intent, a spirit that lacked any of the warmth she once recognized in him.
When he finished, Emcorae looked at the small mountain of gear that precariously floated upon the mule’s pack. The forest had become ominously quiet – in his mind he took that to be a preview of the silence he expected to find at the end of his journey—the silence of a grave.
They wanted me to be an Azora, he thought, his fingers cinching a leather strap until it groaned. It was a fool’s quest. It’s not for me to fight for forests or gods. I’ll fight for the dead and the justice they should be given. And I’ll fight for revenge!
Finally, he strapped the Azora Katana to his hip. The weight of it felt right—a perfectly balanced killing tool that would be in the hands of a mortal who planned to burn out the candle of his life in a blaze of glory. The movement had a finality to it and he felt the last tether to his former self snap. He was no longer the boy who laughed at jokes or the Pupil who sought to walk the “Way.” He might have been those things had the gods directed his path differently, but Fate had gained controlled and it was time for the darkness of his destiny to unfold.
Before he could leave, Alfranco and Nathily arrived. Alfranco looked aged by a century, leaning heavily on his staff, while Nathily’s face was a mask of pale, vibrating horror.
“You’re actually doing it,” Nathily whispered, her voice trembling. “You’re leaving us again? By yourself?”
Emcorae looked towards the north. “I’m going to deliver justice, Nathily. The Council won’t give it, so I’ll go find it in the ruins I create of Orkney.”
“It’s a suicide mission!” she cried, stepping toward him, her hands reaching out as if to physically stop him. “Alfranco, tell him! Tell him he’s walking into a grave! He’s throwing his life away?”
Nathily turned to the old man, expecting the voice of reason. Instead, she found Alfranco staring at his grandson with a look of profound, agonizing pride.
“He’s right, lass,” Alfranco said, his voice a gravelly rumble that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cellar.
Nathily recoiled as if he had struck her. “What? You… you’re letting him go?”
“An Azop without a purpose is just a dead man walking, Nathily,” Alfranco said, stepping toward Emcorae. He placed a heavy, trembling hand on the young man’s shoulder. It ripped the old man up inside and he wanted to scream, to stop him, nay he wanted to go with him and fight until his own heart stopped too. He wanted revenge and justice just as much as Emcorae. But he knew he’d only slow Emcorae down and as to what he might accomplish in battle – well those days were long passed too. He also knew that if Emcorae stayed here in the forest, the guilt would rot his grandson until there was nothing left but a shell—just as it had nearly done to Alfranco himself.
“You go, Em,” Alfranco whispered, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “You go and you make them remember our family. Justice is a bloody business, you may need to become a monster to survive. Be the bigger monster, the biggest of all, and maybe, just maybe you’ll pull through. You have my blessing, Em. And know this – the gods… they’ll watch over you. I’ll make sure of that!”
Alfranco looked toward the trees – he knew a certain jay was watching these events. He’d already had made a silent, internal bargain: he would give Alyssa what she wanted. He would let Al-Corragio return to her bed and her service, provided she used her divine hand to protect Emcorae. It was his own sacrifice—trading his identity and the memories of his own lost wife and family for his grandson’s survival.
Through it all Nathily stood frozen, her Amorosi mind unable to process the speed of these hasty human action. In the elven world, decisions took years; here, her world was being dismantled in heartbeats. “Emcorae, please—”
But the man she loved was already mounting Joanne’s back. After getting into the saddle, Emcoare paused for only a moment, his shadow stretching long across the forest flow. He looked at Alfranco and gave a sharp nod—the only goodbye a man on a suicide mission could afford – even to his beloved grandfather. Then his gaze shifted to Nathily. For a fleeting moment, the “Dark” in his eyes softened, a ghost of that friendly boy who had share so many trials in The Glade flickering in the candlelight.
“Thank you for the light, Nathily,” he said, his voice flat but not entirely unkind. “Don’t waste any more of it on me or the road north.”
And then, he was gone. Moving his lonely party forward towards the road.
The sound of hooves on the path quickly faded into the depths of Arbola. Nathily remained standing in the sudden, deafening silence, her heart a leaden weight. She had expected a long goodbye, a chance to plead, a moment to convince Emcorae to stay, certainly time – at least a few days – to change his mind – even to reveal to him her true heart. But it was not to be – Emcorae was gone before she could do any of that. She looked at Alfranco, who had collapsed onto a nearby stone bench, his face buried in his hands. Nathily laid a hand upon the old man to comfort him – yet she continued looking towards the path that Emcorae had travelled – the man she loved was heading into the throat of danger, and she was left standing in a forest that felt more like a prison than her home.
The Flight
That night the Regent’s house was unusually quiet. The air, usually redolent with scents of Fara’s herbs now hung heavy and cloying. Nathily moved through her chambers not as a daughter of her loving parents, but as a thief in the night, stealing away the future Rian and Fara had so meticulously cultivated for her at the direction of Alyssa.
She was leaving – the decision had already been made. The choice had not been a slow burn like most Amorosi would have done; it was a flash of lightning that had scorched her for the process of thinking like a rash human had felt so unnatural. Yet as Nathily stood in the center of her chamber, every flickering shadow cast by the moonlight seemed to take the shape of Emcorae’s departing back—a beloved friend who hadn’t even turned to acknowledge her tears as he rode away.
He is walking into the darkness, she thought, her breath hitching in her throat. And he thinks he is walking alone. He thinks that dark has already claimed him, but he doesn’t know how much light I am willing to sacrifice to save him.
Her Amorosi heart was no longer the steady, rhythmic drum of a forest-dweller; it was a trapped bird battering itself against the ribs of a gilded cage. To stay in Arbola, to wake up tomorrow to the practiced “wisdom” of the Council, to try to return to her training and just go through the motions, to exist under suffocating, silent pity in her mother’s eyes—all of that was a death sentence she could not, would not, accept.
In the pale, ghostly glow of the moon, Nathily shed her silken robes – they pooled on the floor like discarded skin. She put on her sturdy training leathers, the gear of an Amora who had once committed herself to the rigors of the Glade. Overtop of this she slipped on a traveling cloak. In her mind she wasn’t shirking the promise she’d made at The Glade, instead she was fulfilling it by living the spirit of the Azora – to protect those most in need – which in her mind was Emcorae Azop. She knew this decision would not be viewed kindly by her people. Running away would be a blow to El-Janus’s teachings, an embarrassment to her parents’ standing in society, and a direct insult to the Goddess herself, yet to Nathily there was no alternative.
She packed her satchel with trembling fingers, her mind a whirlwind of logistics. Waybread, linen for bandages, and the potent, glowing salves she had received during a final, hushed meeting with her grandfather.
To her surprise, Dallegheri wasn’t all that shocked to hear about her leaving. He had looked at her not with disappointment, but with the understanding of one who had seen a thousand cycles of love and loss. In addition to his encouragement and love, the ancient elf had pressed a small, lead-stoppered vial into her palm—a rare distillate of Suns-breath moss.
“Heal the wounds of the flesh, Little Bird,” Dallegheri had whispered, his hand shaking slightly as he closed her fingers over the glass. “But remember: some wounds are not made by steel. If you go, do not go to bring him back to who he was. Go to help him become who he is destined to be. This forest is old, but true love is older still. Perhaps oldest of all is the duty of one soul to another.”
I will not be a healer tonight, Nathily finished packing in her room. And when I find Emcorae, if the fates require blood to keep his heart beating, then let the earth drink mine before his.
With that she reached for her falchia. She ran her thumb along the hilt of the curved blade. None truly knew its origin; it had appeared in her hand the day she first stepped upon the Path of the Azora, a gift or a curse from a forgotten era. It was a beautiful, terrifying thing, never before used in battle—at least not by her – but soon it would taste the blood of any who might try to harm Emcorae.
Here she knelt by her bed and offered a prayer.
“Great Mother, Alyssa… You who claim to be the patron of our hearts, do not look away from me now. You are the Goddess of Love therefore I ask in the name of love – help me to find Emcorae, help me to protect him, and most of all, help us to find… to find love together. Even if it’s only for a single night, let my life not pass away before Emcorae understands all that’s in my heart – and let me understand his.“
On her pillow, she laid a small note. Earlier, she had started a long, desperate explanation—pages of prose about how Arbola felt like a cage, how El-Janus’ ‘Two Graves’ wisdom was a prophecy she had to stop, and how her love for Emcorae outweighed her duty to the Regent’s house. But the words had blurred under her falling tears until the parchment was a sodden ruin. She had crumpled it. No prose could bridge the distance between her life in the forest and her future as a fugitive of the road.
In the end, she left only a brief, heartbreaking thank you for a lifetime of love from her adoptive parents—a life she was now effectively throwing away. Then she made ready to leave, but she didn’t use the door. To walk through the halls of her parentss would be to risk a long goodbye or worse pleas for her to stay. Instead, she climbed out the window, her boots finding the familiar knots of the Silver Birch. Nearby, tucked into the deep shadows of the garden, her horse Mossflower waited. The mare was already saddled, her panniers stuffed with grain and blankets. Mossflower nickered softly as Nathily approached.
Before she swung into the saddle, she did one final thing. She placed a single Moon-Lily on the earth below her window—a flower that only bloomed in the absence of the sun, thriving in the most difficult, neglected soil. Beside it, on a small scrap of parchment, she had written three simple words:
“I choose him.”
It was a choice of tragedy. She knew she wasn’t chasing a husband or a hero; she was chasing a man who had already declared himself dead. She was choosing the road to Orkney over the safety of the Green, the scent of blood and perhaps evil, and of a love that might never look her in the eye.
With a silent intake of breath, she pulled up the hood of her cloak and then she nudged Mossflower. The mare slipped into the trees, a shadow following a shadow, leaving the Regent’s house to its silence and the Moon-Lily to its dark.
Like Emcorae, Nathily did not look back.
What the fleeing elfess didn’t know is that her parents were not in the Regent’s house as she thought they were. Instead, at the edge of the village, where the ancient oaks gave way to the younger, wilder scrub of the borderlands, two figures stood hidden in the high boughs. Fara and Rian watched in a silence that was heavy with the weight of centuries. Below them, a small, hooded figure riding on a mare slipped past the sentinel trees. It was their adoptive daughter Nathily and she was moving with a desperate, frantic speed, her eyes fixed on the faint trail left by Joanne and the pack mule.
“She’s gone,” Rian whispered when the rider passed them by, his voice cracking. He reached out as if to catch the wind. “She’s walking into dangers unspeakable, Fara. We can still stop her. I am the Regent—El-Janus can surely stop her.”
Fara didn’t move. Her gaze remained fixed on her daughter’s retreating form until it was nothing more than a speck of green against the grey twilight. Her eyes were hard, yet a single tear traced a path through the beauty of her face.
“No, Rian,” Fara murmured, her voice a chilling mix of grief and pragmatic acceptance. “Like parents the world over, we have to let our little bird fly, even if she flies into a storm. She has chosen her path. She is chasing a shadow, yes, but perhaps her light is the only thing that can keep that shadow from being swallowed by the dark.”
Rian looked at his wife, seeing the “possibilities” she still clung to, even now. “It is a tale of two quests, then. One for blood, and one for a heart that may already be dead.”
“Then let us pray to Alyssa that the heart beats again before the blood is spilled,” Fara replied.
They stood together until the forest swallowed the last trace of their daughter. The “Butterfly Effect” had claimed its final victim in Arbola; the peace of the grove was shattered, and the road to Orkney now held the fate of the Azop line and perhaps even the future of the Amorosi people.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 