The Lay of the Grandmasters Way - An Official Eternal-Lands Story

The Lay of Jerun, Act 2

It was spoken as such by the greatest Draian Philosopher ever known, and was disputably the reason for many of the petty wars and minor "differences of opinion" that broke out between the races of men and elves:

"Noble intent does not suffice, for the short lives of man are plagued by self sacrifice in name of this, yet in the end naught but Vanity was served."

Yet this profound observation of the acts of mankind has plagued me for all my adult years, and there have been many of those. Indeed, more than can be reckoned as true to the observation. More yet than I, Jerun, Grandmaster of Air and Keeper of the Sacred Keys of Tarsengaard Magic School would wish for. But wishes are fickle things, fleeting as a wisp of smoke on the night air, insubstantial and treacherous as fog on a lee shore.

My own wishes proved thus, and thus have I become the one thing I would choose to avoid, had I such allowances in my fate. Yet what is fate, if not the very essence of choice disallowed?

I speak of course, as only a man bereft of choice can, of the fate that led me to become a Grandmaster. Unlike any others who attain such exalted rank within Elemental Magic, it has long been the wont of the elements themselves to dictate who will be bestowed the power of mastery over Air. From the lowliest ship bound novice and storm turners, to the very foundations of administrators and Air masters within the School, not one is self taught in the arts of the Air mage. Our natural gifts and propensities for the element are granted...bestowed if you will, at the coming of age for each of our races.

I was a mere lad of 16 when I received my "gift"...my curse.

Working as a bellows boy for the local smith, I guess I was all hot air, as much as my trade was. But it gave me an understanding back then of how the movement of air affects the nature of things. From the smallest wing beat of a gnat, to the whirling vortices of storm and hurricane, the true power of the elemental forces comes into being and is as swift and violent as an angry god, or as gentle and caressing as a first time sweetheart.

A first time sweetheart.

Alas, that things had not gone the way they did. From the moment I first laid eyes upon the fair elf maid named Rivena, I was smote down as by some inexplicable unyielding ailment of the soul. I yearned for her from that moment on, and even now, even after leaving my mortal ways, I find my thoughts beset by her.

Working away at the bellows, with the rough and ready temper of the smith to keep me in line should my concentration lapse at my toil, I poured my sweat into the air around me. Day after day of pumping the huge leather clad furnace lungs, my lifeblood ebbing and flowing to its heartbeat in an effort to keep its molten eye white as a twilit star. It was this sacrifice of my own self into the very air that altered me, on a level I did not then know existed.

There had been no warnings. No magical portents at my birth. My childhood, blissfully free of strange and inexplicable occurrences of randomized ethereal influxes, passed by uneventfully, from the perspective of anyone looking for signs that I would one day become the greatest living Air Elementalist Draia had had, in its long recorded histories. The Grandmaster of Air.

My "turning" was arranged by those who served the School for which I am now responsible, and whom now serve me, damn them all.

It required one of common birth, who with willing sacrifice, gave himself to the element of air.

A seemingly unusual requirement to fulfill, as no one of common birth is usually so stupid as to sacrifice themselves for anyone or anything. Leave that to the inbred nobles of rank, and right of gods, who rule the lands. The histories of ALL the races of Seridia and Irillion are littered with such noble sacrifice.