EZRIL IARO IS WITHOUT A CHOICE. With a vicious war raging outside the temple's gates, long-held friends calling for help, and a son slowly descending into the influence of an incurable sickness, Ezril has to unlock the secrets of the island, delve i...
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2412 Qintax 20, Daleth
Ezril held a chain with one hand, fighting the oncoming sigh arising from the depths of her soul. Behind her, the Necrom Orb pulsed with a faint green sheen, its use long passed them. A breeze blew from the east, kissing her skin and carrying a reminder of what transpired below. The chain swung with its direction, rattling the rings hanging from it—the only reminder she had left of a time in her life when everything made sense and not a sliver of war touched their soil.
The sigh came, with her powerless to stop it. With practiced hands, she unclasped the chain's lock. No fear settled in her veins. She wouldn't drop it. Not when she clung to it with her soul and life all these years. Fate would have to claw it out of her corpse if it wanted.
She reached back and locked it around her neck. The rings clinked against each other again as they bounced off her chest. Her fur-lined cloak banished them from her sight when she drew the smooth, black cloth around her. It was particularly cold today in Carleon, and in Drodham, with the reality of what they're facing, even colder.
The rest of Wryshia ranges snaked from her view in the balcony of the war room. It was the only thing that didn't change over the few months of the Temple dealing with everything. Even the low-lying clouds forming the haze over the peaks were absent as much as they're present.
No use looking out windows, though. They have a war to survive, and Ezril ought to get to work soon.
Sounds of metal clanging and screams of defiance and pain followed her wake as she retreated into the war room. A prickling sensation passed across her skin and down the length of her platinum gray hair—a sign the soul barrier worked and was still working. She remembered disagreeing when the Rekshais proposed it, but with them wanting to keep their High Priestess safe from harm, Ezril relented. If it's for her benefit and would give her people confidence and the peace of mind to fight in the front lines, then she'd be fine.
It didn't stop her from feeling caged in, though.
She could go out anytime she wanted, but what for? Some of the invaders might have already figured out how to get inside the Temple and navigate it without soul ports. She wouldn't put it past Kymalin to have taught the Cardovians the mysteries of her home. Of both their homes. Ezril didn't need to be captured alive and used for ransom—her life in exchange for Carleon's surrender—so she stayed put.
And it's unfair for the Rekshais to worry about her so openly when she couldn't do the same. She was always shut down whenever she expressed her concern with them being exposed to priestal artifacts for as long as they did. Since their success in turning away the first wave of the Necrom Invasion, the Rekshais took it upon themselves to wield their artifacts in defense of the Temple and their High Priestess. And when a new siege started, this time, led by armies from Cardovia, the circumstance began anew.
It's only a matter of time until their extended usage would catch up to them. Ezril should never have made those artifacts in the first place. They've just become sources of greed.
