This is a project I started a few months back. Since I had not yet penned a story as a debut for our stalwart archaeomancer, and feeling a general sense of dissatisfaction for some of the way I'd fashioned her in the first place, I'd decided to dedicate a story to her and see if I couldn't work out a little more. Admittedly, in the offset of this endeavor, I realized one major problem in working with the character: If all the stories are about dead worlds, then it's going to be a looooonely book for Ilyta.
So, I realized that I'd have to likely invest in some time to develop her outside of her main pursuits. I fully intend to do that, but as an introduction piece, it was vital I create at least one work that actually shows off what she does. That alone came with a few problems, but I resolved to try a little experiment and a literally empty world seemed an ideal canvas to do this with.
I'd go to gatherer and hit random. Whatever cards I conjured up, within reason, I'd include into the story somehow. What's more, in some cases, I'd do my best to incorporate them further in other ways. Now, a few of the cards I got ended up not panning out for one reason or another, and yet others I had to substitute to facilitate part of my project, but overall, I feel like I've put together a decent amalgam of these.
That being said, the story largely hinged on two-three cards that came up, and it was those that formed the backbone of the world Ilyta is delving into, though the very nature of what Ilyta does had a substantial influence on what drove the plot as well. Nevertheless, I present to you the results:
A Dying Gasp
Day 2:
Brilliant silver sand, turned gold by dawn's light, shifted and glittered with the wind’s breath. The spell woven cloth of Ilyta's cloak whipped back, caught violently in the current, but she hardly paid it any mind. Even tossed about in the wind’s grip, it didn’t upset her precarious balance, perched atop the high dune overlooking the desert’s running sands. The cloak wasn’t technically there, after all, but an enchantment meant to shield her from the harsh conditions of her surroundings. The long flapping fabric streaming in the wind was a shifting mirror of the desert around her and she was glad for the protection it offered from what had to be sweltering heat. It made her trek virtually effortless, though her boots could have done the same in this terrain.
But she didn’t have to empty the sand out of her cloak at camp each night.
That didn’t mean it couldn’t pester her in other ways. She attempted again to grab one of the flasks from her belt while the wind did its best to make sure the cloak obstructed her movement. Finally, she snatched the one she wanted from its place among its kin and popped the cap off, sipping it carefully to ration the rest. Snapping the top back in place she held it to her forehead and let her gaze rake the horizon.
A world awaited.
She wasn’t exactly what one would expect from a seasoned archeologist. Bleached hair and even paler ivory skin, she hardly struck one as the 'rugged survivalist' to begin with, but she was Kor and survival ran in her blood. It was even in her name, “Ilyta” just being an ancient Qerish word for "Survivor." There were days when that felt more like a guilty accusation than a name though. It was difficult walking across the grave of an entire world when she was still breathing despite everything in her past.
She felt she had little choice though. Archaeology was more than a childhood dream, it was a purpose, a talent, a knack. It was damn lonely is what it was. The trials an explorer suffers for her expedition, she ruefully lamented.
She rolled her eyes at that and took a careful step, sliding down the dune’s side. A cascade of shimmering silver sand shifted in her wake and she hopped towards the next dune. Several bright lights rose from beneath the sand to swirl around her, and she whistled to them. The blinkmoths were just curious, and she didn't mind the company, limited though it may be. Surveying the desolation by yourself could take its toll. If they followed her a while, it couldn't hurt. It was sure to be a long trek to the answers she was drawn to.
The mysteries of this world were here, an almost palpable charge in the air that beckoned to her. There was little left on this world and she had to know why. She needed to, but more than just for curiosity sake, it was a responsibility. She could chronicle the fate of the barren worlds she came across. She was one of the precious few that could even find them, and most other planeswalkers would see nothing here and move on, never giving it a second thought.
But Ilyta had to find something that proved that people had been here once. If she didn’t, nobody else would. It wasn’t just for herself, it was a duty to make sure they weren’t completely forgotten. She may be all too familiar with isolation, but she couldn't think of anything lonelier than to have nobody even know you had existed.
Day 16:
Ilyta ran, sand arcing behind her pounding steps. The howl of the wind was deafening, but even above that, she could hear the echoing bellow of leviathan song. She didn’t just hear that, she felt it. It shook in her chest and the sheer force of it made her heart shudder. She clamped her eyes shut and desperately dashed for the looming temple. It looked weathered, but it had clearly survived this sort of thing before, so it was the best option she had. Every other structure around her was either shattered or buried, so her options were elegantly simplified in the matter. Feeling a blast of air envelop her, she ran harder.
Buildings flashed by as she sprinted, lungs burning and skin stinging from the swirling sandstorm eating her wake. The thunder of stone toppling as buildings crashed into the sands spurred her on as the entrance's darkness grew before her and she leapt, praying the safety of shelter would protect her. Hopefully, it wouldn't collapse on top of her either.
Skidding in, she turned in time to see the immense form breach from the squall cloud. It was unreal, one of the most magnificent and terrible living images she’d ever seen. The writhing sandstorm its passage kicked up crackled with lightning and she felt her heart sink as the silver cloud of sand devoured the outer remains of the cityscape completely.
It was so close...
One last glance was all she could afford and she darted in, realizing she’d just gone in through a window rather than a door as she dropped slightly to the floor beneath. Without pause, she kept running, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the oncoming storm. A doorway led to an inner chamber and she threw herself in as the world outside exploded as if hit with a god’s hammer. Steep stairs carried her deeper into the sanctum and she stumbled as the floor abruptly leveled out, sending her sprawling as the light beyond her sanctuary blackened under the leviathan’s shadow.
Ilyta laid panting, limbs numb and heart quaking. Her expeditions were rarely this harrowing. Okay, so she had a few stories, but still, it usually didn’t involve running for your life. This much. She took her time recovering, the cool stone of the floor a solid, stoic companion as she worked to put her nerves back together. If she’d wanted a life of excitement, she’d have followed in her sister’s path. Archaeology was meant to be a calm profession…
She pushed herself up slowly and ran over a mental checklist. Light abrasions, what promised to be an enormous bruise on her hip, but nothing broken, nothing lost. She sighed her relief and listened to the roar of the sand, looking around the dim chamber to distract herself from the peril outside.
The hall was a huge central column running to the very top of the tower. She must be well below sand level outside, but for the most part, the chamber was clean, only a few isolated drifts of silver piled near the doors. Stairs and platforms spiraled all along the space and in its exact center was a titanic monolith covered in glyphs. It took up most of the space inside the tower and it was obviously worn with age, large portions of it artfully eroded, though she couldn’t be sure if it was meant to be built like that or not. Between the size of the pillar and the poor lighting, she could barely make out the top.
Her attention briefly turned to the sandstorm outside again and she gave a shrug. It seemed she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, and this was a treasure trove that she could scarcely ignore. Most of her studies had yielded poor results as yet, and even her magic hadn’t found much. The only visions she’d seen were hazy, confused images of lives that were too shallow to leave much an imprint.
The few chances she’d had to research so far had proven disappointing, with few ruins still above the sand to study and even fewer that were whole enough to tell her much. Something like this, on the other hand, resonated with history. It murmured in some half heard language and she could practically feel the deep well of the past it could conjure.
She sat her satchel off to the side and took out one of her paper lanterns, unfolding it and placing it in a nearby brazier. The careful rows of marks penned along its sides made it resemble a miniature of the towering stele in the room. She lit it with a small burst of mana and the spells on the paper glowed jade in the wan light, letting her finally get a good look at the inscriptions on the stele’s faces.
She fetched her scroll and rolled it open, carefully copying each of the unique characters she could find until she had something that might pass as a key, providing one understood the language. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really be able to translate it into anything useful, but it was good to have just in case. Mostly she did it to put her in the right mental state.
Calming her mind, she sat down and reached for the mana of empty worlds. She recalled vast oceans that were mirror still with age and silent fields that had once been proud mountains. Ilyta had never been able to use very large spells, a point of contention between her sister and herself. She preferred smaller charms and tricks, but if she had been able to conjure greater magics, she would singlehandedly wield the might of lost worlds. She was, after all, the only one that remembered them.
All along the monolith, the words began to glow. A deep blue rose along its length until the entire chamber seemed lit bright as day, and even as she watched, the walls faded away, replaced by a sky heavy with clouds.
The world was once known as Rethea.
In those times ethereal mists covered the land, and washed across the plane. For untold aeons, the mist flowed over Rethea, and in its wake, life rose. The mist would twist and curl, seeping into plants and coaxing them to new shapes, it would bloom in the air and animals would drift out of the fog banks fully formed.
Epochs passed and the mists reached ever higher into the sky, even birthing the great leviathans from the storms, but one day, the mists did the unthinkable and touched the stars. The light fell to Rethea and gave birth to a new life, the first of their kind to look to the sky and wonder from where they’d come.
Time swelled their ranks and they learned a great many things. Their need to discover was incredible, their need to build profound, and their need to live ever fierce within them. They did not eat, they did not sleep, they simply spent their entire lives feeling and creating. Their one curse was the brevity of their years, but each of their lives was full to bursting, passing on more and more wonders to the next generation.
As their mastery of the world grew, so too did their knowledge. They learned to channel the arcane and with it, they built wonders to put others to shame. Immense cities that dwarfed the ruins, powered by the mists that blanketed the world.
Their reach knew no limits save one. Their most sacred-
The glyphs on the stele faded as Ilyta’s magic failed. She glanced at the decayed monolith and watched the light die, silently cursing to herself. She quickly cast another spell, a far more intricate one that seeped into the paper of the scroll. The magic carried a rush of knowledge that she'd been unable to focus enough to understand, knowing there was much more locked away in the memories she'd glimpsed.
Even with that, she'd still be missing the most important thing. She knew the story she'd begun was incomplete. It had simply ended, but it didn’t account for any of this, the fallen civilization around her. Something else had happened.
Gathering her supplies, she gained her feet, wincing as her muscles stretched unpleasantly. At some time during her vision the world had grown quiet again. She'd find her way back to the exit, or at least an exit, and try to travel a bit more while the sun was up. Since she arrived, she'd been drifting, hoping to find something to guide her.
After what she'd learned, she finally had a few answers, but all that did was tell her what questions she needed to ask. She had the beginning, now she only had to find the end. If she was going to find it, her new destination was likely the only place she could.
Day 47:
Something in the air had changed, or more accurately, Ilyta finally came to realize something had been in the air all along. It was only momentum, and a bit of embarrassment, that kept her from scribbling new notes in her tome as she walked. It was a lilting song that reached her, filling the air with a distant and barely heard haunting aria that drew her on.
It had been days since it had begun, a few days more since it had caught her attention, a siren's call that seemed to fill the sacred lands. As she'd pushed deeper beyond the boundaries, the landscape had radically changed from the rolling dunes from before. Perhaps not, though. For all she knew the entire world looked like this beneath the sands.
It wasn't the grounds that really caught her attention the most, though, but rather the air around her. The feeling of moisture clung to her skin, a fine mist that danced over her body, but despite what her senses told her, she knew it was substantially more than mere vapor. She'd never found a source of aether this thick outside of the Eternities. Just the discovery of what the mists of Rethea had been told her a great deal, substantially changing how she looked upon the world's history.
The aether clouds were eerily beautiful and the jets of brilliantly glowing geysers blasting into the air spread new light through the darker haze. However many of their number went off, they accounted for little of the light she walked by. Illusory creatures drifted in the aether streams, luminous life lighting the twilight fog that cast the grounds in perpetual dim.
As she passed another chimney, edging around the lip of a crater, she could understand why the Retheans had considered this land sacred. One couldn't walk through these lands without feeling how different they were. When she'd first approached the area, it had only been light wisps of aether blown by the wind, but now it felt as if she'd dove into some ephemeral ocean. It would make an odd sort of sense if it were more truth than poetry.
The life within the aether was stranger than anything she'd yet encountered in any of her studies. She'd occasionally tussled with beasts on other worlds, but mostly it usually felt as if she was truly the only living being on the majority of places she'd written about. To walk amongst such vividly strange and lively creatures was... novel, she supposed. As diverse as the wildlife may be, their existence did little to answer the question she was most insistent on. Why the Retheans faded into ruin while the rest of the world seemed to thrive.
Evidence of their civilization had revealed a bit more as she'd travelled, but it hadn't been as illuminating as she could hope. There were even fewer structures here than outside, but what she'd encountered hadn't suffered as badly as those beyond the aether fog. They were still worn with age, the corners softened by time and weather, but everything was unbroken and bore signs of care.
In some ways, these ruins were even sadder than the broken wrecks in the desert. Those had either been destroyed by time or cataclysm. The structures here felt faded and forgotten, as if they'd simply been left by whoever had dwelt here.
An enormous building loomed from the mists and Ilyta's steps faltered. The song was coming from within. More than hearing that, she felt it. The archeologist passed beneath the great arch of the temple, following the faint echoes of the phantom melody. She slowed in the halls, listening carefully and studying the walls of her surroundings. The gallery was immense, dark smooth stone sculpted in sweeping curves that curled in odd ways. Bright shafts of light lanced down from the gloom and Ilyta briefly wondered what made them.
She rounded a corner and stopped abruptly, taken aback at what she'd found. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to discover in her search, but she hadn't dreamt of this. The doleful song rang in the air and as the figure knelt and sang, Ilyta felt an inestimable sadness settle over her.
"Hello?" She softly called to the huddled figure, not wishing to startle it. Cautiously drawing nearer, she studied it. It was tall and thin, its surface a mottled gray and an azure glow pulsed in its chest. As its gaze turned and settled on her, she saw the same glow lit its eyes, the only feature on its face. A sudden wave of thought and emotion from without touched her, a maudlin relief that drew her closer. "Do you need help?"
"No. I'm just so glad to see someone else." A feminine voice filled her mind, echoing with the same feelings as before.
"Are you okay?" Ilyta rushed to her side, dropping her pack in the process. "Is there anything I can do?"
"It's enough that you're here." an odd mental sigh sounded between them and Ilyta knelt next to the other. The figure shifted with a slow, careful grace that Ilyta recognized from her time with the elders. The being settled carefully and studied the newcomer. "My time is nearly done. I did not want to die alone."
"I'm-" Ilyta began, hesitation stealing her words as she realized how small they were at that admission and the profound implications they carried. "I'm sorry. Aren't there any others here for you?"
"Once, many years ago, but they've both already gone before me. The first I knew only a short time. I met him only as you've met me."
"I'm so sorry." Ilyta's brow furrowed and she studied her newfound companion with worry.
"You've nothing to apologize for. I have had my time and in the end, someone has come to carry our song. It is enough for me." The other nodded serenely, folding her hands in her lap.
"May I ask about that? Your song?"
"It was taught to me by the first in his final moments. It is the song of our people, stretching back to the time when there were many of us. It is the hymn of our return to the aether. We sing it to bring others to us, to share our lives with those who come before we pass on." The light in her eyes dimmed and Ilyta momentarily panicked, but she realized her eyes had only creased with something like a smile. "I'd been singing for days. I'm glad someone finally came at least. I wasn't expecting anyone quite like you though. I know my experience isn't very extensive, but all the same..." She laughed at that, a sound like chimes that washed over Ilyta with an unexpected joy.
"Yeah, I'm from... elsewhere." Ilyta gave her a reluctant smile, but her face fell somewhat. "What happened? Why are there so few of you left now?"
"I do not know. I was told that a long time ago, we built the wonders in the world. Doing so stole something from us, the aether that birthed our kind. By the time we came to understand that, our numbers had dwindled a great deal. There was panic. There was war. Then there was peace, but it was the peace of silence." She shook her head, a melancholy touching Ilyta along with another psychic sigh.
Ilyta had her answers, but the feeling of satisfaction she usually craved didn't come. She loved puzzles, mysteries, whatever she could find to solve. Sitting with the stranger in what she claimed were her final moments, she just felt awful. It was a hollow feeling she was unaccustomed to. She would normally say it was a reason she preferred to be alone, but confronted with someone who had known so little company in all her life, it hurt even worse.
"What did you do during your life?" Ilyta asked quietly, intent on memorizing every detail, capturing it so that something of her life would persist.
"I tended my garden, mostly." A pleasant sensation touched Ilyta again and she watched as the being's eyes lit happily. "When the other was with me, we lived together for years. It was a simple life, tending our garden, watching the aether bloom from the geysers and counting the stars beyond the fog. All I've done since he left has been to care for my flowers."
"It must have been lonely."
"In some ways. It doesn't do to dwell on it everyday, though. You have to just be thankful for the time you have. My only regret is that my garden will wither without me." The other turned her eyes to Ilyta and she let out a tiny gasp as she saw how dim they'd become. "Could you care for my garden? Take what you can to elsewhere and see that they're cared for. Please?" She weakly reached up and passed a single violet blossom to the kor, who took it and held it close to her chest.
"I'll do my best." Ilyta nodded, profoundly sad for having known this being for so short a time.
"That's all anyone can do." The figure settled back against the wall now, eyes closing. "It's almost time."
"I won't leave." Ilyta came closer, just letting her presence reassure the other. "I promise."
Ilyta lost track of time as they sat in silence, the mere act of being seeming to take a great deal of her companion's attention. Slowly, the pulsing beat of her heart grew fainter, each illumination coming further apart and weaker still until at last the solid glow seemed to fade to nothing and the life went out of the aetherborn's shell.
Ilyta watched as it fell, crumbling in upon the robes it wore and shattering silently on the floor. The person that had been sitting there moments ago bleeding onto the ground as a pile of too familiar glittering sand.
Ilyta's heart ached, not just for the death of her short lived friend, but for the desert beyond the fog and what she finally understood it meant.
Brilliant silver sand, turned gold by dawn's light, shifted and glittered with the wind’s breath. The spell woven cloth of Ilyta's cloak whipped back, caught violently in the current, but she hardly paid it any mind. Even tossed about in the wind’s grip, it didn’t upset her precarious balance, perched atop the high dune overlooking the desert’s running sands. The cloak wasn’t technically there, after all, but an enchantment meant to shield her from the harsh conditions of her surroundings. The long flapping fabric streaming in the wind was a shifting mirror of the desert around her and she was glad for the protection it offered from what had to be sweltering heat. It made her trek virtually effortless, though her boots could have done the same in this terrain.
But she didn’t have to empty the sand out of her cloak at camp each night.
That didn’t mean it couldn’t pester her in other ways. She attempted again to grab one of the flasks from her belt while the wind did its best to make sure the cloak obstructed her movement. Finally, she snatched the one she wanted from its place among its kin and popped the cap off, sipping it carefully to ration the rest. Snapping the top back in place she held it to her forehead and let her gaze rake the horizon.
A world awaited.
She wasn’t exactly what one would expect from a seasoned archeologist. Bleached hair and even paler ivory skin, she hardly struck one as the 'rugged survivalist' to begin with, but she was Kor and survival ran in her blood. It was even in her name, “Ilyta” just being an ancient Qerish word for "Survivor." There were days when that felt more like a guilty accusation than a name though. It was difficult walking across the grave of an entire world when she was still breathing despite everything in her past.
She felt she had little choice though. Archaeology was more than a childhood dream, it was a purpose, a talent, a knack. It was damn lonely is what it was. The trials an explorer suffers for her expedition, she ruefully lamented.
She rolled her eyes at that and took a careful step, sliding down the dune’s side. A cascade of shimmering silver sand shifted in her wake and she hopped towards the next dune. Several bright lights rose from beneath the sand to swirl around her, and she whistled to them. The blinkmoths were just curious, and she didn't mind the company, limited though it may be. Surveying the desolation by yourself could take its toll. If they followed her a while, it couldn't hurt. It was sure to be a long trek to the answers she was drawn to.
The mysteries of this world were here, an almost palpable charge in the air that beckoned to her. There was little left on this world and she had to know why. She needed to, but more than just for curiosity sake, it was a responsibility. She could chronicle the fate of the barren worlds she came across. She was one of the precious few that could even find them, and most other planeswalkers would see nothing here and move on, never giving it a second thought.
But Ilyta had to find something that proved that people had been here once. If she didn’t, nobody else would. It wasn’t just for herself, it was a duty to make sure they weren’t completely forgotten. She may be all too familiar with isolation, but she couldn't think of anything lonelier than to have nobody even know you had existed.
Day 16:
Ilyta ran, sand arcing behind her pounding steps. The howl of the wind was deafening, but even above that, she could hear the echoing bellow of leviathan song. She didn’t just hear that, she felt it. It shook in her chest and the sheer force of it made her heart shudder. She clamped her eyes shut and desperately dashed for the looming temple. It looked weathered, but it had clearly survived this sort of thing before, so it was the best option she had. Every other structure around her was either shattered or buried, so her options were elegantly simplified in the matter. Feeling a blast of air envelop her, she ran harder.
Buildings flashed by as she sprinted, lungs burning and skin stinging from the swirling sandstorm eating her wake. The thunder of stone toppling as buildings crashed into the sands spurred her on as the entrance's darkness grew before her and she leapt, praying the safety of shelter would protect her. Hopefully, it wouldn't collapse on top of her either.
Skidding in, she turned in time to see the immense form breach from the squall cloud. It was unreal, one of the most magnificent and terrible living images she’d ever seen. The writhing sandstorm its passage kicked up crackled with lightning and she felt her heart sink as the silver cloud of sand devoured the outer remains of the cityscape completely.
It was so close...
One last glance was all she could afford and she darted in, realizing she’d just gone in through a window rather than a door as she dropped slightly to the floor beneath. Without pause, she kept running, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the oncoming storm. A doorway led to an inner chamber and she threw herself in as the world outside exploded as if hit with a god’s hammer. Steep stairs carried her deeper into the sanctum and she stumbled as the floor abruptly leveled out, sending her sprawling as the light beyond her sanctuary blackened under the leviathan’s shadow.
Ilyta laid panting, limbs numb and heart quaking. Her expeditions were rarely this harrowing. Okay, so she had a few stories, but still, it usually didn’t involve running for your life. This much. She took her time recovering, the cool stone of the floor a solid, stoic companion as she worked to put her nerves back together. If she’d wanted a life of excitement, she’d have followed in her sister’s path. Archaeology was meant to be a calm profession…
She pushed herself up slowly and ran over a mental checklist. Light abrasions, what promised to be an enormous bruise on her hip, but nothing broken, nothing lost. She sighed her relief and listened to the roar of the sand, looking around the dim chamber to distract herself from the peril outside.
The hall was a huge central column running to the very top of the tower. She must be well below sand level outside, but for the most part, the chamber was clean, only a few isolated drifts of silver piled near the doors. Stairs and platforms spiraled all along the space and in its exact center was a titanic monolith covered in glyphs. It took up most of the space inside the tower and it was obviously worn with age, large portions of it artfully eroded, though she couldn’t be sure if it was meant to be built like that or not. Between the size of the pillar and the poor lighting, she could barely make out the top.
Her attention briefly turned to the sandstorm outside again and she gave a shrug. It seemed she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, and this was a treasure trove that she could scarcely ignore. Most of her studies had yielded poor results as yet, and even her magic hadn’t found much. The only visions she’d seen were hazy, confused images of lives that were too shallow to leave much an imprint.
The few chances she’d had to research so far had proven disappointing, with few ruins still above the sand to study and even fewer that were whole enough to tell her much. Something like this, on the other hand, resonated with history. It murmured in some half heard language and she could practically feel the deep well of the past it could conjure.
She sat her satchel off to the side and took out one of her paper lanterns, unfolding it and placing it in a nearby brazier. The careful rows of marks penned along its sides made it resemble a miniature of the towering stele in the room. She lit it with a small burst of mana and the spells on the paper glowed jade in the wan light, letting her finally get a good look at the inscriptions on the stele’s faces.
She fetched her scroll and rolled it open, carefully copying each of the unique characters she could find until she had something that might pass as a key, providing one understood the language. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really be able to translate it into anything useful, but it was good to have just in case. Mostly she did it to put her in the right mental state.
Calming her mind, she sat down and reached for the mana of empty worlds. She recalled vast oceans that were mirror still with age and silent fields that had once been proud mountains. Ilyta had never been able to use very large spells, a point of contention between her sister and herself. She preferred smaller charms and tricks, but if she had been able to conjure greater magics, she would singlehandedly wield the might of lost worlds. She was, after all, the only one that remembered them.
All along the monolith, the words began to glow. A deep blue rose along its length until the entire chamber seemed lit bright as day, and even as she watched, the walls faded away, replaced by a sky heavy with clouds.
The world was once known as Rethea.
In those times ethereal mists covered the land, and washed across the plane. For untold aeons, the mist flowed over Rethea, and in its wake, life rose. The mist would twist and curl, seeping into plants and coaxing them to new shapes, it would bloom in the air and animals would drift out of the fog banks fully formed.
Epochs passed and the mists reached ever higher into the sky, even birthing the great leviathans from the storms, but one day, the mists did the unthinkable and touched the stars. The light fell to Rethea and gave birth to a new life, the first of their kind to look to the sky and wonder from where they’d come.
Time swelled their ranks and they learned a great many things. Their need to discover was incredible, their need to build profound, and their need to live ever fierce within them. They did not eat, they did not sleep, they simply spent their entire lives feeling and creating. Their one curse was the brevity of their years, but each of their lives was full to bursting, passing on more and more wonders to the next generation.
As their mastery of the world grew, so too did their knowledge. They learned to channel the arcane and with it, they built wonders to put others to shame. Immense cities that dwarfed the ruins, powered by the mists that blanketed the world.
Their reach knew no limits save one. Their most sacred-
The glyphs on the stele faded as Ilyta’s magic failed. She glanced at the decayed monolith and watched the light die, silently cursing to herself. She quickly cast another spell, a far more intricate one that seeped into the paper of the scroll. The magic carried a rush of knowledge that she'd been unable to focus enough to understand, knowing there was much more locked away in the memories she'd glimpsed.
Even with that, she'd still be missing the most important thing. She knew the story she'd begun was incomplete. It had simply ended, but it didn’t account for any of this, the fallen civilization around her. Something else had happened.
Gathering her supplies, she gained her feet, wincing as her muscles stretched unpleasantly. At some time during her vision the world had grown quiet again. She'd find her way back to the exit, or at least an exit, and try to travel a bit more while the sun was up. Since she arrived, she'd been drifting, hoping to find something to guide her.
After what she'd learned, she finally had a few answers, but all that did was tell her what questions she needed to ask. She had the beginning, now she only had to find the end. If she was going to find it, her new destination was likely the only place she could.
Day 47:
Something in the air had changed, or more accurately, Ilyta finally came to realize something had been in the air all along. It was only momentum, and a bit of embarrassment, that kept her from scribbling new notes in her tome as she walked. It was a lilting song that reached her, filling the air with a distant and barely heard haunting aria that drew her on.
It had been days since it had begun, a few days more since it had caught her attention, a siren's call that seemed to fill the sacred lands. As she'd pushed deeper beyond the boundaries, the landscape had radically changed from the rolling dunes from before. Perhaps not, though. For all she knew the entire world looked like this beneath the sands.
It wasn't the grounds that really caught her attention the most, though, but rather the air around her. The feeling of moisture clung to her skin, a fine mist that danced over her body, but despite what her senses told her, she knew it was substantially more than mere vapor. She'd never found a source of aether this thick outside of the Eternities. Just the discovery of what the mists of Rethea had been told her a great deal, substantially changing how she looked upon the world's history.
The aether clouds were eerily beautiful and the jets of brilliantly glowing geysers blasting into the air spread new light through the darker haze. However many of their number went off, they accounted for little of the light she walked by. Illusory creatures drifted in the aether streams, luminous life lighting the twilight fog that cast the grounds in perpetual dim.
As she passed another chimney, edging around the lip of a crater, she could understand why the Retheans had considered this land sacred. One couldn't walk through these lands without feeling how different they were. When she'd first approached the area, it had only been light wisps of aether blown by the wind, but now it felt as if she'd dove into some ephemeral ocean. It would make an odd sort of sense if it were more truth than poetry.
The life within the aether was stranger than anything she'd yet encountered in any of her studies. She'd occasionally tussled with beasts on other worlds, but mostly it usually felt as if she was truly the only living being on the majority of places she'd written about. To walk amongst such vividly strange and lively creatures was... novel, she supposed. As diverse as the wildlife may be, their existence did little to answer the question she was most insistent on. Why the Retheans faded into ruin while the rest of the world seemed to thrive.
Evidence of their civilization had revealed a bit more as she'd travelled, but it hadn't been as illuminating as she could hope. There were even fewer structures here than outside, but what she'd encountered hadn't suffered as badly as those beyond the aether fog. They were still worn with age, the corners softened by time and weather, but everything was unbroken and bore signs of care.
In some ways, these ruins were even sadder than the broken wrecks in the desert. Those had either been destroyed by time or cataclysm. The structures here felt faded and forgotten, as if they'd simply been left by whoever had dwelt here.
An enormous building loomed from the mists and Ilyta's steps faltered. The song was coming from within. More than hearing that, she felt it. The archeologist passed beneath the great arch of the temple, following the faint echoes of the phantom melody. She slowed in the halls, listening carefully and studying the walls of her surroundings. The gallery was immense, dark smooth stone sculpted in sweeping curves that curled in odd ways. Bright shafts of light lanced down from the gloom and Ilyta briefly wondered what made them.
She rounded a corner and stopped abruptly, taken aback at what she'd found. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to discover in her search, but she hadn't dreamt of this. The doleful song rang in the air and as the figure knelt and sang, Ilyta felt an inestimable sadness settle over her.
"Hello?" She softly called to the huddled figure, not wishing to startle it. Cautiously drawing nearer, she studied it. It was tall and thin, its surface a mottled gray and an azure glow pulsed in its chest. As its gaze turned and settled on her, she saw the same glow lit its eyes, the only feature on its face. A sudden wave of thought and emotion from without touched her, a maudlin relief that drew her closer. "Do you need help?"
"No. I'm just so glad to see someone else." A feminine voice filled her mind, echoing with the same feelings as before.
"Are you okay?" Ilyta rushed to her side, dropping her pack in the process. "Is there anything I can do?"
"It's enough that you're here." an odd mental sigh sounded between them and Ilyta knelt next to the other. The figure shifted with a slow, careful grace that Ilyta recognized from her time with the elders. The being settled carefully and studied the newcomer. "My time is nearly done. I did not want to die alone."
"I'm-" Ilyta began, hesitation stealing her words as she realized how small they were at that admission and the profound implications they carried. "I'm sorry. Aren't there any others here for you?"
"Once, many years ago, but they've both already gone before me. The first I knew only a short time. I met him only as you've met me."
"I'm so sorry." Ilyta's brow furrowed and she studied her newfound companion with worry.
"You've nothing to apologize for. I have had my time and in the end, someone has come to carry our song. It is enough for me." The other nodded serenely, folding her hands in her lap.
"May I ask about that? Your song?"
"It was taught to me by the first in his final moments. It is the song of our people, stretching back to the time when there were many of us. It is the hymn of our return to the aether. We sing it to bring others to us, to share our lives with those who come before we pass on." The light in her eyes dimmed and Ilyta momentarily panicked, but she realized her eyes had only creased with something like a smile. "I'd been singing for days. I'm glad someone finally came at least. I wasn't expecting anyone quite like you though. I know my experience isn't very extensive, but all the same..." She laughed at that, a sound like chimes that washed over Ilyta with an unexpected joy.
"Yeah, I'm from... elsewhere." Ilyta gave her a reluctant smile, but her face fell somewhat. "What happened? Why are there so few of you left now?"
"I do not know. I was told that a long time ago, we built the wonders in the world. Doing so stole something from us, the aether that birthed our kind. By the time we came to understand that, our numbers had dwindled a great deal. There was panic. There was war. Then there was peace, but it was the peace of silence." She shook her head, a melancholy touching Ilyta along with another psychic sigh.
Ilyta had her answers, but the feeling of satisfaction she usually craved didn't come. She loved puzzles, mysteries, whatever she could find to solve. Sitting with the stranger in what she claimed were her final moments, she just felt awful. It was a hollow feeling she was unaccustomed to. She would normally say it was a reason she preferred to be alone, but confronted with someone who had known so little company in all her life, it hurt even worse.
"What did you do during your life?" Ilyta asked quietly, intent on memorizing every detail, capturing it so that something of her life would persist.
"I tended my garden, mostly." A pleasant sensation touched Ilyta again and she watched as the being's eyes lit happily. "When the other was with me, we lived together for years. It was a simple life, tending our garden, watching the aether bloom from the geysers and counting the stars beyond the fog. All I've done since he left has been to care for my flowers."
"It must have been lonely."
"In some ways. It doesn't do to dwell on it everyday, though. You have to just be thankful for the time you have. My only regret is that my garden will wither without me." The other turned her eyes to Ilyta and she let out a tiny gasp as she saw how dim they'd become. "Could you care for my garden? Take what you can to elsewhere and see that they're cared for. Please?" She weakly reached up and passed a single violet blossom to the kor, who took it and held it close to her chest.
"I'll do my best." Ilyta nodded, profoundly sad for having known this being for so short a time.
"That's all anyone can do." The figure settled back against the wall now, eyes closing. "It's almost time."
"I won't leave." Ilyta came closer, just letting her presence reassure the other. "I promise."
Ilyta lost track of time as they sat in silence, the mere act of being seeming to take a great deal of her companion's attention. Slowly, the pulsing beat of her heart grew fainter, each illumination coming further apart and weaker still until at last the solid glow seemed to fade to nothing and the life went out of the aetherborn's shell.
Ilyta watched as it fell, crumbling in upon the robes it wore and shattering silently on the floor. The person that had been sitting there moments ago bleeding onto the ground as a pile of too familiar glittering sand.
Ilyta's heart ached, not just for the death of her short lived friend, but for the desert beyond the fog and what she finally understood it meant.
or something. I realized you may have simply meant that it was powerful because nobody else was alive to tap it, so I'm not sure exactly how to read that.