#ildari

Art dump!

1. Human Ildari

2. A girl I drew on a plane and rainbowized

3. Pop art froggies made as a gift for my brother

4. A self portrait I drew while at the airport looking at other peoples outfits that I wanted to try on

5. Winter Moth-fairy

6. Tumblr-safe dolphin Atlantean mermaid

7. Vivec I drew awhile ago but didn’t like enough to post until now

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Thanks @thana-topsy by tagging me :3 And therefore recognizing me as a fellow writer even though I still haven't posted anything online. Yet.

The fragments are from two fanfics I'm working on, both telling the story of Ildari Sarothril from her perspecive. They are namely:

"She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude" and "Ashes Feed My Revenge"

As I said, I haven't posted them yet. But if you get interested feel free to dm me, I'll gladly share my work so far with you :3

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Ok, so here we go:

A line from your fic that makes you sad

He looked around the graveyard once again. The dawn greeted him with shy, pinkish rays dispersed in the morning mist. Lighting the sea, the grave… The beautiful and deadly nightshades painted ornate, slender shadows on the ash. The dawn, the time of the Mother of Roses. Silver tears filled his eyes. Oh what a lowly mortal he is, in the face of death, in the face of the Gods. He leapt down on his knees, facing the rising sun, and prayed, prayed ardently being sorry for Azura, Boetiah and Mephala for what he’s about to do. But he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t help it!

(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")

A line from your fic that makes you want to punch a character

Master fucking Neloth. Ulves’ face was hued red with anger. It was him who killed her. He coaxed Ildari into performing some unfortunate experiment on her. Two days ago Ulves floated up into the main tower to bring his master food when he casually informed him to dig a fresh grave. His blood boiled from the sole thought of it. He wished to kill him with his whole heart. But he felt so powerless. The old sly wizard would fry him down to a crisp before he could even unsheathe his axe. The only option would be poisoning his meal… but it was very probable that this ash-sucker would survive somehow. And that would mean the end of Ulves’ life. And even if his master, what would that change? There was nothing that Ulves wanted to do after that.

(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")

A line from your fic you want to talk about more

Imagine silence. But in its foulest form. The silence that is only found in places of death, sending shivers down the spines of the living. The stillness of a burnt-down village. The void that fills the space after a man has uttered their last words. Somewhere, all among that silence a faint sound could be heard. Ildari’s heart started beating.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic you're proud of

And there she was outside, barely treading, yet irate enough to kick the ash left and right with a sour grimace. The grim landscape stretched before her - all was only ash and burned-down trees, with suggestions of the shoreline and the mountains of the other side. But they were distant, covered by the thick clouds of wind-swept ash. […] As much as she hated the musty air in the tower, outside it wasn’t much better. Even though the wind was merely a breeze, she already choked a few times on the ash that got inside of her windpipe.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that's full of symbolism

Her mind was failing her, it was like a barren soil that couldn’t hold onto any seeds of thought, and certainly not let them develop. After a whole eternity of torment, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that makes you laugh

“Knock, knock! Can I come in?” chirped Niyya right outside the door of her room. That was weird. She was getting suspiciously friendly so quickly. Well, so far it was harmless. She’s probably one of those people that take all of their life’s pleasures in serving the others and have the reputation of a saint in the society - unless you are the one they are actually helping - then they become really annoying.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic you think could have been better

“Is everything all right?” How dare she ask such a question? Of course it wasn’t! Just look at her.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that contains an Easter egg

[I don't feel like I've ever written one, sorry ): ]

A line from your fic that's shocking WARNING: suicidal ideation

She put the book down and covered her face with hands. It only takes so much to strip a man off the will to live. What if the voices are never going to subside? And the pain? She can’t live like that! What will she do? Will there be anything to live for? She imagined herself, lifeless, half-buried in ash, like this poor young Bosmer necromancer not unlike her, rotting away - only to be found by a flabbergasted traveller that wouldn’t even have the guts to give the final rites. No voices would be heard then. No pain would trouble her. Not a single tormenting thought would ever cross her mind. Tempting. She heard footsteps coming.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

A line from your fic that makes you go 'aww'

“Um… Ildari” Niyya hesitated. ”I think you are… pretty.” The Redguard’s face turned dark red. Now Ildari understood why Niyya was so suspiciously friendly. But, she was a girl - a mere miner for damn’s sake. And there she was, making goo-goo eyes at her. Ildari wanted to puke.

(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")

• • • • •

At first, she wasn’t sure if she was even heading in the right direction. It looked more like an Imperial outpost. But no, as it grew closer, she could see that it also had the distinctive mycological touch unique to Telvanni architecture. She cast her levitation spell, a spell that she had learned so early in life and yet used so rarely growing up in the Imperial City, and was now able to use more freely than ever before. The thrill of watching the ground fall away beneath her swept away most of her nervousness as she ascended to the tower’s entrance.

The tower’s wizard, Master Aryon, looked at her curiously until she introduced herself as Ildari Melas, and his eyes lit up in recognition. She wondered how much of that recognition was from the present task, or from her recent reintroduction to House Telvanni—this mage was, coincidentally, the one people had suggested that she consider seeking out as a patron for her studies. She assumed it was a mix. Either way, he took the package she had been instructed to deliver to Cosades and set about decoding it.

“Strange,” he said after a few minutes of work. “Normally the Imperials use the carrier’s name for these codes. This should be trivial to crack. Did they change ciphers…?”

He seemed to be speaking mostly to himself, but Ildari responded anyway.

“Try Llothri instead of Melas. That’s another name the Imperials might have used.”

“Llothri…yes, that might work.” He returned his attention to his work for a brief moment, but then paused and looked back up at her with the same curiosity as before. “Any relation to Talvini Llothri?”

“I’m not actually sure, serjo,” she said. “I don’t know my family very well, other than that I have some Telvanni ancestry. So if she’s from the House, then it’s possible.”

“She’s a Master rank in the House, as it happens.” His gaze fell back on the coded package as he spoke. “Has a tower over by, uh”—he waved a hand without looking up—“somewhere in the Bay. One of those cloaked towers. She’s not the type to get too involved in the outside world these days.”

He put his quill down, scanned his decoded copy quickly, and then slipped it into his robe pocket with just enough interest on his face to make Ildari even more curious than she had been.

“Come to think of it, I don’t even know if Serjo Llothri’s still alive,” he continued as though there had been no pause. “She must be around a thousand. Last I heard about her was probably ten or so years ago, when rumors say she got into a screaming match with the Tribunal after they got her wife killed on some Buoyant Armiger mission.” He chuckled. “She’s got guts, that much I know. I doubt she’d let anything kill her, least of all age.”

“She sounds…interesting.”

“Where’d you get the name Melas, then?”

As much as Ildari wished for the conversation to return to what was in the letter, she had a feeling that it was for the best to play along.

“From my mother—my adopted mother—Faryn Melas. A friend of my birth parents. They were…well, they died when I was a baby.”

Aryon’s eyes narrowed in even more interest for just a moment, but rather than explain, he said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I think Faryn Melas studied under Llothri back in the day; I remember reading some papers they co-authored. She probably is your ancestor.” He paused, his hand floating toward the letter in his pocket, and then added, "Don’t go seeking her out, though. She likes her seclusion and all that. I’m sure she’ll come to you if she wants to connect.

“In fact,” she tells them, “you can tell them I’m not even on Vvardenfell. Heck, tell them I’m not even in Tamriel, if you want. Tell them, ‘If you had come on a Tirdas between noon and four, you’d have caught her, but you missed her. Now she’s in Akavir. Sorry.’“

A power-mad ancient wizard with dubious morals and a smug, self-seeking witch of an apprentice.

What possibly could go wrong? :3

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