#luminashdawnwing

Telivathus shook his head, sweeping a bishop across the board to take one of Theras’ rooks, “Hardly out of the ordinary for Magistry business. It’s all posturing.” He looked up from the board and snorted a laugh, “You know how dragonhawks will display for territorial rights? Wings flapping, beaks clacking, tails thrashing? It’s like that, but with more paperwork.”

Aneyah peered at the pair, and felt the tension in each. Theras was worried for his father, and Telivathus’ flippancy was a ruse, she knew; she could feel the swirl of his anxiety in her own stomach. Indeed, she did not even need to reach out to his mind to feel it; his speaking too much was enough of a tell—not to mention an attempt to distract from the state of the board. It was not for Magister Dawnwing specifically, though. Did he fear the coming dark as much as she? Had he heard the Song, too?

Theras quietly tapped Telivathus’ bishop out of the way with a pawn, looking coolly at the elder ranger, “I’d like to believe that, Tel, I really would.”

Telivathus leaned forward, arms resting on the table’s edge as he scanned the board, moving a knight with what appeared to be little thought, “You should. It won’t do any good not to, will it?” Surface aggression, to keep his opponent on his back foot, but clever, Aneyah noted. “Check,” the ranger added.

Theras furrowed his brows, looking much like his father in that moment, and took the knight with his second rook, exposing his castled king, “Do you think his research is actually dangerous? I know he claims it will be useful, will be revolutionary, but what of the harm it could do?”

“Anything worth doing has an element of danger, doesn’t it?”

The younger Dawnwing looked utterly unamused at Telivathus’ carefully hedged answer, his lips drawn into a thin, flat line.

“What is an acceptable cost to fight against Renilash?” Aneyah ventured, her voice quiet and distant, as if her mind were somewhere far away, even as she spoke to the men at the table. Perhaps it was, as it drifted back to the Sunwell, and to the fear she had felt there, “Priests of the Sacred Flame say that when the end comes, if we give all of ourselves, the darkness cannot triumph. He risks everything in search of understanding.”

“But,” Theras replied, shifting his attention to Aneyah, “Is what Father doing personal sacrifice, or is he trying to make himself a martyr? What good comes of prolonging his dispute? Surely he can still make progress in his work if he just…” He paused, searching for the right words, and spitting them out in frustration when he came upon them, “Turns over his Void artifacts? Toys with other forces?”

Telivathus chuckled as he moved his queen—the only piece still in his arsenal other than king and pawns—across the board, “Check, again.”

Theras snapped back to the game, glaring daggers at Telivathus, who only gave him a broad grin in return.

“He would be right to do so,” Aneyah responded, “But you and I saw K’aresh, Ther. Can you deny that there was life even there, awash in darkness? I am not sure the Void is the threat, but the Harbinger. Or other predators. So he may yet be right not to do so, as well.”

Clearly flustered to have his attention drawn two ways, Theras held his head in one hand as he both observed the state of the board and formulated a reply to Aneyah. When he spoke, it was slow, deliberate, “It doesn’t make sense to fear the lynx, but it does to guard the flock from them.”

The Arathi beamed, “You understand. I knew you would.”

Theras’ cheeks colored at even this slightest bit of praise, and he turned his head away before hastily taking Telivathus’ queen with his own king.

“What a principled stand Dawnwing is taking, hm?” Telivathus mused, a smirk playing on his lips, “He could lose much, but anything worth doing is dangerous, right?” He gently slid a pawn forward, one that had slipped past Theras’ defenses, reaching the opposite end of the board, “The queen is dead; long live the queen, as they say.”

Theras turned his attention back to the game, and his shoulders slumped in dismay. With the new queen in play, he had run out of options.

“Sometimes a little bit of calculated sacrifice can do more good than harm,” Telivathus said, adding in a whisper with a wide, cheeky grin, “Checkmate, kid.”

There came a sense of sorrow through the soulbond from her husband before the pair approached the display in the room, a tiered stand housing neat rows of sheet music written for strings–mostly quartets, but a handful of solo pieces for cello. Luminash knew that it had been the composer’s favorite.

The magister briefly raised a hand, as if to reach out and touch the damaged bow displayed before the music. It yet showed signs of the care its owner once had paid it, but it had snapped, the wood splintered, yet its strings remained intact, a relic from before the Fall, a piece of what life had been before it came crashing down. Another stab of regret as he withdrew his hand.

Luminash offered a bow of the head and a grateful smile to the cellist who sat nearby, lost in the performance of the collection here.

For the next while–he could scarcely say how long–he stood, Jaskian beside him, eyes closed and awash in a sound he’d not heard in many years, and how fortunate they were, in that moment.

The plaque adorning the table read: Leanna Dawnwing.

Luminash snorted, “That he admired my restraint in my professional speech. Which means, of course, that I probably nearly made the man’s heart stop.” The magister pressed a hand to the soil beneath a red-blooming shrub, a faint golden glow rising from the earth, “He did confirm receipt of the Arathi theoretical texts I’d requested, and that they bore out my claims.”

“Judging by the fact that you are–what, finding outlet for your magic by gardening? You are still under scrutiny.” Although Telivathus’ statement had begun as a question, he ended it merely as a statement of the obvious.

Brushing dirt from his hands, the magister stood and joined his companion at the fountain, “That would be correct, Tel. They want further demonstration of my spell wards. The true danger hides just out of their reach, and instead of seeking it–”

“Yes, yes, the shortsighted fools simply do not appreciate your insights!” Telivathus concluded, taking on the magister’s avian manner, head cocked to the side and a hand raised dramatically, as if speaking to a mass of rapt students. His broad grin diffused any barbs the mockery may have contained.

Luminash sighed, crossing his arms over his chest, “You’re not the first to have said as such, in such a manner. Tell me, though, do you have any better advice than to simply disregard the Magistry’s safeguards? I won’t lie, I fear what is to come more than I fear what the powers that be may do to me.”

“And in what position will you be to stop what your little daughter-in-law saw if you lose all your resources?”

“Tel, she’s not my–”

“Not yet!” Telivathus laughed, “Theras is utterly besotted. My point remains, though. You are a magister, and must be above suspicion. Do not blur the lines of propriety too much.”

Luminash raised a brow, “You of all people, offering such advice? You lasted how little time back in the Farstriders after returning from Outland?”

Telivathus pressed a hand to Luminash’s shoulder and patted firmly, “Exactly. You don’t need to lift a finger, but perhaps I will. Plausible deniability, my friend.” A flourish of the man’s hand, and a coin rolled across his fingers, moving too swiftly for Luminash to catch before it disappeared again, but he knew it for what it was: the insignia of the Uncrowned, “Now, do you want my report or not?”

The magister nodded, “Fill me in, Tel.”

With a jerk of his head towards the manor house, Telivathus slid from the fountain with a distinctly serpentine grace, “Follow me. I’d like a map for this. The more information you can feed to your fellow magisters, the sooner you can get back to work, right?”

The spellbreaker moved back towards the door of Luminash’s tower laboratory, his red-and-gold armor cast in an eerie purple light by the leyline energy flowing through the wall conduits. He took up his post there, hand on glaive, with his partner, as a pair had been for days, an endlessly interchangeable parade of Magistry hounds.

After the guard’s departure, Luminash turned a pointed look to Goldleaf, “And what of the rest? What, precisely, remains the problem? I am obviously no friend of the Blade, and the tower is secure, even from the skills of a spellbreaker, and as such, what risk remains?”

The clerk shook his head, motioning with his pen towards the warded chamber containing artifacts steeped in the Void, a motley collection ranging from insectoid idols to blackened crystals, “The Void is anathema. You know this. Even in containment, it may corrupt; even–”

“With all due respect,” Luminash cut in, with all the respect in his voice that such a statement typically carries, “Any other force carries similar risks of change, or has the Grand Magister not observed the effects of Order on any number of species? Our own included! Or the zealotry of the Army of the Light, or–”

Goldleaf held up a hand, “Enough, Dawnwing. He will not be convinced with such theatrics, this you well know. If the transmutation of energy is truly capable of neutralizing the Void, the greatest threat to our people’s continued sustenance, he knows it is worth pursuing. Yet, he is concerned with your…other source.”

Luminash drew his lips into a thin line, “Firim.”

Goldleaf nodded, “A known madman. The Broker treatise you provided was…less than enlightening. It is the gibbering of one whose mind has broken, and that you claim to comprehend the meaning is…” He adjusted his spectacles, a distasteful curl of his lips at smudge, “Concerning.”

The magister turned away, partly to make his displeasure known, and partly to hide the frustrated flush blooming on his cheeks, “What further hoops must I jump through to assert my loyalty, Goldleaf? Just because I can see the meaning in what the Grand Magister deems mad rambling does not mean I am a Void-addled cultist!”

A shake of the clerk’s head, “I know, Dawnwing, but even a single point of failure in your wards or your spellcasting could be catastrophic. His foremost concern is for the sanctity of the Sunwell.” After a brief, yet pregnant, pause, he added, “As yours once was. You were among those who were unswayed by Umbric and Maella before the future Ren’dorei were cast out. You returned from Argus convinced the Void was the greatest threat to our people’s safety. What changed, he wonders.”

“So any change of the mind must be madness, must be corruption? One cannot learn or adapt or grow? Must we choose between stagnation and exile, Goldleaf?” Luminash turned back to him, hands once more clasped behind his back, his face an impassive mask of utter composure, “An impossible choice, you know, and not one to be made lightly.”

“Certainly not, magister. I will return in a few days’ time with further information,” the clerk added as he turned to depart, striding briskly past the spellbreakers, who motioned for the magister to follow, leaving his work behind, an exile already in his own home.