#swcrdstellaris

         @swcrdstellaris has come Home

    " Where have you been? You had mother worried sick. " The young woman huffed, crossing her arms over her chest - staring up at her brother with a narrowed gaze. Despite their age, Ranni still took to attending to their mother matron.

A glorious morning had arisen upon the Altus Plateau, and one soul in particular had taken advantage of it as he sat upon his horse, riding into the open fields of golden grass and beaming sunlight, making each straw reflect and almost 'glow' in utter radiance. It made Vyke delighted to see just how everything shone with the glow of his Order. How everything just felt... right, and in balance.

As the ancient lift creaked its long path to the apex, the sorceress Loreley brushed ash and dust off her singed robes. Sneaking her way past the magma wyrm’s massive chamber had gone well up until the end, when she was very nearly beaten bloody and burned black. 

But lo, she lived! And her heart was finally starting to calm down. As she stepped out into the faded golden glow of the Erdtree, she shielded her eyes and set forth along an old and familiar trail past the rather new decor of half a hundred wrecked funeral wagons.

So she wasn’t the only one to wake from death - well enough. Silently stalking between the rows, she ran her fingertips across the golden grass of the plateau and cast her eyes northward. It would be a simple trip along the old Lord’s Roads through the pass and toward her ancestral home of Leyndell.

Rumors that one of Rennala's adult children, Rykard, still being alive drew the Carian Knight to Mount Gelmir, nor for glory or the Great Runes but out of reconciliation. By dying during the Shattering, he had failed his Queen, her family, and her kingdom. And with strange, new life as a Tarnished, he had to know what befell them. It felt like ages has passed since being put six feet under, and it might as well have with everything that changed. Already having seen some of Liurnia, he found himself cautiously optimistic about finding Rykard.

That was, of course, until he found the Bridge of Inquiry, the only bridge between Altus Plateau and the jagged, teeth-like craggy heights of Mount Gelmir. Plumes of black smoke from the volcano at its center began to cloud the otherwise open skies until the sky looked positively furious.

The moment he crossed that rickety, precarious bridge, the stench of burning bodies, brimstone, and iron stung his nostrils. Crows scattered in a remarkable cacophony of squawking protest as he ambled forward, knowing little of what to expect. Once the murder of crows left, the area went completely silent and still in a way tense and unnatural. He knew the area held a dangerous reputation, but he had assumed the volcanic activity and how it attracted serpents and dragons caused it. But that alone could not explain the overwhelming presence of death that hung in the air there like a thick fog.

@swcrdstellaris​ asked:

“Sir, do you want to get a drink or something?”

send me 💭 for a thought/first impression my muse has had about yours!  

The dust is still thick in the air, kicked up in clouds so dense that they almost obscure the vastness of the shape. Over the roiling and filthy fog emerges the silhouette of the great grey wings - four of them, full and shivering like the sails of a barque, blotting out the sunlight that streams between the distant peaks.

Still coughing, eyes still streaming, Veszelya clutches a tree with one hand and her glintstone staff in another, and tries to work out how to cast spells again.

Beautiful.

It is the only thing she can call to her mind as the great neck, arced and white like a swan's, curls down from the heavens. Toward her points the triangular head, adorned with a queenly crown of ivory horns. Eyes like bright golden embers, not so different from her own, gaze into her very soul.

She doubled over, bracing her hands on her knees and heaving. This had been a battle of attrition, getting knocked around while desperately trying to find an opening in the dragon’s stone scales to slip an arrow or knife through. Her swords could do nothing to it, and her flaming breath, fueled by a stolen dragon heart, was nothing compared to this creature’s mastery of lightning. Still, she had cut her teeth on fighting dragons, and considered herself something of an expert in the business ( which was frankly rather cocky of her ). Yet she had never heard one speak, and so was caught off guard by the rumble of the great beast’s voice.

The Best Advice I Can Give