/ Late Afternoon / 5:12 Pm / Monday, Third day 3, Year 522 AC / Waxing Cleft / Mountain Tunnel, returning towards the Guardian's cave /Late Spring / Cool, damp tunnel air; faint blue bioluminescence /
I spoke into the quiet, my voice a low rumble in the confined space. "You're not Althaea, are you?"
"Or perhaps you know her? No matter, rest now. Elder Zhorath might know how to help you. In the meantime, why don't I tell you some stories?"
The question lingered in the air, unanswered save for the steady rhythm of her breathing. I shook my head at my own impulse, then settled into the familiar cadence of storytelling.
"I grew up where the wind doesn't howl - it roars," I began, my voice taking on the measured pace of a Frost Giant's tale. "My first memory is of the smell of pine resin and frozen stone."
"The giants would tell stories around the hearth-fire, and the flames would dance shadows on the ceiling so high I thought it was the sky..."
I shared stories of wrestling giant-kin twice my size (though not my height), of the initial instance I summoned lightning to my fingertips, startling the entire enclave, and of the patient giantess who instructed me to meditate, not merely for focus, but to quell the internal tempest when it threatened to erupt. I spoke of long hunts across glacial fields, of the deep, resonant songs the giants would sing to the mountains, and of the lonely but profound feeling of watching the aurora dance across the peaks, wondering if my true parents were out there somewhere among the stars.
My words were for her, but also for myself - a steadying anchor in the strange quiet after the monolith's fury.
The walk was long, but the stories made time pass. Eventually, the tunnel began to slope upwards, and the air grew slightly warmer. I recognized the approach to Zhorath's cave.
I emerged from the tunnel entrance back into the shallow dimly lit cavern where I first encountered the Guardian. The flat rock where Zhorath had sat was empty, yet a low fire now cracked in a small stone ring nearby, casting flickering light across the walls. The elderly Dragon or was there, stirring a small pot over the flames. He looked up as I entered, his piercing blue eyes moving from my face to the woman in my arms, then to the glowing pendant at her neck.
"You found more than a part of the shattered spire, I see," Zhorath rasped in Draconic. "Set her by the fire."
"Let me look."
He gestured to a pile of furs near the warmth.
I knelt and gently settled the woman onto the soft furs by the fire. The glow from her pendant cast gentle, shifting patterns on the cave wall. Zhorath put aside his stirring spoon and moved closer with a slow, deliberate grace, which belief his age.
He knelt beside her, his ashen grey scales appearing almost bronze in the firelight. He gently tilted her head with a clawed hand, revealing the network of pulsing blue-white lines beneath her skin. He murmured something in a low, guttural Draconic dialect that even I did not recognize; it sounded less like words and more like the grinding of tectonic plates.
Her pendant glowed brighter, and the dark blue stone at its center appeared to drink in the firelight. Zhorath's eyes narrowed.
"Yes," he rasped, sitting back on his heels. "This is Althaea's work. Her sigil. Her curiosity." He gestured to the pendant. "And her folly."
He looked up at me, his blue eyes sharp. "The fracture of the Spire, or the Monolith if you will, was feeding on her."
"Not her blood, but her spark - the elemental energy that fuels life and magic. A slow siphon. She is drained, but not empty."
"The potion you gave her anchored what remains."
He stood and returned to his pot, fetching a wooden cup. He dipped it into the steaming liquid - which smelt of sharp herbs and earth - and brought it back. "This will help her body remember how to make its own warmth again. It will not restore what was taken. Only time and rest can do that, if the source of the drain is broken."
As he carefully trickled the herbal brew between her lips, she stirred. A faint sigh escaped her lips, and her eyelids fluttered, but she did not wake. The pulsing lines beneath her skin calmed, becoming fainter and slower.
Zhorath watched her for a long moment, then turned his gaze towards me. "You did well to bring her here. The spire is jealous. It does not like to release what it has caught." But now you have drawn attention, and perhaps the attention of those who watch from within the storm. "
He returned to his seat by the fire.
"She will sleep through the night. By morning, she may be able to speak."
"Until then, we wait."
The fire crackled. The woman slept peacefully on the furs. Zhorath seemed content to sit in silence, watching the flames.
"Is she a half-elf?"
"At first I thought she was human but then I saw her ears.."
"It's the most curious thing, sleep that is."
"I still don't don't quite get it. I just need to go into a trance-like meditation for a few hours a day and I'm good to go. I was told I got that from the elven side of my heritage. That's why I don't think she's an elf."
"Well, not a full one, perhaps a half-elf as I said before."
Zhorath let out a soft, grinding chuckle, the sound like pebbles tumbling in a stream. "Observant. Yes, her ears betray her. She is of the half-people like you - though her blend is different. Human and elf, I would say. The Ta'essil - the true sleep-is their burden and their blessing. Your trance is the gift of your elven blood, a sliver of the Feywild's timelessness within you. You do not dream as they do. You remember. You wander the halls of your own mind. It is a purer rest, but perhaps a lonelier one."
He poked the fire with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks. "She sleeps now because her spirit is exhausted. The spire did not just take her energy; it fed on her potential, the storm she might have become."
"Her body seeks to heal in the only way it knows how: by retreating into the deep, dreaming dark."
The woman on the furs shifted slightly, a faint frown crossing her features as if chasing a dream. Her pendant's glow had settled into a steady, soft pulse.
" You are a child of three worlds, Kaida Stormwing," Zhorath continued, his gaze fixed on the flames. "Giant, Elf and Dragon. You stand outside the rhythms of most mortal races."
"Do not begrudge them their sleep."
"It is where they are most vulnerable, and often, where they find the strength they did not know they had."
He fell silent again, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and the distant, ever-present sigh of the mountain.
With a sigh I settled into a cross-legged position near the fire, close enough to feel its warmth but not so close as to be in the way. Closing my eyes, I slowed my breathing, letting the rhythm of my heart settle into the deep, steady pulse of meditation.
My trance was not sleep. There was no drifting, no dreams. Instead, my awareness turned inwards. I walked the halls of my own memory: the frozen peaks os my childhood, the resonant voices of my giant kin, the first crackle of lightning at my fingertips. I felt the storm within me - a coiled, sleeping power that was both mine and not mine, a legacy of a dragon I never knew. The elf in me provided the focus, the stillness at the eye of the storm. The giant provided the endurance, the bedrock.
Time lost meaning. The crackle of the fire, the soft breathing of the woman, the occasional rustle as Zhorath tended to something - these sounds were distant, acknoedged but not intrusive.
Four hours passed.
I opened my eyes. The fire had burnt lower, casting long, dancing shadows. Beyond its circle of light, the cave was dark. Zhorath remained precisely where he was, as motionless as a stone carving, observing the flames. The woman lay on the furs, her chest rising and falling evenly. The pulsing lines beneath her skin had faded to near-invisibility; her color looked healthier. Her silver pendant no longer glowed; it rested darkly against her throat.
The deep rest had done its work. I felt refreshed, centered and whole.
Zhorath glanced at me, his blue eyes reflecting the firelight. "The night is deep," he rasped. "She will likely wake with the dawn. The mountain is quiet... for now."
I raised a curious eyebrow, "Don't you need rest? The only person I've ever met that doesn't need sleep, is, well, myself. And I think my meditation technically counts as rest."