Georg Elsebethson wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2025 8:12 pm
"Then I should get to examining," Georg says. First, he gingerly picks up the ring and holds it between thumb and forefinger, looking first for signs of Blackstone and then for markings or inscriptions. Assuming that the stack of papers is supplemental, Georg then turns to the memory glass to see what Antior considered worth preserving.
A quick skim through the papers suggest that they are largely notes, a number of sketches, similar sorts of things. Something to come back to after studying the other items.
The ring, maybe surprisingly, doesn't bite. As far as Georg can tell, there's no blackstone in its construction, but he can't escape the feeling that this ring is familiar. It's a disconnected sort of sense, not provided by his conscious mind (a thought drifts through his head,
maybe not even my own mind, and then disappears again). It's made of a dull golden metal, curiously heavy for as delicate as it looks and cool to the touch.
Antior watches Georg study the ring, eyes narrowed and searching.
"I shouldn't admit to how I came to possess that ring," he murmurs.
"But the circumstances are relevant. It was recently given into my care by an Obsidian operative, who had apparently acquired it by... less than honorable means to keep it from a colleague of hers by the name of Iroe Ahanei. As she tells me -- Dara Fleetwood is her name, the Obsidian operative -- it's considered a minor relic by a segment of the Vaelt population. Rumored to have belonged to an uemannala of some renown named Avaisina. I've included some of the history I've been able to piece together among the papers. According to Fleetwood, it indicated a life bond to another."
And with a sudden flood of memory, he knows why this ring is familiar. He wore it. It is the symbol of a life bond. It was the symbol of his -- Avaisina's -- life bond to Eamai.
Ahanei. Avaisina. Uemannala. Georg's dream. The story of Eamai and Avaisina. Ahanei as Iene's right hand. Iene must have wanted this ring, if Ahanei was after it. But why?
Instead, for the moment, Georg turns his attention to the pieces of memory glass. The first one contains a series of dozens of images, what seem to be pages from very old books. They're all drawings or reproductions of paintings of elves, all garbed in traveling clothes, all carrying some manner of weapon. It's not hard to guess what they represent -- individuals of the
uemannala. He pages through the images until he reaches one that he knows. A slender elf woman, light hair --
blonde, he thinks,
her hair was blonde -- in a long braid with one black-dyed streak running all the way through it. It's when he pauses to look more carefully at the image that he realizes something. Each of the
uemannala have been shown with a small box near them. A couple have held a box, but more often it's somewhere else in the drawing or painting. They're not always as detailed as he'd like, but he'd wager his sword that they're all identical. Furthermore, they're all just like the box that Iralis found. The box that activated the power core. The box that Chavon wanted so badly.
There's more on the second memory glass. In the first image, eleven of the
uemannala are standing in a circle surrounding a shadowy form. They each hold one of these mysterious boxes in their hands. Whatever book held this image must have been heavily enchanted, as before Georg's eyes the shadowy form shifts and flows, morphs into several different forms as Georg watches: a deer, an elf, a snarling wolf, an
uemerai. As the
uemannala open their boxes, a glow begins to form... and then the memory glass goes dark.
No matter what he does, it won't activate again. The same goes for the third glass, the one he hasn't looked at yet. The first glass seems fine, but the other two are suddenly inert.
