Heroine

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Eluenthel

level 66

♝ Find me under twilight

Age 8 years 6 months
Personality neutral
Guild no guild
Monsters Killed about 141 thousand
Death Count 68
Wins / Losses 120 / 41
Temple Completed at 02/17/2016
Wood for Ark 70.4%
Savings 3M, 893k (13.0%)
Pet Grounded hog Nibbler 14th level

Equipment

Weapon cutting-edge weapon +77
Shield impermeable membrane +76
Head iron mask +76
Body machine-washable plate mail +77
Arms palm oil +75
Legs Freudian slippers +75
Talisman croaking device +76

Skills

  • steel finger level 40
  • save-load level 38
  • intimate tickling level 37
  • awkward silence level 34
  • street magic level 34
  • backyard portal level 33
  • quantum fireball level 32
  • self-propelled feet level 28
  • menacing glance level 28
  • selfish interest level 28

Pantheons

Gratitude8774
Might23568
Templehood14408
Gladiatorship1820
Storytelling178

Achievements

  • Builder, 1st rank
  • Favorite, 1st rank
  • Animalist, 2nd rank
  • Champion, 2nd rank
  • Fiend, 2nd rank
  • Martyr, 2nd rank
  • Shipwright, 2nd rank
  • Careerist, 3rd rank
  • Coach, 3rd rank
  • Hunter, 3rd rank
  • Invincible, 3rd rank
  • Renegade, 3rd rank

Hero's Chronicles

A story is told from memories of what is passed down throughout the ages by the lips in which the passages are repeated. In each tale, there is a certain amount of truth — that figment of honesty that legends are molded from.

Our’s is neither myth, nor fairy-tale — though many will attempt to convince you otherwise. An obscure tale, to be sure – passed only in the desolate alleys among the destitute and accursed. You know better than to listen to ramblings of the beggar on the street, know to avoid the sickly and dying living their final days in feverish delusions. But, if you dare? Let us trespass on the memory of the woman who would rise from her mother’s ashes and plunge an entire world into twilight.

Act I Broken Lullaby

The cinders float in the ash-choked air, my silver hair whipping around in the harsh wind as I look onto the writhing woman — my mother — with tears falling from my eyes. I find myself fixated on the searing flames that consume the life in front of me, curling into the embers as the last flames begin to rescinding and wither.

Her mother stands defiant, looking upon the faces of those who condemned her to death. How quick where they to turn on her when fear took hold of their frail hearts, how pathetic even her husband was – claiming ignorance to her known nature. Only one, the babe born of this woman condemned to die upon the pyre of straw and hay, would be left as the flames began to consume her – mother and daughter given one final moment before death parted them forever. As the sun began to set and the as fire began to abate, the pale-skinned child found herself weary from grief and found herself embracing the smoldering remains of her mother’s leg as sleep overtook her.

Her skin was blistered and black, still warm to the touch. I let myself believe that this warmth was still her’s, not the remnants of the fires that consumed her. A part of me, I think, was ready to join her.

It is said that the child was found blanketed in her mother’s ashes, asleep where embers had cooled during the passage of night. When her father found her in the morning, he was unable to wash the ash from her skin, no matter how hard he scrubbed. As the legend goes, her skin was ashen pale and without color – the last, tangible legacy of her mother’s love.

In the days that followed, if it is to be believed, the father of the witch’s child began drinking himself into a nightly stupor. Following the death of his wife, it began as simple depression and grew into an addiction that fueled his own bitterness. It wasn’t long before the attrition between the stares and whispers became too much for the father to shoulder and his indignation demanded satisfaction. The solemn face of his daughter, waiting in the dark alleys among the strays and pathetic filth of the land became too much for his gracious patience and, on a warm and feverish summer’s eve . . . the beating began,

Fear keeps my breath still as his footsteps edge closer to me. I had woken when he slammed the door, announcing his arrival. Perhaps if I didn’t cry, this time – perhaps if I don’t beg him to stop and just kept my mind focused on something else . . .

What a fool I was. The beatings never stopped, no one cared about it – I was the child of a condemned witch and my father was merely beating the taint out of me. I remember almost believe it, that it gave me some justification for the audacious act of cruelty.

As time marched on, however, the abuse became worse. It soon escalated into more than just his fists and belt, as he took to tying her down and leaving her. He began looking for any excuse to whip her, as if he was determined to paint his walls in her blood over the years, or leave her to bleed out in a dark room without food or water. Some sins could not be cleansed by violence alone, he was told once and quickly assumed it as his nightly mantra. This evolved into something far more dangerous and carried a certain, hungry look that remained in eyes once she began grew into an adolescent. She knew the next time her father came home, the beatings would arrive at a horrible conclusive act – one that she knew there would be no return from.

The man was late, I remember. The storm might have caused him to choose to stay at the tavern, but I knew better. His promises of sickening deliverance gave me the resolve I lacked previously, knowing that I had only one choice to remain able to live my life without disgust. I had no clothes for winter outings, but that was not going to stop me.

The snow was frigid beneath my bare feet as I ran through it. I ran through the frozen fields, obscured by the flurries that assaulted me, deep into the dark forests that lined our town. I ran past the skeletal branches and thorny weeds that tore into my skin and ripped my clothes, past the overgrowth and roots that scraped against my legs and feet — it was a pain I knew that had to be endured if I was to flee into the night.

No longer would the man who called himself my father lay a hand on me, no longer would I cry to the silent Heavens while I waited for the bliss of darkness. I would find my own paradise in either this frozen wonderland or beyond it. At least if death came for me here, it would be a fate of my own choosing.

Months after his daughter’s disappearance, the man attempted suicide by hanging himself from a poorly constructed noose, only to be too drunk to properly commit himself to the fate he sorely deserved. Unfortunately, the reason the man wanted to die was because his debt began piling up and he found no way to escape forfeiting his house. He was destined to live homeless and destitute, with his only daughter lost to the darkness of fate. This man is lost in the cruel memory of history, leaving behind nothing more than his vague connection to a woman that simply may have grown up to be known as another.

Act II Baptism Infernal
Everything under this is a work in progress.

It is said that the first any heard the name of Eluenthel was deep within a ancient grove, where the Sylvan and Sidhe lived among with Nature and her spirits.

As this story goes, the eldest of the elves found a young human child wandering in the dark wood one winter’s evening, when the moon was still shining its pale light onto the virgin snow. She was a fragile thing, barely over the age of childhood and yet marked by scars and fresh wounds that would have broken older, more capable men. In her ethereal eyes, there was trepidation and anxiety — obvious signs that she fled from a harsh and cruel life, but within was also a thing of beauty. She was flowing with mana, the heartbeat of eldritch life.

Overwhelmingly so.

Whatever horrible life she had put behind her woke her to a talent that the fair folk revered. She is part of a prophecy, one that at least could afford some happiness in the girl’s young life.

She was raised among the fairy creatures of the wood and nearby streams, kept safe and her innate magical talents nurtured to freely grow. As she grew from the young girl into a ethereally beautiful woman, she knew her time with the Elves was drawing to a close, though had no idea that it would end as it did. With her talents far surpassing even the oldest of her teachers, the entirety of the fair folk knew that she had a destiny somewhere else in the world – one that must began in the blood of their own.

A fateful night, some untold ages ago.
A journey into guilt that would define the young girl into the legend she is known for.

It began upon an autumn night, barely past midnight, as told by the oldest of tales, where her legacy was secured by a single dream.

She found herself unable to sleep, having fevered dreams and terrible visions of her past – the pain still so vividly remembered of what she endured. She longed to walk beneath the stars, accompanied by the shadows of the deep wood to find serenity, but the elder forbade her on this night. There was a strange sternness to his voice that never had been there before, one that deterred all further hopes to dance in the moonlight with the dryads. Relinquishing her pleas she turned instead to the grove in which the fairies and sylphs played, watching them in their frantic dances of beautiful madness. She felt their eyes upon her, as they always were watchful of her, but something was different on this night. Unfortunately, the deprivation of rest caused her perception to fail to notice the obvious sorrow in their eyes – they were saying their final farewells to the child they loved.

She returned to her bedding and laid her head upon the soft green of the mossy earth, closing her eyes and praying to the eldest gods that sleep would finally come over her – sleep that wasn’t plagued by horrifying nightmares.

Ash rained from the sky as the final flames began to flicker out, casting a molten glaze over the woods. Flesh that was still burning internally began to bubble and crack, blood and puss spilling over the bodies of the dead elves. Dryads held each other, shivering in fear as their beautiful skin blackened and withered away – fear that was directed towards me.

I did this . . .

The flames had came to her in the middle of a feverish dream, igniting all around her in an instantaneous inferno. There was nothing that escaped, neither tears nor anguish could keep the flames from touching those that had loved her, those that had nurtured this very talent into existence. The scene began to play over again, from the very first moments the flames crept from her delicate fingers.

The bitterness and hatred welled within her until it manifested as raw magical energy and consumed her one night, all in an instant. She wakes with a primal scream as flames erupt from her body and spread outward after a passing heartbeat. Immediately, the whole of the forested glen is set ablaze without as much as a sound, as if they were all dead before the flames touched them.

There was no sound but the crackling of the wood being devoured by the fire, no voice to comfort me in the orange light of the horror.

I killed them. . .
I killed all of them.

In the horrifying moments that passed, she found herself walking through the consuming blaze untouched. She falls to the ground, her knees strike the smoldering earth and skin is broke. Her head snaps upward and she shrieks to the dark, moonless sky in a voice that was anything but human.

Interlude The Dream

She gasps, her eyes snapping open as the vivid dream steals her breath from her as she wakes. Clutching her chest as she rises, she grasps the silken robe that clings to her entrancing body as she rises from the finery that is her bed. As naked feet touch the cold, tiled floor and sends the otherwordly mist that covered the ground swirling around her flesh. She casts her gaze to the bed’s satin sheets and lets a gentle smile cross her lips as she crosses the room to the opened window. From her room in the temple that was constructed by those devoted to her, she was aware with a view that was beyond dreams.

The finite ocean of azure and indigo stretched before the jagged cliffs and mountains that this temple was constructed on, gently swaying in the winds. Her room and council chamber were connected to the rest of the structure by an chain of mystical iron, floating by way of an enchantment she placed on the marble stones some time ago. A finger touches her lips in thought as she tried to recall the precise reason she felt possessed to craft such audacious piece of architecture.

‘Something familiar, at least,’ she thinks. ‘For me to lament, or for the sake of irony?’

She sighs softly and looks to the twin moons that orbit their world, knowing that there was some terrible secret hidden on either. Such was the nature of the world she lived in, one in which every fantastic being imaginable had been once, perhaps even still. Even a being such as her – called a demon by some and savior by others.

‘I wonder if anything I did mattered.’ She reaches her ashen hand to the night air and grasps, as if clutching something unseen. ‘If anything I did was not wasted on a world that so easily forgets.’

Two separate thoughts, but both subject to her conscious thoughts at the moment. They would end up meeting at the single question of her worth, something she had debated since her first moment here.

She returns her hand to her side and walks down the hallway that led from her bed chambers towards the pillared chamber in which crafted seats of ivory and marble surrounded a long table of onyx. This was where those whom she valued their council once offered it, often discussed among their peers and where strategies were tested against seasoned tactics. She runs her hands along one of the pillars as she passes the stone chairs, the cloudy mist on the floor continuing to part for her. She once thought of the mere thought of the clouds parting for her as something significant, the first human woman to touch the sky and walk upon it, now she finds it a dismal reminder of days she was loathe to relive.

She walks the temple by herself, without the company of she once held in the highest regard. Her queens of night, their brilliant knights and lions. The goblins and ghouls of men’s nightmares, all gathered under one cause. With a sigh, she continues on – time had either claimed their lives, or some other horrible fate awaited them – it didn’t matter to her. Every one she knew was simply dead, something she was long overdue for. Yet, for some ironic twist of fate, when the seals were placed on her and she was displaced in time and space, she found herself as eternal as time itself.

‘If time even passes in these halls.’ She taunts herself, feeling it was pointless to speak aloud when there was no one else who would hear her melodic voice. Melodic, in the way that a siren’s call lures sailors to their death, her voice was once renown for its pleasant poisons. A trivial matter to reflect upon, but it crossed her mind, all the same. She looks to where the cage ends and turns back to walk back from whence she arose. Cherubic laughter is heard in the distance, causing an unnatural chill to settle over the temple.

“Are we now lost in the memory of yesterday?” She recognized the voice, it had become quite familiar to her over the untold days. It would taunt her with cryptic messages and half-worded prophecies before leaving her alone for a stretch of time. She sometimes believed it was her voice, and that she had lost reigns of her sanity. Other times, she mocked the Keeper – knowing that it was as trapped in this finite sphere as much as she.

‘Perhaps I am. . . here, deep within the reverie of my life, I find comfort.’ She had learned to answer the faceless voice, as remaining silent only angered it . . . but she offered no spoken words, finding the basest of satisfaction in riling the entity’s ire for the while.

Nearing her bed chamber, the woman wondered if the entity was still present. Opting to make her thoughts quite known to the tangible world, she preludes her words with a laugh.

“Comfort I can ill afford in this forsaken prison.”

The benefit of being the one known as the Lady of Twilight is that you knew when you were dreaming most often, even if it was such a dream that was meant to last forever. The disembodied voice did not return, this time, allowing her to return to her chamber in peace.

For here I am, alive and undying,
hopeless and forlorn but beautiful as an angel’s wing.

To be continued.