12th of Glade, Year 120
A nightmare had followed into his dreams.
He felt frigid -- cold, with icy talons slowly traveling across his form, step by step; slowly, he was encompassed. The Ebon Knight felt his breathing begin to increase. He was afraid. The Dranoch were far from associated with frost, yet in his dreams it was always such; they were cold, the winter to the summer that was the Remedy. He doubted that it was simply a cognitive attempt at dualism. Perhaps because he'd never really understood the cold - becoming resistant to it from such a young age - he feared it as one would the unknown.
All of this madness with the Joseph's had been getting to him. They had made little progress. What they had learned was that Elandria had seemingly been discovered, and last night she had died. Thus the frigid rake, the overwhelming fear, the encompassing ice. Eleanor was shaken; it was her dearest friend in the world. The one she had always been close with, since before traveling out of Sil-Elaine. When they learned they had both been stationed in Kalzasi together, they were overjoyed. For a moment, everything made sense to them. Their sisterhood had brought the two of them a purpose in their life.
But now, Elandria was dead. The weaker one -- the one prone to mistakes. It only made sense. And yet at the same time, it made so little. This revolution -- this war, even waged far outside of the bounds of Sil-Elaine -- had worn on them utterly, and of late it had left them vacant of much of their aspiration. Eleanor, right now, likely felt these negative emotions a thousand fold.
Taelian left the common area of their small estate, isolating himself to the dueling room. He exhaled, and crafted Shrivenflame around himself in doing so, watching as the fires slowly began to fall from below the ceiling. Taelian breathed again; an inhale. Slightly, the fires budged, moving towards him but not completing their journey. He began to focus on the flames themselves, viewing into their amber-colored cores, contemplating everything that had transpired. His mind was racing with thoughts. The Joseph's... they had been placed to perform a mission of espionage, of stealth and learning, of asking few questions but always ensuring they were the right ones to ask. Elandria was among their best in the realm of deception, but clearly she had somehow made a mistake.
He breathed in again. The fire drew nearer to him, closer than before. He'd been practicing like this for a while now, only he had learned that within his Famished soul, it was often with the greatest displays of emotion that he succeeded in increasing his mastery of the Sigil. And besides: this was something else. Taelian felt so close to mastering the Sigil. He was stronger than even Eleanor in the art, and so the boundaries that she had boxed herself into did not need to apply to him. He could do better than what she imagined for herself. He could kill the Joseph's, even alone.
