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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4033560" data-attributes="member: 143">Nope, these guys don't get off quite that easy.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> * * * * * Chapter 350 THE ELFLORD’S SACRIFICEThe place felt... old. Alderis looked around.  The vault was not large, and his magical light penetrated easily to each of its corners.  Ancient buttresses covered in faint spiderweb cracks rose up to support a ceiling fashioned into a reverse-step pyramid that reached a pinnacle some twenty feet above the floor.  An empty stone bier lay in the center of the room, each of its corners fashioned into the shape of a humanoid figure of indistinct identity, crafted in such a way that they seemed to be holding up the slab.  He had no idea of how he had gotten here.  One moment he had been pushing through the dense substance of the portal, the next he was here, alone.  He turned, and saw behind him a massive block of black stone, set into the wall.  Deep-etched runes that seemed to leak a faint, diffuse light sprawled across its surface.  By some facility that he could not identify, he knew that this was the exit, but likewise that same sense whispered that it would not allow him passage until he had satisfied whatever condition had brought him to this place.  When he turned back toward the center of the room, he was no longer alone.  “You are an illusion, a simulacrum,” Alderis said, stepping forward.  There was a twinge in his chest, where the crystal now continuously reminded him of its presence.  It was like an old wound that never fully healed, like an old soldier paying for a moment’s lapse in some long-ago battle. “As you wish,” Sultheros said.  The elf stood beside the bier, which was now covered with an array of familiar items.  Alderis’s old friend was clad in the familiar robes of the Conclave, although he had retired from that body more than sixteen years ago.  The sight of the robes was another reminder of how much he had lost. “What is all this?” Alderis asked him, identifying the materials atop the slab. “Do you not know them?”“I do.  My books, the old ones... these artifacts from my laboratory... ah, the spellweave matrix, where did you secure that?  Destroyed in the explosion... gods, we were fools, then.”  He let out a little gasp as the crystal pulsed in his chest, and he rubbed it with a hand. “We were young, and eager, and full of our own power and potential,” Sultheros said.  “We were going to redefine how magic was wrought in our world.”“I remember.  It was a long time ago.”  And I am not the man I was, he thought.“None of us are unchanged,” the other elf said, as if he had heard the unspoken comment.  “You are a projection of my own mind,” Alderis said to him.  Sultheros merely shrugged, as if to say that the answer did not truly matter.  “Why are you here?”“To guide you.  You face a choice.”“The sacrifice.”“Yes.  It is the reason why you are here.”“Why?  Why me?”Sultheros made a subtle gesture, indicating Alderis’s heart.No.  Not his heart.  It still beat there, within, but Alderis knew that it was not alone, that each beat was echoed in the symbotic shard that was growing within him. “Must I continue to pay for a moment of foolishness?”  Sultheros’s expression was sad.  “You know the answer to that question already, old friend.”“Yes.  Yes, I do.”  He turned and looked at the relics of his life, spread across the bier in an ordered fashion, as though he’d laid them out himself.  “I do not suppose that these are real, either.”Sultheros did not respond.  After a moment, Alderis looked up at the other elf.  “What is required of me?”“You know the answer to that as well.”“No.  No, I cannot.  You ask too much.”“Then a world dies.  I am sorry, Elegion.  I cannot undo what has been done.”There was a long silence.  Then, finally, Alderis spoke, his words a soft whisper.  “Do it.  Quickly, before I... before I weaken.”Sultheros’s words were gentle blanket.  “I can do nothing, old friend.  You must make the choice.”Alderis’s body shook.  When he looked up again, he was alone again.  The bier was empty.  The elf turned, and walked toward the door.  The runes brightened, as if to welcome him.  Alderis summoned his magic.</blockquote>

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