Excerpt: The Forgotten Tome

.•* The End

The world was not how she wanted to remember it. Carcases and debris scattered among the ruined Towers in the place she had hoped to call home. Blood stained walls and black powder rained down upon her and the wold around her with indifference; almost a jaded mockery to her if ash could be as such. A land once vertile and that thrived in both culture and their blessed Arts was now a story of myth should any survive.

Snow swirled down with the ash as the darkened clouds loomed. Despite the darkness it was yet midday and even then this place was not how it should be. The colder climates were further north, a great deal further, but she guessed that perhaps, maybe it was a slight reprocussion of the magics once used here. She desperately tried not to cry.

“What happened to you, Era Narr?” whispers lost to the rustling winds. “Is this all that we have become? All our power, contributing to the last battle that kills us all? Were I . . .”

Silence from her mouth the wind roared at her, pounding at her lithe body demanding retribution with so very few words.

“No . . . I must not! I can not . . .”

It pulled back, retreating to instead beat against the ruins of the once unrivalled city of Averon.

“Is it not enough?” The whisper quickly rose to a scream. “Was not what you had enough? Could you all not destroy yourselves, you greedy sons and daughters of Nairn! Could you not simply be satisfied? Was your Power not enough that you had to have more?” She fell to her knees, her head lost to her lap as the last threads of her resolve gave way to tears. “Could I not have been enough? Was it ever enough?”

Her voice a lost whisper once a more beneath the shield of starlight coloured hair. A sense of failure, loss and abandon left her cold beyond the chill of the white speckled winds. Time passed unwatched, unknown and without consequense as the inner termoil left her untouched.

“Was I not good enough?”