“Elantra rebelled against the Empire, breaking away due to the Empire relaxing its racial laws that had been holding it back for so long. Specifically the Empire made the practice of slavery abhorrent and illegal, for the people in the Empire affected by slavery it came as a boon though a far too late one. For Elantra it threaten the very existence of elven superiority and while most elves never felt the way the Elantrans do about slavery, the new nation of Elantra was the first landfall for the high elves of Taron and they managed to co-op the national identity as Elnatra being the Nation of High Elves and High Elves first. The Empire has been losing ground from the western and eastern protectorates, somehow after all of this time we seem to be unable to stay united as the many Races of the Empire. Hope that if we do all go our separate ways that we manage defend each other from the horrors of slavery.” Emperor Clastin Draesar, 23rd Celestial Emperor, Era of Inquisition 1477.

1509.04.04 Tomstar, Varsh

The glass wound hadn’t gotten much better, Ada had been in and out of consciousness. Oakarn was leading a wagon and horse borrowed from farmer Tark. Ivalinna sat beside the old man while Rotkar walked alongside. Ada was the only one inside the wagon surrounded by a few day of food and a barrel. Elkralla and Jet spoke alone and off to the right side of the wagon, opposite of Rotkar whom had the remaining teens taking turns between finding ways to annoy the orc warrior, checking up on Ada as she rested in the wagon and foraging for driftwood on the sides of the road for when they a place to camp out for the evening.

“J’varr you throw one more stone at me and I’ll start tossing some back” Rotkar’s tone wasn’t serious, in spite of the change of scenery it seemed like their group was tired of travel. Rotkar continuously scanned the horizon but could see anything in the road and plains beyond. The troope had been travelling the Borderwoods heading to Fort Julius due north. Ada seemed unable to do much as her wound continued getting worse. It seemed Oakarn couldn’t do anything for her apart from changing her dressing everyday, each time they’d stopped to camp. Ada was either suffering from some kind of infection and it seemed they were running out of time as now Ada wasn’t able to keep up with them normally anymore, and the group knew they needed a healer badly. On top of that both Ekralla and Jet began to isolate themselves from the group, more specifically Jet. Even the weather seemed to contradict the general gloomy feeling they had all felt. Ivalinna drew her bow which formerly rested in the back of the wagon and raised her posture into sort of a half stance between standing and crouching.

A distant thundering of unified beating could be heard in the distance. Looking out the Ivalinna saw a group heading south carrying the banners of the Imperial Raven. They marched in a five column formation with horsemen on either side armed with horns and spears, there was a single soldier in front drumming a marching beat who had a harness carrying the banner of this particular cohort. The group had to pull their wagon to the side of the road as these hundred or so men continued along, eventually seeing a purple and white robed figure that Oakarn attempted to flag down.

“Move old man! Or you’ll find you didn’t actually want our help.” One of the armoured horsemen rode up to Oakarn. Unlike the rest of the wagon and their crew the old wizard went alone to the road, Rotkar began brushing and feeding the horse and Ivalinna attempted to corral the rest in an attempt to start foraging in the woods. Oakarn cupped his hands, seeming to make voice more amplified.

“You may want to help actually, I am rather desperate and I see that your unit is equipped with a healer.”

“Help requires payment in coin or in service to the Empire civilian.”

“I know the rules, I propose service and that service is information.” Oakarn hands the horseman which people could now see a little more clearly. Similarly armoured to the soldiers though like the other horsemen the orc’s armour had additional red tassels that fell from the shoulder.

“Halt! Stand at attention!” The energy from the orc’s voice was loud and intense, the other horsemen ensuring that the orders were heard. There was complete silence amongst the soldiery, the marching song died immediately and the drum beat ceased.

“Civilian if these services are not enough you will be tasked with the defence of Anvil’s Crest is that sufficient?” The orc horseman continued to shout.

“I am a former soldier for the Empire, son I understand the rules as I have said.” The orc’s ears perked and he held out his hand palm side up. Oakarn pulled two letters and then a scroll with a black ribbon and gold tassels.

“I know where this needs to go, civilian! I need a relevant statement to the contents,” The horseman put the paperwork in a satchel on the side of the horse.

“Elantra is planning to invade the south. I am not sure when but that scroll is addressed to the Grand Prince of Ildran. No doubt Ildran wants to secede.”

“Doctor! Heal the civilians wounded and send them on their way, Company! Break!” The white robed rider gets off of their horse, another blonde haired elf with kind features as the hood of the robe falls back. Green eyes that shone like emeralds, tanned skin that wore the tell tale signs of sun stress and dry skin.

“Alright let’s see the patient” the purple robed figure followed behind the doctor, both carried small book bags and the white robed figure looked as though they had a leather toolbag. You could also see a series of black bells that hung around the staff of the purple robed wizard. The three made their way towards the wagon.

“What happened?” The two unnamed mages propped Ada up and started to look at the wound.

“I’ve been trying to keep it clean.”

“Not important what happened, I need details.”

“I fell through a window, I had to get some glass pulled out of me.”

“So there might be an infection or even some glass still in the body depending on how deep the glass went..”

“I was fairly careful about the glass.” The wound was being unwrapped, a necrosis could be smelt, it was unbearable.

“This is the worst I’ve seen it” The deep cut weeped pus and looked black and purple in colouration, something was deeply wrong with the cut it was unnaturally rotting away. The doctor looked stunned for a moment.

“What are there any poisons or anything else you could’ve been in contact with. She's about a day or two away from going into rot shock.”

“We took a route in through the Blight….” Oakarn was slowly figuring out the source of Ada’s illness.

“That makes this simple to fix though it will be difficult, we can slow down the necrosis but we don’t have the resources here to fix this.”

“I should’ve known she’d caught the Blight from the cut, you have some sage’s paste? Maybe a bit of Dragon’s Blood?”

“Afraid not on the Dragon’s Blood, otherwise I would’ve just gotten it and fixed her already. I do have Sage’s paste though. The worst part about this is that she will need surgery to remove the glass. Might be easier to resurrect but as you know there can be unintended side effects with coming back.”

“Ada? You are going to be okay, we are going to put Sage’s paste on the wound in an attempt to purify some of the Blight.” A milky green powder was being mixed with just enough water to make a salve, it smelt medicinal and had a mild evaporative cooling effect on touching her skin and flesh. The mixture then seemed to bubble and boil in her wound as the doctor rang a wand that had many white silver bells hanging from it. Little silver arcs of light seemed to cause the effect to accelerate for a time before getting hard and turning to a white stone with none of the green paste seemingly left behind. Ada felt many pounds heavier but she started to feel somewhat normal. She had been unconsciously holding on to her breath.

“Alright hedge mage you lot went to the Blight why?” The purple robed figure spoke harshly almost as if a parent was preparing to scold a child.

“Freeing most of this lot but things went horribly, they didn’t see us coming but they had an unforeseen contingency and we had to leave through alternative means.”

“Elantra? You crossed the border.” The jarring shift in the robed figure’s tone caused Ada to shift uncomfortably, the right side of her body pulled uncomfortably and suddenly she cried out in pain.

“Hey hey hey, it's time to lie still and try to get some rest.” Ada needed help to lie down as Oakarn argued with the wizard. Ada could see her healer’s eyes, a glorious silver with brown hair and tanned skin. Such soft features for a man though he was no doubt as strong as he was gentle as Ada laid back.

“You need to be quiet and let the patient rest and we also need to be on our way, hedge mage, take her to Temple of Hera in Fort Julius as soon as you can. I got what I could but without the Dragon’s Blood to dope our patient she won’t survive a full cleansing.” The black haired purple robed figure scoffed keeping his hood up and spun on his heel

“Heading to Blight is a surefire way to get a lot of people killed hedge mage, be thankful we were here otherwise your friend could’ve died or worse!”

“Blight can do more?” Oakarn stared at the leaving figures, the white robed figure throwing up his hood as he packed his supplies.

“The circle of necromancy has discovered a way to utilise Blight Powder. It can be melted down and enchanted to curse someone with different kinds of immortality. The Emperor decreed last month that this discovery was made at the Arcane University.”

“What have they found?”

“Well they made an animated monster when I was there, so far all I’ve seen them make is weapons but they think they can cure death itself.”

“You can’t cure death, that is surely an elf’s dream.”

“Form up!” The armoured and grizzled orc shouted and his somewhat relaxing company of soldiers immediately got into position as the group prepared to march off.

“Sorry we have to go, I am in Anvil’s Crest if you want to know more about it but with your new information we need to get there post haste.”

“Blessings of Apollo, get there safe!”

“As with you hedge mage, get our patient to Julius as soon as possible, her life depends on it. Make sure she know thighs are going to get a little rough over the next few days as the infection starts again.”

“Of Course!” It took the troope to get together much longer than the Oakarn would’ve liked and after harassing them they all hopped on the wagon and rode off into the afternoon horizon. Dust being kicked up to the distant tower signifying exactly where Fort Julius resided.