March 2025 Epilogue

A six-fingered Sorcerer slumbers slumped silly on bed and books bound in blankets and billowing pillows. A room adorned with purple and black banners, they drape the walls further adorned with birds in flight. A fire cracks calmly in the hearth as it shifts from flames of orange red to green and blue, then in a flash of pink; paws pat precociously yet precisely placed amidst the soot and ash. The orange cat, with horns like flutes, stretches and grooms for entirely too long before making his way over to the sleeping woman and nestling its head in the crook of her neck. With a sturr and a wurr Ervvanna wakes in a wombus of wafting wails, before noticing her facade of a feline friend frustratingly fuzzing his face against her. Blinking in recognition she hugs the “cat” with a shocking lack of delicateness and yells out “Franklin!” spinning him side to side. The two talk as she truly begins to wake, sluggish sprites puppet clothes as if to stand on their own, and dress her still in bed. Franklin protests, nudging her from her nest to the floor. “Fine, fine, they should almost be here anyway.” She smiles as she clicks her shoes, a whirl of miasma engulfs her, and the wrinkles in her clothes disappear into perfectly-pressed paduasoy. “Yes Franklin the Absolus did remind me of this spell.” she chimes back at her companion waving her hand in frustration over her face, for no soot so much as scrubs nor lifts the slightest bit. “Oh.. ya you’re right.” she says reaching down and grabbing a wet cloth from Franklin’s outstretched paw. A quick scrub later and she turns to her friend, “Better?” she says to the silent room aside from her lively conversation. “Thank you, I like it too.” She smiles and picks out a matching shade of purple lipstick.

A knock at the door disrupts the discourse. Greeting her to Dame Ebony and Ser Kestrel, neither yet notice the cat under the covers as its eyes watch like that of stargazing children. The three make their way to have dinner for the fifth night in a row, Ervvanna regales them of Frakus her fiery warrior friend from long ago, who once wrestled ten Yeti, while wearing only a loin cloth and a hat. She spoke of Ergold the scholar who once told her that every book had a soul - but she insists he was just being poetic, Markus the cat with legs far too short for his size, the Cow she had as a child named Darius who was just a cow - with absolutely nothing special about him - other than his so very mundane polarizing personality, and how Liviting Quail taste strangely like King Crab from the plane of Water. A messenger finds their way to the three to carry word from Lord Wainwright that although she was busy tonight, she was free for lunch the next day after. There the two drank “Day Wine” and gabbed of garble most engrossingly off topic and irrelevant to where we move our focus now….

A Dark Sorcerer tosses in bed, remembering visions of a sinister twinkling thrown, a temptation, and a resolve without hesitation. Not he, but the beast within him worms at the thought of what its capture was prepared to do. Terrified as Orvexsus marched closer to reclaim what was his, knowing should Gabrial take the throne it would surely be completely consumed with what he would become. Yet more that very same night after, a Tevvyxian swears he hears half a voice impossibly echo from deep within his core, dismissing the noise as an illusion through thought and reason. Sunken in an armchair, Orophin settles into a new heaviness as a book he holds flutters open, and his event horizon now shimmers with a litany of iridescent glittering flecks of the once Demon Lord's power. Propped betwixt a pair of lips, a pipe contorts and twists as what lay within feeds two somethings under the surface. Julia inhales as a twilight smoke fills her lungs, and exhales a rainbow of unfettered clouds that dissipate into the wind. A scholar, dressed wowheain blue and white, takes note as she shifts and changes. It rushes over her like a sudden high, then harmlessly fades away…..

A Bariqir tends to their arm, now riddled with spinning bruises and dotted with little burns. Their shoulder, elbow, and fingers all ache from that shimmering arrow. Tuulikki traces Sylphan markings up her arm as she notices to her amazement as they shift and accent the burns like filigree. An echo carries in their mind and around all of whom we watch, it illuminates not just those written but all who stood to act against the gloom. A faint wisps of words once spoken…

“By Midas Gold and Kithstone Light, This pocket of Gloom will see its final night.

By Arawyn’s Glamour and Magic of Fey, This Darkness will end this day”

I asked what you will be? You answered me….

Now a throne remains empty, a once Demon Lord dead, as new lights ignite, and pushing back what may now be hiding.