2025 O : Obsidian

    

In the challenge, "O" is for the black stone, obsidian. The archmage, Lord Dal, is on an isle in the Southern Sea. His old friend, Semelen, has joined Dal at a mountain spot used for meditation. The purpose of the visit was to help Dal uncover who murdered everyone on the Isle of Mages.

Warning - the subject of loss might be upsetting to some. From Windmaster:

A swig of fresh water from the gourd he carried refreshed him enough to finish the climb to the ceremonial ledge near the mountain’s summit. He spotted a small pyramid of coral rocks. “This is it,” he said to a furred nose peeking out from between the thick ferns. 

Just beyond the marker, an outcropping, worn smooth by weather, formed a natural bench. Eons ago, islanders had carved the symbols for— fortune... happiness... and love—in the green-flecked volcanic rock. Dal folded his lanky frame to the ground in a single lithe movement. Despite the lava’s rumbling deep within the earth, he could sense a serene timelessness in the rock wall. His eyes closed as he sank into meditation. 

Dal’s consciousness floated downward into the volcano. Closer and closer he moved toward the gaping maw of a lava tube. The haunting notes of Ellspeth’s tune floated up from the dark depths. The blue glimmer of runes on the tunnel walls beckoned him into the darkness even as it lit his way. The sound of the flute led him through chamber after chamber filled with obsidian statues, their blank-faces marred only by the flash of fire where eyes would have been. Dal could almost feel the heat from their implacable anger.

The runes stopped at a pool of black water. A scene he knew well, the island heart-home of all mages, formed in the unnatural mirror. The concentric rings of wood and stone cottages seemed so real that he could see the feathers on the eagle in the council room’s stained glass window. Pushed by a southerly wind, a yellow cloud sifted over the island. Dal moaned at the scattered bodies left in its wake. His eyes strained in vain to see movement. Even in sleep, his hands clenched at the memory. Anger and pain vied for control, as the sulfur smell mingled with the remembered stench of hundreds of funeral pyres. Fires he had set to send the dead, those closer to him than kin, to their final rest. 

“I’ll avenge your deaths,” he swore. “If it takes the rest of my days.”

~till next time, Helen 

 

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