Life in Resembool (III)
Avalon was as beautiful and varied as ever. Giant mushrooms had begun to reach the heights of the sky to the East and hold up entire small ecosystems on their top and on the underside of their caps. To the west, a mountainous valley was concealed at the waist by a thick layer of dark forests and carnivorous birds claimed mountaintops to hunt the lands below.
To the North was his target. Once, a bitter cold and statuesque landscape frozen in time and mostly barren, now slowly melting to reveal patches of green and letting cold rivers pass through in odd places to wash away the snow little by little. Vegetation was taking root, and the targets of a project he should have completed earlier were scavenging out and about in the new climate to discover the advantages.
The Falmer no longer had to be afraid of the twin dragons that would kill anything to openly cross the valley, as they had already discovered. The gray-skinned, hunched over, humanoid and primitive species of blind elf would finally stop being the Betrayed today.
As any other gust of wind would, Yuri arrived in a glowing system of caves beside a pale and regal-looking Elf without notice. He was donned in a scaled white armor similar to a carapace yet lacking any buggy features. This was Gelebor, Knight-Paladin of Auriel, who had stood in this place for over a thousand years without abandoning his duty.
"Did you remain here for fear of losing as much as Vyrthur did? Or did your duty outweigh even the common sense of a normal survival?" Yuri's voice echoed beside him and along the cave walls dotted in crystal. Impossibly clear water trickled lightly through the cave until it reached the first Wayshrine, a gazebo of old gothic architecture that curved from a column to a dome and held a basin and a portal inside.
Gelebor turned his head lightly without any signs of being startled, taking in the visitor with his pale blue eyes.
"I stood here because it was my duty. Because I believed that one day, there would be another soul who would need to be guided through here to save Vyrthur, one way or another. You may have altered that fate, but my duty remains. My duty is to guide one more." Gelebor panned his gaze back to the Wayshrine as if on queue, and out walked Vyrthur himself.
Vyrthur saw Yuri as a ghost, his eyes searched for the one who he believed brought him salvation and left without a word and fiercely stared at his only culprit.
"It's you... you who cast my chains aside and replaced the very sky we lived under. This place is becoming strange, warming up. It doesn't even feel like we're in the same continent anymore!" Vyrthur walked slowly to Yuri and muttered lightly as he did so.
"True," Gelebor continued. "I have not felt my connection to Auriel as of late. It feels foreign. Are you the culprit?" He asked without any malice or even heat.
"How would your faith reply when I confirm it? I have taken you both from any notion of your old god, this world is mine."
Gelebor closed his eyes and lowered his head with visible grievance. A thousand years and a single soul saved, not even by his own hands yet. But he looked up again.
"You have taken us away from Auri-El, but you have not taken Auri-El from us. In light, I shall always walk even under a foreign sun."
Yuri let a smile leak from the sides of his cheek. "I'd hate to make use of a broken man, so all the better. I need your blood," He looked at both the Knight-Paladin and the Arch Curate, who both cocked their heads.
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A cave had been pressed into the earth at speeds defying reason, all with a single clap. The servants of Auri-El then saw lights explode into this underground cavern with a snap and scatter to every corner as the room was smoothened out. Yuri's thin black cloak billowed behind him as he entered the chamber before expanding his senses across the Forgotten Vale. With a flash of his eyes, blurs of grey armored in black abruptly started arriving and filling the cavern with their enraged wails.
Gelebor and Vyrthur to his right and left gave a horrified or a confused face respectively and watched on as the cavern was continually filled to the brim. In under 30 seconds, hundreds of Falmer were wailing and bumping into each other as their confused screaming was echoing across the walls and making even more Falmer upset as they gave up trying to hear their surroundings.
"Now," Yuri said, and the two Snow Elves raised a single hand palm up to either side of him. Yuri reached out and pressed their palms with a fingertip, extracting a drop of blood from both and then clapping once more. He separated his hands and a single coil of golden lightning was piercing the two droplets like beads on a string.
A few Falmer heard this and grew startled, beginning to move towards the only exit they were blocking to attack the new sound. Yuri raised his hands and pressed forward gently, a wave of golden dust and glow washed forward and passed through every Falmer as they froze in their tracks and toppled over one by one. Squirming sounds broke out as one by one their skin began to tighten and take on a healthier glow. The bags covering their eyes liberally began to recede and vanish, their ears bent closer to their head and shortened slightly, their bodies grew smaller and their armor started slinking around their slim forms.
But the biggest change wasn't visible. Their eyes, now sighted, held tints of understanding which led further into confusion instead of animalistic fear. They scanned their environments carefully and found the men who stood above them. They didn't know how to speak, they only tried getting up and waiting patiently or approaching slowly. Some of them still crouched instinctively, while others cast aside their bent armor and found themselves much more comfortable with a straight back.
Yuri barely lowered his hands when he found Gelebor hugging him vigorously and possibly leaking onto his shoulder as the shorter man. Vyrthur kept his distance and nodded his respect while drying his eye sockets for some reason. "I won't even ask how... but thank you..."
"Don't thank me yet. I've given them hope, and you a responsibility. They are redeemed by your blood, both of you. New hands to guide, new mouths to feed," Yuri lightly pushed Gelebor off and waved behind his back as he departed.
"My people are back, praise Auri-El! Praise you, stranger!" Gelebor shouted tearfully to the back of the man who never said his name.
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Only a few days after that visit to the forge, Ally came to him to show him a new weapon design. Not a main weapon for them, but one of the most versatile blades he had ever seen. It was a product for mass production and adaptability, the Enderial blade was a broadsword without a crossguard, replaced by a round disk at the hilt with a gem on the inside and a pure solid body from tip to handle. Along the lower spine, the rivets cut a diamond shape on the inside of the blade and were marked by Spirit and Elvish sigils for what he recognized as a fitting, responding, and altering process.
Ally explained that the hilt disk was an optional battery cell and the rivets were designed to hold something she called enchant cells. In a careful order, one can mix and match up to the number of rivets in enchantments by placing a corresponding cell. Without the gems, the sword just becomes a channeling device, and with them they completely alter the energy that exits the blade. Numerous circuits could cut paths inside the sword and close others to change how it behaves depending on the cell as well. Ally had already made a few cells herself, adding elements and a basic package of enchantments that make a reliable blade.
Yuri saw it as an incredible idea to mass-produce a blade that nobody would ever need to get rid of. But why did she make something that wasn't designed to be custom?
"Well, I wanted to get it out of the way. I look at Avalon and how easy you pull entire regions into it and I know where it's going. You'll need warriors to keep the peace, but we can't just make crappy weapons for all of them or perfect personal weapons one by one. This is for the future, to keep in the hands of people we trust to use them correctly. The gems can be used as a secret control device to self-destruct them anyway, this blueprint is never leaving my hands."
Yuri smiled, glad that he wasn't the only one looking forward to the future. He took her hands, rough and covered in soot and calluses, and he kissed her forehead lightly.
"You will make a fine Queen one day, Alera," He pulled her closer to him and she melted in his embrace after several long days of work.
"Quit using my full name!" She whined with muffled voice into his chest. "I thought we agreed on that!" She looked back up into his eyes and pouted.
"Haha, fine Ally Cat."
"Alley Cat?!" She crooked her brow and glared at him before she entered combat without warning. As the husband, it would be his duty to help her blow off steam, so he figured it was a good time to practice. The spar turned into a battle they had to take into Avalon, and Yuri was surprised to find that her physicality was beyond what he had at her point of training.
"Ally, what weight do you use?" He pointed to the inconspicuous forearm sleeves that they all used alongside the calf sleeves.
"7000 lbs. Surprised?" She grinned as a bit of sweat pooled on her forehead. Yuri was, but he wouldn't show it or tell her his weight was usually set to 9000 lbs while Toni was barely behind him.
"Ha, you're on the right track! Speaking of track, what path have you decided to take?"
"I...uh... I'm stuck there. I'm a blacksmith with Dragon blood, is there a path up from there?"
"There is, but it would be easier if you were a True Dragon Hybrid. Considered it?"
"Wouldn't I need to, like, actually kill a True Dragon for that?"
"That's the easiest way, OR, you can master bond with Drem and drink a diet of his blood for a while."
"Hmm... I'll have to talk to him about it."
"It's a big step for both of you, this wouldn't be as passive as the sigil. If you died, so would he. Besides, I don't know if you can negotiate yourself into being his master."
"So I would have to cow him into submission?"
Yuri tilted his head and shrugged. "That's for you to decide, but I'm sure you won't need to go that far to earn his respect."
The pair dueled in fisticuffs till the sunset on Avalon and Toni called them for dinner back on Truth's world.
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Spring, 1904. It has been over 9 months since the Nightingales arrived in Resembool, and life couldn't have been more relaxing and easier for them. The strawberry farm they had made attracted a wider variety of farmers to investigate the arable land around this idyllic town and more agricultural ventures began to...crop...up beside the most profitable staple of the town which was sheep farming.
As the months passed by, the locals began to take notice of the kind neighbor family with an extraordinary skillset. The Nightingales were invited to dinner by ambitious new businessmen, older locals of the town who took a liking to them, and those who they "happened" to be around in their hour of need. Their reputation around town became something of a staple themselves, akin to the Rockbells.
Yuri's own Library gained a bit of a reputation on its own. Nobody could find their way around it for the life of them, but they always found what they wanted in the end and paid less than they assumed it would take. Though people who tried to take advantage of this and search for information beyond what they should have would wind up back at the entrance.
And people who came to find out what was so special about the library without good intentions would leave with a seemingly random book on a shelf for their troubles and be bound by a curse.
Blank pages first met the eye of the thief who thought themselves to have figured out the Library's scam, then letters appeared next before their very eyes. Revelations of detailed past and inevitable future. They had opened the book of their life.
In madness, these thieves flung aside their books and cursed in the street, saying the Library had told them of their demise or denying it as a parlor trick. But the book would come back to them. Horrified, these people would try to show their books and spread the truth, but the books would become blank to anyone else. Whenever they closed these books they would forget the details yet remember the truth of the contents, and soon they would fear to even close it. The curse of the library is to know themself better than anything for a time, yet be seen as a fool in the eyes of all others.
Locally and beyond, people came to investigate the Library of Greed for better or for worse.
Yuri had designed a stable and brought out Arvanak many months ago. The Elric brothers took this opportunity to get acquainted with the horse, who adored Winry and was fond of Alphonse but would take every opportunity to push Edward over. It seems his bad relationship with animals had just begun.
In time, the Nightingales had become an inseparable part of the lives of the Rockbells and the Elrics. They had all even celebrated Alphonse's fifth birthday together when they of course gave the best gifts. Alkahestrical Daggers which he would infuse with Chi over time, made of a material completely foreign to the understanding of any Alchemist. Yuri's bones. This expenditure to him was nothing, especially with his daily intake of local Chi he purified and assimilated. Needless to say, Edward was looking forward to his next birthday.
In fact, Edward immediately asked what it was made of to make his own, but Yuri told him to find out himself, earning himself the ultra-rare Ed pout!
In times of need, the humble Trisha would have to take all the Nightingales had to give and learned to grow a thicker face around them because their generosity would not stop. Trisha would often be entertained by Toni and Ally, whisked away for escapades beyond the town as Yuri handled the brother's tutelage.
The brothers themselves had gained a workable understanding of Chi and Alkahestry. He had altered their necklaces to only give them the Alchemical boundary passer and kicked them off the training wheels program. This gave them the motivation to work their way back up themselves, and the two five-year-olds could probably kick the ass of a single normal grown adult.
Soon, it came time for the Resembool Spring Festival.
{Next Chapter: A Spring Festival, A Sinful Visit}