Chapter 5: Bloodlines

"Aromir, son of Kandir, son of Setham, I am Ac'el Terras. A millennium ago Izodir's father, Craftsmaster, found that if he combined copper, silver, nickel and tin, at various amounts and pressures that he could make different metals. He made the best weapons, armors, chests, and so on, because he knew which formula to use. He shared his art with no one, and soon became the head of his order. During his reign, he was presented with many gifts and queries in the field of metal, and the most unique of either of them was a living metal. It wasn't sentient, or could be killed, but it would never harden, no matter how you treated it. Craftsmaster hid the mysterious metal away from the other craftsmen, because he knew that using it would lead to great disaster. When the Craftsmaster married The Lady, Izodir's mother, they left the fraternity to make a life together and to raise children. To keep the living metal away from anyone, the Craftsmaster took it with him. In the midst of the new couple's settling it was forgotten." "Soon Izodir was born of The Lady. When the time came, Craftsmaster began work on his first son's coming of age gift. While making this gift the vile that the living metal was locked in fell from a shelf and into the forge while Craftsmaster was working the steel. The result was a crude form of the arm brace you wore for the last ten days. It was unsightly and rough. Had he been solely responsible for the finished product, he would have run into his own sword. He took the brace to The Lady and asked her to either repair it or destroy it. She did him one better." "First, she removed the impurities left from the raw coals in the furnace. When that was done she shaped me and refined me so that her husband could polish me. What she didn't expect from either task was that her magic gave me a consciousness. The metal that fell into the forge was a piece of old magic from days far forgotten. I even do not know of its origin save for the fact that I was once piece of something great and terrible." Izodir took over from that point, his gaze at the branches that grew from the marble columns distant and glazed. "When my mother and father presented me with Ac'el Terras, I was disgusted. At that time I was known throughout the land as the great swordsman of that generation. I didn't need a silly fad as a protection, when I had lived soundly enough by my blade. Even then my own reputation was a shield enough from those capable of touching my talent." "I left the brace at the Shadow Forge and left to join my brother, The General, in stopping a war. During the fighting for Sadoc- Min a squire protecting his knight caught my off balance and ran a battle standard, flag and all, through my left forearm. They cut it off to keep me from dying." "So ashamed was I that returned to the Shadow Forge. While lamenting my fate a voice called out to me. Not just a voice a hunger. When I searched it out and found its source, I believed for a time that I had gone mad in my sorrow. A year later my father and I had made me a new arm of steel so that I wouldn't look disfigured. The first night I had it on, I heard the same calling as before. I went to the room where the brace was kept and without reservation put the arm brace on." "I didn't shrink inside of my mind like was the design of my mother's magic. Instead I joined with the Ac'el Terras, and was made whole again, almost. Ac'el had shaped himself into an arm and hand and when I willed it to move, it moved. I was never the swordsman I was again during my life but I was yet whole." "Through the rest of my life Ac'el learned speech and his thoughts were welcome. Before I died, I found the metal that catalyzed my savior. With it my brother Magirim and I raised this tower, Di'Girel. The day it was raised I died and my consciousness was pulled into the tower. Ac'el and I were still linked however and I gave him one last task. It was to find the Wielder and bring him to me. He has been successful." Aromir tried to let it sink in that his life was from this point and maybe so very much earlier was destined to be so much more than a meager existence. There were a myriad of questions Aromir could have asked of Izodir, and to both their relief he asked the right one. "Who am I?" "Aromir, have you ever heard of the People of Fate? They are a race of humans that lived long ago, longer even than before my grandparents' grandparents were alive. To varying degrees of intensity, they can see the future. Also to varying degrees can they use magic, or could rather, the art has been lost since then. They are swift warriors and in their prime conquered all of Eselia. When I was alive a peace had been brokered between the mundane human nations and the People. Ten men, each the head of their nations, were given a ring that would have them ensure peace between themselves. During this reign of peace the world saw an era of invention and discovery. The mundane humans began to learn and experiment, and think and imagine, and it frightened the leaders of the People of Fate. To control this surge of discovery the Ringmen created a fraternity to control the sudden influx of knowledge. These men were chosen because they were each masters of applying such learning and seeing where new knowledge could be used." "What the Ringmen had created was the Fraternity of the Craftsmen, which in his time, my father was the head of. The People of fate were appeased with this move by the Ringmen and the peace continued to last, until they arranged my father's marriage to my mother. My mother was The Lady. You see, to see the future, any person born of the People had to be 'Awakened'. The person to do this gave their life to study magic and only magic forgoing the gift of the future. Their marriage was a plot between the Ringmen and the leaders of the People to breed a gifted human who could imagine and create. Both of my parents saw it as the potential for the world to plunge into a new kind of war, so terrible that the world would not survive." "My father and mother fled the capitol the night of their marriage and settled deep into land no man had ever explored. There, using her magic and his knowledge, they built a keep in one day and named it Shadow Forge for it would be always unknown to those my parents fled from. The two races of humans soon became stale in their powers. My father's disappearance led to the breakdown of the Craftsmen, and as it was the only seat of learning for five centuries, nothing new was learned and much was forgotten. Without my mother's gifts to awaken the young, The People of Fate became powerless in a single generation." "The night my parents abandoned their people, they doomed their progress, but they also saved it. My mother had a sister. The night of the wedding my mother charged her with a task that would last a millennium. She told her to bear only one daughter, and for her daughter to only bear one daughter, and so on. When the bloodline thinned enough for the magic oath to be null a son would be born. That son would be hold a power to bring peace and unite an entire world. On her death bed my mother told us of our aunt and her mission. She told us that we were to together create a weapon fit for the son, fit for the Wielder. Each of us was to die and remain on Eselia in some fashion to train him to hold great power." "Aromir, your mother was the last of my aunt's line. You are the wielder and I am here to teach you."