• Solo • A Delayed Letter

[Yrmellyn Cole]

A Delayed Letter

Trial 1 of Cylus 718

The painter Yrmellyn Cole was restless.

Zida had passed without any news about the apprentice she had been hoping to meet up with, a young boy from Rynmere named Rudi. According to Rudi himself, the first trial of Cylus was his birthday and if he really had been eleven years old last arc he would be twelve today. If Rudi had been there she would perhaps not have paid so much attention to this fact, because Yrmellyn had grown up with people who didn’t pay much attention to birthdays, but as he wasn’t there she was free to fantasize about arranging fantastic birthday celebrations. Wonderful food. Fun entertainment. Sweets.

She had left Ne’haer in mid-Vhalar and arrived in Rharne at the end of the season. The supply of apartments for sale had been miserable but expensive. Yrmellyn had finally decided to buy two apartments, one of them a renovation project, as they had only been sold as a pair. She had told herself that she would repair the sacked apartment and sell it for a good price but instead of working diligently during Zida she had roamed around in the city without getting anything done. Now it was Cylus and she would have to work in the dark. Yrmellyn berated herself for this while she walked to the Cathedral despite the nearly unbearable cold, in order to ask for letters and news.

The dream in Vhalar. I dreamt about him. He was looking for me. I knew it, but he isn’t here. Was it all just a dream then? Am I on a wild goose hunt?

Yrmellyn had found it best to not write to the boy in Rynmere. The atmosphere had been dangerous at the time she had left the city, and according to what she had heard it had gone worse. Going there to search for the boy was out of question. She had never told anybody that she was a wizard, but this didn’t make her assume she would be safe there. In her experience, there were always people who were prepared to point out a stranger as guilty of this or that, if they thought they would earn a reward.

She arrived at the offices near the Cathedral and asked if there was any letters for her. A priestess rummaged through a small pile of papers and shook her head. No. No letter. Disappointed, Yrmellyn continued to the Cathedral and went in, looking for warmth and light. She was freezing and she wanted to come in from the darkness of Cylus and strenghten herself before she would have to walk back to her home, without the comfort of hope she had felt on the way here. She didn’t expect the boy and his potential company to arrive in Cylus, but why was there not even a letter for her? A spike of wrath shot through her at this thought. It felt like the immortals were deliberately trolling her, despite that she knew it was irrational of her to feel that way. The immortals, she thought, were probably busy with more important things than her and her little life. The likelihood was high that they didn’t even know that she existed, and cared even less. This cathedral was Ilarens seat, but Yrmellyn didn’t see the immortal anywhere. She never had.

Typical for immortals ... invisible when you need them ...

A choir of priestesses stood in the well-lit center of the cathedral, practicing at a hymn. The sound of their song rose from toward the ceiling high above, spread out through the whole enormous room and resonated in the shadows near the entrance where the painter sat on a bench near a big stone pillar. Once upon a time Yrmellyn Cole had been told that she had an amazing voice, but she had never had the chance to school it properly. When she had sung, it had been for pennies on the streets in her lower teens and later for light entertainment at parties. She had never sung a hymn. For a moment it occurred to her that she wanted to join the clerics and feel her own voice blend into the nearly unbearably beautiful song. Oh, if she could stand there in the heart of the cathedral and sing until all her dark thoughts were expelled and all that remained was the music!

A gust of ice-cold wind and the low sound of the entrance door closing made her pull the cloak tighter around herself. Yrmellyn continued to listen to the hymn, but her wish to sing along was gone.

“I heard you are looking for letters.”

The voice was low and if it was female or male was impossible to say. Yrmellyn looked in the direction it had come from. She saw nobody there, just the pillar of stone. After a few trills of confusion she looked at the choir again.

“There’s more than one place to look for letters.”

The voice again. Yrmellyn glanced to the side without turning her head. There was nobody there as far as she was able to see. This was starting to creep her out. She didn’t know if she ought to respond. It felt like it would make it legit to hear stone pillars speak. Only insane people could have that kind of weird imaginations. She didn’t want to behave like she was crazy and speak to the empty air.

Despite this she finally inquired: “Is it?”

She had just not been able to not ask. The hope to somehow find a letter in another place than at the only address she had left to anybody in Rynmere was ridiculous, laughable, absurd. She knew this. Nonetheless she hoped. But the moment after she had allowed herself to ask the question she regretted it and said: “Go away!”

The voice spoke again. “There are several letters waiting for people to find them. Perhaps one is for you. What is your name?”

Yrmellyn felt her heart beat hard and her mouth go dry. What madness was this? Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to say her name or anything else of importance before she had understood what was happening to her. Steeling herself for unknown horrors, she decided to investigate the phenomenon.

“Who is asking?” she said, her voice tense. “I cannot speak with what I cannot see. Stop hiding behind the pillar and show me your face.”

“I would prefer to not do that” said the voice. “But I can assure you that I am of flesh and blood just like yourself. There are means for concealing oneself when it is needed. Many things can be found at Hannah’s. Also letters, sometimes.”

[Yrmellyn Cole]

“Hannah’s? Why would they have letters for me?”

Yrmellyn waited, while she very slowly and silently rose and took a step toward the stone pillar. She aimed at revealing the person she assumed must be hiding behind it. When nobody answered she took one more slow step. At this point the hymn increased to a crescendo. Yrmellyn welcomed this, because she hoped it would help her to totally conceal the sound of her steps. When she was near enough, she dashed forward in a sudden long leap that took her past the pillar so she could see ... nothing. There was nobody behind the pillar! She stared at the empty place. Then she felt a whiff of cold air again and heard the low sound of the door closing.

“Where are you? Answer me!” Even as the painter said this she knew that no answer would come. She rushed to the door and pushed it up, but there was nobody outside. Feeling shaken and crept out she closed the door, returned in and sat down on the bench again. Perhaps it would help her calm down if she sat still and listened to the hymn and thought this through?

The only “Hannah’s” Yrmellyn knew was a small potion shop at a backstreet in the shabby Dust Quarter. It was named “Hannah’s Healers” and they were selling home-made potion, tonics and medicines there. It felt really unbelievable that anybody would send letters for Yrmellyn to that address. There was no reason ... it just didn’t make any sense.

What had happened to her a few bits ago could have been pure imagination. Perhaps she had wished so intensely for news that it had made her hear things that hadn’t been real. This possibility felt reassuring in one way and unnerving in another. If it had been real it was scary. If she had started to hear voices like crazy folks do, it was even scarier.

She tried to think again. Who could possibly send a letter to a potion shop and hope that the proprietor would contact her and give her a letter? The only person she expected a letter from had been told to send it to the Cathedral’s offices, a reliable and safe place. She had told Laurits Verran the address the last time she had spoken with him in his brother’s potion shop in Rynmere. So...

It suddenly struck her that the potion maker’s brother, the man who had taught her the basics about alchemy, might have his own contacts in Rharne among people in his own field of knowledge. What it he knew the people at Hannah’s and had sent a letter for her there instead of to the Cathedral? What if he hadn’t memorized her instructions and Rharne was the only part of her address he had recalled? This hypothesis was so wonderfully simple and harmless that the painter felt a bit less tense when she thought of it. Then again, she was aware that it could be nothing else than a wish to make the odd turn of events make sense. It would add a lacking piece to a pattern that would otherwise be impossible to deal with and make it all be so natural and logical.

There was only one problem with it. She wouldn’t even have thought of this possibility, if she hadn’t been approached by somebody invisible, who had said there could be a letter for her at Hannah’s - or perhaps just imagined that this had happened. Even if it really had happened, they had just said “”Hannah’s” and not Hannah’s Healers, so it wasn’t even safe to assume that it really was the potion shop they had meant. Chances were that if the invisible person really existed they could just be looking to lure her into a trap and rob her. Perhaps they had been in the Cathedral offices for reasons of their own, happened to hear her inquire for letters in vain, and jumped at the opportunity to use the knowledge for criminal ends?

Invisible! How could anybody even be invisible? As Yrmellyn was a mage she was no stranger to magic, so she guessed some kind of magic unknown to her could be involved. It felt logical, but it did nothing to make her feel less uneasy.

The hymn ended. An enormous and profound silence settled over the room. The painter could hear her own fast breath. It seemed overly loud in the stillness. Her heart beat in her breast, it’s pace synchronized with her breath, and she became aware that her right hand was tightly clenched. Slowly and deliberately she opened it and flexed the fingers.

She knew that she wouldn’t be able to just forget what had happened.

It was already Culys and no letter had arrived from Laurits Verran.

Or perhaps it had?

The farfetched idea about connections between the potion shops in Rynmere and Rharne was the only idea she had about how to find a potential letter sent to her on an unexpected address. She didn’t want to do it, but in her thoughts she had already decided to walk to the Dust Quarter and investigate if Hannah’s Healers had something for her. It would take a while, because she would need to pop into many taverns on the way there, in order to keep herself reasonably warm. Luckily the whole city was littered with taverns, bars, inns, speakeasies, you name it. The alcohol imbued culture of Rharne had it’s drawbacks, but it made it easier to move around the city in Cylus, when the weather was unforgiving.

She put the hat on her head and pulled on her gloves. With the cloak wrapped tightly around her, she went out into the darkness and cold of Cylus, following a vague hint from an invisible stranger.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

The darkness and cold of Culys wrapped itself around the painter where she walked from the Cathedral towards the stairs down to Earth Quarters. It was like entering an entirely other world. Her visit in the cathedral with its lights and music soon felt unreal and distant like a dream.

She reached the stairs and began the descent from the highest point of the city to the lowest. It was always with a vertiginous feeling of walking on the air high up above the city she entered the stairway from the temple side and could see the buildings and streets below, the wall, the ramshackle Dust Quarters outside it and the landscape beyond. All this wasn’t visible now. Numerous small lights from lanterns and windows shone in the darkness. It was like looking down and finding a starry sky instead of the city.

Feeling dizzy, she forced herself to move carefully and not give in to a sudden need to speed up her pace just to get this done. Accidents on this staircase weren’t unheard of. The risk for slipping on ice and snow was real this time of the arc and there was no shelter against the wind. The painter held on to the railing and focused all her attention on making sure to find safe foothold on each step. She didn’t want to think it, but the though was there anyways ...

I don’t want to fall and die, not now, not here, not fly from the stairs like a mindless drunkard ...

It wasn’t until Yrmellyn reached the street end of the stairs and entered Earth Quarters that she realized that she had been holding her breath. Her heart was beating hard in her chest. She breathed out and frozen mist spread like smoke in the air in front of her face.

Immortals, it’s so cold! And what kind of fool’s errand am I on? I should go home ...

She should go home, but the mysterious experience in the cathedral made her continue. Instead she sought refuge in a tavern she passed by. There were so many taverns here in Rharne and they all used to be full of life, but the place she entered was half-empty and calm, no doubt due to the weather. She bought a cup of mulled wine and sat down at an empty table near the fireplace. The wine was flavored with honey and spices and filled her body with a pleasant warmth. Nobody approached her and she didn’t approach anyone. And so Yrmellyn sat alone and thought of the walk ahead and planned which taverns to drop into on the way to Dust Quarter in order to keep up her body warmth.

The last swig ...

Her cup was empty, the wine consumed. It was time to hit the streets again. She pulled the cloak closely around her and left. It felt a bit warmer outdoors now, but she knew it was just an illusion created by the alcohol. A dangerous illusion- Sometimes people drank so much that they thought they were warm and didn’t feel that they were freezing to death, but she wasn’t going to be that careless. She stopped only at one more tavern at the main street, and then she was nearly at the gates.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

When Yrmellyn reached Hannah’s Healers, nestled away in the backstreets of the Dust Quarter, she was happy to get indoors. The small tonics and potions shop was dedicated to helping the poor and you could find a lot of different potions there, said to cure most anything. A good place in the poor part of the city.

The front windows used to let a lot of light into the store, but not now in Cylus. Instead a number of lanterns made it feel warm and inviting. Old Hannah stood at the counter, occupied with the preparation and mixing of potions. Their shop was as usually looking messy, but not randomly messy, actually just a bit cluttered because the small space made it necessary to store materials and produce everywhere, including under the ceiling. The many bunches dry herbs hanging there spread a nice and spicy fragrance. They kept a fire burning in a small stove so it was warm and cozy there. Just being in the shop made Yrmellyn feel more healthy than she had been moments ago out on the streets.

“Oh, so there you are ...” The old woman smiled at Yrmellyn. Her voice was soft when she continued. “Somebody told me they have a message for you.”

Yrmellyn waited for Hannah to continue. She wanted to ask about the weird experience in the Cathedral but found it best to postpone it a bit.

Hannah poured the potion she had made into a simple bottle and then she took a cloth and wiped her hands on it. “There. Just a moment ...”

Yrmellyn watched while Hannah walked over to the narrow door and locked it.

“Now we can be sure of not being disturbed. Take the stool in the corner over there and come and sit with me at the counter while I get something for you.”
Yrmellyn nodded and did as Hannah said. She expected the woman to fetch a letter and give it to her, but instead Hannah put a scroll on the counter. She sat down on another stool, beside Yrmellyn. Then she rolled up the scroll. It was blank. Hannah found a pen and Yrmellyn watched when she started to write.

“She is here now, as I told you.”

To Yrmellyn’s surprise an answer appeared under Hannah’s text: “On time! I don’t have much room for this ... can she see what I’m writing ?”

“Yes, she’s sitting next to me at the counter in my shop. It’s only us two and the door is locked.”

“Good. Greetings Yrmellyn, it’s me, Laurits Verran. I have news, not so happy news I’m afraid. I would have loved to be more detailed, but the situation forces me to keep this message short. So. When you told me the whereabouts of my mother-in-law that old witch Anne Brandon I finally found her and my son Rudi after all these arcs since she disappeared with him. I understand that this can be a surprise, but it’s how it is. I didn’t take the boy to the orphanage as he isn’t an orphan, he’s mine. This was a good thing, because everything is going to the beneath here in Rynmere and we had to get out of Rynmere. Now we’re hiding. My mother in law is as she is, but I had to bring her out of harm’s reach. The king and the whole kingdom of Rynmere has gone insane. They are hunting down people and burning them alive on public pyres. They can pounce on anybody, but they pounce more on ragged people with a suspect appearance. Had to bring her with us, for the boy’s sake. We are looking to find a ship and travel wherever we can. We followed the coast northwards to Norr Port and that’s where we are now. I can’t write much more because we need to move again. If you have something to say, be brief.”

All this was written at high pace and Yrmellyn stared at the text in shock. Not only was the scroll an amazing device, the message it conveyed was extreme and scary. She didn’t know what to believe. It seemed like there was little room for questions though, so she gave priority to the most important.

“Give Rudi a hug from me. Tell Anne that I’m not bailing from my promise. And take care of you all Laurits. May all good powers protect you.”

“I will.”

He didn’t write anything more. The text started to fade even as she looked at it and the scroll went blank again. Hannah put it away. Yrmellyn just sat. She put her elbows on the counter and covered her face with her hands.

“Have a cup of tea Yrmellyn. “ Hannah put a mug on the counter. The painter took it hesitantly. It tasted cinnamon and other spices. She drank it silently, shivering despite the warmth in the shop.

“Sometimes the only thing we can do is hope” said Hannah. “They are at least in the north, and at the port. Perhaps they will find that ship and sail as soon as Ashan comes.”

“I left them behind.” Yrmellyn spoke slowly. “My apprentice, his grandmother and my only real friend in Rynmere. I never thought ...”

“How could anybody have guessed that something like that could happen in a civilized kingdom like Rynmere? Don’t accuse yourself, girl. It’s not your fault.”

Yrmellyn drank the rest of the tea and allowed Hannah to give her a spoonful of an unknown potion. Feeling a bit better, she remembered that she had some questions to raise before she left.

“Hannah, how ... that scroll ... how could it send text from afar?”

“I don’t know how. I just know that it works. Laurits and we here in Hannah’s have business together once in a while and he gave it to me. An echo-scroll he called it.”

“Echo-scroll.” The word told her nothing. She had never heard about that kind of scroll before. As it was obvious that Hannah didn’t know more either, Yrmellyn asked her last question.

“The cathedral. Someone spoke to me there and told me you had a letter for me. But there was nobody to see, only a voice and then it was gone. What ...”

Hannah smiled. “A potion. The effect is very brief. Don’t ask me too many questions Yrmellyn. We all have our secrets of our trades, yes?”

Yrmellyn nodded. The curiosity of the attunement spark burnt like a pyre in her mind, but she quenched it an abstained from asking more. Hannah had helped her and she didn’t want to annoy the old woman. Perhaps she would need her if Laurits would want to get in touch with her again.

She went outdoors again and started walking home.
The darkness swallowed her.
It was Cylus.

[Whisper]

Yrmellyn Cole

Awarded Points
10
These points can/cannot be spent in magic

Awarded Knowledge
Investigation: Investigting an eerie phenomenon
Stealth: Taking one small silent step at the time
Stealth: Taking advantage of a higher sound nearby to cover the sound of your steps
Psychology: Reasoning logically with yourself in order to calm down
Discipline: Abstaining from giving in to vertigo
Investigation: Understanding when it’s best to not ask more questions

Echo scrolls: A device people can use for sending messages from afar

Awarded Extras
Loot & Losses

• None

Injuries

• None

Renown

• None

Comments

Oh the intrigue in this... even before we got to read the message, I was desperate to know what was coming. Now I want to see what's next for her. Enjoyed this a lot!

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Thank ye.