Everlight Family/Elios/Burn

Burning Missives

Everlight

"You sure you want to go wasting that on letters, Aeravon?"

Elios turned his neck stiffly to address his injured companion, who was propped up at the field infirmary's folding table, bloodied bandages on an alarming proportion of his body, busily scribing something on a stack of parchment. He did not appear to hear the question.

"You could toss some of that over here, with today's missives. It's going to start the stove up real fast..."

A myriad of scrolls were stacked in a haphazard "log cabin" in front of the blond-haired and much-bandaged Count of Wailing Wood. Broken wax seals with a variety of colours and sigils could be seen amidst the pile through the opening of the stove. The healers, who normally would have chased the Count away from this sort of duty, were all passed out on cots exhausted after having worked a double-shift to care for the two commanders, the lion's share of the cavalry, and a handful of infantry.

Elios continued speaking as he fumbled blood-stickied fingers on a flint-steel.

"It was a long while ago I told those folk in the capital to stop wasting parchment on copying personal communiques to everyone in the realm, but I guess they want to keep the paper mills in business, or more likely just try to embarrass each other with their posturing. Or they'd rather say they listen, and then do whatever they please anyway. S'pose I should be thankful, not sure how else we'd get a fire going in this bedamned wet sleethole of a region. You hear that Kannoktet? Your weather blows goats."

Velaryon

Aeravon affixed his seal on the letter and sent off the runner. He sighed. The wounds pained him dearly yet he suppressed the pain. The Kingdom was spiraling out of control and it appeared clear that the King was delusional in his fairy land where everything happens when he wills and how he wills it. The majority of his closest associates and ringleaders of this shamble called a government were no better, and he was sad to see his former knight Demetri likewise struggling to look beyond the horizon and understand the tides.

Then he spotted Elios, his faithful friend. "Elios the Stout", he whispered. "A man worthy to dine with the gods." "For how long will we defend this barren wasteland we call a home, my friend. We're left with a penniless land and the area size of a giant to protect. For how long can we last, I wonder, before the hordes overrun us."

The dark clouds were fast approaching from sunken Nuzanki and the night was drawing cold and bitter.