>>5912297“You’re the one who inspired all this, you know,” she says gently.
“ME?”
She takes your hand in hers, and squeezes, staring into your eyes.
“You showed me I didn’t have to be alone, Ezreal,” she says. “You taught me I was being selfish… Not thinking about how magic could benefit anyone besides myself, thinking only about my OWN freedom.”
You stare at her, unsure how to reply.
“Thank you,” she says. “I mean it. Now, thanks to you… Look how many people we’re helping! Don’t you see how many people we’re freeing? How can the Gods of Freedom be AGAINST this?”
“Show me the army,” you sigh.
“It’s NOT an—”
“I know, I know,” you groan.
And show you she does. Izzy takes you into a great construction of stone—well, ‘great’ by the standards of this place. As you travel there, you note the efforts which the people of this… Place… Have already put into making it more like the sacred groves of the Sylvan Realms: they have planted many a tree, though most are still but saplings. They tend to them with reverence and care, if with a somewhat unpracticed hand, and amongst them they have also begun the amateurishly cultivate small plots of wild and domesticated food-plants, such as berries and herbs and squashes. It’s not MUCH, but then again these are mostly city-folk, from the world’s LARGEST city, and this land is not so fertile or fecund as the blessed and feytouch wilderness of the elven lands.
(And you could make it better… So much better… With what you’ve learned, with what you could yet discover and refine...)
You set aside the thought for a moment, an echo of both Izirina’s ambitions and the teachings and ideology of the Wild Gods of the elves. Inside the stone construction, you find a small cadre of men and women—some familiar others less so. Each of them is young, but not too young: adult, strong, and standing almost at attention. You look questioningly to Izzy, who looks a little embarrassed.
“I sent word ahead,” she says.
“Magic letter?” you ask.
She nods.
You do not recognize most of the people here, or half-recognize them at best. Each is clad in black, though none wear wizard-hats as Izzy does, and so you doubt they are affiliated directly with Archmage Theresa Henzler in spite of their sartorial affectation. A few of them you recognize as former research subjects and patients of your own efforts to cure the lizardman-engineered ‘dragon-pox’, now cured and made strong. Others are total strangers. One… One is technically family, and a rather odd individual to see in such company.
“ADOLF?” you balk, recognizing your father’s sister’s… Well, a cousin-by-marriage, essentially, on the human side of your family.
