Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story by Kirill Klevanski (essential reading .txt) 📗

peace, crumbled to dust. The ancient abode was waking up from a long sleep. Shaking, it threw off the ice shackles.

Ash, who had surrounded his friends with a protective shield made of fire, was thinking about the world. The nameless planed changed again. For the umpteenth time in a very short period, its millennia-old foundations have been shaken. The First Master, eternal in his unshakable indifference, spoke his Word; Helmer was getting ready to march again; Erlnd died, distraught in his rage; and now the Order of the Mage King had been awakened.

Something was happening in the nameless world. Ash feared the worst — the Gods preparing to turn the page of the Book of Fate.

Perhaps, only perhaps, the end of the Age of the Drunken Monk was approaching. And as the legends said — at the junction of two eras, amazing, but equally terrible things were bound to happen.

Chapter 56

1st day of the Month of Art, 313. A.D., the High House

T he High House, or, as it was called by the travelers, the Sea of Forests, was a vast area consisting of various forests, from deciduous and coniferous, to the jungles on the very south of the continent. Legends said that when the Gods were still young, and humans were still apes, one of the future Heavenly Ministers, then the very young Asal, planted the seeds of the first trees. A hundred years later, the first forest was born from them, and Asal called it the Crystal Forest, and it was from it that the first elf was born from the first summer leaf.

Asal embraced the elf and raised it as if he were his own child. The God of Nature touched the brow of the first Leafborn and put wisdom into his mind. He then touched his heart and filled it with love for every living creature. And then he dropped a tear on his lips, granting him and his kin the knowledge of Words and music that even today, hundreds of eras later, people flocked to the elven capital of the Crystal Forest to listen to the songs of their bards.

Centuries passed, followed by millennia, and the great tree scattered its seeds around. They sprouted, gained strength, and carried their fruit even further, whispering something to the wind. And so the High House was born, the boundless abode of the forest elves. No one knew exactly how many cities there were in this seemingly endless forest, because no one had ever attended the meeting of their rules. And if anyone had been lucky enough to be present at that event, they certainly wouldn’t tell us anything.

No, not because they were, as the good old Blackbeard would say “turned into hedgehogs,” but because only a friend of the elves could enter the Crystal Forest, and who in their right mind would betray their friends?

In summer and winter, in spring and autumn, the High House attracted thousands of wanderers seeking beauty, fine wine, and festivities. The tall, distant crowns of the trees hid them from the midday heat, and in the evening, they moved to open up the view of the starry sky. In the shadow and the light of Irmaril, under the snow and the caress of summer, the High House remained one of the most amazing places on the continent of Mormanon.

A man was walking across the grass carpet of the Crystal Forest. Even by the standards of this odd, mystical land, he looked odd in his tattered clothes. Even more striking was the chipped staff he was leaning on. Tapping with it in front of himself, he trudged wearily. One look in his odd-colored eyes was enough to notice that he was exhausted.

He thought that a week had passed his disappearance, but when he finally managed to free himself from Hu-Chin’s clutches, he realized that he had been kept captive for almost three months. He collapsed from exhaustion, only to find himself lying somewhere in a forest, under the sun of the first spring. He didn’t know how he got there or what day it was. The last thing he remembered was absorbing the dragon’s essence.

As he walked, not knowing where his feet were taking him, spirits whispered around him. It was the first time they had seen a mortal who could hear and speak to them, even if he didn’t know about it. The sleeping fairies woke up, intrigued by their “relative.” The spirits of flowers and leaves, which weren’t allowed access into the Feyre although they were called fairies and fae, hurried over. They raced along the paths known only to them, until they finally appeared before the radiant eyes of the King of Princes, the ruler of the Crystal Forest.

He listened to their jumbled up stories and ordered the Leaf Guard to bring this stranger to his palace so he could see what had disturbed the little spirits.

Meanwhile, while the strongest warriors of the High House were flying through the trees, Ash was losing consciousness. There was so little strength left in him that even breathing seemed like an effort. After the clear air of the Eastern Reach, the heaviness of the forest’s atmosphere seemed almost choking. Unable to take it anymore, Ash fell face-first into the grass.

A pair of strong hands caught him cautiously before he collapsed, but he felt nothing anymore. After who knew how long, he finally fell into a blissful, dreamless slumber.

A dream later

Ash came to on the threshold of a magnificent creation of clearly divine power. A gigantic tree towered above him. It spread its branches over the lake, which in its purity looked like a bowl of tears. The mage didn’t doubt that it was miles deep even though it seemed that its bottom could be touched by hand. As for the tree itself, an entire chapter wouldn’t be enough to describe it.

Hundreds of balconies and houses,