The Order of Elysia

Chapter 1- Unsettling prospects

Lilly sailed down the eastern coast of the Realm and the farther south they travelled, the more distinctly the landscape began to change. While the shores of Eiradorn rose sharply with cliffs and craggy stone, occasionally speckled with fir trees, dense beech and oak forests covered the land of Orrenwaith and dipped it into a rich and vibrant green tone.

Every two or three days, they laid anchor and more passengers boarded the large ship. They were all being brought to the same destination, but unlike Lilly, most of them had come by free will and looked forward to pledging their lives to the Order. Most even considered it an honour, for the Order granted life and service on the island to only a small fraction of those who desired it. Lilly knew many would have sold their own mothers to get the opportunity to join, as even though it wasn’t a lush life, it was said to be one of recognition. She remembered the imperial announcements that were nailed onto the town’s boards of the Empire annually, which invited those who were searching for a greater purpose, who wanted to fill their lives with meaning and believed they might be worthy enough to be chosen, to contribute their talents and skills to the Order and subsequently to Solendris, so, in many regions pre-selections were hosted, as hundreds were drawn to the call of Elysia.

Few among them seemed to have suffered a fate similar to Lilly’s. But by the end of the first week of their journey, Lilly had met a young woman named Dunja, who was unmistakably carrying a child beneath her heart. She had caught Lily’s attention because, like herself, she rarely spoke to the others and at night, Lilly could hear Dunja’s muffled sobbing from the cot beside her. They hadn’t talked much, but Lilly had shared her supper one evening, after Dunja couldn’t hold her own back in.

When they finally crossed into the province of Tyr, the air grew noticeably warmer and Lily saw the famed grasslands she had heard so much about, for the first time, but as they approached the Bay of Drosven, she began to have her troubles with the heat. Never before had she travelled so far south and she wasn’t used to the warm, humid air out at sea. Looking westward, she was stunned to see yellow sand beaches stretching along the mainland’s edge. From afar, it looked soft and fluffy and Lily couldn’t help but wonder what the sand really felt like.

She stripped off her vest in order t

o avoid sweating and glanced down her thin arm. The weeks - almost four months, as she now knew, that she had spent in the dungeon with barely anything to eat - had taken their toll on her body. She had lost more weight than she would’ve liked to admit and if her father would have still been alive, he would have probably told her that she looked like skin and bones.

Just as she was about to let her mind wander off deeper towards her father, Lilly spotted their destination in the distance and held her breath for a moment. Under different circumstances, she would have been excited to visit the Temple Isle, having already heard and read so much about it. As a child, she had always imagined herself praying to the Goddess of the Sun in the Temple of Elysia one day. What an irony.

Elysia- the goddess to whom Solendris owed its name. The goddess who held a protective hand over the Empire while it carried out great heroic deeds and atrocities in her name, the goddess to whom the island and the Order had dedicated themselves to. The very same Order that had made it their all-encompassing and sole mission to protect the Empire under Elysia’s blessing by any means necessary.

The temple rose radiant and imposing in the center of the island. Even from a distance, the white stone from which it was built could be seen clearly. It reflected the sun almost as strongly as a mirror. The island measured about ten kilometers in width at its broadest point and was quite densely built toward its center. However, it was surrounded by a ring of trees and meadows that stretched along the edge of the island. Rising around the ring, stood several sentinel towers, seemingly built to protect the island, for they offered a wide view in all directions -ready to spot any foe who might bring danger upon the Isle. Some of the towers even overlooked the open sea, as if expecting something might be lurking out there, waiting for the right moment to devour the island as a whole.

It was surrounded by treacherous waters, waves, almost two stories high, crashing onto the cliffs that framed the northern and eastern reaches of the Isle, protecting it from the water masses beneath them and making it nearly impossible to leave or reach without permission or without meeting one’s certain death when trying to.

Now, with the Isle in view, the other passengers started to notice it as well and it didn’t take long, for about three dozen of them to gather on deck, watching the approaching landmass.

"I can’t wait to see the temple up close.”, said a petite, but athletic blonde woman with a pixie-cut, who was standing at the stern rail.

"And I’m looking forward to the combat training, I hope I’ll gain an axe glyph.”, added a broad-shouldered man with brown skin beside her, gazing out toward the distant island.

"I’ve heard they have the finest masters of the battle axe here.”

"If you survive the initiation.”, scoffed a tall, gangly man standing next to them, eyeing the pair with doubt in his expression.

Lilly listened to the group’s conversation and although she had preferred solitude over company ever since her release from the dungeon, curiosity got the better of her. She had read a fair amount about the magic of this place and she had heard quite a bit about the High Sovereign, but she had never paid much attention to the details of the initiation process or the different ranks within the Order.

"The initiation?” she asked the group, startled and quite a bit louder than she had anticipated. Lilly instantly bit her tongue at her remark, she wasn’t used to socialising and the thought struck her mind, that maybe it was incautious of her to let them know how little she knew.

All three Initiates turned toward her at once, eyeing her with honest surprise and Lilly could see that one of them, the tall man, carried a glyph on the back of his neck that looked like a spiral-cube, shimmering through behind his dark-brown ponytail. Interrupting Lilly’s curious inspection of his glyph, the lanky man finally replied:

"You didn’t know that? Oh… You must be from Eiradorn." he said, looking up and down at Lilly, with a subtle but unmistakably smug grin.

Just as Lilly was about to snap back and inform him that Eiradorn boasted one of the highest literacy rates on the entire continent, the man added: "Dressed layered like that? You have to be."

"Don’t mind Konrad, he thinks he knows everything.", the small blonde woman cut in, rolling her eyes demonstratively.

She turned back to Lilly and continued: "Yeah, the initiation. We have to pass the trial in order to proceed and if we don’t, well, you know...They say on average only nine out of a dozen get to become a Disciple.”

Lilly’s eyes widened and she silently grasped for air. No one had mentioned deadly rites of passage and she wondered why anyone would willingly join such an Order. Wasn’t the Order always preaching justice, light and the protection of the innocent? None of this made any sense, but on the other hand, considering her fate, she should not have been surprised about gruesomeness like that.

"What kind of trial?" Lilly asked, her voice tense.

"No one really knows." the woman answered with a shrug. "They come up with something new every year. New ways for Elysia to judge whether we’re worthy… or not. I, for my part, have been training for this for a long time, like many of us have. It is such an incredible honour to be here."

"Wow, she really doesn’t know what she is getting into, is she?”, Konrad glanced at Lilly in disbelief, before he continued lecturing her in a slightly pretentious manner:

"You do know, that we will be sent onto missions when the basic training is over- some more dangerous than others, to war or even to cursed or plagued lands if the Sovereign, the Emperor-King’s council or whoever else makes the decisions think it will contribute to the greater good of the Realm. And do you realize that Elysia herself eliminates the unworthy by forcing their paths into deadly situations like having the sea swallow them alive, do you? ", he made a gesture towards the dark waters of the ocean beneath the ship, but he wasn’t finished yet:

"And the training at the Temple Island will test our worthiness and make us stronger. It will harden us for our upcoming tasks and will help us grow above ourselves… Are you sure you want to be doing this? You don’t seem to know what you are getting into, well to be honest you don’t seem like you have a chance.”, he ended his speech of horrors.

Lilly swallowed the gigantic lump that had formed deep in her throat. The pony-tailed man was right, but also wrong. She was not just ‘not sure’ if she wanted to be there, she knew she didn’t want to be there at all, but she had no choice. She tried to hide the panic rising within her, she had to play it cool, or else she would immediately be identified as the weak link, a target.

"Uhm, yeah, I know. I was just trying to find out if you know anything about this year's initiation process in particular.”, Lilly mumbled, trying to sound confident, unsure how the three had perceived her petty attempt to lie.

A glimpse of pity flickered through the blonde woman’s expression, when she looked at the stammering Lilly, whilst Konrad squinted his eyes at her words. Lilly nodded at them, pressed out a quick ‘thank you’ and spun around, leaving the group behind as quickly as possible. She didn’t want those people’s pity and she for sure did not want them to know that she was forced into service. If she wanted to live through this, she needed to be accepted as a contributing member of the Order.

Her head spun. How was she supposed to survive? She wasn’t particularly strong and had no special talents. After all, she had spent most of her time taking care of her lonely and broken father and had only found a little time to read and tend to her small garden back home in Fortress Alenhold. She had never had the spare time to train or improve her skills, not with the heavy responsibilities she had carried on her shoulders back home. Was that the reason they had sent her to this island? Because they were aware of her lack of talent and thought it might be amusing to watch her fail? To see her die?

The ship dropped anchor about a mile north of the island. As Lilly and the other Initiates were brought ashore in small boats, one group at a time, she spotted a narrow stone path carved into the cliffside, leading upward toward the inhabited part of the island.

Most people never had the chance to visit the Isle in their lifetime, for it was the domain of the Order and common people were barely granted the opportunity to visit. It was even said that the magical Veil surrounding the Temple Isle was woven particularly densely, which was why the Order located themselves on the island over 600 years before. After all, the Isle was a place of worship, training and improvement and doing so in a place with strong magic like that, made it easier to gain and develop glyphs.

Lilly had read every book about glyphs she could get her hands on, surely a dozen over all, but it wasn’t easy as glyph lore was tightly controlled and anything beyond the approved curriculum was rare, censored, or quietly vanished and even the archivists grew wary if one asked too many questions. But everyone knew, that glyphs were magical symbols, containing fragments of the Veils power, best described as small signets, that were said to be awakened by the Veil itself and were magically branded onto the holder’s skin, manifesting a bond between the bearer and the Veil, giving the holder the ability to channel certain types of magic or to enhance natural talents.

Glyphs looked like little, fluorescent tattoos of a silverish color which almost appeared as if the shimmer within them was moving behind the fine lines of the shape. Lilly had always eyed them with astonishment, whenever she met someone with a visible glyph etched on his body. Visible, because they appeared on different places on the body, some hidden beneath layers of clothes.

The symbols they showcased were often connected to the powers they held; though a sword might have enhanced sword-fighting, other symbols were less easy to grasp and understand; especially since not all of them depicted clear shapes, but some rather displayed abstract lines and patterns.

Each glyph looked individual, as the combinations of symbols and patterns it manifested were as unique as the powers that evolved around them. Whilst a flame could represent arcane fire magic, which allowed to create fire, it could also represent the ability to heat a room without fire, or the art of seduction, or even something as trivial as otherworldly forging skills. Some glyphs enhanced the holder’s talents, whilst others gifted completely new powers, but whilst some of them were rarer than others, there were many glyphs that held similar powers and were thus referred to as "common glyphs”, even though they did not look exactly the same, which was why the interpretation of glyphs was an art in itself.

Lilly had once heard of a glyph that manifested in the form of an hourglass, right onto the chest of a smith’s son. He had been really excited about his glyph and tried to find out what magic it channelled, but the months became years and he never discovered what power it held and thus he had no chance using it or evolving it further. He died at the age of 126.

Glyphs were also known to sometimes change over time; they became stronger in color or changed their shape. This was either caused by a change in the holder’s skill, a change of the bond or within the Veil, a change of emotions, by choices and of course, by changes of fate. So, if the obvious isn’t clear by now: those things did whatever they liked. They were unpredictable and sometimes unstable, but powerful if handled the right way.

Clerics preached that it was the Veil’s choice whom it accepted as worthy to carry a glyph. They were said to be earned, whenever the Veil chose to open up a potential path for someone, offering its magic for the journey and some even believed it was the Veil’s way to keep the universe in balance.

Lilly knew that most people never earned a glyph in their lives, but that wasn’t surprising considering most people were superstitious, didn’t trust magic and last, but not least, simply wouldn’t be considered as worthy by the Veil. Others were more privileged and called more than one glyph their own, though that wasn’t very common. Due to the high intensity of the magic on the island, paired with Elysia’s blessing and the oath that was sworn to her, Disciples had a higher chance of gaining glyphs than common people, but even some members holding higher ranks in the Order never achieved a single glyph.