[Closed] You can’t keep a good man down

It seemed colder; a minor detail that should not have been of importance, but seemed out of place for the Inverness shrine of garth. It was always cold. A stable cold. A comfortable cold. Except today.

Today it was biting cold.

The acolytes of the shrine still followed their daily routine of meditation, study and exhausting elemental training. They honed their craft, held their heads up high, followed the path of tradition. Acolyte Armin, an elderly German elemental who didn’t look a day over thirty, seemed to be the only exception. He had quit meditation early and was restlessly patrolling the labyrinthine hallways of the garth shrine. Many of its passages had iced over, not opened for what seemed like many months. A process that was normal for a place of elemental magic, but had seemed inexplicably off.

Armin had always been able to feel the flow, the ebb and tide of garth magic sweeping through the shrine. As brothers and sisters came back from their morph he could feel their power returning, setting the shrine alight with the feeling of blistering coldness. Sometimes, a new bit of ice, a freshly formed crystal would announce the returning presence of a familiar face. This, however, seemed different as if someone, or maybe something, much less familiar was returning from the beyond.

As he made his way down a passage he could not even remember being there, he got nervous. Why did it seemed like the ice was getting darker as if made from blackened water? He could hear a sound, low and rumbling, uncanny by any stretch of the imagination. Armin forced himself to continue. If not himself than who would go and face this thing in the absence of their harbinger. Images flashed in his mind, black feathers, icy winds, decaying structures, bones and dead bodies. None of these things were real, so why was he seeing them? He closed his eyes to keep the dark thoughts at bay, while trying to progress further down the corridor. Fear was welling up in him.

Armin took a deep breath. He was the master of his emotions. He was in control. Slowly, the acolyte opened his eyes to see a black symbol glowing from inside the ice. Instinctively, the acolyte reached out to touch it; and then, without a trace, he was gone. The black symbol flashed, as if to announce its satisfaction.

While Volker’s chakra flow hadn’t been the best for a few days now, even if he had only recently came out of his morphing form in which he had spent approximately a month, the ice elemental somehow felt that it wasn’t just him feeling today’s cold especially discomforting, but most of his fellow elementals. Being in the garth quarters, somehow all the Advocates and some of the Zealots perhaps felt the same as he did: that an ice elemental shouldn’t be openly saying that it was somehow too cold.

His plans for that day had been to head to the library and do more research regarding some runes he had found from his latest travels, however Volker had somehow been so lost in thought that he had managed to lose himself in the complex corridors of the garth quarters. It was ironic how Volker had spent an already good part of his life at the Council in Inverness, yet still somehow managed to get lost within the corridors every few months or so. However, it didn’t bother him that much; throughout the years, the garth Advocate had learned that sometimes, taking by accident the wrong corridor could lead one to finding new writings on walls, or chambers he hadn’t known that existed without getting the wrong turn, which always proved both interesting and entertaining. Sometimes, Volker’s adventurous ways had bothered certain Zealots, nonetheless it had never been something that had been specifically frowned upon.

Somehow, the specific corridor which Volker took seemed to get his energy flow sense a kind of obscurity. It wasn’t a type of darkness which Volker had felt before, yet it reminded him of a darkness which he had only experienced during the rogue attack at Beauxbatons. A darkness which somehow felt of death. For a moment he thought that perhaps he was imagining things for Volker, ever since graduation, had focused more of the light side of elementalism than on the darker one, so maybe, just maybe, everything that was a bit past neutral intentions was to make him feel like he was out of his shell, somehow unprotected and unprepared.

However, it seemed that this time he hadn’t been completely wrong. The ice on the corridor’s walls seemed to be getting darker indeed; it was both as if it had been made of darkened water, yet also felt as if someone had simply dropped some ink and it was just flowing, and not dissolving. It was some sort of energy still inside the ice, frozen, yet at the same time not.

Volker turned around as a few garth Zealots were rapidly making their way on the corridors, from their words understanding that they were heading towards the shrine, were Acolytes were generally meditating at this time of the day. It seemed also that something had happened to Acolyte Armin, but Volker didn’t understand exactly what, as everyone seemed to be in such a rush that he couldn’t exactly stop someone and ask for everything in detail. Truthfully, considering the feeling of darkness which was somehow getting more and more intense as each moment passed by, Volker could sense that nothing good could have happened to Acolyte Armin.

He had desired to follow the Zealots, however the ice on the corridor caught his attention; it seemed that, for a moment, the black within the ice seemed to be expanding. Volker turned around, his initial urge being to freeze the ice even more, until it cracked open, so he could properly see that dark quintessence. But the garth Advocate decided against it, for ice, as beautiful and marvellous as it may be, it was also ruthless and unforgiving, even with its own kind.

Volker took a deep breath, his eyes focusing on the black essence, starting to feel as if it was almost communicating with him. A noise, low yet somehow quite profound was now making its presence known on the hallway, and Volker couldn’t tell whether or not the echo was disseminating it, or if it was heard everywhere. Somehow, the garth Advocate felt that the ice was calling or looking for something, and perhaps it would have been for the best if the Harbinger would have been there.

A state of slight anxiety captivating Volker, he had wanted to go look and see if Peter Alva was around, yet still, he couldn’t find it in himself to move. The darkness of the ice was too captivating, probably far too much, as part of him couldn’t bear it to look elsewhere.