[Cyril Darkcloud]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: The Shadow Mage, Lord of Shadows Today, sitting in his throne room, the Lord of Shadows called forth all of his former allies, letting them know that the path had been made to return, and safety was again at the tower for those that served him.

ooc: And as we all know, where there's shadow, there's bound to be storm......

Once again with Larry's permission:

Elsewhere – a place where life is lived close to the sky .....

The Stonespires they are called in the tongue of the outsiders, these mountains of hard and jagged rock where the ceaseless movement of wind and the violent freedom of storm and the expansiveness of sky have made a home for a race of men set apart from all others. “Stonespires,” such a name only an outsider might give to such a place as this, for such a name speaks of that which reaches upward and away from the sure and stable firmness of earth to point to what is distant and beyond reach. Such a name speaks of the stone in its fixity and the mountains in their height and ignores the wind in its movement and the storm in its freedom and the sun in its bright and burning heat. But those who dwell here care little for the names of outsiders and have no interest in the firm soil which provides such stable fixity to their world. For to those who live here within the restless motion of the free and living air, where the sun is bright and storms are sudden and breathing is a thing both beautiful and difficult, it is not the harsh stone of the mountain tops, but the air itself which is their home. Life, to the children of the Clans of Storm, is to be lived close to the sky and so they name this place ha’ruah ha’shama’im – breathing of the sky – home.

They are synonymous to his people, life and movement within the free and living air close to the sky. And it is the closeness of the sky and its expansiveness that is his comfort even as his movements are made with the pain of a body that has been broken. Too long had he been away. Too long had he wandered the lands of the outsiders that are so terribly far from the sky within which he now stands. Seven years. Seven years which cannot simply be replaced. Seven years of living preparation for these wounds which shall be felt for the remainder of his days. Seven years within which his daughter has grown from a child to a young woman. That is the most painful of all. He looks at her as she climbs the stone ledges that lead to the place where he waits. Her movements are fluid with the grace of one familiar with so rugged a climb as this, as well they should be, for during those seven years she climbed to this place each night. It was here that she looked skyward to the Great Nomad, the star that always wanders yet is never lost, for it was at that star each night for the seven years of his Exiling that they met each other in the gazing upward of their eyes. The pain of those seven years was not his alone and this also is a great wound. She is free now, his child – her freedom won with the terrible price of those seven years, a price that each of them paid, he in being Exiled and broken and she in her lonely waiting. With her freedom came, of course, the freedom of their people for the Devourer is no more. The sacrifice of those seven years was well-made and its fruit has been great. The pain of those seven years, however, remains and even victory cannot erase it.

She smiles as she reaches him and the pain that even victory could not overcome recedes before so simple a thing as the smile a daughter gives to her father. He smiles himself in return and they stand together in silence a moment before she places the package in his hands. Sitting, he places it upon his knees and carefully unwraps it. There has been some attenuation of the burns on his hands and arms and his fingers have regained something of their normal range of movement. Still, he moves slowly and with a focused care. “The son of Koph’ar,” he says looking to his daughter, “has done his work well.” Slowly he lifts the head of an axe, the head of the Stormreaver – broken in conflict with the Devouring Wind – from the package. Forged anew by the son of he who forged it originally, it is well-balanced and all that remains is the sharpening of its blade and the finding of wood suitable for a handle. “Soon,” he says quietly. From a pouch on his belt he takes a file and begins to run it along the edge of the blade. He motions to his daughter to sit beside him. “Tell me,” he says to her, “how it was for you, enduring those years of loneliness.”