Chapter Text
The day she gets the strangely shimmering necklace from her parents is the day everything changes.
It should by no means be extraordinary. Irene is used to getting trinkets and small gifts from whatever expedition her parents finance. Something antique, often jewelry, pretty things that make her smile each time. Rewards for studying and working hard, or apologies for smoothing over harsh words.
This doesn’t feel different at all at first.
The necklace is old, Irene can see at first glance. Centuries maybe. The gold trimmings are terribly outdated, but they hold a gem that shimmers intriguingly in the late afternoon sunlight. Perhaps, with a bit of work, she can turn it into something she can wear. It wouldn’t be the first gift she turned into something else. Something more suitable for a young woman to wear. She has learned the art of goldsmithing from the moment she was able to hold a hammer, after all.
She only listens with half an ear to what the caravan leaders returning from their Mhach expedition and her parents talk about. Something about trade routes becoming more dangerous, Ala Mhigo war-mongering at Gridania’s borders, and some obscure Republic in the far north expanding their territory.
All these things sound far away and mostly unimportant to her daily life. A life that primarily consists of being an exemplary daughter and hoping that whatever ambitious match her parents will come up with for her one day will be a tolerable one.
Irene retreats into the workshop as soon as she can without being impolite, the clunky necklace with the shimmering stone in her pocket. She has an idea of just how to frame it—something more delicate that lets the stone talk on its own instead of drowning it out with decoration. Slowly and with the utmost care, Irene gets to work, gradually setting it free from its gaudy constraints. The shine seems to get stronger and stronger the more metal she removes. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, the low purple glow shining brightly as she removes the last attachments.
“It’s almost too pretty to surround it with anything else,” Irene murmurs to herself as she polishes the stone.
The glow reminds her of the particular fires lit during funeral processions. Whenever a coffin is carried to a burial, the way out of Ul’dah is littered with these special, dark-purple flames. It is an old tradition, dating back to times older than their city’s history. The practice of illuminating the path, guiding both the souls of the dead and the grief of those who remain behind to a place of rest and peace.
Irene takes off her work gloves to let her fingers run over the smooth and shiny surface, but what she isn’t prepared for is the rush of energy that suddenly runs through her. The stone glows brighter than before, latching onto her aether faster than she can retreat her fingers, and suddenly Irene knows with a deep certainty that she wouldn’t even want to. Every bit of magic in her comes alive at the touch, burning the deep knowledge into her that this gem belongs to her and no one else. It feels like it has been made for her, waiting for her, and now it calls for something.
The sensation is a little frightening. Irene had always known about her affinity for magic, but her parents had made it clear to her early on that in the future they were planning for their sole heir, it had little room. That her energies would be better spent on learning other things. Things that make for a good and financially beneficial match and not, as her mother tends to call it, unnecessarily flashy distractions.
Irene has learned a variety of skills in her arguably still very short lifetime of barely nineteen summers. How to produce goods that she can sell, how to work with her hands, how to behave and how to appeal to people, and how to take over her parents’ business when the time comes. But magic? Magic has never been of consequence for her, and right up until now, Irene had been confident that she wasn’t missing out on anything.
But with the gemstone still glowing warmly in her hand and her aether feeling like it’s almost yearning for something, she is shaken by the desire to know more.
For the first time in her life, Irene does something in secret. She knows full well it’s a bad idea, but late that evening, when her parents are out and she is alone in her room, she takes out the crystal and listens. It has something to tell her, that she is sure of, but it doesn’t speak in clear words. It’s more of a feeling that rushes through her again, an impression of warmth. When Irene opens herself up to it, the stone becomes almost blazing. Sudden heat runs through her, and a terrifyingly long second later, parts of the curtains are burning.
The gem falls to the floor as Irene springs into action, ripping the curtains down and suffocating the flames with a heavy blanket. Mortification runs through her as she looks over the mess, and the burning need to understand the strange gem is somewhat dulled as she comes up with a story to tell her parents about how she clumsily put an open oil lamp somewhere she shouldn’t have.
It is believable, at least.
After the mishap, she is more careful. Her curiosity is still there, but she knows her home is not the place to explore any of this. When Irene picks up the stone the next time, she is wearing gloves. She still feels it calling to her, but it’s duller, easier to ignore, and when her parents leave the city two days later on a business trip, she uses the opportunity of being unobserved to find a secluded place outside the confines of the city for her experiments.
In the vast and uninhabited stretches of Thanalan, potential fiery mishaps seem way less dangerous than in the confines of Ul’dah’s walls.
The stone whispers at the back of her mind whenever she holds it in her bare hands. It murmurs about fire and ice, about destruction and rejuvenation, and even without any formal training, it somehow makes complete sense to her. Irene doesn’t know much about the basics of magic, but the crystal knows it for her, leaves behind images and impressions in her mind that make calling a glowing ball of fire right in front of her as easy as breathing. Too easy if she is honest with herself. The amount of stray bushes Irene sets on fire with her first few attempts is staggering enough to be worrisome. That’s when the crystal lets her know what she’s missing.
A conduit.
Irene wants to smack her hand to her forehead when the stone whispers the thought into being. Of course! All mages she has seen so far use one, after all. A staff or a wand made of specific materials to direct the aether more easily.
The next day finds her stroll through Sapphire Avenue, looking for a piece of craftsmanship she can afford without having to explain to her parents why there is a sudden hole in her budget. It is most likely not the best tool for the job, but the small staff she purchases is plain enough to pass it off as a walking stick and cheap enough so she can easily afford it from her unsupervised allowance.
It makes the next tries outside the city much more controlled already.
Channeling the magic that the stone whispers about already comes a bit easier to her, but Irene knows she is flailing around half-blind, messing with something she doesn’t entirely understand. Everything around it feels dangerous.
If only it weren’t so terribly interesting.
The wisest thing for her to do would be to put the stone away, to leave it in the back of her closet, and focus on other, more important things, like the fact that her parents have been busy lately, trying nonstop to find her the perfect marriage match. Or at least what’s most perfect in their eyes - the most lucrative connection they can build.
Irene isn’t thrilled about the prospect of her relatively carefree life ending soon, but it’s something she’s always been aware of. This is what her parents had raised her for, after all. It makes the temptation to get lost in something interesting while she still can all the stronger, though. But when she is nearly caught by a merchant caravan during one of her experiments, she knows that she needs to find a more suitable spot than just Thanalan's prairie. A place where she can try out spells without running the risk of burning down houses or frightening the local fauna. A place that grants her the secrecy she needs to keep her endeavors hidden from unwanted eyes who might rat her out to her parents. Irene knows that should her parents find out about it, it would mean the end of what little freedom she has.
It doesn’t take her all that long to realize that she already knows of a perfect spot. A good walk away from the city, behind an unassuming part of the mountainside, is a cave. A cave she knows is stable, a little hidden, and void of anything alive in it. A place she used to hide in every now and then as a child when she was tired of having to attend lessons and do chores. It had been the perfect hiding place - not once had she been found before she went back on her own, and when she approaches it, Irene knows this still holds true. No one ever comes here. Not voluntarily.
As a child, Irene had always found it strange that people seemed to avoid the cave. It isn’t empty, after all. It’s a shrine. A row of oil lamps, dusty from the ever-present sand, sits on a small altar in front of a gigantic statue.
Nald’thal, guardian deity of their city, watches unmoving over the small cavern with his stone eyes.
When Irene was younger, it had felt peculiar that the shrine was always empty. The older she gets, though, the more she understands. The people of Ul’dah revere their gods, and they hold their patron in the highest esteem. But, at the same time, they are also utterly terrified of him. The god of death and the underworld is more feared than he is loved. Temples and shrines are erected in his name, are maintained and cared for as much as necessary - but his places of worship are not places anyone wants to linger.
When Irene enters the cave, she feels none of this apprehension. For her, this place is comfort. It’s safety, quiet, and a refuge from her home. She never saw the point of avoiding places such as this. If a god wanted to strike her down for an arbitrary reason, it wouldn’t matter if she were in a cavern devoted to him or out in the fields, she had argued even as a child. Now, as a young woman, she isn’t even sure if she actually believes in the gods at all. The Twelve sound more like cautionary fairy tales, myths to motivate people towards a common goal, than anything based in reality.
Irene lights up one of the oil lamps to see a bit better before she gets out her wand. When she starts her practice once more, this time surrounded by comfortingly familiar cave walls, something feels different. Irene closes her eyes and listens to the stone, and the magic comes to her like the air she breathes rushes into her lungs - completely natural. Not just that, the magic is multiple times stronger than anything she has drawn on before. She has to focus all her energy on guiding it. Even with the help of her small staff, the aether around her feels wild and unpredictable.
Irene thinks of fire, and the aether rushes to her aid, flaming high and demanding her all. She casts and casts, just like the stone nudges her to, and as the heat exhausts her, she feels the aether guide her to the opposite. She raises spikes of ice from the sandy desert floor, and it feels like her aether gorges itself on their cooling touch. And just like that, she is no longer too tired for the fire.
It’s a circle, Irene realizes quickly. Two extremes, two opposites, coming around to aid each other, to form a whole.
She tries it again and again, losing all track of time as she floats on the give and take of fire and ice, learning more and more of its intricacies with each round. A small laugh falls from her lips as she wonders if she could go on like this forever.
She can’t, she has to admit a while later, when her hand shakes slightly, clutching around her staff. Despite the ice refilling her reserves, Irene feels herself waver ever so slightly.
“Damn it,” she curses quietly as she is forced to take a break even though the stone keeps pushing her to go on. Its subtle whisper insists she can do more, but Irene knows her body’s limits, knows she needs to recuperate. It still feels like the stone is right though, she shouldn’t have that need. Not with this peculiar kind of magic.
“Why doesn’t it work?” she mutters to herself as she sinks down against the wall next to the giant statue. Her body feels tired, but her mind is racing. “It should work, damn it!”
“You are doing it wrong…”
Irene’s heart nearly jumps out of her chest at the sudden appearance of a voice. Despite her tiredness, she leaps to her feet, looking frantically around the dim-lit cave. She can’t see anybody, but she is rather certain that she didn’t imagine the voice. It is deep, rumbling, and seems to come from above her.
“Who’s there?” she calls out loudly, clutching her staff tighter as she steps into the middle of the small room. “Show yourself!”
“Just what are you hoping to accomplish here, girl, meddling with powers you clearly don’t understand?” the voice comes again, sounding like it’s chiding her. “Dabbling in lost and forbidden arts...”
She whirls around in the direction of the voice, but there is no one there. With a frown, she carefully steps closer to the statue, peaking to the left and the right of it before checking behind it with quick strides.
The cave is empty.
Someone must have followed her from the city, using the location to play an elaborate prank on her. It’s the only thing that makes sense to her.
“This is not funny,” Irene says with a low growl. “Whatever bumbling imbecile you are, thinking that you can mess with me like this, I swear I will find you.”
“Bumbling imbecile?”
The voice rumbles dangerously low through the cave, and with it, the air shifts. Irene can barely breathe, and her eyes widen as she can suddenly see her condensed breath in the air. It’s the last thing she sees before the small oil lamp goes out and the whole cave falls into darkness. It takes her a couple of seconds to realize what she feels.
Cold.
Biting cold fills her lungs as she draws in a deep breath, the icy air straining her lungs. Irene still tries to make sense of it when the entire cave lights up to nearly day-light proportions. The cold’s grasp gets swept away by a blaze as every torch, oil lamp, and brazier lights up simultaneously.
“What in the hells,” she murmurs as she looks over the entire cave once more, still somehow expecting to find someone with her. A person that would give her a better explanation than the vague and utterly ridiculous suspicion she holds.
“Maybe you want to rethink your conclusions, my dear…”
The voice is ripe with condescension as Irene is stunned by the spectacle. The light from the blazing flames lets intricate shadows flicker across the walls and floor. Watching the moving patterns could, under other circumstances, be soothing, but as her eyes get stuck on a peculiarity, Irene is confident that soothing is the last word she should be using.
When she looks at the giant statue of Nald’thal, there is no shadow to be found.
Irene can see her own shadow overlap with smaller ones from small vases and candlesticks. She can see the shadows cast by the ever-moving flames dimly dancing across the far wall. But around the statue, where its shadow should be, there is nothing.
“Impossible!” she declares, but her voice still shakes a bit under the foreboding thought that her utterly ridiculous suspicion seems to be right. “The Twelve are nothing but a myth!”
An amused chuckle comes from all directions.
“Correct,” the voice agrees with her. “Your neatly constructed images of what you want your gods to be is barely more than superstition cultivated into a common cause.” It sounds almost reassuring to Irene before the voice adds, “But you forget that even the wildest myths are always based on a hint of truth.”
She isn’t sure if that last bit just might be even more worrisome than her initial conclusion.
“Who are you then?” Irene asks, looking up at the statue of Nald’thal with a skeptical squint of her eyes. “Are you telling me you are that truth?”
The silence stretches for a moment. Around her, the fire keeps burning with the same intensity, keeping Irene tense as she waits for an answer.
“You may call me Emet-Selch,” it finally comes.
It’s not a name Irene has ever heard before. It sounds strange, fitting no name or language she knows of. The thought that the god that Ul’dah worships with all his connotations and vast powers is indeed only a myth could be one of comfort if it weren’t for the other implication and the far more important question: what kind of being could inspire such a tale?
“I must admit, it is rather amusing watching you scramble your little mortal brain to come up with a better explanation,” the voice, no, Emet-Selch, interrupts her thoughts.
Forcefully, Irene shakes her head, trying to gather her wits.
“It makes no sense,” she insists. “Even if you were all this, why would you be here, in the middle of nowhere, in a shrine built around some superstitions based on you?”
“I wouldn’t be,” Emet-Selch replies, and his voice echoing through the cave is audibly annoyed. “I have infinitely more important things to do, but this place is a place of power, of aetheric balance, and someone saw it fit to disturb that.”
“Oh.”
With dread rising in her stomach, Irene glances from the wand she still holds to the scorch marks and water puddles her earlier experiments with her magic had left behind.
“My spells did that?”
"Your pitiful excuses for spells, yes,” he says sharply. “Tugging and ripping at the aetheric weave like a child ripping something apart to find out how it works.”
Irene flinches slightly at how scathing the hissed words sound.
“Tell me, who risked their neck, their life even, to go against all rules and teach you this discipline?” Emet-Selch asks.
In lieu of having someone to actually talk to, Irene looks back at the statue and shakes her head.
“No one,” she answers truthfully. “I have no idea what you are even talking about.”
It doesn’t seem to be the answer he wants to hear.
“You’ve dragged my attention away from far more pressing matters with your disturbances; I will not have you lie to me, girl.”
“I am not lying,” Irene insists, her jaw clenching as a spark of anger runs through her at the insinuation. “I don’t even know what it is I am trying to do. I found this…”
She takes the purple gemstone out of her pocket and holds it up towards the flaming light of one of the braziers. The moment she does, the flames spark up higher as if the fire had been stoked, and Irene has to force herself not to flinch away in fear at the heat around her suddenly swelling.
“Impossible…” the voice mutters.
“It’s the truth,” she says firmly. “And ever since I did, it’s like I can hear it whispering to me. I didn’t come here to disturb anything. I just needed a place where no one would see me and where I wouldn’t accidentally burn my parents’ house down.”
She isn’t sure if he believes her explanation. Carefully, she eyes the direction the entrance to the cave lies, wondering if she should risk trying to sprint towards it. Whoever this Emet-Selch is, he appears to be both powerful and decidedly unhappy about whatever she had done to this place. She is still standing, though, not struck down where she stood by some powerful being’s anger, and she isn’t certain that breaking into a run might not be the thing to provoke just that.
When he speaks again, his voice sounds thoughtful, almost far off, as if he is talking to himself.
"Out of all things in the world, that it would come down to luck… Coincidence or fate, it is remarkable how much those two look alike.”
The flames around her shrink back down to their normal size as he speaks to her again.
"The fact remains that you are meddling with forces beyond your ken.”
Without thought, Irene scoffs.
“You think I don’t know that?” she asks before shaking her head. “Look, I can do my meddling somewhere else, where I won’t disturb anyone. And as soon as I find out what it actually is this stone is trying to show me, I’ll make sure to look for a teacher, alright?”
She sounds more upbeat than she feels as she hopes that her suggestion is enough to appease him, but it seems like she is not going to get that lucky.
"You won’t find any,” comes Emet-Selch’s reply. “The art of black magic has been lost for centuries, outlawed and abandoned.”
It sounds like a warning, and Irene swallows as she looks at the soft purple glow surrounding the stone in her hand. Every rational thought tells her it is a warning that should be heeded. That messing with forbidden magicks is a bad idea. Maybe the best thing to do would be to throw the stone down right here and walk away. To return to the safety of Ul’dah’s city walls and forget this ever happened.
The aether surrounding the small gem pulses warmly through her hand and up her arm, its alluring song the same, if not even stronger than before, and Irene’s throat runs dry at the realization that throwing it away is the last thing she wants to do.
“Then the stone will have to be enough,” she hears herself say in a surprisingly firm voice. “It wants me to learn this!”
It’s something she knows in her heart to be true. Whatever this gem is, it belongs to her, like it was made for her. And if she has to incite the wrath of some powerful ancient being on herself, its gentle glow gives her the courage to do just that.
But Emet-Selch doesn’t sound wrathful.
“Of course it does,” he murmurs. “It recognizes…” For a moment, he sounds almost distracted before his voice turns firm. “Return here, at the same time tomorrow!”
It is unmistakably an order and not something up for debate, and for a second, Irene struggles to understand until it dawns on her what this means.
“Are you saying you are going to teach me? You know about this magic?” she asks incredulously as her fingers close tightly around the stone.
“My dear, I was there when it was created,” comes his slightly patronizing reply, but while he sounds dismissive and a little impatient even, there doesn’t seem to be any wrath behind his words.
Relief, anticipation, and a hint of remaining fear run through Irene in a conflicted whirl of emotions. She wants nothing more than to learn about this strange stone and the magic it whispers of, but the idea of letting someone she can neither see nor fully comprehend guide her is not an entirely comfortable one. Not to mention the fact that she isn’t even certain she can trust in everything she has just learned.
“I am still not sure if I fully believe you,” Irene points out, and his laughter echoing through the cave sends a peculiar shiver down her back.
“Of course not,” Emet-Selch says, amusement swinging in every word. “But you are far too curious to let that stop you. Don’t be late!”
And with that, the flames around her go out, and the cave goes almost completely dark again, save for the small oil lamp she had lit earlier. The strangely charged air is gone, and with everything being back to normal, Irene knows instinctively that she is alone again.
The self-assurance in his words is grating, but not as grating as the realization that he is right. All the good reasons she can come up with not to do this are not enough. The stone has secrets to teach her, and if he isn’t lying to her, so has Emet-Selch.
No argument, no matter how good, will keep Irene from coming back.