Title: Songs of Change
Word Count: 86,000
Song: "Try" by Pink
Pitch: Five-hundred-year-old elf Erissa must unite the elves and humans, magic-users and technologists driven apart by the Cataclysm that destroyed technology, or witness the destruction of everything she loves by an invading army of mechanically-enhanced humans.
250:
Erissa Filidh glided through the pattern of her sword exercise. After four centuries, each movement was precise, automatic. As she finished the sequence, dripping with sweat despite the winter chill pervading her practice room, she paused in the unexpected silence. The sound of Radha's harp should fill the house.
Erissa relaxed as the first notes wafted through the doorway, then clenched her jaw when she realized they were not from her fifteen-year-old daughter's harp, but her own. She marched up the stairway, halting a foot from the harp. Her leaf-colored eyes looked like they could cut through flesh.
Radha's hands fell from the crystalline strings. Her eyes locked with her mother's as she rose, toppling her stool.
"Yes, I touched your precious harp. Someone should." She'd inherited Erissa's pointed ears and compact form, but her human father's dark skin and fiery temper.
Erissa froze. She required every ounce of the self-control gained during centuries of practice to keep from striking her insubordinate daughter.
Legend says powerful mechanisms protected ancient Galdor until the Cataclysm shattered the land a millennium ago, creating a hundred islands and destroying the technology. Mother's first prophecy showed an invasion force sweeping across the Isles. Her second showed a fiery sword stopping it.
- Erissa Filidh, 899 years After Cataclysm (yAC)
When I was fifteen and still learning the bard’s craft, I believed my future held no surprises. That was before I learned that the old tales about lost technologies understated the truth.
- Radha Darkstone, 1046 yAC
I. Song of Silence
Erissa Filidh glided through the pattern of her sword exercise. After four centuries, each movement was precise, automatic. As she finished the sequence, dripping with sweat despite the winter chill pervading her practice room, she paused in the unexpected silence. The sound of Radha's harp should fill the house.
Erissa relaxed as the first notes wafted through the doorway, then clenched her jaw when she realized they were not from her fifteen-year-old daughter's harp, but her own. She marched up the stairway, halting a foot from the harp. Her leaf-colored eyes looked like they could cut through flesh.
Radha's hands fell from the crystalline strings. Her eyes locked with her mother's as she rose, toppling her stool.
"Yes, I touched your precious harp. Someone should." She'd inherited Erissa's pointed ears and compact form, but her human father's dark skin and fiery temper.
Erissa froze. She required every ounce of the self-control gained during centuries of practice to keep from striking her insubordinate daughter.
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