It felt like many seasons had passed since Ellie left Ikedria. The Guardians insisted that an embassy was built within the Outpost, so that was the closest she got to a trip home. The Ikedrians sent their ambassador, but very few of them came with her—most likely due to their familiarity with her mother, A'chrya Q’Indyrk, Ellie’s former guild master, and quite possibly the cruelest of all the guild masters in the underground city. Her people’s warriors were put through excruciating physical trials, beaten nearly to the point of death, nursed back to health, and then put through the same sequence of events again—but they knew what was coming and knew there would be an end to their suffering. Ambassador Q’Indyrk, on the other hand, excelled in psychological torture—claiming that her methods created wizards that were not scared of anything or anyone, and who were always on alert and never easily overwhelmed.
Ambassador Q’Indyrk, who was only a few years older than Ellie, was widely known to be somewhat different from her mother. She was still the stereotypical dark elf female—stern, intolerant, and not terribly friendly with those other than her own kind. As far as Ellie knew, though, she was quite popular with the heads of the noble houses in that she had not taken a mate. To become the spouse of the ambassador would mean a considerable raise in status for any of the eligible young males. Frequently Ellie reminded herself, with some sadness, how lucky she and Kamendar were to have escaped from the trappings of Ikedrian nobility.
But today she was going to see the ambassador on purpose, to request space within the embassy to live and study. Since the death of her mentor, Ellie had been living in a rented accommodation above one of the taverns. Now that her research was moving towards a workable endpoint—one that she felt sure would have greatly pleased her mentor—she needed privacy for some of the more involved experiments. Also, there were strange times that she lost track of time and herself, and those were times that she wanted to know where she would be when she again became aware. Those missing parts of her memory were concerning, but somehow when she tried to remember what had happened and couldn’t, she wasn’t overly concerned. It felt as though she was being protected, in a way, from events that occurred during the blanks—but it still bothered her, especially when she came back to herself somewhere different than the last place she remembered being. The safety of the embassy would alleviate some of those fears. Ellie took a deep breath before she rang the doorbell in the middle of the large marble doors on the front of the embassy. A dragon with the tail of a snake writhed on the door as the doorbell sounded. Though unnerving to outsiders, to Ellie, it was a reminder of home—the home that she left behind so many years ago.
“Name?” Ellie came back from her musing and looked up slightly into the piercing gaze of a male of her species. He was from the warrior guild—the crossed pupils that were a racial marker of the Ikedrians in his eyes were completely black—unlike her own red ones.
“Ellie—err, Elspethe is my given name.”
“Surname?”
“None.”
“House?”
“I said no surname.” The warrior glared at her, drawing his eyebrows into a point in the middle of his forehead.
“Everyone has a surname or a house. What is yours?”
Ellie fisted her hands at her sides and looked up at the warrior. She pushed into his mind, just as Taeben had taught her to do. So easy. “I have no surname, and you will take me to see the Ambassador immediately.” He blinked a few times and then nodded.
“This way, mistress.” Ugh—that was a point to work on, making sure they didn’t call her mistress straight away. Taeben had not taught her how to change that because he rather enjoyed it when his victims called him master. His face filled her mind now as she followed the warrior through the embassy’s broad hallways, and she felt her heart twinge in response. After all these years, she still missed him. He was the only one that had understood her, and it had become her life’s work to avenge him and finish his spell work. “You may wait here for the Ambassador. I will inform her of your arrival.” He indicated a row of chairs pushed up against one of the stark white marble walls.
“Thank you.” You will forget that you have ever seen me once you do, is that clear? He nodded at her and then walked away, and she sank into one of the dark purple velvet chairs to wait. Thankfully her wait was not long, and it was only a few minutes before Ambassador Q’Indyrk appeared at the end of the row of chairs, almost out of thin air. She was not much younger than Ellie, but seemed larger than life thanks to the confidence she wore like a mantle.
“Come with me,” she barked at Ellie, who was out of her chair and following the ambassador before the female had reason to repeat the command. The ambassador’s dark aubergine colored locks of hair kept time with her robe, swaying back and forth as she walked, causing the chain of office that she wore on her shoulders to clink and clank as its links collided with each other. “This way.” She opened a door with the word for ‘Interview’ in D’leesh carved into the stained wood, and Ellie just made it through before it slammed behind her. A chair that put the
