Chapter Text
1324 AE
Caithe leaned against the green surface of the house. Her thoughts churned and twisted, trying to make sense of all that had happened recently. It had started when the Pale Tree, her Mother, had contacted her with a dire warning. There was an artifact of immense power that had been disturbed by the bandits that plagued Kessex Hills along the border to Caledon Forest. If they were to succeed in its retrieval, the shadow it cast would throw everything out of balance.
She had barely gotten there in time to stop them, but in the end, Caithe had triumphed. The bandits had even been kind enough to have already loaded the artifact into a cart for her. It wasn’t until she safely returned to the grove did she got a good look at the item. The “artifact” was a large silver chest forged into that of a dragon. No matter how much she looked, she couldn’t figure out how to open it. However, there was a script carved into the wing that folded over the top of the chest.
It looked Orrian in nature, but … different. So she had sent for the one person who was an expert in almost all things Orr. “Caithe!” The sylvari female snapped out of her thoughts to turn towards the caller. A smile came upon her face. “Trahearne, brother! I’m glad you have come.” The dark green sylvari, Trahearne, came to rest in front of her. “I have to admit your message had me intrigued. You say The Pale Tree sent you a dream to stop the theft of an artifact with Orrian writing on it?” Caithe nodded and led Trahearne into the room where she had put the chest.
“Bandits were trying to smuggle it past the border of the forest into Kessex Hills. I barely got there in time to stop them.” Caithe explained as she pulled off the cover on the chest. Trahearne inhaled sharply at the sight. “Remarkable. The time it must have taken to make something like this.” He marveled as he knelt to examine the chest, running his fingers over the metal gently. The dragon had been forged to appear to be curled up asleep, one of its feathered wings covering over the top of a large chest. The dragon’s eyes were closed, and it had a large black pendant grasped by the chain in its mouth.
“The entire chest appears to be made of metal like mithril almost, no other metal would be this bright. Not to mention the dragon portrayed. It's much different than the elder dragons or their underlings that we have seen before. Hmm … this script…” Trahearne observed the script closely. The sylvari crossed his arms over his chest with one hand to his chin. Caithe shifted on her feet, slightly impatient. “Do you know it?” Trahearne nodded and looked at her. “Yes, I have seen and translated it before. This script is ancient, however, almost before the founding of Orr, even. It'll take me a while, I'm afraid. At least an hour.” Caithe inwardly sighed, but knew it was necessary.
Trahearne smiled at Caithe, knowing her impatience at such things. “ I suggest you find something else to occupy the time while you wait. I think it would be rather dull just sitting and watching me translate.” Caithe knew an out when she saw one and agreed quickly. “I’ll be back in a while, then.” Trahearne bemusedly watched as the other firstborn quickly made her escape from boredom before turning back to the chest. “Now, let’s see what secrets you hold.”
Trahearne hadn't moved from where he was, bent over the chest, as Caithe walked into a small, well-lit room. The dark male simply kept writing on the parchment roll in his possession. “Trahearne?” The sylvari in question hummed in a thoughtless answer. Caithe cleared her throat, visibly making the other jump. “Oh Caithe! Back already?” The lighter female chuckled lightly. “Yes, it has been almost four hours. Were you able to complete the translation?”
“Yes, I have. I was just making some notes. Interestingly, the script appears to be a riddle of sorts on how to open the chest. Though it doesn’t say what is in it.” Caithe raised an eyebrow and moved to get a look at the parchment the other was holding. “A riddle, you say? Any luck with solving it yet?” Trahearne shook his head. “I haven’t tried yet.” Caithe took the parchment from him and read aloud,
“I slumber, I wait,
For time to decide my fate.
A total of nine shall wake,
But not without I, the drake.”
Caithe tilted her head, thoroughly puzzled. “What are your thoughts, brother?” Trahearne took the paper back and pointed to his notes underneath. “Make note of how it says ‘slumber’. I believe it has to do with the fact that the dragon appears to be sleeping. We have to wake the dragon to open the chest.” Caithe nodded and pointed to the last line, “Then what does mean by ‘A total of nine' mean?”
Trahearne encouraged Caithe to stand by the chest with him, “Well, my theory is that it is referring to the obsidian pendant in its teeth. It's a clock, what they looked like originally before the Asura remade them. What's peculiar is the clock was only invented maybe 300 or 400 years ago, but this chest has to be at least 1,000 years old based on the script.” Caithe looked at the clock pendant with interest. “The short hand tells the hour, while the longer hand shows minutes. Usually, there is another hand, a thin rod that goes round that counts the seconds, but this clock doesn’t have one. I’m afraid I'm unsure of what it could mean. The twelve at the top usually signifies exactly noon or midnight.” Both sylvari stared at the clock pendant, trying to make sense of everything.
A thought occurred to Caithe. “Perhaps we should try to make the hands point to the nine? That could be what it means.” Trahearne thought about it for a minute before admitting, “Yes, that seems reasonable.” Trahearne leaned over the chest and gently started to rotate the long hand of the clock. When the hand got to the nine, nothing happened. “Try the shorthand.” Caithe encouraged. The dark male continued to gently wind the long hand to move the short hand slowly. As the short hand rested on the nine and the long hand on the twelve, Trahearne removed his hand. Nothing happened for a moment, disheartening the two, when suddenly the dragon’s closed eyes opened. Twin amber jewels crafted to look like eyes stared up at them.
There was a click and a loud bell sound of metal striking metal. The clock hands began moving on their own, continuing to turn to the right. The sound of gears was heard over another bell-like sound. Trahearne and Caithe quickly moved from the side of the chest to a safer position. The wing covering the chest shuddered before folding in on itself, section by section, to reveal the inside. The sound had struck exactly nine times before everything stilled with the click of the clock hands on twelve.
Caithe and Trahearne glanced at each other before cautiously approaching the chest to peer in. Caithe gasped at the contents, and Trahearne’s brows creased in worry. At the bottom of the chest, buried in pillows, was a person. The person was wearing a royal blue robe that was cut short at their knees, but had long bell sleeves and a hood that covered their entire head and all of their hair. They were lightly snoring without a care in the world as if they hadn't just been found in a 1,000 and something years old chest.
Trahearne, though unsure, gently reached in and shook the person’s shoulder. There was a light, feminine groan from the person as they shifted. “Nooo … I don’t *yawn* want to … wear the pink bow … Gigi…” She mumbled as she curled up further into herself with a slight grumble.
Trahearne tried again. “Stop it, Gigi. Go bully Sai instead.” She muttered again. “Excuse me, miss?” The girl hummed and pushed herself up from where she had been curled up. What seemed to be long baby blue hair fell from the hood as she fully sat up, facing the sylvari. Pale hands came up to groggily rub at hidden eyes. Blinking sleepily up at the people who had woken her, her eyebrows furrowed in a confused scowl.
“Great Divine. This sure is a weird dream.” Trahearne looked back up at Caithe, who was hovering over his shoulder. Caithe shrugged at his look, not knowing what to make of this. Trahearne looked back to the girl who seemed to be rubbing at her eyes again and cleared his throat. The girl jumped visibly, seeming to wake up more. She stared dumbly at the plant people who seemed to be staring at her with the same incredulity. “Oh. I’m … awake.”
Both sylvari nodded. “So, I’m not … dreaming?” Two head shakes. “Are you sure?” Two more nods. They could physically see it sink in as the hooded girl sat there quietly. They should have expected the screaming.
“Okay, okay. Taigon, deep breaths, you're fine. Just a little lost.” The girl, Taigon, muttered to herself as she hugged one of her bright red pillows in her nest to her chest. “Think, what happened last?” She asked herself as she screwed her eyes shut tight. There wasn’t much coming forth, just a feeling of sorrow and then a peaceful abyss, and her dreams. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the plant people approach her slowly as if not to startle her.
“Are you okay, little one?” The female asked. The woman-plant had an interesting accent to her voice, she had never heard before, very proper sounding. Okay, okay. You are calm and collected. You can do this. Taking one more deep breath, Taigon answered her. “I think I'll be okay, but I'm not sure right now.”
Trahearne sympathized with the young girl. He had been like that a few times in his lifetime. “That’s okay. My name is Trahearne and this is Caithe. You’re in the Grove and safe.” The girl curiously watched her as he introduced himself and Caithe, answering some of her questions. “Um, pleased to meet you, I guess. My name is Taigon, though everyone calls me Tai. No offense, but what are you and what am I doing here?”
Caithe stepped up to answer her this time. “We are Sylvari. As for why you are here, I believe it would be best for you to explain how you got in this chest.” Trahearne offered his hand to help Taigon out as she asked, “Chest?” She grabbed the proffered arm to clamber out of her nest of pillows. “Yes, this chest that we opened. Caithe saved it from bandits trying to smuggle it away from Caledon Forest.” Trahearne gestured to the dragon chest.
Taigon glanced back at her sleeping place with a small scowl. Oh! “You mean the ark. It was designed to keep us asleep.” Caithe and Trahearne shared a look. “‘Us’?” Taigon idly looked at her wrists, feeling like something was missing. “Us, as in my siblings. We were to be sealed into these and hidden away if there ever was an emergency.”
Trahearne was about to ask something else when Taigon let out a panicked squeak. Both firstborns were on guard again as the girl seemed to frantically check her wrists. “What’s wrong?” Caithe asked. “My … My Tanzo! They’re not here!” Caithe hid her slight exasperation at the girl as she tried to all but throw herself back into the chest. “Tanzo, what are those?” Trahearne was puzzled by her behavior. They must have been really important if she looked ready to tear her ark apart.
“Tanzo are special items given to us at a young age. We carry them throughout our whole lives.” Taigon’s explanation echoed from where she had flung herself over the side of the chest and was tearing pillows out of the bottom. As Trahearne watched with a hint of worry, he noticed she was pretty short. Even just being slung over the edge of the ark at the waist caused her feet to leave the floor, toes dangling off it by a couple of inches. The male flushed lightly as the skirt of her robe rode up higher on the backs of her thighs, and politely averted his gaze when a glint of gold caught his attention.
Caithe continued to watch as the girl seemed to get more frantic as she searched. She glanced over at Trahearne, who moved closer towards the head of the dragon, who was still staring at them with fierce orange amber eyes. “Taigon? They wouldn’t happen to be gold, would they?” He asked as he spotted a pair of thick golden wristbands decorating the dragon’s wrists. They were about a hand's width long and delicately decorated with silver vines.
“Yes, they are!” Taigon paused in her futile search of her empty nest. “How did you know?” She asked him as she pulled her head and torso out of the chest to look at him. Trahearne smiled at her and pointed at the dragon’s wrists. She gasped at the sight of her beloved Tanzo. Scrambling towards them and dodging Trahearne, she shouted in delight. “Yes, that's it!” Caithe blinked, slightly astonished at how quickly the girl had moved. It was like she had blurred out for a moment.
Taigon let out a sigh of relief as she ran her fingers over the golden wristbands reverently. Focusing her energy into her fingertips, they sparked with blue light over the golden metal of the wristbands, causing them to snap open. Trahearne was startled at the usage of what seemed to be a form of electric magic by this young woman. Taigon quickly locked the wristbands snugly to her wrists with a click that left no seam of where they had closed.
“I’m never removing them from my person ever again.” Taigon sighed happily as she rubbed fond fingers over the golden bands on her wrists. “What are they?” Caithe asked. "Well, a Tanzo is a weapon that takes years to forge. Each Tanzo is unique to suit the wielder due to the forging process. As a side effect, most people can’t wield a Tanzo that belongs to another person, unless you're family."
“Weapon? I’ve seen many types of weapons, but never a pair of bracelets.” Caithe said, shifting her weight on her feet.
Taigon’s sly smile was shadowed by her hood as she stepped back from Trahearne’s side. Raising her hand out, she flexed her right hand into a fist, causing the air to ring with the unsheathing of blades. The wristband had, for lack of a better description, expanded up the back of her hand and laced around the middle of her palm. Three sharp blades about 2/3rds of a foot in length extended from between her fingers and knuckles. “You were saying?” She asked a gaping Caithe as she relaxed her hand with a flick, and the wristband shrank back into its unassuming appearance.
“Hmm … Caithe is right. I’ve never seen a weapon like this, even within my time in Orr.” Trahearne observed, “If I may?” Taigon shrugged but offered her other wrist for the other to examine the wristband with curious fingers. While the male firstborn turned her wrist this way and that, Caithe started asking the other more questions.
“You said you had siblings. How many do you have?”
“I have one older sister and one older brother, then two younger brothers and four younger sisters.”
Caithe looked at her with disbelief. “That’s a rather large family for even a human.”
Taigon tilted her head to the side, confused. “I suppose so, but what does that have to do with anything? I’m not human.”
Trahearne paused his examination of her bracer. “Not human? Pardon, but you aren’t of the right size to be Norn, and you certainly aren’t Charr or Asura. If you aren’t human, then what are you?”
Taigon considered him as if he were joking before answering. “My kind are, err… were called Valto. We were blessed with the ability to change our forms.”
Taigon reached up to her face to grab her hood and hesitated for a moment. It’s alright. By the sound of these different races, they won’t judge my appearance. She lowered her hood to rest on her shoulders, the rest of her long, light blue hair tumbling down her back.
The two sylvari were not quite sure what to make of her. She was young, looking to be the same as a 17-year-old human with slightly rounded cheeks and a delicate nose. Upturned, jewel-like orange eyes watched their reactions with concerned blue eyebrows. Thin blue stripes marked her cheeks, two on either side and just under her eyes. Her light blue hair was tied into two twintails on the back of her head that trailed down to the middle of her back, bangs brushed to the right side of her face.
However, what caught their attention the most were the white and blue furry triangles perched on the top of her head, coming up from where human ears would have been. They flicked under the sylvaris’ scrutiny.
Taigon babbled as she nervously tugged at one of the ears. “Usually, I keep to human ears, but I must’ve unconsciously shifted them back while I was asleep. I've got a tail as well, but I usually keep that shifted away or hidden.” Said tail unwound itself from its hiding spot to curl almost bashfully around her leg to her knee. Taigon stopped rambling at the mind-boggled looks from her new leafy friends, though she still wrung her hands in front of herself.
Caithe shook herself first. “There’s never been a race like that here before. We have our more tribal and bestial races, certainly, but none that can change their race.”
Taigon wrinkled her nose before saying, “Well, not races really, just animals. All Valto are born being able to shift their forms. Your first form is usually that of your clan, but you have to learn the form you wish to shift into. It could be anything, so long as it’s an animal as defined by the Great Divine.”
Trahearne, looking intrigued, asked, “Clan? The Great Divine?” Taigon flushed a little as she wasn't used to trying to explain things. Kat was much better at explaining things. “I’ll, uh… try to explain better at a later point in time. There are more important things to sort out first. Like, where am I? Where are my siblings’ arks? And how long have I been asleep?” Taigon paused at the last question. “Though, I think Kat said there was a timer on the ark somewhere.”
“Those are very good points. From what it sounds like, our cultures are very different, so you'll need some assistance in getting used to Tyria. I would not make the best teacher currently, as I move around too much. It would be best if you stayed in one spot for the moment while you learn the basics like currency and general history.” Caithe said.
Trahearne was silent as Caithe explained her points. It was true that Taigon would not learn as much as quickly as she would need to in those conditions. However, he knew someone who could teach her what she needed to know. Clearing his throat, the male sylvari brought both of their attention to himself.
“I can teach her. Seeing as I have the necessary knowledge and I'm not traveling currently, I would be able to help you better.”
Taigon smiled gratefully at Trahearne. “That would be wonderful, Trahearne!”
Caithe looked to her fellow firstborn with a grateful smile, “Then it is decided. Taigon will stay with you to learn about Tyria. I’ll continue my hunt, and if I come across anything that resembles your ark, I’ll be sure to pass along the information.”