[Aeshen]

Herein follows the accounts of Aeshen, and his meeting with the Elder Druids.

Sparkling evanescence shimmered a primordial cascade of vapor. Augmented through a series of well practiced lines of thought, Aeshen's perceptions altered that he might see through the veil of mist. He crossed the threshold, the curtain of fog parting wide enough that his slim shoulders might pass through. Acutely aware of only a few senses, the air was damp, cold, and seemed close to his skin. He wore only loose fitting robes, light green, his favourite, since the weather was beginning to cool, slightly, it was still a warm night.

Climate indifferences notwithstanding, the grove was dark, and far off, the distant rumble of thunder was heard. Spanning a section of about 15-ft across, the Elder Druid Grove was guarded as one of the most sacred location in Forest Druid lore. Being the first time he had ever set foot within the isolated, and hidden location, Aeshen moved his fingertips to his forehead, his lips, then lastly, to the soil. The traditional greeting of the land for newcomers. He knew as much, to stride into the center of the circle. Arrayed around him, stood thirteen towering trees of various origins. Oak, Ash, Yew, Hawthorn, amungst others stood as immutible column of wood and bark, seemingly ageless before the affairs of the world.

He slowly turned, to regard each towering tree around him. Aware of a creeping mist which sent white tendril to crawl along the ground, the temperature dropped slightly, for Aeshen shuddered. The air seemed to draw breath itself, for the ageless wisdom, and sentience that made up the Elder Council, awoke.

It happened within a brief moment, a pausing of time between intervals. A voice without gender came to him unbidden, not unlike telepathy.
'Sit.' The voice had requested, and Aeshen obeyed, closing his eyes from the physical world, and tucked his legs beneath him, cross-legged. Allowing his mind to suffuse with the presence of his superiors, the wood-witch calmly traced him meditation with a rune of focus. He spoke after a moment of serenity.
"I am here, Elders." His voice did not carry far, and the air, which became slightly damp with moisture, carried the rich scent of earth.
Silence greeted him. But he was aware of a slow and deliberate process. Whatever the Elders were doing, they required silence in their undertaking.

Minutes passed, which slipped by as if seconds, and finally a stirring of awareness caused the elf druid to flinch as the voiceless wording came to him.
'You know why we have summoned you?' It spoke with edged tension, as if some grave decision has been weighed upon.
"Without question. You seek a review of the Eastern Transian assault team." It was said without doubt, for intention and reason were plain to this druid.
'Yes, recall the events in your mind, that we may unfold pattern and source to success or failure' Having been denied their physical bodies in order to provide Phonobeles greater wisdom to the Clans of the Forest Druids, the Elder Druids lost only those senses available to them as human or other bipedal races.

Aeshen unbound the strictures of his mind, uncloistering the fabric of the last few weeks. Which such, he unfolded a series of events which recalled, in detail, the assault on the Eastern Transian.
Aware of the 13 minds within the presense of his own, Aeshen knew no privacy. Every stray line of thought was caught, disected, and set aside for review. He obeyed the Druids, and allowed their course through the privacy of his mind without hinder, but his mind screamed protest, knowing all too well the futility of resisting the combined focus of thirteen forces at once, the witches mind was laid bare.

White knuckles from strain, digging his robes with bare hands as finally, the last of his woes came to bare. Aiyanna's words resonated through his mind like a gong in a monastery. Loud and pure. Doubt woven with anger fused portions of the memory. The elders withdrew, atlast from the sanctity of his uncaged mind, and Aeshen slumped onto his back. He relaxed involuntarily. He spasmed, and contorted as the brutal mental wrenching came to an end. Sweat ran off him in runnels, and his skin was pale and white. His eyes were clenched tightly against the loud roar of the blood in his head. He struggled to regain some composure after the mental onslaught. Failing to achieve even a moment of respite, the Druids boomed once again in his mind.
'Your doubt is the cause of your agony, Aeshen. You defied our will, and failed our command.' Aeshen contorted in pain, as the collective thoughts of thirteen elder druids sifted through his memories, thoughts and feelings like they were nothing.
'It causes us no joy to see you like this. But you have seeded doubt like weeds amungst the strengthed bower of our ancient sect.'

Images of Maya and Gideon flushed through his mind. Brought from their resting place in his memory and forced to be seen through the eyes of strangers. Aeshen clutched his temples, twisting on the ground as he tried in vain, to erect some measure of defence against the visions he saw. They spoke again, pain lanced through his awareness like a hot needle into butter. 'Look, see how they observe you for weaknesses. The female has her eyes on you. You have become weak, a rotten branch, no longer capable of holding it's fruit.' Each telepathic syllabel registered as a scream in his mind. He observed their vision of Maya, pulsing with an aura of purple energy, and yet, her anger fading and her energy simmering to a soft blue hue. He registered the convenient arch of patterns, the change in energies. And how Gideon seemed to always condescend him, as if the witch was incapable as always.

Aeshen fumed, his face turning a mottled red as he gritted white teeth against the untempered mental abuse. Further and further the druids funnelled into their servants mind, leaving no sense of self unturned. They skirted the period of time where Aeshen was a Necromancer, a smouldering sense of lingering distrust marking every moment he spent. He saw, unwillingly, the moment his wife died. Kaishe stood, looking upwards towards the sky, horror and pain scorched onto her face as she wove the last spell to save him. Then he watched her, become consumed by flame. Again and again they forced him to watch his love disintegrate into ash.

Aeshen snapped.

Eyes bleared open to an impressive glow of emerald. Acutely aware of the matrix of power that lingered just within reach of his unhinged sense of self, he uttered a single sylabell. Spoke in words which paired with power itself, he brought a wellspring of energy to his mind. The druids countered, erecting wards of selfdoubt within the memory of how to perform spellcraft. Aeshen fused with this sense of doubt, letting it take him. But quicker then a minds thought, he inverted the spill of doubt, patterned it, then reversed the resonance within himself.

Confidence was the result. Enriched by the sudden burst of arcane magic, the witch erected wards to sanction his mind against others, using the collective elder druids pattern to shape the gylphs in his mind against them. They shrieked against the barriers he created. Recovered slightly enough to stand up, his entire being flooded with a magical energy that he never knew to harness. He stared defiantly at the tree infront of him.
"Never again.. seek to use my brethren, for your 'greater balance'. You exist.. only as a thought... and thought... you shall... remain!" He threw his arms up, his throat unleashing words which shaped raw power to his command. Charged with the unbridled magic which he maintained only through rage, he called upon the inner, most deepest thrum of power he could manifest. He pressed his wards against the fabric of each tree, sigils of green flame flared against their bark, sealing the druids minds reach within themselves. "From this day forth, you will never again seek to manipulate my brethren for your misguided purposes. You no longer of Phonobele's begetting." There was never any proof of Phonobeles choosing of them, it was only heresay. Aeshen crackled with power as he shaped spellcraft to steal 13 druids inside the tree shapes they existed as.

As each tree became a prison for the 13 druids who abused him, and caused the death of so many fellow druids, Aeshen set steel-eyed glares upon the vision of his handiwork. Upon each towering tree, a shimmering slightly green gylph pulsed against the bark.

Left drained by the expulsion of magic so enrichly woven, Aeshen staggered out of the circle. Raw and empty like a hollow drum, he finally leaned against the bulk of a rock, breathing heavily. The lying elders were silenced, and the fate of Forest Druids now lay soley in their own hands, where it belonged.

Aeshen took only a few minutes of rest, then vanished in a shimmering swirl of green light...

Within the druids grove, which now began to overgrow with briars and weeds, thirteen elders screamed in silent protest over the wood-witch they used, manipulated, abused, and fatally underestimated.

[IceSC]

Chosen by his own hand the elders imprisoned before his very eyes, did as they thought was best under their Goddess rule. If it was done wrong against Aeshen Christiana didn't know about it. Slowly eyes looked back and forth from a tree upon the hill it's thick trunk almost shaped as a body and he watched everything that happened.

As quickly as the tree might of been seen it disappeared, and a barren spot stood upon the hill where the tree was. He called upon Velvet Angel, who was the closest thing to an avatar of Phonobele. When she rushed to the site where the druids were, a crack of a cloud opened above her.

Lightning flashed this way and back, and it spiraled around her as if the goddess herself was angry. The lightning hit low though missing the high trees as if it was being cast from the ground rather than the sky. Slowly vines wrapped themselves around the 13, and a slow crack was heard.

Selected as they were, if they emerged Aeshen might want to seek Angel out to hear what they had to say. The ground gobbled up the lightning and it traveled back up to the hill where watchful eyes appeared once again.

Sometimes when someone thinks they are betrayed the betrayal begins a new path in their life, these druids were willing to open their minds and intelligence to the man who acted almost insane casting his magic upon them. Thirteen elders, became stronger from the instance, their strength coming from a lesson well learned.