Riend (prime)
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Riend Ar'Fiernel
"I wanted to dissolve into the floor, mixing myself with the hard stone. A stone had a single purpose: to be. No complicated promises, no worries and no feelings."
Features
You see Riend Ar'Fiernel the Master Artisan.
She appears to be a Sylvankind.
She is tall in stature and has a lithesome, nimble build. She appears to be in the bloom of youth. She has expressive, chestnut-haloed malachite green eyes and gardenia white skin. She has fine, textured hellebore black hair worn swept up in a blossom-like style of many petals pinned in the center with an eleven-pointed silver star barrette. She has an oval face, a gently sloped nose and gracefully pointed ears that complement her high cheekbones. Though her features are predominantly sylvan, subtleties in the shape of her face and the tilt of her eyes appear faintly erithian.
Origin
Riend’s home, Llythwere, lies deep within the southeastern forests of Elanthia, nestled between the site of the once-great sylvan stronghold of Nevishrim and the winding cliffs of Barrett’s Gorge. Established in 2874, the settlement’s origins may reach even further back, according to the older families who whisper of an earlier encampment near Ne’Yuscarl Point. The truth, they say, depends entirely on which founding family’s tale you hear.
It was the wise and honorable sylvan mage Illiweth Siergeth who gathered the scattered survivors of the D'ahranal, left homeless and adrift after the closing of Yuriqen. Seeking refuge from the turmoil that followed, they journeyed first to the fringes of the Southron Wastes, gathering others who had fled or still longed to return to their lost homeland. Carrying word of what had befallen their kin, they sought to turn back any who might attempt the perilous journey home. Bound by kinship and strengthened by safety in numbers, they set out in search of a new refuge, following the ancient paths that had once led their people to the Silver Veil.
Where the Lost Took Root
The sylvans’ journey to the southeastern forests of Elanthia lasted nearly a decade. Harsh terrain, unrelenting weather, and sickness claimed many along the way, reducing a caravan of thousands to only a few hundred weary survivors. In the early spring of 2871, they reached the shadowed forests at the base of the Dragonspine and founded the settlement of Llythwere. Their first shelters were little more than makeshift huts of branches and hides, built from what they could scavenge. Supplies were always scarce, and each day was a struggle to find enough food, water, and firewood to survive.
Their hope did not last. Foraging patrols sent to gather supplies never returned. Fear gripped the settlement, and whispers of abandoning Llythwere spread. It soon became clear they were being hunted. A ruthless band of rogue Faendryl struck again and again, taking lives in the dead of night. By the end of the raids, barely one hundred sylvans remained.
Winter descended, bringing famine, sickness, and despair. Their warriors were nearly gone, and their last great mage lay dying. They could not farm, dared not hunt, and their meager stores were nearly gone. Each day brought the sound of hunger and grief. When the erithi appeared, strangers of an otherworldly kind, their offer of protection, food, and shelter seemed almost impossible to believe. Suspicion warred with desperation, but the choice was no choice at all. The sylvans accepted.
For a year the alliance flourished, and Llythwere began to recover. Then the erithi named their price. Every fifty years, a sylvan would be tithed, bound to them in a ritual of blood magic. The accord was not entered lightly, but the sylvans remembered too well the starvation and slaughter they had endured. Faced with the possibility of returning to that state, they agreed. The first ritual was witnessed only by the elders, its details kept secret, but its outcome ensured the pact would hold for generations.
As time passed, Saoirce Ar’Fiernel, a gifted mage and Riend’s mother, rose to prominence in Llythwere. She saw the tithing as barbaric and considered severing the erithi’s access to the settlement. Her skill with the wards that protected their home gave her the means to do so. Quiet dissent began to gather around her, and for a time it seemed the centuries-old accord might break.
It was Saoirce’s grandmother who intervened, reminding her that the tithe had safeguarded their people when they were at their weakest. She urged her to see it not as a punishment but as a duty, a sacrifice made to ensure survival and honor the covenant with their allies. Saoirce had been raised to believe in that duty, having been a tithe herself, and the words stirred memories of the pride and purpose her own mother had instilled in her. In time, her defiance softened, and she set aside her rebellion, choosing instead to pass down that same belief in sacrifice and the needs of the many to her daughter.
Over the centuries, Llythwere thrived. As their numbers grew and their needs expanded, they began to build upward, weaving their homes into the great trees that had once sheltered their first camp. The city that emerged did not rival the splendor of Yuriqen, yet it was a quiet, graceful place, its walkways and dwellings shaped to live in harmony with the forest. Bathed in dappled light and the whisper of leaves, Llythwere became a testament to survival, resilience, and the enduring bond between its people and the land.
The Path Set Before Her
When Riend was born, her mother’s heart filled with both joy and sorrow. By tradition, she should have been protected from the tithe, for Saoirce herself had already been given and returned. Yet Riend was the first female born in Llythwere in three generations, and the shortage of daughters left the council with no other choice. She was chosen for the fate her mother had endured, and with that knowledge, Saoirce vowed her daughter would know freedom, however brief, and taste a life she herself had been denied.
Riend’s early years followed the path of any sylvan child in appearance alone. She learned to track with a light step, to string a bow with quiet precision, and to hear the language of wind through the leaves. Yet where others had laughter among the branches, Riend had silence. She was kept apart, her world narrowed to a quiet corner of the forest under the careful watch of appointed elders. Days passed with little more than measured lessons and long stretches of solitude. She did not grow up among the easy chatter of friends or the shared mischief of youth, and the rhythms of companionship were foreign to her. Words came rarely, and when they did, they were offered in hushed tones. She learned to speak softly, not from gentleness, but because there was no one to listen.
Saoirce saw how solitude and the shadow of the tithe pressed on her daughter. Wanting to give her more than a life spent waiting, she entrusted Riend with a task. She was to travel westward, carrying word of Llythwere and its open gates to any sylvan who wished to come make their home among its people. Outwardly, it was a mission of welcome and kinship, but in truth it was a chance for Riend to walk beyond the familiar boughs of her home before the tithe claimed her.
Her journey took her west past the Dragonspine, moving from forest to forest, meeting scattered sylvans and guiding them home. In time, her steps carried her to the small town of Wehnimer’s Landing, where she would learn that not every freedom brought joy, and some paths, once taken, could never be walked again.
The Weight of Another Soul
In the early 5110s, Riend was drawn into a nightmare. Grishom Stone, a rogue blood mage, sought to create an urnon golem capable of bringing the demon Althedeus into the world. To power it, he hunted and murdered women who resembled his former lover, Madelyne, using them as both punishment and sacrifice for a betrayal that had driven him to madness.
One night in Wehnimer’s Landing, Riend heard a voice that chilled her to the bone. Weak, frightened, and pleading for help, it pulled her through the streets until it surged into her. It was Madelyne’s restless and vengeful spirit, and that moment marked the beginning of a torment Riend could never have imagined.
The possession broke her slowly. It did not strike her down in an instant but wore her away piece by piece. Fevered nights blurred into waking hallucinations so vivid she could no longer tell memory from reality. Sores marked her skin and refused to heal. Her limbs grew too weak to carry her far, and her voice often failed her entirely. The pain was constant, but the spiritual torment was worse. Madelyne clawed through her thoughts, whispering the dying screams of Stone’s victims until they became her own. Every night brought another echo, another memory that was not hers, and always the same demand: that Riend destroy him.
When Stone first approached her, he seemed unaware she knew what he was. He offered help, promising to free her from the spirit’s grip. His attention, and her striking resemblance to Madelyne, made her valuable to him. Others noticed. They saw how he looked at her, how she occupied a space no one else could. She was asked to remain near him, to watch and gather what she could. It was not given to her as a trap but as a quiet sacrifice. She agreed, not from trust, but from a belief that she could help bring an end to him.
The danger lay not only in the pain, but in the doubt. Somewhere beneath the madness, she began to feel drawn to the man who had orchestrated her suffering. Stone could be charming, attentive, even gentle. There were moments when he smiled without cruelty, when he listened without judgment. In those rare times, she could not tell whether the warmth she felt belonged to her, Stone's own manipulations of her mind, or the fractured love Madelyne had once held for him, still clinging to her mind like a stain that could not be washed away.
She tried to redeem him more than once. She wanted to believe there was something in him untouched by ruin, that he could be persuaded to turn away from what he had become. Even as Madelyne twisted her from within and Stone bent her from without, she held tightly to the belief that humanity could be reclaimed. It was not faith. It was desperation.
Eventually, he spoke of a ritual that would sever her bond with Madelyne’s spirit. He painted it as a mercy, a kindness, a clean end to years of torment. Riend agreed, desperate for relief. But the ritual was not what he promised. Instead of releasing her, it transferred Madelyne’s spirit into his urnon golem, binding her to his monstrous creation and leaving Riend broken in its aftermath.
Time passed. The golem was destroyed, the demon’s influence faded, and Stone was captured, his power weakened. From his cell, he sent for her with an unusual request: a pair of shoes. She delivered them in person. In the stillness of the prison cell, they spoke with a quiet normalcy that was almost unsettling. There was no magic, no threats, only two people hollowed by what they had endured. She asked him to stop, to let it end. He claimed to care for her. She could not believe him, and she could not trust herself.
He escaped, as he always did. Soon, letters began to arrive. They came without warning, sealed with care and signed with the same words each time: “Yours, always, Grishom.” She never replied, but she read every one. In the quiet hours before dawn, she could not say whether part of her still hoped he might change, or feared that he never could.
For a time, Riend believed Madelyne was truly gone. But the spirit was not destroyed. A fragment had splintered off and lodged within her, feeding on everything she tried to bury. It grew stronger with each unspoken fear and every moment she tried to forget. Madelyne waited, patient and watchful, ready to surface whenever Riend allowed herself to feel too deeply.
In order to survive, to protect those she cared for and unable to know how dangerous Madelyne could still become, Riend learned to close herself off. She buried the joy alongside the pain, the longing alongside the fear. Every feeling became a weakness, a door that could be forced open. She locked them all, until nothing remained but a quiet shell of the woman she might have been. It was the only way she knew to keep the darkness inside her from breaking free.
The Price of Survival
When Riend returned to Llythwere, she came not as the dutiful daughter destined for the tithe, but as something worn and withered by years of torment. She told her people what had happened beyond the forest, speaking of the possession, the slow breaking down of her body and mind, and the lingering presence of Madelyne’s spirit that had never truly left her. She asked for the sanctuary and healing her home had once freely offered. The council listened in silence, their faces a mask of judgment she could not read.
Saoirce was gone by then, her voice absent from the chamber where her daughter’s fate was decided. No advocate rose to speak for her, no elder who had watched her grow up an awkward, isolated thing took pity on her. When the council delivered their verdict, it was without hesitation. She was unclean. Unfit. Unworthy of the tithe. What had been done to her, though no fault of her own, had tainted her in their eyes. Worse still, her ruin placed all of Llythwere at risk. Without her, there was no other daughter to tithe when the time came, and the breaking of the accord could mean the end of their fragile peace.
The verdict was final. She was cast out, told she could not remain among them. The paths she had once walked as a child were closed to her, the voices she had once longed to hear fell silent. There was no farewell, no parting gift, only the forest itself standing between her and the life she had tried to return to. She left as she had once entered the wider world, alone, carrying only what she could bear, the weight of her people’s rejection pressing heavier than the years of pain that had brought her there.
Her purpose stripped away, Riend found herself without direction. The duty she had been raised to fulfill was gone, and with it, the anchor that had shaped her entire life. She could neither return to what she had been nor see the shape of what she might become. In the emptiness that remained, she stood suspended between past and future, unable to move forward.
Vignettes
New - The River Between us