Opalina (prime)/When Elanthia Trembled
When Elanthia Trembled
Title: When Elanthia Trembled
Author: Opalina Jalcon
From the journals of Opalina Jalcon- 1-30-2002
The fire in my little home had long since burned low.
The room still smelled faintly of honeysuckle, a comforting scent that usually made me feel safe. I stood there for a while, rubbing my crystal amulet and letting familiar thoughts drift through the minds of Icemule.
"Good evening, Icemulians."
Such simple words.
Normal words.
I needed them to be normal.
Too much had happened these last weeks. Too many whispers of liches, stolen relics, impossible enemies. Every conversation seemed to end in someone asking who had died, what had been found, or what terrible thing had happened while the rest of us slept.
So I stepped outside.
The cold bit at my cheeks as I wandered the familiar streets. Snowmen watched from quiet corners while halflings painted roofs and laughed with neighbors. It was such an ordinary evening that I desperately wanted to believe the world had remembered how to be peaceful.
Perhaps if I prayed...
The Ice Garden welcomed me with its frozen fountain and silent flowers sleeping beneath winter's blanket. I knelt before the altar, folded my hands, and whispered words meant only for Oleani.
For a few precious moments...
...there was only stillness.
Then came the vision.
A narrow forest path.
A crystal-clear pool.
An overwhelming urge to leap into the water.
Yet something held me back.
I could only watch.
Even my prayers carried unanswered riddles.
Time seemed to slow after that.
People came and went while I remained at the altar, unwilling to surrender the fragile peace I'd found there. Around me the town bustled, thoughts drifting through the amulets like birds riding unseen winds.
Then...
The world moved.
Not gently.
Not naturally.
The glacier groaned beneath my knees.
The ground lurched violently, throwing me onto my back before I even understood what was happening. Stone, snow, and ice shuddered together as though some great beast beneath the mountain had rolled in its sleep.
For one terrible heartbeat...
I wondered if the glacier itself had decided to fall.
Voices flooded the amulets.
"Did everyone else feel that?"
"Earthquake."
"I felt it in the gemshop."
Some hadn't felt anything.
Others had.
I forced myself upright, my heart pounding harder than the trembling earth ever had.
"I felt it..." I admitted.
Because I had.
Every bit of it.
And somehow...
I feared the shaking had not come from the ground at all.
My feet carried me almost without thought toward the Temple.
Toward answers.
Toward people who understood more than I did.
As I climbed higher through the halls of the gods, each chamber seemed quieter than the last. The walls celebrated life, seasons, art, strength, and thought...yet even there something felt wrong.
The air itself seemed to be waiting.
When I reached the Hall of the Mind, I found familiar faces gathered together—Ilvane, Sothog, Dregaus, Iscikella, Nekales, Kadesha, Aranrhod...
And Tianni.
Something about her made the tiny hairs on my neck rise.
People warned me to be careful before I had even spoken.
One of the Nine was here.
The words settled over the room like frost.
I watched Tianni laugh—a laugh that did not belong in a temple.
"We shall soon have you all as our thrall..."
The words echoed far longer than they should have.
I drew my cloak tighter around myself without realizing I had done it.
For all the horrors I had seen in the wilds...
This frightened me more.
Not swords.
Not monsters.
Not death.
A smiling face speaking with another's voice.
Conversation drifted from the missing staff to the escaped liches.
Everyone searched for certainty.
No one found it.
The questions piled upon one another.
Did they need the staff?
Were they truly free?
Would they return?
No answers came.
Only tired eyes.
I looked around at the people gathered there.
Heroes.
Priests.
Warriors.
Friends.
Every one of them looked exhausted.
The kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot cure.
"I think we are all tired."
The words escaped me almost as a whisper.
Heads nodded.
"It has been a long week."
No.
Longer than a week.
It felt as though the world itself had grown weary.
Standing there beneath the pale light of the temple, I realized something I had been trying desperately to avoid.
I could not hide in my little house.
I could not pray until the danger simply disappeared.
The earth had shaken beneath us.
The enemy walked into holy places wearing familiar faces.
And every one of us—whether rogue, cleric, warrior, or scout—had become part of a story none of us had chosen.
I wrapped my cloak tighter around my shoulders.
Not because I was cold.
But because, for the first time in many days...
I truly understood how afraid I was.