No scholar at the Academy had ever laid eyes on the lost ward, or walked its streets and returned. No songs of it were ever sung. No map had ever marked it.
Etar’Das was only a whisper told behind closed doors and avoided in the presence of all but a very few.
Legends of an abandoned city buried beneath the scarred remains of a forbidden mountain top, laying beyond the medley plains and deep forests, said to have been raised by the Altir the ancient fae in the prior age.
The last to find it was Ber’odin of the Cavin’Dor, the greatest wizard of his generation. With all certainty of the legends he found this hidden place and entered the wards gates…And then he vanished.
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This is a continuation of a freewrite I made in this forum 5 years ago. You can get more of the backstory by reading chapter 1 here.
Hive post Mystery Of Etar'Das Etar'Das. Unexplainable to scholars and twice as confounding on the eye...
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Tagoth gazed into the open chasm cautiously, Dravas, his Kath’ire watched as his eyes scanned the looming opening as if pondering his next step.
Slowly he retrieved one of the lit torches from the wall and waved it through the glyph scrawled gate. Long dark shadows sliced across the walls and darted from one corner to the other.
“Remember Kath’ire nothing inside is to be trusted.“ Tagoth said and took two careful steps into the mountain’s forbidden undercroft. Dravas nodded quietly his gesture minimized as if to not awaken the latent energies of the chamber its self. Although not quite tangible, something felt off to him, a subtle buzz to the very air its self.
The tunnel yawned before him like the throat of some maleficent beast. Jagged cracks clawed along the walls. Bits of rubble strewn about casting shadows that defeated the light of the torch as if deliberately trying to hide the true nature of this place. It was as if some terrible force once roared its way like a deathly phantasm through this hall shattering the stonework as it fought its way out to invoke the rancor and devastation that left the summits trees gnarled and its stones melted.
Fungi blossomed in tight knots along the cracks that spiderwebbed the walks pulsing in uneven rhythm, as if the stone itself were breathing. Dravas touched one without thinking, and the glow shifted under his fingertips, warm, pliant, disturbingly alive.
“El’tras, what dark magic conjured this?” He asked, referring to his senior in the title reserved for doctorates of the university.
“Shhhhh” Tagoth motioned holding up his finger silencing him, his head cocked, distracted down the depth of the corridor.
Dravas thought he could sense what the El’tras had. In the stillness, almost certain were faint whispers carried along a steady draft. The smell of damp earth and something older, sharper, like ozone before a storm brought lightning. Beneath it, insistent, came the sound of running water echoing from somewhere below.
Tagoth lifted his torch higher, but its fire seemed to flicker and dim, as if muted by the energy spilling from the walls. Dravas recognized the effects of coupling magic having just seen a demonstration only moments before in the anti chamber. Etar’Das was alive with a greedy sort of magic, reclaiming the flames energy as if countering the feeble will of the human conjurings.
“Do you feel it?” Tagoth asked. His voice was hushed, reverent.
“The air?” Dravas questioned.
“No. The ward,” he corrected. His eyes narrowed, watching the fungi’s glow cascade down the tunnel in a ripple. “It’s not welcoming us.”
Dravas followed the ‘El’tras as they pressed deeper down the tunnel until the rough stonework gave way to deliberate craft. Pillars rose on either side, carved too finely to be the work of the Fae alone.
Tagoth’s arm stiffened holding Dravas back. And then silently rose, commanding silence. His eyes, sharp as a dagger glinting moonlight, fixed on the pillars carvings.
“Kath’ire the pillars. This is elven. Perhaps, the scholars read the legends wrong. More is at play here. Elven and Fae have never partnered”
Catching the pale glow of the fungi, flowing script like veins of silver filigree shimmered faintly along the columns as if a dormant energy had been summoned by their presence.
“Kath’ir… mark the pillars well. Remember the details you see here. It’s important” Tagoth said at last, voice low but solemn and heavy.
Dravas leaned forward inspecting the script uncertain. “Then the scholars spoke falsly…Etar’das was Elven in its founding?”
Tagoth grimaced his mouth tightening and he shook his head. “No. If it were so simple, the Record keepers at the University would not have kept this place hidden for centuries. Humans have always known of the Elven. Besides, journeymen , scribes, minstrels alike would all have pieced together rumors and clues over the centuries. Look closer, Kath’ir. Go ahead and look. See the lines beneath the script? Those veins that pulse faintly through the stone. That is Fae weaving, an Altir’s work binding the script to the mountains power. The Elven knew not this magic.”
Dravis placed his palm flat against the pillar. Rippling like disturbed water at his touch light blossomed through the column. Startled the Kath’ire retracted his hand quickly.
Tagoth’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
A draft stirred through the chamber, not cold like the underground air, but as if a tendril swept past stealing energy and chilling the air. A faint whispering almost a quiet as an imagining spoke something unintelligible to him. Dravas swallowed. “But… the Fae and the Elves have never joined hands. Not in war, not in craft, not in anything the chronicles recall in any of the kingdoms. Not even in the elven libraries.”
A thick silence hung for a moment then the El’tras looked down at his Kath’ire a shadow encroaching his face and finally spoke in a hushed tone. “Then the chronicles are wrong, or worse…they were deliberately rewritten.”
“Come Kath’ire” Tagoth beckoned, and pressed further into the tunnel following the sounds of running water. The torch fire dimmed again and flickered desperately before flaring to life again. Etar’Das’ magic again taking what energy it could from its interlopers.
Ahead around a corner light washed across the walls and the tunnel terminated into a gaping, maw-like opening, with edges draped in moss. Tendrils of mist shimmered in the light beyond swirling gently in the cool draft of the mountains bowels.
Dravas and Tagoth halted at the threshold. An unnatural silence smothered the two of them.
Dravis looked on breathlessly. Taciturn, the ticks of his heart marking the moment.
Etar’Das spread out beneath them like a ghost revealing its self from the shadows. Overhead, long silvery rivulets spilled from fissures high in the cavern roof, seemingly fed by the slow melt of alpine ice and snow from the forbidden mountains peak. The waters fell in glittering ribbonlike curtains, catching the wards lights below like sequins on fabric made of midnight, plunging hundreds of feet into vast, inky shadowed pools below.
From there, streams sluiced their way through the preternatural wards, branching into neat glimmering channels that peeked from the shadows as they slithered through the darkened lanes of the Burroughs. The ghostly flickers seemed as if the city itself were somehow alive and watching.
Dravis drew in a sharp breath. A brief involuntary gasp. For the briefest instant, looking down into one of the alien like wards, he could have sworn a black, wraith-like shape had just crawled down one of the alleys and dissolved itself into the shadow of a building. His eyes darted to Tagoth, but the senior’s attention was fixed elsewhere. Dravis swallowed his words and let the silence hold, uncertain of what he had just seen was real or a figment of his imagination.
Even from this height, the differences of the Wards were as clear as dawn.
One quarter distinctly Fae having grown almost organically from the minds of the Altir. Its streets entwined in senseless, knots, flowing like the entwined branches and roots of some vast tree. Its symmetry no human mind could grasp nor desire. The walls and arches carried no straight lines, no hard corners. Almost as if moulded from wax.
Glowing trees grew at odd angles wherever there was room their canopies half shrouding passageways and thoroughfares. Dravis squinted and watched as their bark veined with shifting light, erupted in waves of amber and blue light like brush fire or lightning pulsated beneath their surface.
Serving as lighting, some trees bore luminous fruit that dangled like lanterns, swaying occasionally as if prompted by unseen gusts, though no wind stirred. As if Etar’Das its self was alive and breathing. The air itself seemed thicker there, damp and alive working with fingers of mist that lingered low in the air.
Dravis gazed at the Altir ward below. He had never seen the Fae let alone any of their architecture . It was beautiful yet unsettling at the same time. One would go insane dwelling in such madness.
Another district shimmered like white delicate sandcastles effulgent in silvery moonlight glow.
This Dravis had seen before once during his first year at the University. He had never forgotten the needle like spires with gossamer buttress adjoining them to another. Sylvarenne, the ‘Forest Crown’ the Elven village was called nestled atop a cliff faced butte overlooking a sea of dense green on the far side of the Valen forest it served as a trade center between human and elven affairs.
Simple orbs of pale silvery-blue light drifted above slender obelisks that lined the streets below like watchful sentinels. The light they shed was not the warm glow of a hearth but a cold, lunar radiance that silvered the stone and cast shadows along the sharp glass like needles that towered over the other wards as if to permeate the Elven arrogance that underlined their sense of superiority over the other races.
Connecting each spire, bridges arched with such impossible delicacy their spans seemed as if spun from moonlight itself. Buttress curved like the ribs of a colossal ancient creature seamlessly connecting flawlessly to vaulted causeways. Elven architecture was imbued with no human sensibilities. Hovering above the spires near the cavern vault small robes twinkled like living stars.
To Dravis the eleven ward was beautiful, but not comforting. The geometry was too ethereal, cold and distant. It did not invite warmth. Instead, it was designed for beings lighter, and more pure than man. For lives never lived as mankind.
To their left of the maw overlooking Etar’Das a grand stairwell curved elegantly downward following along the cavern wall. Almost as if carved from the wall it’s self and arbored in gossamer like buttresses, it descended into the elven quarter of Etar’Das. As if carved from white sandstone and polished smooth by centuries of care, every edge shimmered like crystalline scattering the hues of the wards into glittering facets. To Dravis the stairs looked almost too pristine and timeless to have been simply abandoned.
“Those stairs are far too long a journey Kath’ire” Tagoth chortled in amazement. “Let us see if there is any other way down”
Dravis’s gaze was soon drawn to something stranger half hidden in the shadows. To the right, half-shrouded, stood a device that did not belong. An open platform of wood and iron, its chains vanishing into the ceiling above, creaked as another gust breezed through the open maw and into the tunnel behind them.
A lift… plain, utilitarian, its function obvious even to human eyes.
“What in Emire have we got here?” Tagoth said motioning for Dravis to approach the platform.
“This Dwarven El’tras?” Dravis questioned.
Yea Dwarven,” Tagoth whispered. The thought unsettled him. Dwarven constructs were older than even the elven spires. This lift was rough-hewn but an enduring reminder of the now thought to be extant race.
“Perhaps… the dwarves had been the first to unearth this cavern.” Dravis questioned.
The platform creaked faintly as if in inviting approval of the Kath’ire’s comment.
Tagoth’s expression only hardened in reaction.
“All three here,” muttered stroking his beard, his voice low and pensive. “Elves, Altir, and Dwarves…all sharing one hidden city, deep beneath a forbidden mountain. Overlooking The human city of Emire and its University of mega magical studies?” His eyes narrowed furtively, unreadable in the dim light. “Why would they do this? And why keep it from mankind?”
Shifting uneasily, Dravis changed his weight from one foot to the other as if unsure which path offered less danger his eyes darting back and forth between the stairs and the lift.
A gust of wind rushed past again and the lift groaned its chains rattling. One of the ancient gears popped slightly. This time Dravis could hear the whispering again and by the look on Tagoths face he had too.
Dravis swallowed eyeing the lift distrustfully. “El’tras… should we take the stairs?”
Tagoth’s gaze surveyed the stairs once more and then lingered on the Dwarven lift, its blackened gears still as if waiting for the two to make a decision.
“No. The stairs would show us what the Elves wanted us to see. I would rather learn what the Dwarves left behind.” He stepped forward, boots scraping against the stone. “Come. If Ber’odin left any traces or clues, he may have left them there in the Dwarven wards. The Dwarves were the closest to human. It’s only natural he would have likely started there .”
Dravis stepped onto the lift. It swayed slightly bouncing having received his weight. “Partnership between any two would be rare enough,” Dravis said. His words came out softer than he intended, barely audible above the roar of water echoing from the fissures above now that they were standing out in the open . “But all three makes no sense.”
Tagoth’s jaw clenched, tacit unease exposing his otherwise practiced composure. “Sense or not, Kath’ir… it happened….what they were hiding and why?”
As of stirred by his suggestion the wind caught up again and a shrill whistle howled through the cavern like the cry of something ancient waking from its slumber.
Tagoth inspected the chains where they disappeared into the Dwarven gears and machinations, searching for any clue on how to activate the ancient lift.
Dravis eyes scanned the old wooden balustrade, its beams cracked and splintered from age but sturdy none the less. And there nestled in the dew kissed moss and lichen off in the corner he saw it.
He recognized it instantly. The angular hash-like markings of ancient Cavan’Dor invitational script. The seal of Ber’odin, was etched on the margins of tomes forbidden to Kath’ir and not taught anywhere in the University.
“Tagoth,” Dravis whispered, his voice barely more than audible. “he was here.”
Tagoth’s body stiffened in acknowledgement but he gave no answer. Instead his gaze remained fixed on the chains as they ascended to the darkness of the caver ceiling.
Tagoth crouched near the chains, and splayed his hands over the metal as if sensing something no readily apparent. “The Dwarven mechanism…it’s not mere machinery,” he murmured. “This lift is like a lock that only responds to the right combination of energy, Kinetic…Elemental resonant with its surroundings. We’ll have to awaken it.”
Dravis nodded in understanding. This was a common binding even with the humans.
Tagoth turned toward him. “It won’t answer me alone. The lift will only stir if we work together. “
Dravis swallowed. “What will you have me do?”
“Kath’ire, do you remember your year one drills?” Tagoth’s voice was calm but firm. “The ‘Chain-Song.’ Luminar Thalen’Droth’s lessons on resonance.
“Of course El’Tras, I can perform that.” Dravis chummed confidently, feeling useful again.
“Good Kath’ire. This Dwarven contraption…you will be It’s pulse. I will give it its breath.”
Dravis stepped forward, placing both hands on the cool damp links and closed his eyes, letting his body slip into rhythm of the cavern, of the ward below, of the water falling. A complex pattern, nuanced, layered, hyperplexed, but not overly challenging with enough concentration. The chain reacted. At first a slight tremor. Then a quiver as it vibrated faintly beneath his touch, answering.
“Yes,” Tagoth encouraged. “That’s all this lift asks of you Kath’ire”
Tagoth lightly touched the largest of gears with his finger tips, and outstretched his other arm towards the nearest curtain of falling water fingers splayed. An unnatural silence hushed the roar of the falls as if sound its self was stolen. The shimmering torrent began to hesitate, its droplets elongated midair shimmering in the wards lights suspended like diamonds frozen in time.
Frost started creeping along the mosses of the balustrade sending a chill through Dravis as the magic coupled with the Dwarven workings. The gear glowing softly incandescent in the dim light absorbed amber halos from each of Tagoths fingertips. Dravis watched wide eyed at the advanced El’Tras magic.
With a soft sigh, the gear slowly started rolling and the lift finally complied gently descending down on its rails into the darkness below.
Tagoth released his breath. The glow along his fingers dimmed, and the frost receded from the metal. A sudden roar echoed against the cavern walls again as the waterfalls released from Tagoths grasp and resumed their natural pace, thundering once more into the pools below. He stood still for a moment, composing himself, then turned to Dravis with a satisfied smile. “Ber’odin must have been… impossibly powerful,” he finally spoke. “To leave traces of his path and command two magical acts at once? Its almost unimaginable”
Dravis’ expression sobered, and gave a small nod.
“Come my talented young Kath’ire. Let us descend into the Dwarven wards. Ber’odin undoubtably passed this way, and perhaps then we will find further clues,” tagoth said his eyes gleaming, “we may begin to finally understand why all three races built here, and why they abandoned it…and what Ber’Odin was seeking beneath Etar’Das.”
Dravis stared down into the waiting darkness of the Dwarven wards below. At the profuse quiltwork of dim sodium colored lighting that highlighted only major landmarks leaving the rest of the dwellings shrouded in darkness.
A flicker of movement passed at the edge of his vision, like a shape shifting just beyond perception, a silvery specter in the darkness vanishing behind a walled courtyard gone as soon as he blinked.
Uncertain at what he had. Seen he glanced at Tagoth who seemed I disturbed watching the chains clink along the lifts gears.
Whatever lingered here was not human, and it had been waiting.
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This story was inspired by the freewrite word of the day “The Lost Ward”.
Hive post 27 September 2025, 
@daily.prompt/27-september-2025-mariannewests-freewrite-writing-prompt-day-2873-the-lost-ward
It’s a continuation of a story I have sat on and wanted to continue for nearly five years. It will most definitely become an ongoing series. Heavily influenced by Patrick Rothfuss writing style which captured me around the time I wrote the first installment. Additional thanks go out to /@kaelci Hive account 
—-——————————————————- pist script: wow a five minute freewrite that turned into a 3000 word passage. Two intense days of writing. I had forgotten just how exhausting being creative can be. Cheers to all the writers out there. May your pen flow freely and true, expressing the inner you.
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All photos are mine, taken by me. In this case a shot I took exiting an underwater cave 150 feet underwater off the southern tip of Eluthera known as “the hole in the wall” beyond is open ocean and a 6,000 foot drop into the abyss below.
Starry Magic of the Sagittarius Star Cloud. It reminds me of wizardry. Don’t know why. Taken 2am Sept 2025 by me.
