Ioeth Story Prompts

Why did it take so long?

Ioeth stares at their hands. They don’t look different—they are still black, shadow etched into the skin—but they don’t feel the same. Magic hurts, now. In the weeks since they returned from the Whispering Sea, their magic has begun to come back; like a trickle of water in a dried-out riverbed that once held a roaring torrent. They can shape shadows again, and smother a candle or lantern, small things, little more than parlour tricks… but every time they call upon their magic, their hands ache. The pain has lessened over time, but it doesn’t seem to be going away.

When they look inwards, where their magic once was, there is now a hole—a void, an irony that would have been amusing if it wasn’t so unsettling—a strange mindscape, endless and without limits. Black bone stretches before their mind’s eye, and the faint glimmer of stars.

Again Ioeth returns to the same set of questions, as they bend over their workbench. With each rasp of the file, each stroke of the hammer, they echo in their mind—why did they do it? Why did it have to be them? Why didn’t the mage protectors of Ivras come to the aid of the villagers faster? 

Ioeth thinks about a king and a royal council, slow and indecisive; they think about Miriam’s foolish, dangerous policies, and what they had said during the debate in Faline, before she ascended to power: What will you do, when the next monster appears?