Post by fae iona cloudbreaker on Nov 5, 2022 13:44:44 GMT -7
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October 30, 2027
There came a point where the Council had grown concerned over the amount of time that Fae spent inside the archive building. Back in March, following her discussion with Bianca, she realized that there had to be pieces to the puzzle that were missing. Concerning both the Merlin ordeal and Yrisle. Whether or not the two were associated really didn't matter to her anymore. She had entered a fervor of research, and one that had her only emerging for important meetings and annual rituals. She even went as far as to set up a hammock in the wooded area behind the archive building, creating a second home of sorts for herself. While her actual home wasn't far (as nothing on Hy-Brasil truly was), the precious time wasted waking between the two could be better utilized in her research.
Previously, she merely glanced through the documents and tried to find references to either of the two topics she was looking into. That had produced a meager amount of material, and then when she tried to get more from the mainland, they proved to have even less. And what they did have was seeped in tainted lore of the mystical Merlin, and his adventures with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. To be quite honest, she did enjoy their stories and it tickled her brain in a way that hadn't been possible since the barrier over the island disappeared and the Wyrd arrived. They were useless to her though. Similar to how her predecessors had left barrels of scrolls that had very little information on them. As important as counting grain for the winter storehouses was in the tenth century, it got her nowhere now. Such a document had little to no value even back then, so it was strange why Councils past thought it pressing to keep and store in the archives. Surely she couldn't learn anything from it, as they didn't even utilize the same farming techniques anymore, and hadn't for hundreds of years.
The majority of her deep dive through the annals of Hy-Brasil turned out similarly. Notes for meetings on long dissolved ritual practices, correspondences from the Ministry apologizing for a broom that had gone astray during a Quidditch match and ended up in the waters outside of the barrier, and other useless material. Fae had surmised that these were the sorts of things she was going to be looking through, but had to do it nonetheless. No stone left unturned was her newest policy. She became fanatical about it at times, going into lengthy rants about how absurd their ancestors were for doing things certain ways - especially how barbaric a lot of their sacrificial rituals used to be - and her poor parents and fellow Council members were forced to listen to it. Being well-versed in the history of Hy-Brasil and it's druids was certainly important, yet there came a point where it turned from gathering knowledge in a healthy way to total fanaticism.
It was around late July when she received a response about an inquiry she had completely forgotten about: Bianca had managed to get her an appointment with Sir Cadogan, a Knight of the Round Table and potentially someone that would have known Merlin. She momentarily forgot that he was a talking portrait, and had planned a day of sorts to try and make the most of it. To say he was well adjusted to his frame was an understatement, and his quirkiness was exactly the sort of energy she needed. Weeks of staring at nothing but ancient Brasilic and crumpling scrolls had put a damper on her mood and dulled the color of her hair even more than usual. It all came back instantaneously when Sir Cadogan recognized Merlin's Staff. The confirmation that she had the real deal gave her a warm and fuzzy feeling, and while she had always known it belonged to Merlin, hearing someone say they actually recognized it was different altogether. She didn't feel so strange carrying it around and claiming it for what it was, and the knight was treating it like seeing an old friend. Which considering the magical personality it seemed to have at times, may have been the truth.
Calling their discussion that, a discussion, would be a horrible way to describe it. The knight immediately jumped into a fanatical description of the many adventures he had with Merlin and their other comrades over a thousand years ago. Fae couldn't recall the last time she had received such valuable information from anything - and now it was spilling out of a talking painting as if it all happened yesterday. Sir Cadogan confirmed that many of the stories she had read up on, muggle and magical alike, were indeed tall-tales peddled by himself following his ascension to the walls of Hogwarts as a picture. But they also weren't too far from what actually happened. He had a flair for the dramatic, of course, and she could see now why Bianca had looked like she wanted to rip him out of his portrait and throttle him when she first mentioned him all those months ago. Listening was how one conversed with Sir Cadogan, Knight of the Round Table, victor over the Wyvern of Wye, father of at least seventeen children, and protector of portraits. He was insanely proud of how many of his colleagues he had saved from the fiendfyre that felled Hogwarts. History had been preserved by him doing so, and she knew she had to be grateful for the fact that he survived the ordeal as well. Without him, centuries of knowledge that she needed would be lost.
After several sessions of listening to his stories, mostly about his life as a knight and how he disliked all of his ex-wives for varying mundane reasons, Fae finally got to ask questions of her own. The answers were not what she expected them to be, and she immediately got the sense that Merlin was a tad recluse in his later years, especially when he arrived on Hy-Brasil to establish the barrier. Sir Cadogan had zero ideas on why his friend would do such a thing, as there was little to no reason to leave his staff behind like he did. The knight went further, explaining that it would be one thing if Merlin decided to settle down on the island and created the barrier as a safety net, but that wasn't what happened at all. He returned to the mainland and went about business as usual. Puzzling as it was, and creating more questions that Fae desperately wanted the answers to, the next part was what really made Sir Cadogan useful.
Merlin, a naturally scatterbrained individual that was too smart for his own good, had a bad habit in his later life of pulling his memories out and placing them in vials for safe keeping. If such a thing still existed, she had the chance of getting what she needed directly from Merlin himself! Assuming he managed to capture and preserve the specific ones she needed. Fae wanted to portkey back home immediately to keep looking through the archives, her excitement comparable to the first time she drank butterbeer. It seemed wild that a warlock as wise as he was would be carefree enough to leave his precious memories laying around, but by Sir Cadogan's descriptions, it was fairly apt of him.
Profusely thanking her new friend, Fae returned to Hy-Brasil to continue her new search. Her work was interrupted only a few times throughout this, mostly to confirm that everything was fine with sending druid children to Hogwarts and that the new campus was sufficient enough to her liking. As if her opinion actually mattered on such a thing. Extravagant castles and educational buildings was such a mainlander thing, and while impressive in size, she found the entire establishment rather tiresome and overblown. The more time she spent on the mainland, it became apparent that her previous desire to get out and explore their world was always going to be stifled by their crutch on muggle technology and their lack of caring towards the natural world. Of course, none of that would matter if Yrisle and the Wyrd became aggressive and swallowed the world whole. Preventing that was sort of important, and she couldn't hold it against most mainlanders when they had no idea what was going on.
During her breaks in her official duties, which only increased as the year went on, Fae continued to delve further into the archived. Every time she moved a shelf or a basket, a new series of reports or scrolls would appear, as well as a thicker layer of dust. The best part about that was that she could tell most of what she went through had never been touched since it had been placed there, meaning she was the first druid to set eyes on all of it in hundreds of years, if not longer. Her search shifted from paperwork to vials though, now interested in the possibility of finding a case of memory vials, or loose bottles of silvery mind slivers. She even went so far as to preemptively purchase a pensieve. Premature? Absolutely. Expensive? Broke her tiny purse in half. After setting it up in the archives, she realized that she probably could have put an inquiry into the Ministry for one, or just asked Bianca. But she felt like she accomplished something by doing it on her own. Even if it did lighten up her butterbeer money considerably.
The day before Samhain began, the thirtieth of October, was when the breakthrough happened. Quite literally. Fae had never conceived the idea that the archives building could have false walls or hidden panels. Had she closely observed the structure from the outside, she probably would have noticed that the interior was far smaller than the exterior was. With how much useless crap had been shoved into it, it only seemed like all of the floor space had been used up. In actuality, there was a false wall.
Throughout her months of laborious research and self-torture, Fae had smartly decided that the best way to keep things orderly for future High Druids was if she organized everything as she went through it. It was while she was moving one of the shelving units to the other side of the room, so that the box of documents on the Niffler disappearance during the summer of 1784 could be added in chronologically, that she accidentally bumped into the wall behind it and heard a hollow thump. On Hy-Brasil, that usually meant one of two things: the structure was poorly crafted, or that pixies had turned the interior of the wall into paper mache with their spit. A couple of confirming knocks told her that the building was still structurally sound by druid standards, and that something was (or wasn't) behind it.
So Fae bore a sizable hole into it with a spell and poked her head through it. Immediately draped in darkness, her eyes failed to focus on the inner space of the wall. Replacing her head with her wand, she cast a levitating light inside and tried it again. This time she could see that she was face to face with additional documents and a cabinet that was absolutely not druid-made. The angle of the the hole she made, to where everything was located, wasn't conducive to getting any of it out and into the main room, so a few arrangements had to be made. With the assistance from a couple of neighborly druids, Fae was able to clear the archival building in no time. Coating the already ancient and sensitive documents in even older dust and particles wasn't her intent, especially because she had no idea how to safely remove the wall.
Thankfully it was easy, and according to one of the island's architects, the wall wasn't a load-bearing one. Shaving it down enough to be able to fully reveal the other side didn't take long once she knew where to target, and in no time everything was in full view. The mysterious cabinet was easier to see now that it wasn't bathed in the faded blue glow of her Lumos spell, and she quickly confirmed again that it wasn't druid made. Which begged the question: why was something non-druid hidden inside their archival building? There was no mention anywhere of who had placed it there or at what time, and even Council members that stopped by to check on things were confused by her discovery. The layer of dust inside told her it had been well over a century since someone had last touched any of it, if not longer. That wasn't exactly a surprise to her, but did generate a sort of intrigue that she hadn't felt yet throughout her period of research.
Of course, the excitement paid off when she started to get into the cabinet. Force was needed to pry the long untouched wood drawers open, a sticky crackle as they were individually separated and made to reveal their contents. Clean scrolls - something she hadn't seen even in the newer documents housed in the archives - quills with brittle feathers, many pairs of spectacles that were made for someone with atrocious eyesight, and a velvet box that lacked hinges, seams, or any visible way to open it. Considering what she was looking for, she immediately jumped to conclusions on what it could be. Even before reading the scrolls stuffed all around it, Fae knew she was finally getting closer to her goal. As the day progressed and she looked through every crevice on the cabinet that she could feasibly find. The box would have to come later; the grand finale of her research.
The scrolls that came from the drawers did eventually confirm knowledge on Merlin and his escapades on Hy-Brasil, mostly detailing how he had been the first mainlander in hundreds of years to visit, and that relations weren't exactly peaceful at the beginning. Fae could understand that. These were events that repeated themselves over and over again, and in more frequency as things got closer to the present. At some point in the future, another High Druid would read scrolls left behind by her own experiences, and they would fit perfectly into the cyclical history of Hy-Brasil's plight with the mainland. Because of this, Fae knew of most of the historical events that preceded Merlin's arrival from other scrolls she'd read months ago, and the easiest way to break it down was that things were not good between the druids and mainlanders at the time. There seemed to be a general amount of untrustworthiness in the mainlanders, and reasonably so, and that the High Druid at the time believed Merlin was being sent as a facilitator sorts to work things out between the two groups. Merlin, being the funny individual that he was, apparently decided he liked Hy-Brasil more than the mainlanders and was sympathetic towards their wants of being left alone. Thus, leaving his staff in the cave and creating the barrier.
There weren't any further details provided about the actual spell used to make the barrier or what the process was in choosing the cave where it was placed. The safe assumption for the latter was that it was a particularly prime magical location. There were serval locations like that around the island, typically focusing on poles or the geographic center of Hy-Brasil. As this cave was hidden away in an area basically unknown to most druids, she found the choosing of it even more curious.
With the cabinet of curiosities carefully cleared and contents categorized for further intellectual consumption by the Council, Fae turned all of her attention to the velvet box. Under the natural lighting of the archival building, she failed to find anything peculiar about it, aside from the obvious inability to open it normally, and decided that she'd take it for a walk and see if that produced any ideas on how to crack it open. Tucking it under her arm, she began the trek through the woods towards one of her favorite rock outcroppings, which had led to many ruminations over the years. The same location had been where she first discovered her advanced affinity for nature. She felt that could help her gather her thoughts more surrounding the box, as blasting it open was violent and unnecessary.
Hours of deep thought and meditation later, and she came to no conclusions. Nothing appeared in her mind's eye, and there didn't seem to be a cohesive opinion from the forest around her on how to approach the box. Fae could feel the strain in between her eyebrows, mostly from furrowing them so much, but also because she'd been scrunching her nose at the item while in deep concentration. If her assumptions were correct - and with the lead from Sir Cadogan earlier in the year - there was the very real possibility that this box held Merlin's memories. While a one-time use, she knew for a fact that mainland historians had never broached this subject before, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to stop themselves from writing about it. And with as much useless information as Hy-Brasil kept, even her ancestors had hidden this away. It had to be important. She didn't know what to do next if it was just personal effects. Another pair of eyeglasses wasn't going to help her at all, unless they have a glimpse into the past through Merlin's eyes or something equally ridiculous (she'd already put them on and tried, both with the box and without it).
And then she realized that she was thinking too hard about this whole thing and hadn't even tried the most simple of opening spells. "Alohomora," she asked the box, tapping it gently with Merlin's Staff. Of course, it worked. A series of thin, self-illuminating blue lines appeared on the top of the box and formed rune-like shapes of a language or culture unknown to her, before shooting off to the four corners of the box. These in turn formed their own recessed lines, seemingly giving way to the box's lid. Inside, as she had assumed, were a dozen vials of silvery, opaque liquid: memories. A few were missing from their slots and one looked to be empty as well. There was no guarantee that they belonged to Merlin, but everything was lining up to look that way. It was all so simple that she couldn't help but laugh at it. She had read muggle mainlander mystery stories that were more convoluted than this was. Merlin may have been a master warlock, but he apparently didn't have a flair for the theatrics as much as his colleague Sir Cadogan did. Hiding an easily openable box in a cabinet behind a false wall was beyond easy. Though, and this was a thought that popped up as she happily skipped back towards the archive building, it was safe to assume that the key was actually the staff. Which wasn't possible to remove without knowing the way to do so, meaning the box couldn't be opened unless a series of other events precipitated before it.
In her excitement, Fae hadn't even pulled any of the vials from the box yet, wanting to do it in secret behind the locked door of the archive. She knew she probably looked like a child, learning of the first time they would get to travel to the mainland. It was a giddiness that hadn't shown itself in her in months, outside of a few, temporary instances. To possibly be the only living person on the planet to see Merlin's memories...she wanted to jump up and down through the street of Boudicca's Grace, but kept it to a cheesy grin at minimum while she sped walk back towards the archive building. Once inside, the prep work of the pensieve began.
Fae had never actually used one before, but has been given very clear instructions on what to do should she ever find what she was looking for. Now that she had, she realized how nerve-racking it was. These vials were one go. That was it. Prepping a scroll and quill next to the milky pensieve bowl, Fae decided that it was now or never, and waiting any longer would only delay figuring out what she needed to do. Plus Samhain was about to occupy her next couple of days, and she couldn't exactly shirk or High Druid responsibilities because she found the memory journals of her celebrity crush. The Council would understand but also wouldn't at the same time.
The first memory vial dropped into the pensieve wasn't much. Which was a lie, because it was lore information about Merlin than she'd found anywhere else, but it also didn't drive her research at all. Standing beside him, it appeared that this memory was of the first time he stepped foot onto Hy-Brasil. Fae almost forgot that she could follow behind him, captivated by the unchanging qualities of her home. For being several centuries ago, everything essentially looked the same now as it did then. A few buildings had been built since, and the dock was completely different, but the pathway towards Boudicca's Grace was still the same, the Dragon's Tooth peak looming off in the distance, and the Tranquil Oak standing tall and resolute, albeit maybe a little shorter than it was now.
As quickly as the memory started, it stopped, and Fae felt herself get pulled back to reality and out of the pensieve bowl. Before she could forget, she scribbled down her observations, as brief as they were, and then dumped the second vial in. This process repeated itself over and over again for the next half dozen or so, giving her a visual representation of what had been written down inside the scrolls she'd read earlier. While she completely agreed with the apprehensiveness that her ancestors showed towards Merlin, there were points where it seemed that they were content with being a backwards magical civilization. And the aggressiveness was definitely something she hadn't expected. Again, it made sense in the context of what Hy-Brasil had been through, but there was no possible way they'd ever be able to defeat Merlin of all people. That was just silly.
When she got to the eighth vial though, that was when things changed a bit. A discussion between Merlin and the High Druid was conducted. Sitting as an ethereal third party to it all, Fae listened intently to the description of the spell that would eventually become the barrier that surrounded the island. It was a fascinating change from how her predecessor was only a few vials back, though it was clear time had passed and Merlin had grown on the druid people greatly. In the memory, she watched the warlock scribble down the incantation for the barrier and pass it over to the High Druid. There was potentially paper evidence somewhere! With that memory over, a problem presented itself: the next couple of vials were missing and then there was an empty one. It didn't take too many context clues to know what that could mean, with the chance of seeing Merlin casting the barrier spell maybe gone forever. Wherever those vials were, they didn't exist inside the archives because she'd turned the building over at least a dozen times by now and only walked away with paperwork. Someone had removed them a long time ago, and done with them who knows what. She was frustrated, of course, because that meant the cause for all of this could have been because someone gained that knowledge and came to the island in an attempt to disrupt the druids. A human element to all of this instead of it being the incoming Wyrd from Yrisle hadn't ever crossed her mind, especially not after the other island appeared so soon after.
Completing the rest of the pensieve dives, very little information on the barrier could be gleaned from them. It was obvious that Merlin had conducted it because he lacked the staff, meaning she was the only person to touch it since. She felt melancholy about it - everything hinged on her finding the spell to put it back up, but now she wasn't sure if she ever would. And it also didn't seem like Merlin had the foggiest idea about what Yrisle or the Wyrd was, and if he had, it was never once mentioned in his memories. The immediate issue of that was still alive and present.
Sitting back in her chair, the weight of the excited hunt she had been on started to peel itself off. A year and a half of time spent researching every lead possible, going to a museum, talking to a painting of a knight, and wondering if Hy-Brasil would ever go back to the way it was. And now she wondered if that was even a good thing for them at all. Isolation had never been a part of her policies, and while being tossed out into the public eye of the magical world was horrible, the Ministry was finally starting to take her seriously as a leader. Ironic, because she was more consistent than all of their Ministers and government officials. There was still one lead left, though finding a scrap of paper she hadn't discovered yet inside this building would be a miracle at this point. Did Hy-Brasil need the barrier?
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