Trust is much like a mirror in that when it breaks you can piece it back together, but you will never again be able to look at it’s reflection without first seeing the cracks.

The wards to the Apex Tower in Elinhir have been broken and now Minerva Lauzon begins her ritual to breach the tower doors. Lauzon is a former apprentice to Yamanu-ko of the Blackcaster Mages Guild, but unlike Leta and Avys, she realized that life is a price too high to pay for knowledge.

She believes that defeating Yamanu-ko may be enough to break the cycle of the Serpent’s savage spell. But Yamanu-ko has grown ever more powerful in her tower feeding upon the magicka drained from her fellow mages in the city below. I have faith though that we can overcome, for just as wielding a blade is not strength, knowledge is not power. Those to whom knowledge is gifted, no matter how hard or long they have strived for it, oft prove little wiser than they were before.

Elinhir was once a city built upon faith and trust. For centuries its people put their trust in the mages to keep their city a safe bastion in the wastelands of Hammerfell for those who sought refuge from empires and wars. The mages were eventually to betray that faith however, by putting their own trust in the words of the Serpent’s envoy.

The city of Elinhir now lies in ruins and the people may never again want to put their trust in Lauzon and the mages, but this city cannot possibly be rebuilt without them. We all make mistakes, do wrong things, things that sometimes have bad consequences; it does not mean however that we can never be trusted ever again. But if the people of Elinhir can not ever see beyond the cracks in the mirror then perhaps they should let this city, the City of Mages, fall into dust.

S.K