“I grew up the son of a wealthy family. My parents founded a company that soon grew to be the largest producer of paper scrolls in all of Kanarth. My father invented a magical spell that allowed for the paper we made to be much more durable which made it highly popular among mages, who often had to rewrite their complicated spells because the paper was tearing, dirty or just too crumpled up after carrying it with them. Their books were more hardy, but there were certain benefits to having spells on a loose piece of paper too. I digress, but basically I grew up with a lot of money and parents who were closely working for the Kascoma. That was the name of a magical society that trained young people into mages. It was at Kascoma where I first learned about magic. It was also where I met my wife, Linia and her younger brother Sorda. Sorda and I became quick friends. I had the intelligence to come up with new things and he had the natural talent to master almost anything instantly. I distinctly remember visiting their house early on in our friendship and being quite shocked. Sorda’s parents were of the lowest class in Kanarth. Wealth was everything back in those days and if you didn’t have anything to provide to the city then you might as well not exist. It was such a different upbringing from my own, but we felt like we were such close friends from the very start. It was also that visit to their home where I first met Linia. She was the most beautiful young woman. Short red hair, those little dimples and just a mischievous look in her eyes. She did not care for me one bit. Called me a stuck-up loser and left the room shortly after I introduced myself. Sorda said that was a good first impression but I didn’t buy it. Still, we would hang out almost every day back then, and I would regularly visit their home. I would always bring something to eat or drink as that felt appropriate. I was definitely trying to flaunt my family’s wealth if I’m being perfectly honest with you, but a young man would want to impress a girl in any way he could think of, you would understand. After a few months, I invited Sorda, Linia and their parents to my house for dinner with my family. Sorda and I had just finished the first stage of our education and it was worth a celebration. Because my family had the means, we invited their family over. It was after that dinner, when I showed Linia my study, that she started to open up to me. I was obsessed with nature and specifically trees. A big part of Kanarth’s culture was about longevity and trying to create a state so rich and powerful that it would last forever. Some of the trees that stand here in this very forest are older than any of us alive. If you want to live forever, just look at the world around you and you’ll find plenty of examples of those who have figured it out. It was also around this time that Sorda and I started realizing that our end goals weren’t fully aligned. I was happy being just another mage in the bigger picture of it all but Sorda had a hunger. And that hunger could not be satiated by simply living a single lifetime.” They looked at Teddy and Rolin. “Us elves live a much longer time than many of the other mortal folks, but even we feel the passing of time get faster and faster as we age. There’s an old wisdom about the passage of time, are you familiar with it?”
Teddy nodded. “I think I know what you mean. Say you’re a ten year old boy, and you have to wait for something for an entire year, that is one tenth of your life. That’s a lot of time. But if you’ve lived for three hundred years, then that same year is a third of a percent of your lifetime. It will feel like it goes by in a flash.”
Karnisal nodded approvingly. “Sorda had not experienced that feeling himself when we were at Kascoma, but he had seen it in others and he feared it. Fear of death and the passing of time is normal, most of us experience it at some point in our lives, but Sorda was obsessed with this fear. And he knew it too. He talked to me about it at length and I tried to comfort him, help him out. Linia did the same. The two of us spoke at length about the joys of living here and now, and not the fears of what might come but the anxiety he experienced was indescribable. There was a point in time where his fear of death got so bad that he attempted suicide. It’s almost ironic if you think about it, but my friend was so scared of death that he couldn’t live with himself. Linia and I sought comfort in each other’s company at the time and before we knew it we welcomed our first child into the world. Kaishi. We named him after Linia and Sorda’s grandfather, who had passed away at a young age during a pilgrimage.”

Karnisal took a sip of their drink and stared into the distance for a while. On their face was a mix of melancholy and regret. Eventually they spoke again. “It was during these few years that I think we lost sight of Sorda. Of course we still kept close watch on his moods and made sure he wasn’t getting into anything too serious, but taking care of a child is hard work and I have to admit that our priorities weren’t always with him. When Sorda started dating a fellow student at Kascoma we figured that he might finally be able to get rid of some of his anxiety. We didn’t anticipate that his new partner would be a terrible influence on him. Sorda’s partner was a charismatic man, handsome as they came and with a witty sense of humor. Darovin was his name. To this day I do not believe that Darovin’s intent was to send Sorda spiraling deeper into his anxiety, but their relationship did not go well. Where Linia and I had tried to focus on the positives of our long life and the opportunities that still lay before us, Darovin was far more focused on sheltering Sorda from the world around him and instead having him focus on their relationship. This seemed to work well for a few years and they got married not long after Linia and I finally married. I remember that Kaishi was just old enough to walk by that point and he brought the rings forward. Sorda looked good at his wedding. He’d grown out his hair, the same pretty red hair that Linia had, and he started wearing a suit at every opportunity. We still kept close contact and to this day I regret not realizing that things were worse than I thought. Darovin had found an alchemical substance that helped Sorda calm down a bit and let his anxiety fade. A drug of sorts that relaxed the mind. Now I’m no stranger to drugs either, it was actually a pretty common habit back in Kanarth. Makes sense right? A society of mages and sorcerers would definitely experiment with everything they had on hand. There were mixtures that helped you focus or allowed you to skip sleep for much longer than would normally be healthy for you. There were also relaxants like the one that Sorda started taking. What no one accounted for was that the potency of this particular drug was much higher than he intended. One night, Darovin suddenly knocked on our door, with an unconscious Sorda in his hands. He had taken too much of the Nasfarweed, the drugs in question, and was unresponsive. We managed to get him back to his senses by administering a combination of herbs that were known to force the toxins out of the body quicker. A rather unpleasant experience that left him sweating out the toxin through his skin, which probably felt awful. After that episode, we made sure that Sorda’s drug usage was monitored closely. But by this point, it was already too late and Sorda’s downward spiral had already started. What made things worse was that Darovin was racked with guilt for letting this happen to his husband. Both men changed and there was nothing that Linia, myself or anyone else could do to make things better again. Sorda’s fear of death got worse and he would bounce from being high on drugs to being torn apart by anxiety. He’d stop eating for days on end and would go into fits of rage. We even had to break contact with him for a while when he almost hit Kaishi in his anger. He divorced Darovin, who eventually recovered from what had clearly become an abusive relationship and started teaching classes at Kascoma. Sorda eventually left Kanarth behind to see more of the world. I didn’t know at the time that his aim was to find a way to make himself immortal, but in hindsight it’s not strange. Someone obsessed with death would want to be immortal to prevent death altogether. I bet he thought he would no longer be anxious if he knew he would not die. Despite feeling worried about Sorda being left to his own devices, life went on and Linia and I had our second child, a girl called Sarina. We were a happy family. I had taken over my parents’ paper business although it mostly ran itself by this point and we’d started building a communal garden in Kanarth. The city had always been focused on magic and towers and building more and more modern structures that it felt peaceful to have a garden that anyone could visit. It was our pride and joy and we would spend much of our time taking care of it.” There was a soft smile on Karnisal’s face as they recounted this part of their past. “At a certain point we had mostly forgotten about Sorda. Sad as it sounds, that was the reality of things. He had decided to disappear on his own and he had never bothered to contact us. We wouldn’t see him again until our children were both adults.”
Karnisal looked at the door and then rang a little bell on their desk. Mirgia had been there to respond to this bell many times so it felt weird to sit there and wait for someone else to show up and help Karnisal.
The door opened and the familiar face of Larf, a fellow guard, appeared. “What can I do for you, Lord Karnisal?”
“Larf be a dear and fetch us some wine. I need a drink if I want to continue this story.”
Larf nodded. “I shall be right back.”
Karnisal looked around the room. “I hope I’m not boring you with too many details about my youth,” they said apologetically.
“It is hard to tell a story if you can’t tell it from the very beginning,” Rolin said. “I for one am quite interested in hearing your story, if it brings you even a little bit of relief to tell the story to someone.”
Karnisal smiled. “You are a very kind person, I am glad we got to meet”
“I appreciate that very much, and I am glad too.”
Larf returned with some drinks and a platter of fruit as well. Mirgia poured everyone a glass and then returned to his seat. They waited patiently while Karnisal drank their wine before the story continued.