Sisters Khalembra

The Disappearance of Ancient Magic

The legend of the Khalembra Sisters warns of the dangers of jealousy and secret keeping as it explains the origins of the Mystic Mountains of the Khalembra Desert, and the unusually brackish Weeping Dune River.

Summary

Long ago, before recorded history, the Khalembra twins were inseparable. The sisters, Raella and Diora, did everything together due to their many shared interests, and they kept no secrets from each other for they understood each other's hearts. Raella and Diora possessed great skills in all of their interests, as their friendly competitions pushed them both towards practice and perfection. Their magic was no exception, and their prowess in Ancient Magic was unrivaled. Their childhood friend, Tyllia, was jealous of their skills and begged each sister to teach her their magic in secret. Both sisters agreed, for they had been taught to share their gifts with the world, and each agreed to their friend's request to keep the lessons secret, even from their sister. In this way Tyllia hoped to secretly surpass the skills of the Khalembra sisters. But in the process of her magic lessons, the sisters each found themselves falling in love with their friend, and Tyllia discovered herself returning the affections of both Diora and Raella. She adored Diora's easy humor and cherished Raella's gentle honesty, and her magic lessons became a reason to spend time with each sister rather than learn magic. Tyllia feared losing the love of her sisters if she revealed the truth, and continued to hide her dual magic lessons from each of the sisters. She requested lessons on various deception spells and magic rituals in the hope of discovering something that would guarantee the secret remain undiscovered, but to no avail. As with all inconvenient truths, one day Diora discovered Tyllia and Raella, arms intertwined romantically, as Raella demonstrated the use of current stones to coax flowers to grow in the dark underbrush of the forest before presenting the resultant specimen to Tyllia. Diora confronted her twin in a rage, accusing her of attempting to steal away Tyllia's affections. Raella turned on her sister in kind, enraged that her own sister would claim a relationship with her lover. Tyllia's attempts to diffuse the situation were ineffective, and she was forced to watch as her two dear friends each cast a protective spell on her before summoning their most fearsome spells and focusing those spells at their own twin. The battle raged all day and into the night, destroying everything in its path. Tyllia struggled to break the protection spells cast upon her so she could end the fight and claim all blame for herself, but they held fast, the two different spells intertwining their effects the more she struggled to diffuse them. She watched in growing horror as the Khalembra twins' attacks against each other gained ferocity with their rising anger, eventually engulfing the forest itself in their fury of fire and destruction. One day became two, and two days became so many that Tyllia lost count. Still the sisters fought, each spell more destructive than the last, until not only the forest but the surrounding towns and farmland were stripped of life and faded into desert. Still the battle raged, until the very ground itself was pulled into the fray, screeching in protest as rock and stone were thrust into the sky as a symbol of power and the rage of betrayal. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the battle was over, Raella and Diora gasping in exhaustion and pain from deep within the rocks. They had successfully halted the fight through mutual self destruction. Tyllia wept, tears of guilt and loss and pain flowing freely as she finally lay bare her long kept secret and begged them both for a healing spell powerful enough to undo the damage she had caused. The Khalembra twins collected what little Imperium reserves they could to survey the surrounding damage and verify Tyllia's words. Upon discovering the full extent of the destruction from the fight they cried out in unconsolable grief for the life and the lives they had destroyed. Their last thoughts were of each other, and the shame at distrusting their own twin, and with that they passed from the world due to their injuries, leaving Tyllia to her guilt. Tyllia wept, her tears pooling at her feet before sinking into the hungry sands of the magic-birthed Khalembra Desert. She carefully extracted each of the current stones from the sisters' belongings and began her own ritual to memorialize the sisters and their death. The rocks grew higher and higher, becoming the Mystic Mountains, a pair of geographically impossible mountains in the middle of the Khalembra Desert, to commemorate her lost lovers. And once the mountains became a fitting tribute she commanded the earth to open wide and swallow her well beneath their peaks so she, too, could join them in death. But the Khalembra twins' protection spells remained in effect, even after the death of their casters. Each subsequent attempt to find an end to her suffering also failed. The two spells had intertwined to form an unbreakable defense, keeping Tyllia from physical harms, aging, and death itself. In a rage, she used all of the twins' current stones to cast the strongest memory spell she knew, to scatter the knowledge of ancient magic itself and prevent its use again. The only memory she permitted to remain was the memory of the power of ancient magic, in the hope this understanding would prevent another such catastrophe. Upon completion she scattered their stones across Khalembra. Her efforts to destroy ancient magic complete, Tyllia cast herself down under the mountains to spend eternity crying for the loss of her dear friends as a result of her secrecy and jealousy. To this day it is said the Weeping Dune River springs from the tears of Tyllia's remorse from deep within the earth. It is also said that only those who have experienced the loss of a dear friend can see the waters as they flow, and that partaking of the briny river will help sooth a sufferer's broken heart.

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