There were many chores for Emeraldis to do today, but she began by setting the table in the massive dining room. Eighteen seats and placements. Then set to making breakfast, cooked oats with berries and sliced spice bread. She ate alone, reading one of her old favorite books on the Hethe Ambriel her mother had given her. It was a story about The Hethe Ambriel and it talked about her promised land; The Grandsea Gardens, Riviera. A beautiful land for the Hethe Queens chosen where none felt sorrow or pain and all lived in harmony. Her mother told her all the stories; Of Ambriel standing against a monster who sought to end the universe and destroyed a corrupted Hethe with her flaming spear. That she was both an arkn and a dekn with flowering antlers and wings made of wind and clouds of petals. Her mother was an Ambriel cultist, she rejected the ideas of the arkn and dekn that Ambriel wasn’t a Hethe and was a member of her cult for a while before meeting her father. Her mother had taught her everything she knew and had even given her the amulet that her High Priestess had given to her. A round pendant made of stunning gold with a giant tree and vines standing in relief on it. She listened to everything her mother taught her, all the lessons and songs and sigils, she knew all the stories. 

When her mother came back she could show her how much she’d practiced. How much she studied every single day. 

After finishing breakfast and cleaning up she set to cleaning the bedrooms, dusting, and changing the sheets before lighting incense just as her mother would. Moving downstairs she cleaned and dusted the family room and library and workshop, being careful not to disturb any of her relative's projects. Moving into the foyer she looked at the Starheart and frowned, standing on a stool to dust it with careful, delicate flicks of her wrist so as to not disturb it. If her father knew she was messing with the Starheart he would scold her harshly. It was never to be touched by anyone, ever. EVER. She remembered her father then and the gift he’d given her before he set out and pulled out the Emerald Star. It was a gift her mother, father, and grandmother had all three made for her before they left. It was a hand-cut rethyc crystal and cut so perfectly as to radiate shades of green. It glittered in the light of the Starheart like its own green sky of stars and shone perfect mirror images on every facet. She held it up to the light of the Starheart and looked into it closely. On the inside were lines and fractures that almost formed sigils to her. It was then she suddenly remembered she had to water the garden. She tucked the star into her shirt and put the stool away. 

Outside the house was her mother's garden, a huge collection of flowers and plants from all over the place. She used to collect them and put a lot of effort into cultivating her medicine garden and the smell of the wormwood was the first thing that hit her when a gust of wind came rolling over the soft-looking green fields that stretched into the horizon around their home. Among the wormwoods scent came honey from her father's beehives and the vegetable patch her grandmother kept and her mother's countless beds of flowers. Emeraldis pouted, this was too much work for her alone and she was already tired and she still had to go out. No one would know that she’d done it she supposed. She’s studied for it after all. She took out a shining, cut crystal from her pocket and drew a sigil in the dirt with it, laying the crystal on top. With a thought, a rumble came from the air and storm clouds gathered over the gardens and began pouring rain down onto the beds. The flowers seemed to like it and danced in the wind as it blew through again. Emeraldis groaned, of course she forgot to mop the floors!. She stomped back into the house with the bucket in hand. 

Once the floors had been cleaned and the rugs had been beaten and put back in their place she was finally done. She was already tired, though, and dreaded the idea of going out now. But she couldn’t go much longer without getting food and she honestly really wanted a few new books to read. She got out the heavy bag she used to go out and did her preparations. Applying a black lacquer to her horn and applied a layer of shielding. She couldn’t go out without people wanting her attention and it was better to completely hide than be tormented. Downside of being a Crys’talis. Once she was absolutely sure she looked completely normal she walked to the library where their teleportation was placed. It was always set to the same small town in the Elevrium. A place where she could move unseen and not attract attention. 

Emeraldis breathed, this was always hard to do… not because she couldn’t but because she didn’t like leaving her home. She knew she could live on the garden and maybe she could try to learn cutting on her own instead of reading…. But she didn’t want to disturb her families work, and she’d already gone through everything in the library…. She had to go out. She had no choice now, she’d already left the circle several times and postponed doing this. She took a breath and calmed herself and focused on the large crystal that powered the sigil, she vanished in a blink. 

Strings of perfectly cut glittering crystals shimmered on strings in the window as the morning sun sent the small beams of light that caught other crystals sitting on shelves and hanging from the ceiling, casting a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns onto old toys and books that sat in years of disuse. Soon the blankets on the bed shifted and a single crimson horn emerged, catching every beam of light and reflecting it back as if it were a red mirror and throwing the room into a cacophony of color and light. Emeraldis groaned and did her best to straighten her hair, laying her bangs carefully around her horn as she pulled the covers off and climbed out of bed. She had a great many chores to do today- as she did every day. And she had to go out- a challenge in itself. 

Stepping out of bed she remade it, pulling old blankets that should have been changed out years ago into position and finding her clothes, pulling on the old, mended garments and finding her cloak, a green one with long holofenx ears that had fit her well in her younger years but now only reached down to her waist, once dressed she pulled on her boots and set off out of her room. The house was a huge mansion and had definitely seen better days, but it was empty now and only she remained. She walked downstairs and into the foyer where the treasure of the house sat on a pedestal, capturing light from the cut-glass windows. 

It was the Starheart, a huge ethri gem cut by her great-grandmother and one of the last remaining masterworks of the house. For generations, the Crys’talis family had produced the greatest gemcutters in all the realms, Lords and Ladies of all kinds brought their best pieces to be shaped and cut into powerful works of art. The Starheart was no exception, it was made from a giant ethri crystal unearthed from the heart of a Dekn volcano and brought to her family to carve. It ended up shaped like an exploding sphere, with many points terminating off the main body, with carefully placed fractures made within the gem to cause different parts of it to catch different colors of light. It hungered for light, and drank it eagerly from the windows, glowing in every color imaginable. 

It was this skill and this reputation that caused her family's downfall, it was expensive to commission works from the Crys’talis, and waiting lists stretched hundreds of years into the future. Positions were fought over since even the cheapest gems could become priceless when in the hands of the families' master gemcutters. It had been the orders of their matriarchs that only family could be trained in the art, and for reason. They had once attempted to bring in potential apprentices from outside the family in an attempt to take some of the load off, but money talked and they ran in pursuit of it, creating a market for fake versions of their work. Many spent outrageous amounts of money only to find out when they actually attempted to use the objects that explosive shattering and instability resulted. It took the generations of training from childhood to learn and properly channel their abilities to become cutters of their caliber. The work was so exact and took a lifetime to perfect, but even young gemcutters made their fortunes with slightly cheaper work and their workloads were just the same. 

Everything. Their reputation, their desirability, the demand, the supply… their fame is what destroyed them and left the house empty. It all started with Emeraldis’ aunt, who got an urgent request from an influential client to come and make a repair on a gem he’d intended to use in the courting of someone they loved. The offered pay was astronomical, even for their family and her aunt set off, never to be heard from again. The family lodged complaints, demanded investigation, but every demand was met with excuses, silence and dismissal. That’s when others began to realize they could skirt right around having to commission and wait; they could kidnap and enslave their own gemcutter and a cousin was the next to vanish. He’d been in Sessiz Sehir, their home city. The crystal city was supposedly the safest place in the universe for them. Nothing got in or out of the city without the guard knowing about it- yet somehow the only evidence brought back was that he’d met with the Dekn Lady of Sight, Cria’sera, and was seen walking down a street and taking out a large amount of credits from the bank before he vanished. 

Cria’sera herself didn’t know anything about his whereabouts, and the family was inclined to believe her. She’d been the most staunch supporter of the family over the years and had appointed some of her own personal units to protect him while he was there. Cria’sera herself had been the target of many attempted kidnappings herself and had declined a private security company, opting for the Scintillant Guard, a custom-made unit of guards constructed from ethri crystal and programmed with sigils to be mentally infallible and completely mindless and loyal to their master. She made a personal inquiry and according to records, her guards had taken the cutter to his lodgings and then were sent back. They were checked and found to be in perfect working order. Crias own paranoia caused her to decommission the guards and replace her entire unit for fear of compromise. 

Things snowballed after that, the family couldn’t simply close the shutters and hide within their realm. Their business had to continue. They began hiring security groups, the best of the best and no expense was spared to protect themselves. But it seemed like their enemies were always two steps ahead of them and the signature red horns the family possessed as part of a genetic quirk were quickly exploited and used as a method of identification. Family members vanished left and right, no one knew how they managed to track them through secret, private flights, or how they managed to constantly have informants within the staff, but soon there were only a few left. It was then, finally that the family decided to lock down their subrealm. Preventing all but their own blood from entering as a desperate bid to save them from extinction. Then it happened, someone went missing within their own realm, her parents and grandmother.  

No one knew how they got in, the Ythen were supposed to block all but the bloodline from entering the realm. But their home was suddenly surrounded. Her mother was a devout from the cult of the Hethe Queen Ambriel and in desperation to protect her only child took the forbidden Starheart and funneled all its energy into her protection circle; shielding and cloaking her daughter as her father lifted the floorboards. They tucked her within as the door crashed down. Emeraldis didn’t know what happened to the last of her family. They were likely captured and sold off to the highest bidder. As much as she desperately wanted to leave this place and search for them this was the only place she was remotely safe. 

Emeraldis had waited until all signs of life were gone before leaving the safety of her hiding place to find her life and home empty. It was as if her entire past had become a dream and she’d woken up to the reality that she was alone in an empty world, stuck within a universe that saw her as merely an object or a prize to capture. As much as she needed to leave this place once in a while she had to do it under powerful glamorous and shields to prevent anyone from ever discovering her true identity. With no friends or allies, it was best that the universe thought she didn’t exist.