Augusta
Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook
The Hollow Court: 1 - The Unveiled (Power Level 6)
Augusta is older than the Court's naming system. She does not know which century she was born into — she knows the trees that were there when she arrived, and she knows the trees that were there when she left, and the two lists are not the same.
She was a grove-keeper. A Dryad of the deep Hollow, one of the old kind — not the masked, performance-polished fae who rise through the Court's ranks by learning to wear other faces. Augusta wore her own. Bark-pale skin, antler-branch at the brow, the slow patience of something that measures time in rings. She kept the grove. The grove kept her. For centuries this arrangement was sufficient.
The Court required land. Specifically, they required flat land, stable ground, a site grand enough to host a State Banquet for seventeen Hollow Court dignitaries and their entourages. The grove was identified as suitable. No one asked Augusta. No one asked the grove. The clearing took three days.
She was given the rank of The Unveiled — the lowest the Court assigns — as a form of compensation. The citation noted that she was to be grateful for formal recognition within the Court's hierarchy. She received the citation. She did not respond to it.
She came to The Dark Masons Lodge because the Lodge is built on old stone, and old stone remembers what stood before it. She does not speak much. She sits in the corner where the wall is thickest and she counts the rings she can feel in the timber — the years still held in the wood of this place. She finds this comforting. She does not explain why.
At the centre of the Lodge is a courtyard. No one designed it around her — the trees simply came up through the flagstones over years, and the Masons left them. Augusta asked once. They did not refuse. It is the only part of the building that is not under anyone's control — open sky, old stone, roots splitting the paving, something green in every season. The Masons acknowledge her there. They nod when they pass through. That is the arrangement.
She is the only one in the Lodge who can see through the Mason's disguise. She knew Elven blood before they had names for themselves. The Masons do not ignore her. The alternative is worse.
The wolves and foxes who survived the clearing found her eventually. The Court considers this irregular. Augusta considers it the only logical thing that has happened since.