HOLY IMMOLATION

Songweaver Eurielle’s Trinity Mandates aimed to shackle our heavens-given right to use magic, our very way of life. It wasn’t long before we decided to start anew. There had always been whispers of untapped power in the bright, rugged lands to the Northeast one could espy from high atop the Jade Canopy.

We named ourselves Lightchasers and Second Suns, and we ventured forth with hope. But Mithron — and the land we came to know as Celandine — gives up no treasure willingly. In the fifth week we camped by the base of a colossal mountain, and we became pre`y.

The first night it was just horses and pack-beasts. The second day hence it was the rear-most caravan. The day after, growing bold with success, we laid eyes on our hunter — lions that moved with lightning speed. We began to climb the mountain — our only hope for a defensible position.

It helped little. We climbed higher, our numbers ever dwindling, not one of us untouched by claw or tooth. A cave offered refuge, or at least a convenient tomb. The last of us entered, and hid. Yet the beasts had keen noses and found us that night. As the pack gathered and prepared to pounce, there was a glow upon the cavern’s ceiling, brightening to near blinding after hours in murk. It seemed to me a divine sign. They pounced, and I roared in prayer, commending our souls to the sign of the sun we would never see again, and then all was light, and a column of flame engulfed me, and I was glad. But I had not expected to open my eyes again, and my injuries healed, and the beasts were ash.

The cave was illuminated by the light — not of a hundred suns — but of crystals, raw and brimming with power. I vowed then to honour the memory of our fallen by using the crystal’s power to build a mighty city and establish a pious order. The mountain became a home, and earned a name –

Mount Sunstone.

JUXTAPOSITION

Sneaky!

Master Ruu and Acolyte Chiori sat in the long reeds of the courtyard garden of the Lei Monastery atop Saberspine Mountain. They were both still as the clay statues of their Seal-ancestors, and the scene was silent but for the occasional rustle of the wind through the Moonberry trees and the restless cicadas.

A cicada sprang from his its perch and Chiori’s hand darted out and made a closed fist, fast as a breath. He drew it in and opened it palm upwards, but this cicada, like so many others, did not await therein. To his left, the elegant insect sat atop a statue of Kaon the Ghost Tiger Taegon the Citrine Dragon, rubbing its legs together in sarcastic applause.

“What is the essence of Cicada-Palm, Master Ruu? My reflexes are stronger than ever, but still they elude me!” Ruu remained silent for a long time. Then he said, almost laughing, “Ask Taegon — it was she that caught it!”

Chiori grimaced. He envied the Taegon of legend. He envied even the statue. A spark of enlightenment! While Ruu sat watching, Chiori gently brushed the reeds and sent another Cicada hopping onto the brilliant Dragon statue faster than his eyes could track, but this time he didn’t try to grab it at all. He shut his eyes, help his left palm open by his side and brushed the reeds again with his right. Then he knew that his perfectly still body was wood, and then he opened his eyes. Master Ruu was now opposite him with the statue of Taegon to his right where he’d been moments ago.

He looked down at his palm and saw the Cicada there.

Master Ruu turned to his pupil and touched his head to the ground.

“Master Ruu…what are you doing?” Asked the younger man.

“When you juxtaposed with the statue, you swapped our relationship too.” The old man replied. “Now you are the master, and I am the student.”

PORTAL GUARDIAN

Xerfir stepped through the shimmering, roiling surface of the portal, knowing not what realm or trial awaited him — only that there would be one, and succeeding would mean finally becoming a Portal Guardian, and that failing usually meant any combination of dismemberment, dementia, and death. Xerfir’s thoughts rehearsed the possibilities once more: the vicious dervishes of the Silica Realm; the fey riddles of the Aetheric; the gruelling endurance tests of the Ferris; and so on.

In an instant, the dreamlike starscape of the dimensional transference faded, and the young Vetruvian knew he’d somehow plane-stepped into uncharted territory — or at least, territory no-one had returned from yet. Territory that was an abyss of black, punctuated and cut-through with mathematically precise glyphs and outlines of glowing light.

There was a rustle behind him, and Xerfir spun on his heel. Somehow, someone seated atop a throne began to emerge from the darkness, wearing a hooded cloak and covered in the same glowing glyphs and seams of light. Then it spoke. “You have wandered far, into the realm of Truesight. Your trial is simple: find the exit, and you shall leave, and be able to call upon my strength. Fail, and you will become one of my subjects, forever bound to amuse me.”

Xerfir swallowed his rising panic. I won’t see the end if I cannot find the beginning, he thought to himself. His hands slowly rose to physiology boosting helm that covered his entire head, and started the elaborate unlocking mechanism.

I suppose I won’t be needing this.

MAKANTOR WARBEAST

Not your average donkey ride.

[The following are transcripted excerpts recovered from Magmaar Aspect Vaath’s ancient voice-crystal, found badly decayed in the year 23.175.]

18, Month of Erewhon, 23.125, Year of the Aspects

Valknu has walked lucidly through a terrible vision: a great, inky miasma enveloping the Golden Chrysalis. Mithron’s grand continents smoking ash. This the darkest omen since Emperor Sargos discovered the Second Empire prophecy and summoned Starhorn, Valknu and I for guidance he didn’t take. Valknu has decreed the Thirteen Aspects shall leave God’s Heel immediately, whether to seek new wisdom or for safety it is unclear even to me.

26, Month of Erewhon, 23.125, Year of the Aspects

I have returned at last to my homeland! The rich Magmaari soil welcomed the weight of my heavy heart like a dream. Yet already I grow restless with lack of purpose. My heart yearns for the Mokvaar Plains, and to see the glorious Makantor roam again. It might be my last chance.

32, Month of Erewhon, 23.125, Year of the Aspects

Such wondrous beasts! A riot of lethal spines and tusks, and such agility for their hulking weight. If only we could harness that wild power somehow. Though it would be terrible arrogance to tear them away from their habitats and natural — we just might have need, in order to —

3, Month of Sienar, 23.125, Year of the Aspects

— was glorious. They start to accept me at last. I was even able to spiritually commune with the Makantor Alpha and Omega. I stalked through the dusty, rich savanna of their minds as they did mine. They are fierce and wild creatures, but proud and noble. As I was in my youth.

7, Month of Sienar 23.125, Year of the Aspects

Dare I to dream they could be actually one day be ridden? Such glorious mounts they would make in battle! I must try, perhaps if I can —

17, Month of Sienar, 23.125, Year of the Aspects

It has been a lengthy recovery process. I do not think I shall try again.

DRAUGAR LORD

“Come in Thann! By Sidyr’s frosty teats you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Limping to the bar, I gestured for a mug of Snowdrop. The biggest mug.

“Not a ghost…let me explain…”

And so I told my story for the first of many, many times.

Our people the Vanar knew little of the gigantic, territorial Draugar that lived near the nameless peaks and passes of the Whyte Mountains. They were fiercely protective of the privacy and solitude of their mountain homes.

I was foraging carefully for the sensitive, rare roots of the nearby alpine forest. My woodman’s ears caught a subtle crunch and I hid, in no hurry to confront a bear or rhyno. It wasn’t a bear though. It was a giant.

The fact it was unawares compelled me to follow. For days I fed on forage and would have frozen if not for the fire of my curiosity. Eventually, and several hundred metres higher, the lumbering hulk arrived at a rocky outcrop fenced by sparse forest.

I climbed a Snapcold tree for a better view and hid myself among thick branches.

I was stunned to see a score of Draugar there already.

They had converged, cantillating around a massive Draugar of the darkest grey, sitting cross legged.

His voice boomed, “Draugar must watch. Must prepare. The Draugar that can find an icicle that sees the stars will succeed me as Lord. Now…I grow weary of this great weight.”

What I saw next stunned me so that I lost my grip, and fell, and fled for fear of trespassing on their sacred rites, but what I tell you is true. The Lord seemed to start rippling, leathery skin as supple as silk. Then he became icily pale and seemed to reflect the moon, mountains and ice around him. Finally the illusion shattered, and in its place was an Ice Drake, resplendent in scales of moon silver and ice blue.

“Well Thann. If what you say is true…we ent never heard of Draugar shapeshifting afore.”

“Not shapeshifting, Old Vae. Those Draugar weren’t spell castin’, nor mourning. What I saw — was a rebirth.”

Ivory Peaks, Celandine/Halcyar (border of Lyonar/Vanar territory)

SWORN DEFENDER

The swarms of Inxikrah crashed against Consular Draug’s Vermillion Legion like a raging torrent. They were unnatural hybrid forms: serpents with the legs of a plains beast; humanoids with transparent skin; and worse yet from the depths of Styxus.

The sun began to set over Monolith, finally completed after seventeen centuries, and bathed the battlefield in a sickly red glow. Equally crimson swords hacked in futility at the pale, twisted onslaught.

At the very heart of the battle was Consular Draug himself, surrounded by his last, elite cadre of Sworn Defenders. Their giant tower shields locked together to form an almost impenetrable circle, bodies piled up against them. Draug himself was assailed by magics from all around, and though his own was immense, the weight of shadowy power began to wear on his frail body. The Sworn Defenders felt his pain as their own through their binding oaths, and in desperation their vigour was unending.

A winged serpent slipped over the defensive line and dived towards Draug. Consumed and frenzied by power, he snatched it from the air and roared with hysterical laughter as he bit deep into the scaly flesh, in mockery of the consuming horde that assailed his finest hour and sought to deny him the true power residing within the Monolith. “My Sworn!” He bellowed. “If any of you still stand when I fall, your spirits will rot in the abyss!”

The indomitable Sworn proved so meddlesome that Warlord Aq’Toth was forced to slither to the front lines. He gurgled The Name of Shadow and razored points of void erupted beneath them, staggering and breaching their wall. Leaving them to be devoured, he snaked up to Draug, who was channeling the last of his energy. Aq’Toth snuffed it out with a wave, and ate Draug then, in such a way he remained conscious until the last.

RASHA’S CURSE

A bloody war of attrition. A power-hungry preacher turned treasonous usurper named Rasha. A ship that from the golden sands and ancient canyons of Akram. A bitter desire to prevent the Aestari from upsetting the sacred balance again.

All these things and more had brought Ziros and his triumphant Vetruvian host to Aestaria’s coast, near the Alcuin Library, and thence to the capital’s palace Grand Trianon. Ziros hated the claustrophobic pomp of the inner palace, but he knew an empty throne would only attract more ruinous pretenders. Entering the throne room alone but for his most trusted lieutenants, Ziros was met with the final dregs of Rasha’s Fists of Akrane, hungry for revenge at any cost.

Their leader wielded a beautifully wrought Y’Kiri staff that crackled with barely contained primal energies. It pointed towards him.

“Rasha’s memory be damned…” Ziros commanded, his voice rich with scorn, and the staff splintered into coruscant shards. A dervish formed from the debris, wailing, heaping curses on Ziros Starstrider. “You tricksy child, you heathen, how dare you defy our ancient prerogative to rule over your pathetic kind?!” it screeched, as it blindly tore through the rebels in its whirling rage of razor sharp silica.

Ziros laughed in surprised delight at what his curse had wrought, and the dervish seemed to recognise him for an instant. It screamed in redoubled anguish before dissipating into a small pile of sand among the fallen.

FENRIR WARMASTER

Real prey, at last. The Frostbone Nagas are far from their natural home and too close to ours. Though they make fine sport anywhere.

It’s dusk, and I’m ready, have been ready from birth. Somewhere in this copse there are Hoarfrost-Wolves, desperate for a meal.

I’m almost salivating. I savour their smell. They carry wicked, barbed lances, their wide tentacles oddly suited to making good speed through the snow. My Warmaster pack around me are all grinning, some open-mouthed. I’m the youngest, but I’m no cub anymore. I howl our warcry and bound towards the edge of our cover.

I draw blood with my knife to better stir their hunger. I am the bait, and the hunter. It is only minutes, crouched in a dense tangle of Coldsnap bramble, before I smell them nearby. I re-curl my grip on the knife and howl.

The blessed adrenalin kicks in, numbing the phantom pain in the empty space below my right forearm. Knowing without looking my War-pack are close behind, I raise my arm almost in salute. Binding the pain and the blood-hunger to the prayer I once said over three dead bodies, I form the ice-blue apparition of a wolf’s head around the mangled stump of my wrist.

Three. Hungry and desperate but full of cunning, the more-so for knowing that this could well be their last chance. They circle and attack at once. The first leads slightly and so I roll and kill it quickly, my knife raking across the wolf’s gaunt belly and spilling the meagre contents. The other two are more coordinated. I shield my throat with my right hand while I slash the other with my knife.

The Nagas are within reach of wolf-fist. I can smell and taste blood in my throat. My consciousness fades and later, in the aftermath, I understand for the first time that this power will eventually claim its soul-debt.

Three pitiful bodies at my feet. The last alive, the Alpha, had the honour of shredding my fist to useless ribbons of tendon and viscera. I say the oath, bound by the blood of animal and man, and tilt my head at the moon. I let rip a rebel yell, one part pain, one part victory, one small part howl.

AETHERMASTER

You enter my study, bristling with ambition and promise. You’re so young, but when you smile it’s with the jaded surety of a veteran commander. When I welcome you formally, you laugh like a delighted little girl at her first courtly ball.

You stub your toe on a low stool whilst admiring the bookshelves behind me and you grunt. For an instant your composure slips and you look feral, as though you’re about to tear the stool to pieces for daring affront you. I barely suppress my mirth.

You’re calm, but I sense in you the energy to remake the world. You ask for a naming, as I knew you would, and though you’re a lowly acolyte of the School of Harmony, I am honoured. You sit, and I lay out the cards — seven, one for each school — face down in a fan. I still my breathing and draw on the fey magic of the aether. Then, I am astral-phasing, stepping lightly through near future micro-realities that could or will be.

Here: a towering inferno tears through the Seventh Sanctum. There: a lute transfixes Kaero’s nobility with the most heavenly, but sad harmonies. Now-that-was: the fizz and spark of one mage-blade against another, Aestari against Aestari on the balconies of the Grand Trianon. Then-that-will-be: the shade of the Weeping Tree dissipates as the branches curl and die, its great star-magic lost.

And always, you. Terrible, brilliant, at the centre of the image, of the world, of the time.

I come to from my trance. It has been but a few seconds wait for you. One card levitates briefly and turns itself face-up.

“The Deladriss.” I say. “One doomed to the utmost greatness.”

“Kaon Deladriss” you say, turning the names over in your mouth like a fine wine. “Rolls off the tongue — think I’ll keep it.”

Twilight Sorcerer

When the first of the itinerant Aestari left their ancient homeland in search of a wondrous new life, they found a continent of extremes. Unforgiving marsh-jungles, lifeless mountains, brutal deserts and unseen predators at every turn. At the centre of the land they called Xenkai however, was an anomaly, a miracle, an antithesis.

The Aestari spark

The Twilight Spring — an unfathomable meeting of dusk and dawn, light and dark, life, death, blood, earth, animal and human. And it spoke. Or more accurately, its ambassadors did: mostly humanoid and with faces that uncannily resembled (or actually were) masks, fey and transient, they spoke to the explorers of Xenkai in a vexing mess of riddles and nonsense. The most diligent of the Songhai forefathers were not deterred, and persevered in prideful pursuit of further power.

“Butterflies” the fey figure croaked, standing in the swirling entropic mists. “Wherefore have you always been going?”

“We come from Aestari, looking for a new wisdom, and power, and home.” the wisest explorer named Nagisi replied.

“Do you talk at the moon with only one eye open?” the masked figure replied in a whisper so soft it shouldn’t have been understandable.

“We seek far-off knowledge yes, and I know we are still half blind.”

“Amusing — that’s not what you said last time.”

Confused, Nagisi asked: “What is the nature of this place?”

“Two curves that support each other.”

Believing himself to already understand, Nagisi replied: “Ah-ha! A never-ending space between two points?”

Without warning, the figure raised his short staff and a torrent of unstable magical energy blasted into Nagisi. After the shock receded, Nagisi realised he was unhurt, but two of the companions by his side had not fared as well. One lay in a pile of ashes the shape of a phoenix, whilst the other waddled languidly away to chew on the nearest crop of bamboo, diminutive and furry. Nagisi’s mind began to crackle with the energies of a spell he had never learned, yet had and would always know.

The figure was fading from existence, and its bizarre voice appeared in Nagisi’s mind. “There is a key to this place. If you will find it, you can’t find it. Its power is greatest once spent. Lose the answer and return.”

As the figure Nagisi had already begin to think of as a prophet more than an ambassador faded, his silhouette twisted into that of a dragon doubling back on itself. The other philosopher-warriors looked to Nagisi for guidance. The words sprung unbidden to his throat.

“There is power here to change us, and yet connect us to our ancestors. Whatever the cost, we must harness the spring.”

The small Pando that used to be his comrade munched away, happily.

Boundless Courage

(An Ode to Charge of The Light Brigade by Lord Tennyson)

All of a league,

Onward through the snow,

Half in the valley of doom

Ran the two hundred.

“Forward, the Skar brigade!

“Charge for the crystal-cannons!” he said:

Into the valley of doom

Ran the half-hundred.

Needles to the right of them,

Fire-bolts to the left of them,

Crystal-blasts to the front of them

Roared and thunder’d

Storm’d at with fire and ice,

Boundless was their courage

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Charged the half-hundred

They flashed their blades,

Flashing in the ice,

Cutting down the trespassers there,

Charging an army while

All the Vanar watched:

They were plunged into foul fire,

Through the lines they broke –

The Vermillion Army

Reeled from their blows

Shattered and shocked.

Then they went back, incredibly,

All the half-hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the boundless courage

Of the hand they played!

All the Vanar wondered.

Honour the charge they made,

Honour the Skar Brigade,

Noble half-hundred.

Mark of Solitude

Rhane had never found solace in duty. His Vanar tribes-folk endlessly chided him about their ancestral mission and the importance of their ascetic way of life. Rhane had pride, but he couldn’t take it in anything expected of him, least of all battle.

A time of hardship came, and Rhane looked for belonging in the one place he could make his own mark.

From the clifftop village, the dense Wyldewood leagues below was a disturbing, out of place contrast, like seeing a patch of moss thriving on ice. Firewood could be harvested much closer, and the allure of hunting some rare prize paled in the light of a phosphorescent glow, and the unidentified shrieks of the forest after dark.

At first, he skirted the edges, collecting bark samples and heeding the uncanny bird calls. Back at the village he found himself attending to chores with renewed vigour. He grew more curious, marked himself a shallow path into the woods, and saw all manner of lush flora and beguiling fauna. At home, he grew bold in arms-training, besting his elders and receding even more from their suspicion and mistrust.

Before long, he allowed himself to linger just inside the edge of the forest after nightfall. The frigid wind was softened by the thick trees, and pine-smell delighted his nostrils. He smiled his first smile in recent memory.

Raiders came to the village, and there was skirmish. Rhane desperately wished for peace but equally, he felt every fibre of his being taut with a newfound ferocity. It was all a wash of colour and overbearing smells, and his kin told him as he came to his senses that he had killed a score of the raiders, and he remembered not, but the thought of it drove him wailing back to the Wyldewood of fey lights.

Hands still bloody, he dove for the heart of the Wydewood and washed his hands in a stream there. He saw in his reflection a mane of hair, bulging, veined muscles, an elongated snout, and obsidian eyes. Breathless, he checked his hands — they were still hands — and his head. Human, still, but what was this scar, seemingly in the shape of a rune, criss-crossing his face?

The village seemed like a distant memory now. At last, Rhane felt a glee in him, and he laughed and danced with the fireflies as lithe, befurred beasts observed him from the canopy, screeching in unison.

Healing Mystic

Cute!

The Azure Mountains encircle most of Aestari, thrown up like ripples that couldn’t escape into the sea by the impact of the Star Seed that seeded life on the continent. At their southernmost tip they almost graze the the foreboding and bleak shores of Shar, where the cruel Abyssian dwell deep in subterranean chasms. There the Mystics hold their vigil.

There is a great flood-plain that runs to that coast of Shar that falls into the shadow of the Azure Mountains called the Blighted Lands. The run-off of the Abyssian’s sinister energy and unnatural rituals emerge and collect there as a crackling miasma. It is this the Mystics hold their vigil against.

The miasma corrupts. It burns, and wafts over the narrow straight, borne along by the uncaring winds of fate with a terrible impetus. The Mystics don’t remember how they ended up living in the low, tight cave systems and steep, dense patches of alpine forest. They don’t need to — their existence is spartan, and pure. As the Miasma periodically washes like an incoming tide against their mountain home, they periodically cleanse one another of its foul influence, and the intricate runes etched into bark, stone and the very skin beneath their long sleeves form a barrier many miles across, that helps to dissipate those dark exhausts. This is why their vigil holds.

But if it failed, what would happen? Rumour among the oldest living Mystics tell of a previously bounteous mountain valley where a particularly dense front of Miasma collected, and how only bubbling ash, dark vampiric moss, and the pitted bones of the Mystic clan that sacrificed themselves there to hold back the tide from threatening the interior. This is why their vigil is eternal.

Sunriser

“Tell me the one about ma again.”

Darian smiled sweetly at his daughter, while his gut lurched with vertigo.

“Very well my love. I imagine soon you’ll be able to recite it to me!”

The girl snuggled up close, grunted as if to say ‘I could recite it now — if I wanted to’ and closed her eyes.

“A long time ago, all life began with a stellar seed, crashing into our planet. The old land died, and gave birth to the new — seven continents, including what became our home, Celandine was born. After a long night, the sun rose and burned brighter than ever, searing through the ash and revealing the new creatures there.

Many years later, our ancestors the Lightchasers boldly carved out a new home atop the highest peak in Celandine, to the east. It was also a time of danger, so they created a glorious set of swords called Sunrisers, and so too were named the women — and only women — who were able to wield them. The pairing of sword and wielder strove to maintain a balance. When one of our clan was healed in battle, the Sunrisers were imbued with a glorious light that tormented the minions of darkness.”

The girl joined in for the next line, a soft echo.

“Your mother was one such Sunriser.”

And fell quiet again as her father continued.

“She shone the brightest of all defending against the Chaos Elemental invasion. Though their foul smog threatened to cover the sun, she burned through, slaying hundreds, even surrounded and outnumbered.”..

‘Yet as the sun always rises, so too must it sometimes set.’

Star’s Fury

Vetruvia. The Remade Man. Remade by scorching heat and iron will. Remade from humble Aestari settlers into some of the greatest inventors the world had known. And remade by the grace of starlight, absorbed for millennia by crystals hidden deep in the Aymara Canyons.