Searing 27, 116
It was a beautiful day, and Imogen Ward was going to become a Sunsinger.
In many ways, this is a bad method of thinking about the coven’s initiation. As her mother would have told her (had she expressed the sentiment aloud, which she wouldn’t) the Sunsingers were not a magic, they were an organization. All those souls who took watches outside of the Sanctuaries, the children who ran messages, the sympathetic men and women in the merchant-houses who took orders off the books for them… they were all part of the Sunsinger cause. “Wars are not won by soldiers alone,” she would say, sternly, as Imogen paid indifferent attention to her discussions of logistics and cooking and alchemy, “And an army with nothing but swords is one which defeats itself in a week.”
These are hard lessons to impress upon a teenager, but Imogen did try to listen. She wasn’t unappreciative of her mother’s arguments. But the sun-reaved swords were also important. You couldn’t reason your way out of that point- the sun-reaved swords were undoubtedly the symbol at the center of the entire thing. If you'd asked Imogen whether the menial work she had done for the Sunsingers was less important than the work the witches did, she might have said "no", but she wouldn't have believed it.
”The sun in splendor… dwells beyond…”
The Orkhan girl swung her sword lightly into the bale of hay which had been tightly-wrapped and deposited at the far end of the empty storage room. The blade was heavy; this close to the initiation, she was to practice exclusively with the weapon which would be her Pact. She had commissioned a greatsword for the occasion from a smith in a settlement south of Zaichaer, far enough away that the receipts wouldn’t be read by the Order, and spent the better part of a month obsessing over the huge blade. By the traditions of the order, the pact weapon was meant to be purely functional; no ancestral swords or fancy masterworks, and absolutely no runeforged weapons. That last one was on pain of death, though it wasn’t a sentence the Sunsingers had to carry out.
The lore she had been taught instructed that it didn’t matter. When the weapon became one with her soul, it would shape itself in time, and gilding and decoration would be so much wasted money. Even a malformed blade would straighten with time, though given the rigor of the initiation she did not think her master would have accepted that. Thankfully, the weight and resistance of the huge weapon was perfect as she swung it, assuming a separate stance after every swing into the soft target.
”The houses…”
Her sword described an overhead arc, her arms floating at the top of the swing and flashing downward to carve a wide gash through one of the bales. She drew inward and upward on the downswing, pulling the blade to scrape the tops of the bricks to her right rather than embedding itself in the straw or crashing into the floor. Swords of this size were unwieldy and disfavored in an age dominated by guns rather than pikes, but the style she had been taught by her uncle (and her father, when she could talk him into it) relied on an element of overwhelming force. Give your enemy a chance to shoot you once and yourself a chance to hit them in turn, and you’d always have the bigger hit.
”...of her brother spheres.”
After a swing and recovery like that, her arms were burning and she wanted nothing more than to draw back and catch her breath. That, her uncle had always taught her, was precisely the sign that she should press the exercise. Following his advice, she reversed course, pivoting on the ball of one foot to bring the greatsword all the way around, following her vertical strike with a horizontal slash. She nearly managed the speed she wanted, the blinding follow-up meant to break the legs of an opponent who had just thrown their defenses at the first assault… but she didn’t quite hit the target, the sword’s tip wooshing in front of the hay harmlessly.
”And in her- ah, fuck..”
Imogen let her sword drag her body around and fell backwards onto the hay, turning her mistake into a (she thought) fairly graceful sit. It also brought her face-to-face with a huge green figure, grinning ear-to-ear.
”Oh! Uncle, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
“No, no, no, child, don’t get up on my account.”
Uncle Lewis towered over Imogen, unusually tall even for an Ork, which he boasted as a throwback to old Ecith, from which he was only a generation removed. He wore no uniform (unfortunate in Zaichaer, but perhaps understandable for a criminal organization) but a severe shirt and vest, precisely-tailored for his huge frame at enormous cost, and a single golden sun pin over his heart.
“You’re not really supposed to know those words yet” Uncle Lewis chided gently, “but never fear, I won’t say anything. Traditions are not always justified by anything other than themselves.” The tall Orkhan’s tone left no doubt about his true message- many traditions did need to be observed for important reasons.
”Yes, sir. Of course.”
Imogen wasn’t an especially deferential trainee, though she had more than enough discipline to avoid any real insubordination. The initiation was a risky proposition; if an acolyte lacked the absolute trust of the Sunsinger masters, they simply would not be permitted the trial at all. Uncle Lewis, however, commanded her complete respect. He had been her favorite storyteller as a child, her tutor in the sword for years, and her primary advocate to be granted instruction in magic at all. He was the pioneer of his own (and therefore, her own) style, which sacrificed defense for (fairly impressive) power, and relied on the natural gifts of her race to make the exchange unequal.
“Good girl.” Lewis said, tone approving. “I believe the interview is tomorrow, yes? And you have your sword ready? Good. Have you named it?”
”No.”
“It’s refreshing to find that one of my nephews and nieces was paying attention. Don’t cloud your steel with preconceptions about what it should be before you have the chance to let it show you itself.”
The acolyte shifted in her improvised seat, putting her sword down to the side. She rubbed her arms, first one, then another, feeling the burn in her muscles ebb as the strain was finally released.
”It’s just the acceptance tomorrow, right? But I hardly know the masters, so I’m not sure what they…”
“Mmm.” Uncle Lewis interrupted Imogen with a deep growl, “Can’t talk to you about what they’re looking for. In fact, I already have, haven’t I? Surely I didn’t spend all those days smacking you with sticks for no reason. You know everything you need to know, or your father and I wouldn’t have recommended your initiation.”
This was a generous interpretation of the facts. Lewis had recommended, and her father had concurred; he had no real basis to gainsay her uncle, so he went along with it. It was no real secret that he thought his brother was far too concerned with tales of lost heroism, that he worried that Lewis was filling his children’s heads with suicidal ideas. But the Sunsingers always needed recruits, and he had enough children to spare a few.
“Well, not that you need to worry about it, but it’s just an interview tomorrow. There will be two of the masters, plus myself, and you’ll spar for a bit so they can observe your manner and style. One other thing, but don’t you get worked up about that; I’m not concerned in the least for you.”
”And if all three of you agree…”
“The initiation ceremony will take place three days later.” Lewis responded with one of his famous smiles, his teeth gleaming in the low light of the storage room. “And I have faith that you’ll be there. Now, I like you, niece, but rest assured that I’ve never recommended an acolyte who I thought might fail the rite. Still, if you’re concerned, let’s get some of that energy out of you, eh?”
Imogen Ward exhaled sharply at the suggestion, but she wasn’t about to disobey her master the day before such an important event. With a grunt, the acolyte pushed herself to her feet, grasping her unnamed sword with one hand and pulling it upward into a defensive stance. Uncle Lewis’ grin grew sharper and he held his hand out to the side, the air beneath it beginning to glow as aether coalesced into flame and condensed into matter harder than steel.
“Good. Are you ready?”
It was a beautiful day, and Imogen Ward was going to become a Sunsinger.
In many ways, this is a bad method of thinking about the coven’s initiation. As her mother would have told her (had she expressed the sentiment aloud, which she wouldn’t) the Sunsingers were not a magic, they were an organization. All those souls who took watches outside of the Sanctuaries, the children who ran messages, the sympathetic men and women in the merchant-houses who took orders off the books for them… they were all part of the Sunsinger cause. “Wars are not won by soldiers alone,” she would say, sternly, as Imogen paid indifferent attention to her discussions of logistics and cooking and alchemy, “And an army with nothing but swords is one which defeats itself in a week.”
These are hard lessons to impress upon a teenager, but Imogen did try to listen. She wasn’t unappreciative of her mother’s arguments. But the sun-reaved swords were also important. You couldn’t reason your way out of that point- the sun-reaved swords were undoubtedly the symbol at the center of the entire thing. If you'd asked Imogen whether the menial work she had done for the Sunsingers was less important than the work the witches did, she might have said "no", but she wouldn't have believed it.
”The sun in splendor… dwells beyond…”
The Orkhan girl swung her sword lightly into the bale of hay which had been tightly-wrapped and deposited at the far end of the empty storage room. The blade was heavy; this close to the initiation, she was to practice exclusively with the weapon which would be her Pact. She had commissioned a greatsword for the occasion from a smith in a settlement south of Zaichaer, far enough away that the receipts wouldn’t be read by the Order, and spent the better part of a month obsessing over the huge blade. By the traditions of the order, the pact weapon was meant to be purely functional; no ancestral swords or fancy masterworks, and absolutely no runeforged weapons. That last one was on pain of death, though it wasn’t a sentence the Sunsingers had to carry out.
The lore she had been taught instructed that it didn’t matter. When the weapon became one with her soul, it would shape itself in time, and gilding and decoration would be so much wasted money. Even a malformed blade would straighten with time, though given the rigor of the initiation she did not think her master would have accepted that. Thankfully, the weight and resistance of the huge weapon was perfect as she swung it, assuming a separate stance after every swing into the soft target.
”The houses…”
Her sword described an overhead arc, her arms floating at the top of the swing and flashing downward to carve a wide gash through one of the bales. She drew inward and upward on the downswing, pulling the blade to scrape the tops of the bricks to her right rather than embedding itself in the straw or crashing into the floor. Swords of this size were unwieldy and disfavored in an age dominated by guns rather than pikes, but the style she had been taught by her uncle (and her father, when she could talk him into it) relied on an element of overwhelming force. Give your enemy a chance to shoot you once and yourself a chance to hit them in turn, and you’d always have the bigger hit.
”...of her brother spheres.”
After a swing and recovery like that, her arms were burning and she wanted nothing more than to draw back and catch her breath. That, her uncle had always taught her, was precisely the sign that she should press the exercise. Following his advice, she reversed course, pivoting on the ball of one foot to bring the greatsword all the way around, following her vertical strike with a horizontal slash. She nearly managed the speed she wanted, the blinding follow-up meant to break the legs of an opponent who had just thrown their defenses at the first assault… but she didn’t quite hit the target, the sword’s tip wooshing in front of the hay harmlessly.
”And in her- ah, fuck..”
Imogen let her sword drag her body around and fell backwards onto the hay, turning her mistake into a (she thought) fairly graceful sit. It also brought her face-to-face with a huge green figure, grinning ear-to-ear.
”Oh! Uncle, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
“No, no, no, child, don’t get up on my account.”
Uncle Lewis towered over Imogen, unusually tall even for an Ork, which he boasted as a throwback to old Ecith, from which he was only a generation removed. He wore no uniform (unfortunate in Zaichaer, but perhaps understandable for a criminal organization) but a severe shirt and vest, precisely-tailored for his huge frame at enormous cost, and a single golden sun pin over his heart.
“You’re not really supposed to know those words yet” Uncle Lewis chided gently, “but never fear, I won’t say anything. Traditions are not always justified by anything other than themselves.” The tall Orkhan’s tone left no doubt about his true message- many traditions did need to be observed for important reasons.
”Yes, sir. Of course.”
Imogen wasn’t an especially deferential trainee, though she had more than enough discipline to avoid any real insubordination. The initiation was a risky proposition; if an acolyte lacked the absolute trust of the Sunsinger masters, they simply would not be permitted the trial at all. Uncle Lewis, however, commanded her complete respect. He had been her favorite storyteller as a child, her tutor in the sword for years, and her primary advocate to be granted instruction in magic at all. He was the pioneer of his own (and therefore, her own) style, which sacrificed defense for (fairly impressive) power, and relied on the natural gifts of her race to make the exchange unequal.
“Good girl.” Lewis said, tone approving. “I believe the interview is tomorrow, yes? And you have your sword ready? Good. Have you named it?”
”No.”
“It’s refreshing to find that one of my nephews and nieces was paying attention. Don’t cloud your steel with preconceptions about what it should be before you have the chance to let it show you itself.”
The acolyte shifted in her improvised seat, putting her sword down to the side. She rubbed her arms, first one, then another, feeling the burn in her muscles ebb as the strain was finally released.
”It’s just the acceptance tomorrow, right? But I hardly know the masters, so I’m not sure what they…”
“Mmm.” Uncle Lewis interrupted Imogen with a deep growl, “Can’t talk to you about what they’re looking for. In fact, I already have, haven’t I? Surely I didn’t spend all those days smacking you with sticks for no reason. You know everything you need to know, or your father and I wouldn’t have recommended your initiation.”
This was a generous interpretation of the facts. Lewis had recommended, and her father had concurred; he had no real basis to gainsay her uncle, so he went along with it. It was no real secret that he thought his brother was far too concerned with tales of lost heroism, that he worried that Lewis was filling his children’s heads with suicidal ideas. But the Sunsingers always needed recruits, and he had enough children to spare a few.
“Well, not that you need to worry about it, but it’s just an interview tomorrow. There will be two of the masters, plus myself, and you’ll spar for a bit so they can observe your manner and style. One other thing, but don’t you get worked up about that; I’m not concerned in the least for you.”
”And if all three of you agree…”
“The initiation ceremony will take place three days later.” Lewis responded with one of his famous smiles, his teeth gleaming in the low light of the storage room. “And I have faith that you’ll be there. Now, I like you, niece, but rest assured that I’ve never recommended an acolyte who I thought might fail the rite. Still, if you’re concerned, let’s get some of that energy out of you, eh?”
Imogen Ward exhaled sharply at the suggestion, but she wasn’t about to disobey her master the day before such an important event. With a grunt, the acolyte pushed herself to her feet, grasping her unnamed sword with one hand and pulling it upward into a defensive stance. Uncle Lewis’ grin grew sharper and he held his hand out to the side, the air beneath it beginning to glow as aether coalesced into flame and condensed into matter harder than steel.
“Good. Are you ready?”
