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40th of Ash, Year 123 of Steel
It was odd to her mind: she could shift herself from the material plane to Pantheon without a Rune or any divine magic taught to her by the Masked Queen or other; Indric, her Silver Wing, was a skilled traverser, and could not vault here even if she mapped the slipspace for him and poured it into his mind via Avialae bond and her sembling. But if she had learned anything in this process of apotheosis, it was that mortal understandings of the way of things were limited at best. Her understanding of magic had always seemed to intuit how the ancient Hytori mages hadn't separated things out into Cardinal Runes, how magic was just a matter of imposing one's will upon the aether, upon reality, and yet the divine reality of that was still such an ineffable concept that it was still trickling into her mind.
Kala warned all her bonded souls what she was attempting. Even Marda Ahtivan, with that slender, tenuous resonance between them, was informed. The Great Lady had kept faith with her since she had revealed her divinity to her in order to assure her support when she revealed her wings to the Kalzasern council.
None of them would panic when she was gone, when their bonds grew terribly quiet, stretched between planes. Of course, they would all worry; that was inevitable. She would worry about them, as well, and try to convince herself that she was merely looking out for her people as she had been trained to be as a noblewoman, not in some maternalistic, condescending way, even if she knew that eventually, her humanity would largely fall away.
From her bower in the courtyard gardens, Kala meditated, reached for that place Eikaen had created for her kind, and then she was in that place - out of space, out of time. Or, at least, space and time worked differently there. She was different there, as well. She was more herself, and more of what she would become. Here, she could see herself from the outside as well, as if consciousness and perception were spread through every atom of this existence. She remained in her posture of meditation, straight-backed and rising out of her crossed legs like some creature born of a lotus blossom on a bottomless reflecting pool.
She wondered if Talon would recognize her as Kala, or if Arcas would only recognize her as the goddess who wore the mantle of dead Nazam. But he had been a Draegir, and she was a Moritasi. Perhaps that was why she was a Dark Star, clothed as if in nebulae, haloed by changing patterns of stars, her third eye a black hole limned with a coruscating event horizon. A part of her was embarrassed, as if this were arrogance and presumption, but the rest of her was content - this was her destiny.
Attend, Avatar. I request your assistance.
