Legend of Ransera

Phocion grimaced, glancing over his slender shoulder at Hilana and replying to her question through gritted teeth and snarling lips.

"When I made my last trip, I didn't get this far." He admitted, grudgingly, before turning his full attention to the Orks ahead. As he swung his glaive to their front, Phocion's potent Craft of Kinetics disarmed some of the would-be assailants and turned their own weapons against their number.

With the aid of Raithen raining strikes from above, Cithæra picking off errant aggressors with the ætherically enhanced aim of her bow and Hilana felling stragglers and survivors who endured the onslaught of the Re'hyæans, the Orkish contingent was not long for whatever world they now inhabited. Attention could thus be shifted to the Hytori mages who were emerging from the obscuring stealth of their Masquerade, some losing their camouflage for having been struck and wounded, others losing it due to Mesmer-induced madness that turned them against their own.

Cithæra's puissant Craft of Semblance afforded her an intricate sense of the battlefield around them. She could feel Hilana, inexperienced in battle but picking up important slack as the others wounded opponents who might have risen to strike them from behind, if not for the Vastiana's coups de grace. She could feel Raithen rising to inhabit his element, his soul singing with serendipity as he collaborated with the older brother he revered. She could feel Arvælyn, nervously exploiting skills he'd drilled in a controlled environment and finding new merit in the hours spent improving his martial ability. She could feel Finn flitting between points in slip space, riled with an overweening imperative to protect his amatus. And she could feel Phocion, his choler raised in righteous rage at the quondam opponents to their Divine Founders. It was on her eldest son that she focused, as the pilgrims cut down the last of the Hytori assassins and another band of Orks came bounding down the hill ahead.

"Enough of this! Phocion, sece nobis viam!" She cried out to her silver born son, "Pilgrims!" Her eyes darted to Finn up ahead in particular, "You're going to want to get behind him."

Cithæra fired off a few arrows, felling the Orks at the front as Phocion dismissed his glaive and began to pool æther, gathering such great swaths that the air around him seemed to warp before their eyes with a semi-translucent, purplish glow. The fallen Orks tripped up those to their rear, setting the little group to staggering as Phocion stood tall and extended his arms, stretching them out to either side. At first it appeared that he was standing on the tiptoes of his black boots, but within moments the sands beneath his feet vibrated as he rose above the path.

The aggressing Orks looked up in confusion at the elf levitating before them, and several crossbow bolts made for the salient target. One pale hand darted forward and the bolts battered into an unseen barrier, cracking and crumbling to the ground.

"Hic confecti sumus." Phocion declared, as he sharply brought the other hand to his front and clapped it with its counterpart, sending a pulse of Kinetic energy that sent the Orks, and the many corpses littering the path hurdling backward and falling off the rocky precipice.

"Duc, fili mi!" Cithæra instructed, and Phocion shifted and Compressed the æther in the air before him, extending out from the hands he held out palm to palm pointed forward. The ætheric energy formed a barely visible barrier shaped like the prow of an icebreaker ship, and the levitating Moonborn floated forward up the path. All who stood athwart him were sent hurdling over the edge of the path to tumble down the rocky hillside. The weapons that sought to strike them were also swept away by the levitating Grandmaster Kineticist.

Cithæra would lead the Pilgrims behind their living dreadnought up the path, higher and higher. The battle below did not pursue them, and those who fought in the skies were unconcerned with a small troop of intrepid voyagers making their way up Mount Kaladon. After they'd rounded the mountain once on the coiling path, there were no more enemies Orkish, Elvish or otherwise standing in their path, and so Phocion descended to solid ground and conjured his glaive once more. He used his polearm like a walking stick as he led the way to the summit of the mount, where the heat of magma warmed their faces as they stepped onto the flat, natural platform that lay out before the mouth of Mount Kaladon.

The shrieking of great beasts faded as the sky itself seemed to melt. Or at least some façade that had mounted the sky like some preternatural mural began to dissolve. Once again, the skies were empty but for Sol Invictus, and the sounds of the winds supplanted the din of the bygone battle. Any arms taken up from fallen soldiers disappeared from the grip of the wielder, leaving them as they arrived.

Cithæra took Raithen's arm, and stepped aside to allow the others to pass onto the platform.

"Now, Pilgrims. It is your time to go forth and stand before the æternal."

As they stepped toward the churning pit of magma, the ground beneath their feet began to quake as a pillar of fiery lava rose and hardened to form an obsidian bridge leading out over the very centre of the volcano's maw, where a glowing, molten altar formed as if inviting sacrifice. Though there was no apparent sign of either Founder, even those with no mastery over æther would sense that they were under the watchful eyes of something potent, ancient and, indeed, divine. The hour was at hand and it felt to each Pilgrim as if the path that led them here had been preordained by some remote and alien force. Even those new to the very notion of these deities, was overcome by a sense of personal destiny tied to this moment. Awed by as yet unseen Majesty.

Arvælyn blinked in awe as Phocion’s feet overperched terra firma and he began to float above the path the rest of them trod. It became swiftly apparent that Phocion had been holding back in their lessons together. He knew his kinsmen were powerful mages, but this was a level of Kinetics to which he’d never borne witness. Arry watched as his half-brother quaked the very earth with an ætheric burst that sent bodies, living and dead, flying through the dust clouded air to tumble over the far edge of the path and proceeded to float forward as a bulwark against all further attempts to assail their party.

“Well, fuck…” Arry said to Finn, who’d blipped back to the main group. Gripping his arm, the half-elf was relieved to assess the outward signs and Symphonies of the party, finding no major damage done.

Even with the threats thwarted by Phocion’s show of force, Arry felt compelled to rush toward their terminus. There was no telling how long the elder elf could keep this up and there might have been any number of even greater hazards ahead of them. Moreover, he had this overweening sense of destiny urging him forward. It felt more like he was being pulled from the front than pushed from the back, as his pace remained rapid along the route.

Ultimately, they found themselves at the pinnacle of the mount, and just as he cast his curious gaze to regard the Draconic battle above, it began to dissolve before his eyes. At the same moment the axes in his hands seemed to lose their mass as they dissipated into naught but mist. And even that quickly evaporated beneath the blazing sun above.

Arry nodded to Hilana, accepting her tincture and shooting it down before wiping at his lips with the back of his wrist.

He nodded to Cithæra at her portentous proclamation and stepped past her, grabbing and clinging tightly to Finn’s hand with one of his own, as the other clutched the amulet that had hung at his chest since early adolescence. The grip on both tightened as the ground shook and, from the roiling magma, structures were conjured by forces unseen to his eyes and unsensed by his Craft.

The obsidian bridge cooled quickly enough that it didn’t melt their footwear as they crossed, but the heat billowing below was stark and the aroma of ash and smoke was thick enough to be bracing.

Hilana stepped forth first, to his surprise, making her offering in her native Vastian and forcing the creature onto an altar that still seemed to churn like the lava that composed it. The creature chittered and emitted a hiss that was quickly silenced as glowing orange-yellow chains sprung up from the altar and held it tightly in place. Whether stunned by fear or something else, it made no further sound or motion as Arvælyn stepped forth reluctantly releasing Finn’s hand.

“Pro Deus et Domina…” He bowed his head and unfastened the twine that had held the amulet in place at his chest all these years. He’d never dreamt of removing it before this moment. But that, too, was placed onto the altar. A pedestal rose beneath the little wooden charm, as if in reverence, and held it aloft beside Hilana’s bound arthropod offering.

As Finn sang, the altar responded. Upon its surface, glowing grooves sunk onto a flat part of the table. They wound and wove until they took a form Finn would recognise as a replica of his own Cardinal Rune of Mesmer. It glowed there beside the creature and the charm.

Finally, Phocion stepped forth crouching to produce a dagger from a sheath at his ankle. A purple glow emanated, as it caught the light and he held the blade over his palm above the altar. What would appear, at first, as the beginning of a blood sacrifice would take a turn, as did the blade of the dagger, when the flat side fell upon Phocion's palm.

He muttered words as he lowered the Soul Cairn dagger over the altar. The specific sentiment was inaudible, but the lilt and phonation would be familiar enough to those who spoke the ancient tongue to recognise it as Vallenor. The altar did not respond. He froze there confused and hesitant to press further, if his sacrifice was unworthy.

All at once a silvery symbol lit up his left wrist, and he was suddenly tugged backward- Dragged by the arm still clutching the dagger back across the bridge down which they'd trod to reach the altar. His slender body slammed into Raithen's, and then he was released. The symbol remained aglow and Cithæra lifted Phocion's arm to regard it, eyes widening.

"He was already Marked. Even I couldn't see it, until now..." She knew that her eldest son's body had twice been claimed as a vessel for Varvara, but she hadn't realised he'd come away from those experiences with a souvenir. "Phocion is Tethered." She announced to Raithen, eyes blazing with pride.

Meanwhile, those on the altar platform would feel a rush of heat rising from the volcanic core below, as a ball of fire like a simulacrum of the sun shot upward rapidly, before pausing to hover ahead of them to their left. While their focus was instinctively and inexorably pulled toward the radiant orb, to their right the black smoke pluming up from the magma below was beginning to assume a long slender form.

The glow of the orb became blinding, and it seemed to grow before their eyes. As it expanded toward them, they would realise it cast light but no heat. Which was surely a relief as its advance soon consumed the altar and the pilgrims themselves.

Raithen, Cithæra and the dazed Phocion regarded the spectacle, shielding their eyes from its blinding blaze, until it suddenly ceased to exist, along with all that it encompassed: Altar, platform, people and all.

NOTE:

Hilana's pilgrimage proceeds here

Arvælyn & Finn's pilgrimage proceeds here

Raithen's course will continue in this thread.

It wasn't long before the party of pilgrims was complete once more. No sooner was Hilana across the obsidian bridge, than a ball of blinding light identical to the one which had absconded with three of their number, flashed the absent two back into existence before the Altar of Domination. Arvælyn and Finn were holding hands, their other two arms outstretched as if to grasp at something unseen. As soon as they were dim enough to look upon, Arry turned to Finn and embraced him. A radiant sigil rounded Finn's brow like an empyreal diadem, and another encircled Arvælyn's throat like a taut collar. Though both symbols quickly faded out of view to the unaided eye, Cithæra beamed at the vision which was still clear as desert daylight to her Sembling gaze.

"They are favoured..." She grasped Phocion's hand, and her moonborn boy seemed startled by the spontaneous burst of affection. "My pilgrims have been marked." Her other arm snaked about Raithen's waist, as she looked to him and considered how well this portended for her other children. How she'd feared losing a child today, and yet half of her brood was now elevated in the scrutinising gaze of Providence.

Arry kissed his Majestic amatus, amazed that they not only survived but actually benefited from the trials they'd just undergone. For a moment, there was no one else in the world, because no one else in the world had experienced what they just did... though perhaps, as the Founders said, the Twins themselves had endured a similar test, albeit one that claimed greater consequences in exchange for greater boons. Somehow, though, for Arvælyn the abject anguish of the threats he'd endured felt worth it for the euphoric rush of newfound power that coursed through him from the Emblem binding him at the throat. Squeezing Finn's hand, he drew his beloved across the bridge to join with the others.

Cithæra bowed, as they approached.

"Chosen of the Founders..." She intoned reverently, "We have much to discuss. Do you need to rest before we make the return trip? I don't expect there to be many Orkish hordes obstructing the path down the Mount, but..." She glanced to the Divine Emblem at Arvælyn's neck and suddenly noticed something else that usually hung there was missing. "My gift. The charm-..."

"Was my sacrifice." Arvælyn interjected. Cithæra pursed her lips and inclined her head, her eyes and Symphony softening with sympathy.

"Oh, my son... May the Founders stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk." Arry furrowed his brow and parted his lips to speak, but the princess proceeded apace, "Shall we trek down, then?"