Legend of Ransera

For better or for worse, Garel had done the heavy lifting with regard to experimentation, trial and error, and his subjects had submitted to risk and pain - at least, she hoped they had all been volunteers, martyrs, and heroes. She shuddered to think that anyone had been coerced. Birth was painful; this second birth might be too. Hers hadn't been traumatic, but Naori had taken her into another realm to confer divinity and responsibility upon her. She had only had to learn to live in her new body.

"I am certain that at some level of cold, we would still die... Our blood could freeze solid. But the rarefied air where we fly is cold, and it does not slow us down. We feel it, but are hardened against it, I suppose. I will still prefer wool for long, high-flying travel.

Kala smiled at Torin's reaction, delighted to be able to work small miracles for those she loved. Not entirely sure how she did it, she accepted some of his aether, letting it find the pattern of her soul and strengthen it, but weaving some of it back into the asterium so he could see it sparkle the more brightly. She didn't take much - just enough so she wouldn't immediately need a nap and a hearty meal. The gift was accepted, but she would not take more than she needed, not without some dire necessity.

"It will have a similar effect upon the shadowspawn as the illumite or the lunicite," she explained, "but I will let you explore its potential as it grows for you." They weren't sentient, but she felt almost as if they had spirits much as the stars themselves were not sentient but had spirits. There were many things she knew now without having the words to articulate them. But Torin seemed to understand many ineffable things via his connection to the aether around him and his quiet, wise soul.

"Thank you," she said with an amused smile. Kala's amusement was never at his expense. In time, she would get better at creating asterium, or perhaps she would be able to call it from the depths of the void to her. Divinity was still new to her; the breadth and depth of her growing power were as yet unknown.

"There's... hm..." Instead of using words, she tried to show him with her sembling. "Do you see...?"

When he seemed to catch her drift, she found some words.

"On another world, our illumite would merely be another form of asterium. Our sun is our star. The warmth of illumite's energy comes from our star, and from how generations of us have ascribed meaning to it. It carries the warmth and hope of dawn instead of the blazing of, say, the desert sun. The light in lunicite is the same light reflected from our moons. They are all different, and yet the same. The same energy, different patterns. Different resonances. Do you ken?"

It seemed he did, the concept if not the words to articulate it.

"I know many things now that I don't know how to explain." For a moment, she considered how ice, water, and vapor were all the same thing in different forms, how there were even more mutable forms in the heart of a star. Perhaps someday, she would wear armor and raiment of asterium that moved with her like water or mercury. She knew that if her power grew too great, her vision to keen, her mortality would fall away and she would be other. She would be sacred - set apart.

For now, she treasured the warmth and transience of mortal life. It was all she knew.

Kala nodded. He understood, was even able to wrap his mind, albeit briefly, over one of the mysteries of creation that she struggled with.

Next, she spread her hands and created a delicate bubble of a warding. Within it, she kindled Fire. But what answered her was not the flame of a candle, nor a torch, nor a bonfire—instead, she kindled stellar fire. It shone brightly, white and hot, though her ward protected them from the heat, the light, and the strange phenomenon she struggled to explain.

"There are types of fire in a star... one that... combines... one that splits... but fire... it's... it's still the thing that is burning. A flame is mostly... air and water..." She laughed. "Imagine that... flame being made up of things that can extinguish it. But star fire... it sustains itself for... Stars last longer than life has existed, but they too die."

Her words ran out. She wished Stefan Dornkirk was here; there were elements of science involved, she thought, and he was another one who understood the science of magic. But Torin was more esoteric; he understood things without having words for them—like she did. Kala maintained the tiny mote of star fire. It wouldn't sustain itself without her will focused upon it, not like a true star. All the same, it had all the same characteristics of the thing itself. She had felt it when Zalkyriax took her to the home of his people, lit by an entirely different star—sun—that shone a different color, was made up of different things than this, their sun.

Torin hadn't spoken. She didn't know if he would speak after this. But she observed him observing her carefully caged star, perhaps learning something indirectly. In any case, he would have the Rune of the Elements, even though that, too, was categorizing the nature of the world incorrectly. Consciousness and will, they changed the nature of reality in some ways. She didn't know how to explain that either, though having been to the Pantheon, she understood that the greater gods understood this in a more fundamental way, hence their will altered reality.

It was a terrifying reality.

Points: 10 each, may be used for Magic

Injuries/Ailments: None

Loot:

Torin: 1 Minor Asterium dragonshard

Notes:

Mod XP: None