Legend of Ransera

While Kala had been moonlighting in Solunarium, there had been frequent portals opened to send correspondence back and forth. She didn't entirely trust Kanedama in her absence, knowing he was at least partly infernal. He hadn't been caught in her trap yet, of course, so she hadn't confronted him for gross violations of her trust. In any case, an appointment was set up. She arrived home in the morning, made a brief appearance at the Palace to keep Tianoch from asking too many questions, and then she was home. She set aside her work when Torin was announced, and tea had been set up so she sat with him in a sitting area, pouring the tea herself. It was something Akshara herself would do for a vassal, and Kala could do no less. Hospitality was important.

His words were, however, a surprise. Their sembling was on par, though she thought he might be one of those wunderkind who surpassed all others. That was good for him, she thought, as well as for Kalzasi. She had seen so many wildly adept magi in Solunarium that she thought it would become important to ensure the same up north if only for balance. Her surprise only lasted a moment, though, and then she set the tea in front of him. There were little finger food snacks as well. She thought he would always be hungry with such a muscular frame to feed, and she found herself with a greater appetite, perhaps to feed her divine nature as well as her body.

"Dear Torin," she said warmly, "we have both been going through radical personal changes while the world around us reels from emergency to emergency. You have not been a poor friend. You have been adapting. You are here now and we are still, I think, friends, and that is what matters." She took a sip of her own tea, a varietal from Hilana of Atraxia, blended with desert ingredients. The warmth of it was more welcome here where it was cool even in summer. "I am becoming something other than Avialae, other than human, and I know that inevitably, there will be such a great difference between me and other people that... hm, it will be lonely, I think. I am savoring my mortality while it lasts. And any goddess who demands respect, let alone worship, without earning it seems... unworthy of respect and worship. So, I know our relationship will change over time, but this—" she indicated the tea service, "—with you, it's something normal to cling to."

Kala knew there were items of business to discuss and, while she didn't delve into his aura, she could tell there was something else, something important to him that he wanted to bring up, but she didn't change the subject. It would be rude, peremptory, not to allow him his responses. That was a human detail she could focus on to keep her grounded.

"As long as I can avoid the Gelerian Imperium and volcanos," she allowed with a smile. The first had felled Arcas, at least for a time. The second had trapped the Divine Twins for an even longer time. "Secrecy still seems to be the wisest course of action, though I am glad I can entrust my secrets with you and the rest of my people." There was more she wanted to say on the subject of her people, but she was willing to let Torin take the lead with the conversation for now.

"Ah, yes. It is rather like the Rune of Semblance opening us up to the world—on another level. More powerful, I suppose, but also... more different than just an order of magnitude. There's a little girl praying to me in Starfall just now. Her voice rises within me like a bubble in water. I can feel the stars in the sky—invisible because of the sunlight, but still there. I can sense the Aetherium... how it lines up with our world, but also... doesn't at all. My mind is learning to understand things that I cannot even articulate yet. And I wish I could share it. The sharing would make it easier to understand, less frightening—sometimes it is frightening. But I think if it was taken away, I would feel empty... I would not simply return to the Kala I was."

She sighed, not unhappy. Perhaps her brain just needed more air to keep up with things.

"Because you are a bannerman of my House," she continued, rounding back to previous thoughts unshared, "I will tell you that I am trying to decide how to handle House affairs. Some might expect me to seize control from my mother, or demand to inherit it before Aquilios. But I think instead that my mother and I will make a covenant that I will renew when Aquilios ascends and those that follow. That I will always watch over Starfall and its people, but I will only ever step in to take control if House Leukos otherwise dies out. So hopefully Aquilios will be a father and I needn't worry about the succession." Kala smiled.

"But there is something you want to ask me, I think?"

Kala smiled, glad she had been able to help ease his passage through a difficult threshold sickness.

"It was my pleasure and my honor to help, Torin, and it has been gratifying to see how you have embraced it rather than fearing it, and how it has only made your enchantments more impressive." She had more to say on that account, but saved it for later. "I would like that. Sharing with you. I think you would understand better than most, and two master semblers can communicate many things that words cannot."

She paused. "Mother Naori helped some, but She is so far beyond anything I will ever be, I don't know that She truly understands what I am going through. She was never mortal. And I have met some of the other demigods. Some are flailing, others claim to know it all but... I don't know that I believe them. In any case, a sounding board with a good understanding of aether and a good heart... I think that would be good for me."

As for House Leukos, "Of course, I would always watch over the descendants of my family, as well as the people of Starfall, you and yours included. Perhaps they will keep me from growing so far away from my mortality that I lose empathy." She considered asking whether Torin intended to father children, but opted not to.

"Ah," she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. "I can certainly see that for you, learning the elements. If you wish it, I will initiate you. And I will take you with me when I tour the planes to attune to the less common ones." Kala smiled, thinking it would be an adventure. "In any case, that would diversify what you could do at the runeforge as well. And someday, you will have to take the dragonshards I brought back from Atoria and create divine artefacts for me. I might even be able to lend... divine power to them?" They would certainly have to experiment with that. She trusted Torin with her prizes, the sanguinite, mnemosyte, and illumite, as well as a piece of her own power.

Kala sensed enough of his thoughts to share, "I am keeping extensive journals both for my future self and for posterity."

For a moment, she felt a chill, which was odd given an Avialae's immunity to cold. There had been someone she thought to compare and contrast herself through early divinity, but perhaps she was mistaken, perhaps hearing echoes of Nazam from the stars or similar. In any case, she made a point to keep her eyes open for any young lady who might be a good match for Torin. She knew he had solid relationships with Master Kavafis and Master Sunrunner,

"I don't know if it's different either," she admitted. "I will say that my, ah... ascension... has changed how I view magic and aether. I suppose I might eventually have powers like the old archmagi. I have told you how my awareness has incorporated new parts of the world - the Aetherium, for instance. My relationship to the elements has changed as well." Her eyes went far away as she tried to explain. "The fire of the sun - our star - is mighty, but without the natural wards of Ransera, it would melt and scorch us. There is a sort of... hm, chemical reaction within the heart of a star. Its emanations can induce radical changes in matter. This is good for creation on the stellar scale, but... again, without our natural wards, it would create too much change in our bodies, changing us, perhaps even killing us. And stars create a sort of wind that travels out through the void. Hm... yes, my power can capture these. I do not know if that is merely a quirk, or a feature of my stellar domain, nor whether it would be passed unto you. If so, I would teach you how to harness them without fear. If not, at least you will have a competent teacher in me, and in Kaus, who would likely be there to help you through whatever aftershocks you must weather."

She laughed out of nowhere.

"He said you will have to fashion yourself some sort of wings, so he can teach you how to fly with aeromancy." Kala considered. "I do have a prototype to help with maneuvering, though it wasn't as helpful as I had hoped - a student experiment, really, though I suppose it could be more fully engineered."

While she considered also showing it to Stefan Dornkirk, she wasn't sure his intellectual curiosity would outweigh his inborn distaste for the Avialae. In any case, she would have to remember where she had stowed that. What she could retrieve, she did. Walking to the cupboard, she unlocked it, then unlocked a particular drawer, and pulled out a velvet sack.

When she sat back down, she pulled three silk bags from it, then revealed three supreme dragonshards for his perusal: the gold, the pale blue, and the blood red.

"Well... once I master alchemy and the draconic language, I ought to be able to decipher Garel's grimoire, and then I could make you Avialae if you so desired." Kala smiled. She was going to focus first on Avialae women, but the Necromancer had made it seem brief and easy once one knew the secret.

"But I would be interested in seeing those schematics. I am still learning to fly as effortlessly as Kaus. There are some small instinctual cues, but I did first practice in the privacy of Starfall, and I was quite ungainly." She laughed at herself.

While he was communing with the Atorian dragonshards, she closed her hands into small fists. Through her left hand, she pulled aether into herself. Once it was hers, she began to change it, a weave of mostly Earth with a fair amount of Fire. As she did her internal alchemy, the finished product began to coalesce in her right hand.

When Torin finally did look up, her face was drawn and wan. It took some doing, and she hadn't normally tried to do it so fast. She smiled to assure him that she was well.

"While it isn't... easy... I have been able to make fabled asterium much the same as I used to make lodestones." She opened her right hand and passed it to him. The star shard was structurally sound, but only minimally charged. "If you let it bathe in starlight, it will charge faster. Or... I presume you could channel aether into it and then sit back while it claims it, converts it into its own special energetic signature. Again, I don't know if your attunement to Earth will follow mine..."