Legend of Ransera

Templum Mediæ Noctis Matris
75th of Ash, Year 123 of Steel

The faithful sang to the Dark Mother as suppliants opened their veins or let fall other offerings into her devouring fires. They chanted ancient songs, the strange marriage of Vastian and Vallenor, the musical traditions of the desert and the dead Boundless Empire. They chanted, and there was a new buzz in the air, not magical, but perhaps numinous or divine. The peregrinus beloved of Deus Aværys used his gods-given talents to underscore their traditions with dark, deep harmonies, gutteral and primal.

Some wondered if he had learned them in the barbaric northlands, or perhaps among the strange nomads of the deep desert. Nobody could match him, though, and they thought it a worthy offering to Domina Varvara. It got under the skin of some, while others found it strangely, terribly beautiful.

They thought him beautiful too, merely human, but colored like a moonborn elf, and beloved of their miraculous crown prince.

When the song ended and a new one began, he rose from his knees among the choir—they in their robes, he in his formal Sentinel blacks. In Solunarium, religion was a public affair, even down here in the Umbrium. This had been strange to him, but he was conforming to the nation of his amatus, the people of his deus. A priestess ushered him toward a place where his sacrifice could be made where those with eyes could observe it, marvel at it, and grow in their faith. Though he was immune to the Control that hummed in the background, he could sense that faith without his Rune. It was a heady thing, the nectar and ambrosia of gods.

He knelt once more.

"Domina Dominorum," he intoned, his well-trained voice reaching the ears of her faithful and likely hers, as well. His brow began to glow, albeit faintly, a golden mist as his emblem reacted to this holy place of Aværys' sister-bride. "I came to Solunarium, thinking it a stop in my journey rather than an end. Unknowing, I intended to make a pilgrimage to Drathera to return an artifact sacred to Syren. Now I belong instead to thy radiant brother and thyself, and where once I offered blood, a song, I now offer thee the instrument of thine enemy to do with what thou wilt."

Finn unslung the lute he had acquired as if by destiny back in Kalzasi. He looked down at it for a moment, remembering the music they had made together, and then he let it fall from his hands toward the fire. She could consume it or she could keep it enchained in her realm as a trophy. In any case, he sacrificed it to her.

"Fiat tenebris," he said eyes rising to look upon the terrible statue. The song of the worshipers sounded like a moan of loss, a moan of ecstasy.

The bard felt more than a pang, but he remembered the music and he would make more on other instruments—henceforth, for the glory of Aværys, of Varvara, and of himself. He was an Empyreal Lord even here in the depths of the Umbrium's foremost temple. Ugrimal the Undying, he thought to himself. Ugrimal of the Umbrium. His throat, still warm from the harmonics, imagined how such sacred poetry might sound in his mouth. Even without the Rune of Command, he had gone through life listening to the music of the world. To compose was to breathe, to exist. He only hoped she never demanded that of him.

Callused fingers remembering the feel of lost strings, he rose, making ritual obeisance even as he did so. It felt strange sometimes to go through these motions after having visited the Divine Twins in their volcanic prison, spent time outside of time and space with them, spoken to them as he spoke now to dragons and princes. But an Empyreal Lord had to bow before his betters, the better to lead by example. Even Aværys, or so his god said, bowed before the throne of Eikæn.

The dragon's amatus turned, and while he wanted to bring his hands up to bring his veil up so the onlookers would look away from him, allowing Finn to become just another Sentinel in their midst, without personal identity, he knew his duty here and, if he was honest with himself, there was a perverse pleasure, almost arousal, at being watched, being seen, being known. He did not want to become a slave of his hunger, his ambition, but rather use it as a tool to fashion the world around him in an image he wanted.

He descended, walking down an aisle made narrow by crowded bodies. Hands touched him, brushed against sleeves, cloak, and such. Finn was a living symbol of their Rex Regum.

Finn—called Farstrider—could have gone from Umbrian temple to Luxian with but a single step; he walked instead. One could argue that the expense of aetheric energy was a sacrifice, too, and magical traversion could be showy enough, but it was not so protracted as a walk, a climb, and the use of the miraculous elevators. Eyes followed him as he walked the streets of the Umbrium. He felt them like Varvara's own chains, and he imagined he trailed a cape of invisible chains behind him, gods-given finery that also tied him to this place, these people, and this culture. There were ever fewer reasons to even visit home now that his family was here and likely to find fertile soil for their roots in the desert city. He was become Solunarian. Perhaps he ought to found a gens of his own, the better to enfranchise his family, though he didn't know that Arvælyn would ever allow him to father children of his own. But his siblings might—had. It would be right for his parents to take up the mantle of pater- or materfamilias, but he was the northstar drawing them into the future like a lodestone.


Templum Solis Radians

In the light of the Sceptre, he stepped onto a Luxian street. Some had followed him from Domina Varvara's temple, taking a brief pilgrimage with him, perhaps. He felt the ebb and flow of symphonies around him. He felt how people were moving through space, parts of them moving through the slipspace as well. It occurred to him that perhaps Cithæra and other semblers might sense the world similarly, sense the energetic patterns underlying everything.

The crown of Aværys on his brow shone, catching the eye despite the light of the Sceptre. He let it shine, opening himself up to his god as he approached his god's primary temple. While he didn't know Aværys' mind on the matter and suspected that, whatever the outcome of the current troubles, his will would be done, Finn didn't like the schism between the Solunarian realms. Luxium and Umbrium should work in tandem as did Aværys and Varvara, though he supposed if it became some battle royale to see who was strongest, who most fit to rule, it would also be fitting. He only hoped that the schism didn't weaken Solunarium, open it to rivals.

The Vastians feared the Ecithian Orkhan. Finn, a Kalzasern citizen, knew the Gelerian Imperium's reach was long. Mists, they had sent a collared demigod here.

Ascending the temple steps, he felt the symphonies of those following him, felt them responding to him, to his subtle command, and to the emblem he wore like the trappings of royalty. He hoped Vrædyn wouldn't think he was taking what wasn't his. Since Phocion's insight, Finn was ever more wary of stumbling into a combative relationship with the Princeps Pontifex. This was his domain in many ways, but it was moreso the domain of their god.

He took his place with the solar choir, nodding to the young acolyte he had been teaching for her introductory solo. His voice joined her, taking the lead, their bodies supported by the droning voices of the choir. It was an old song, one he had found in Vrædyn's ancient library—a pater noster first written for Streleon, now rearranged for the current incarnation of Hunger.

The vasty hall of worship was filled with their song, their voices. None else dared do aught but breathe; some forgot to do even that. Incense-laden air hummed with primal resonance. While he worshiped no goddess of song, it was song that connected him to the esoteric, made a mystic of him even if only for the length of a hymn.

Finn felt lighter here, having sacrificed the precious lute and loosened one chain from his soul. The tension didn't break when the song ended, though the audience of suppliants could be heard to breathe again.. He smiled to the girl; one day, perhaps, she would be one of his Singers.

The empyreal foreigner approached the altar to make his formal obeisance. The Farstrider had traveled far to become the chosen of their solar deity. His crown's light began to blaze to a blinding brightness.

Far to the Northwest in an embattled realm of smoke and steel, Her attention was roused. Rising from Her meditative repose, She stepped from the mortal realm into Her own. Standing before the Altar of Domination, She regarded the bequest from Her brother’s chosen. The instrument represented an alien force… a relic born of a rival realm. Midnight’s Mother could sense the weakness of the waning luthier and, with a smile, drew upon the power of the doomed godling of Rebellion, She severed the ties that bound the instrument to its former Domains. She watched the remains of that foreign divinity burn away in silver flames, as it became a simple, mundane object.

She lifted it from Her altar, and held it aloft in her hands. Then She strummed a minor chord. Each string was a tether, taut the way she liked. She began to manipulate a melody from those tethers and, once more, celestial energies were imbued into the artefact.

She sang in soft extempore, as her melody swelled.

“As I accept this Sacrifice,
My altar alters this device.
No more a lute to suit a bard,
As Syren’s pow’r I now discard.

Where once this lute played for delight,
Let it compose motifs of might.
Let chains hold taut where once were strings.
Let songs be played for binding kings.

Thus changèd I return this gift,
To him who did bestow it Me.
May it be used hence to uplift,
The cause of Our supremacy.

Wield it well, thou Mortal Muse,
And thou shalt bind a vasty throng.
Remember who thou ow’st thy dues,
And rise thee forth as Lord of Song.”

A bead of silver light appeared in the Templum Solis Radians, high in the vaulted ceiling where the Sceptre once hung before it mounted the sky. It expanded overhead and slowly descended, falling like a teardrop down a smooth cheek to levitate in the air before Finn.

The bard felt the energy of the sacred space shift even as his brow touched the polished floor at the nadir of his kētóu. There were gasps. The song of the chorus faltered as some voices fell away; those that remained burned with pious ecstasy. Hands still on the floor, his gaze rose. It wasn't a major chord of Aværys setting him to resonate like a tuning fork, but a darker minor key from She whose locks were unbreakable. From the ground, he looked up, his face a mask of religious ecstasy. His divine crown blazed, completed somehow by the presence of Domina Varvara. One could not serve one of the Divine Twins and not the other, no matter which turned Their gaze upon one.

Finn didn't know if anyone else heard Her song, but it felt like transverberation to him.

Some of the others there present must have heard, however, because once he stood and lifted his hands up to take his sacrificed gift in its transformed state, he could hear anything other than Her song once more.

Dominus Carminis, they called him in awed whispers. Sanctus. Beatus.

For a man who had been born with only a syllable to call his own, he was acquiring many names.

When he plucked the transfigured lute from the hallowed air, he felt as though shackles closed upon his wrists. Ignoring that, he wondered at its fantastical construction, whether it were steel or silver or something else entirely. He strummed the holy minor key, and the holy dark moved within him. The strange instrument felt strangely familiar in his hands, and music spilled out of him—music for the Gods, for his Gods. The bard wasn't thinking whether this song was binding kings, though perhaps there were princes in the audience, the congregation, and while sometimes he felt like a channel for something greater than himself when he composed, he knew this music in particular was being played through him, some echo of an order beyond mere mortals.

"Gratias, Domina," he managed, moved.