Legend of Ransera

A crater, Zaichaer
27th of Frost, Year 123 of Steel

Finn was late for a very important date, but better late than never, he hoped.

On 67th Glade, on one of his rare days free from the exigencies of the Custodes Deorum and Arvælyn's court, he had been taking a nap when light, pleasant dreams of what he might do to Arvælyn should he come to bed had been violently altered into a nightmare of darkness and fear, primordial pain and determination, of being hunted. He awoke in a cold sweat, his right hand aching where Lyra had inscribed her mark upon him.

The next day, he had discussed it with Phocion Vigilia, as the Custodes Deorum was already aware of Lyra and her strange magic. Aværys himself had only been mildly miffed when she answered his call on Hilana's disastrous quest, but Finn knew he no longer had carte blanche to pursue his whims, or even his instincts and intuition.

In any case, it was less than a month before he was in Kalzasi for the coronation of Shokaze Karam Senue, and he had managed to make time to return to Lyra's shop and her home outside the city to question his former co-workers. Again, in Ash, he compared notes with them over several trips to Kalzasi with Hilana, her sister, and Lykos.

But it would take until after his wedding at the beginning of Frost to persuade his brother-in-law that he ought to go to Zaichaer to investigate. That was where all the evidence pointed and while it was the belly of the beast to a man raised in the shadow of the High City, he was determined to do his job and to be the friend Lyra had been to him. Without her, his hand wouldn't be able to play music, and he wouldn't understand magic, nor indeed the world, as well as he did.

So here he was, dressed as a decently successful man of Karnor, his raiment as secretly protective as his Sentinel blacks. The flight over had been aboard a Solunarian trade vessel, testing Zaichaeri airspace and market value, but now he was here, he could suss the slipspace and return home without any further apparent affiliation with them. Some might wonder at the golden cast to his skin, a gift from Aværys' sceptre throughout the Eclipse, but what light there was in this benighted city would only serve to wash it out. Phocion hadn't let him go alone, whether because he wanted eyes on Finn or to protect him or both. But Decius had warned him of the warding preventing physical intrusion, as well as the fact that it didn't encompass the entirety of what lay below.

He daren't linger long here at the edge of this crater. It was cordoned off, but his compatriots had already noted the rotation of the guard. This was his first time seeing it as they hadn't wanted any possible guards to note a familiar face. It was unlikely he would be troubled by military or the Order, and they seemed to rely on the good sense of the citizenry to avoid spelunking in craters that emanated the strange feelings. While Finn began to recall flashes of that long ago dream, he rubbed at his right hand through the black leather glove. While she had taught him much, she hadn't given him an instruction manual for her mark—he hadn't even known it was there at first—and it was entirely possible this was a fool's errand.

But he had to know. He had to do his due diligence, both as her friend and as a Sentinel to ensure the Zaichaeri weren't attempting to do something along the lines of what the Imperium had intended with Talon Novalys. He didn't want his friends to become batteries, nor to suffer the indignities and pains of forced incarceration.

"Lyra...?" he called down into the void, feeling both apprehensive and foolish. Then again, she had always made him feel a stripling boy. He had thought her a long-lived elf, but she was apparently something else entirely. Varvara and Zalkyriax made him feel that way, too.

Wanting out of sight in case this took a while, he felt along the slipspace, found lines leading down and in that didn't interact with the Order's wards capping the crater. He vaulted into darkness. There was some light from above, but very little. Zaichaer didn't have the Sceptre and so their night was dark and full of terror.

She wasn't going to answer to his voice, so he reached up to his neck, remembering the feel of her power—what had remained in the mark upon his hand at that time, anyway—stitching into him there. A golden serpent, Hilana had said, though he couldn't see it in any looking-glass. Still and all, he felt as though it were there, close to him similarly as he could feel Aværys' crown about his brow even when it wasn't flush and burning with his Majesty.

Thrice he could call upon her and she would answer; she had promised. Finn knew more stories than most about the wild fae and other creatures who offered their gifts in sets of three, but he saw no other way through the dead end between his investigations and the mysterious Lyra. He wasn't sure how to invoke it other than with intention, but he could see more of the room as golden light shone through his fingers, could feel his voice altering such that it echoed through the Void in a way that made the nothingness reverberate as if it were something.

Lyrielle tu Kovash Elmari, he said, a name he didn't know. Epithets poured out of him in Vallenor, which he could understand, though he didn't know from whence they came. Lana. Scribe of the Gods. Lady of Whispers. King Breaker. General of the Dark. I call upon you and you will answer me.

He blinked, hoping the light pouring from his neck like heartsblood and the augmented voice hadn't drawn any attention from above. That had been dramatic, he thought. That had been something. But his hand itched where she had first marked him, even though the Vigilia had determined that its power was spent. His neck burned. His throat throbbed from carrying that voice that was his, but more than his, words he knew without knowing how. Damn Lyra and her mysteries, but then, they were what had kept him as her beck and call boy for years.

Still.

Finn prepared to vault away, having already mapped out several places he could move between in quick succession should anyone from the Order be able to match him and attempt to track him through the slipspace. But really, he just wanted to hear her voice once more.

The Lyra Mystery

This sort of experience proved to him that he was no mage, no matter his mastery of two runes, and his progress with another. Certainly, he could have shifted himself from the depths of a crater in Zaichaer to the Palatium Umbrarum in the blink of an eye, or turn an unguarded mind to his will, but Lyra could twist reality to her will. His reality shifted and they connected, but could not communicate. Then his reality shifted once more and he was back where he had called to her across the Void or whatever else separated them. He got the sense that she was spatially close, perhaps having run afoul of the Order of Reconciliation. Close, and yet impossible to reach without the connection she herself had forged between them.

She was gone, but the eldritch trail was clearly her means of communicating her will. If he couldn't rescue her, at least he could do her this favor. He laughed hollowly to himself, having spent one of her boons just to fulfill a boon for her. Ah well, that's what friends were for.

Finn glanced skyward, the ward-capped mouth of the crater depressingly high and small from this vantage. The blue fire didn't warm him, but what made him shiver was the realization that this was not the normal world any longer. Whatever that had caused this crater—and perhaps taken Lyra down—had opened another door into the Warrens. This wasn't the one he recognized from his brief foray from Kalzasi. Perhaps he was better equipped now, but that didn't make him feel any better.

With a determined sigh, he followed the will o' the wisp lights deeper into the Warrens until he came to the strange alter. He looked over the dark altar, muttered apologies to Aværys and Varvara, assuring them that he wasn't worshipping Lyra, merely aiding and abetting an old friend and teacher. He laughed again, though he ought not to have done. There were perils in the underworld that he likely couldn't counter. No, he was no mage. He couldn't light a candle, let alone a brazier, with his magic. Thankfully, he was a village boy through and through. He pulled a flint striker out of his coat, and a dagger out of the aether. The former was a standard thing, the latter perfectly made, though non-magical other than the fact that he had claimed it and infused it with a bit of his soul.

Between steel, flint, and a bit of tinder from his pouch, he brought the brazier to fiery life, hoping that was what the insistent whispers in his head wanted him to do. Cupping the nascent flame with his hand, he blew carefully upon the tinder until the fuel caught properly. Then he stood back, because Aværys knew what would come next.

"Are you certain I'm the best one for this job?" he muttered to her, unsure whether she would hear or not. He figured she wouldn't—couldn't—respond.

The Lyra Mystery

Whatever he had expected to find, this had not been it. Lyra had burrowed deep into the Warrens, whose geography he didn't entirely understand. Beneath the rebuilding Brass City, where magic was more tightly controlled than anywhere in the world, she kept her great arcane altar. As if she heard him, the mark on his neck thrilled once more. It was both comforting and disconcerting, as if she could reach out of the Void and asphyxiate him. She wouldn't. At least, he didn't think she would.

Finn could only trust in Lyra's hand upon his hand, and then upon his neck, marking him as one of her people. Her magic conjured an energetic wyrm, who seemed to judge him and find him wanting. But while he stood firm, ready to blink out from between its jaws, Lyra's mark pulsed and banished it.

The magic changed and something akin to one of his portals opened before him, revealing what looked like a magical egg, clear as the finest glass, throbbing with power. Within slept what looked like a moonborn girl.

"Lyra...?" he whispered, then shook off his awe. "Lyra?"

He stepped forward, trusting that if her marks kept him safe this far, she meant him to be here. His flesh shivered of its own volition as he passed whatever threshold lay between where he had been and where he was going. Perhaps Lyra had a new form incubating. Finn didn't know exactly what she was, from whence her power came, but he knew that she was not bound to one body.

"Lyra," he said, more strident, not knowing how much time he had to do whatever business needed doing here. His left hand came up to touch the egg. His voice was laced with power from his Rune of Mesmer, reaching for the mind within.

Thread Title

The bard had some experience with the minds and symphonies of gods and beings greater than himself, and so he was careful with the amount of aether he poured through his rune, how much he let in and how much he pushed out. His hand remained fixed where it was despite the fire and the melting; the magic didn't harm him, whether because Lyra's work recognized him or it was just not meant to burn, he didn't know.

His hand only fell away when the form inside proved stable, not falling over, and then he marveled. It was decidedly not Lyra, not because of the shape of things, but because of the melodies she contained. There were hints of Lyra, of course, and he could only assume this was offspring of some sort. He could think of no other reason she would go to such trouble to protect her, nor why her music would resonate so with what he remembered.

The Rune maintained a tenuous connection between them. He didn't Command, but he surrounded her with a sense of comfort and safety much as he did with Hilana's venomous snakes so he could develop a rapport with them. And also as he did with those serpents, he listened for any hints that she might react in fear, lashing out.

"I am Finn," he replied in fluent Vallenor. "I am a friend of your mother. She is trapped, I think, but reached out to guide me here. Will you come with me?"

Rather than reach out a hand, he doffed his coat. It was cut short enough it would likely fit her like a robe, but wouldn't, at least, drag on the ground behind her.

"I can take you someplace warm and safe until we figure out how to help her."

With an encouraging, accepting smile, he took the hand she offered, shook it in the manner of some cultures, and then draped his coat around her shoulders, buttoning it up so she wouldn't get cold in this strange span of the Warrens. He glanced back over his shoulder and sighed.

"The way I came is being watched now," he explained, as she seemed quite self-aware for her apparent age. But he knew nothing about her, truly, except that Lyra claimed her as a daughter and she claimed Lyra as a mother. He turned back to make eye contact, still kneeling before her so their eyes were nearer the same height.

"I don't think they are giving chase, but the aether is strange down here and I think we may have to travel by foot until I can find a safer place to open a gate back to where I live, where you can be protected. Don't worry. I can protect you, and I'm certain your mother has left some tricks up your sleeves." His smile was wry, concerned. He shivered. This part of the Warrens was cold, but they would be walking soon and his blood would warm up.

Finn stood, kept her hand, and began to walk in the direction where the slipspace seemed most auspicious. He didn't know how to explain that, though there were some high level academic studies on Traversion that he had skimmed. Something about the interconnectedness of all things, which was just a fancier way of saying he was using his intuition.

Other than her egg, there wasn't much. He didn't see anything to take with them, so they began their journey. The sooner begun, the sooner they could be back home, where she would certainly be housed at the Citadel until he could get permission to take her to the Prædium Sorokys where, he supposed, his family could give her some sense of normalcy if such were possible.