Giask - Part I
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"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'" - Nietzche
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Henrich had come down the road with a small procession behind him. Men, women and children who worked in the fields transformed into musicians and dancers. Daydreamers. The High Priest wore a white robe, pure as the clouds above him, so simple that it was difficult recognize himself on those calm waters like the Duke he had once been. Without a homeland, Henrich had become a stranger in foreign lands, avoiding a nobility now so strange to him, taking refuge with the common people, converting them and spreading the word about a world beyond the Shroud, a world that they could touch when they sang, danced, drank and dreamed. Before a Diplomat, Ambassador and High Magistrate, mastering the laws of his people and foreign policies, now he remained reclusive, preaching and pacifying hostile regions, taking his message to merchants and the rich class living below the nobles, paying taxes and accepting him with dinners and curiosity.
Sailing from Askileon to Giask, he remembered his adventurous youth in Kid's Rock, seeing an entire region flourish through his hands. The times in which he threw himself overboard to whaling. The seagulls were a constant reminder of Itau and its ports. Nothing had been more edifying than give life to that forgotten and abandoned city. So, he could understand the men who had trodden the path before him. His father had been a humble warrior, a hero spending his last days taking care of Abilotiel. Yeux had erected magnificent temples that were destroyed by enemies and now only Avamar was still a jewel in the hands of an elvish conqueror. During his time at Itau he had consolidated the triad of power within his family. Him, the Duke of Itau; Yeux, Duke of Agyr, Great Maharshi of the Bloodspeakers and King of Melhed; Erik, Duke of Avamar, the one with more titles than a mortal could ever have. What his ancestors would think of him now? A noble without titles, without power, without lands or estates. A self-imposed vow of poverty. An exile that went beyond the physical world.
However, these were characteristics that shaped Henrich in a solemn, pure and kind creature. A nobility which could not be purchased or ripped from the hands of an enemy. His presence was overflowing peace and a nobility that appealed to the common people. Those who saw him as a different model of noble. Someone who could give without ask anything in return. Someone who could walk among them, tell him stories, ministering healing and love potions. It was said that the grass was greener where Henrich walked. The cows gave more milk and women gave birth to healthy children. Not coincidentally, the virgins worshiped him and that peaceful aura that gave him an austere beauty.
Thus, in all his simplicity, Henrich reached Giask, the last city of Asylon. A dying kingdom living from its own ideal, much more into the Dream than in the world of blood and flesh. The High Priest had no illusions about the future. He was not there to serve the living world and its kings, but to build a bridge between the mankind and its crazy dreams. If the south loved the stars, he would teach them to kiss the sky.
