Author Topic: By the Light of the Stars  (Read 1621 times)

Daycryn

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By the Light of the Stars
« Topic Start: March 15, 2013, 04:40:19 AM »
The scarlet-robed priest walked the desert by the light of the stars. He was alone, no scribes nor servants, no troops nor guards, not even a mule to carry his supplies. Sand and dirt caked on his clothes and his face and his boots. During the day he had slept uncomfortably in the shade of a crumbling boulder, bitten by ants. Now he wandered, having trekked down from the mountains, his belly empty and mouth parched. He carried skins of water with him, which he doled out to himself in measured sips. The journey was hard on the man, he who had once been a knight. His body was sore and he stumbled every now and then, but did not fall.

With the moon risen high, he stopped to take a break. It was bitter cold, but he had no fire to warm him. He knelt to pray; his voice uncharacteristically soft as he muttered words under his smoking breath. He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed in meditative contemplation, and he stayed there as the moon arced across the sky and the stars rotated slowly above him.

As usual, the voices came to him. His own voices, he knew. Questioning, doubting ones, always wondering why he did what he did. Frightened, confused ones, always wondering if he should turn back home, reply to his many letters. Cranky, complaining ones, reminding him of how his feet were sore and his flesh freezing and his stomach rumbling for food. Angry ones, condemning those in his life he had become, for various reasons, opposed against. Reminiscing ones, retelling the stories of his past; the awakening from naivete, the defeats, the victories, the revenges both satisfying and otherwise. And as usual, as time passed, slowly these voices began to quiet down. Not all at once, and often one would quiet only to be replaced by one of the others, in a frustrating cycle.

But eventually there approached a place of silence. He felt his body renewed, aware of every limb and digit with a keen sense. And yet he felt his body slip away too, slowly becoming ... irrelevant. Mind and body - both of the flesh. Both fading from his awareness. Something else remained, however. In a detached way he began to focus on this last thing, to notice it more and more. It slipped and twisted away from attempts at thought. This thing that remained evaded definition, eluded the grasping of his hungry brain. Suddenly he remembered the Bloodstars. The Divine Bloodstars. There was something that remained there, too. Something that was not the mere fact of their physical bodies, these lamps in the sky. Something that was not the mere fact of their influence on mentality and emotion. Something else, something that continually slipped and twisted away. What are you? What is the Divine?

He heard the wolf growl from behind him.
Lokenth, Warrior of Arcaea, former Adventurer
Adamir, Lord of Luria Nova

Daycryn

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Re: By the Light of the Stars
« Reply #1: April 21, 2013, 01:45:04 AM »
...it was upon him, all fangs and claws and fur, the priest rolling and reeling in the sand in a battle for his life. He felt its breath hot upon his face and neck, felt the sticky wetness of its drool on his parched skin, and he looked into its glowing rage-filled eyes. He rolled it over, rolled it again, and suddenly there was just him, under the night sky. Stars looked down on him. There was no wolf, and never had been.

Bloodmoon? But... I haven't eaten of that in...

He sat up again and re-crossed his legs, blinking furiously. Hallucinations were said to be a symptom of going without water for too long, in the desert heat. But he had his water-skin.

What can this mean?

The wolf had been terrifyingly real, hungering for his mortal flesh even while he thought of the Divine Bloodstars and pondered what they might be in their essence. Even as I search for the immaterial, the material still comes for me, a wolf in the night.

Or was it? There was no wolf, after all. The material proves to be immaterial after all.

When dawn came he stood, and gathered what he could of his things. A map of the region had been in his possessions, but he had torn it up irrevocably in struggles with his vision. No matter. He set out again anyway, realizing that perhaps the destination mattered less than the journey itself. It was good to be away from the turmoil of high politics, even if in the back of his mind he worried about how it would all turn out without him. And a part of him, growing with each step, considered resigning from it all. The Light of the Maddening. The Duke of the First Temple. The Elder Council. All of it.

Lest the wolf's jaws close upon my throat.
Lokenth, Warrior of Arcaea, former Adventurer
Adamir, Lord of Luria Nova