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.
