Oh, Do You Dream Of Me, Netherworlds?
I wonder, sometimes, if this world is the heart of all the others, and not the ends to the journey walked.
Sometimes, I wonder and wail, for I have witnessed the corruption of a network like no other.
I was once queen and sage, touched by the firmament!
The people were touched by the Jinkyo moon, it's sceptred light the surveyor of justice and calm.
Oh, do you dream of me, netherworlds?
- Mordelain Saythrou, The World Walker
Perhaps I have been delivered, not stolen.
Perhaps I have been saved, not cursed.
Perhaps, and this is a consideration I have pondered over for many years, the death of my world in fact saved us.
It has been too long since I was free, fear my chains and exile my dishonour. Though the people of the Kalithrism scorn the very thought of me, I believe that one day, they will find someone true to blame, and we shall come out of exile to lead them back to the light.
“Or maybe not…” Mordelain skipped a stone over the surface of the lake and hung her head in shame. She counted each splash with silent movements of her lips, and smiled as it reached five, and finally succumbed to the weight of the icy water.
Without a word, she knelt and embraced the frozen and lapping shore. Her bare knees dipped into the frozen heart of Salvar as if she was touching its soul, and with a bow of her head and a prayer, she drove her hands in after them.
She left Althanas behind with a whirl of mist and a sudden transition from tundra to city, her knees warmed by the cockles of the Eternal Bazaar, once eternally full, now eternally silent. Without a thought for the magnitude of what she had just done, she knelt again and pressed her lips delicately against the dirty cobblestones and relished the taste of the dust.
“Blessed be the walker, the dancer and The Path,” bounced out of her with pride and honour she only felt in the fleeting moments she observed the traditions of her people. She took a moment to take in the silence of the ghostly city before pushing herself upright, and reached down for her staff. It rested by her side, no longer submerged in the waters of Althanas, though it was still damp to the touch and heavy to lift. With a push, she stood back up and took to examining her surroundings.
Walking, even after so many years, was as much guess work and luck as it was application of knowledge. Many a Troubadour, young and ancient had stepped through the folds of space into the unknown, and had become lost or worse in untold legends and corners of the Kalithrism nine worlds. A heavy burden rested on her heart as she thought of all those that had perished in the protection of their home, but let the thought subside as she embraced her decision to visit the places she had left behind after so long.
“I am not afraid anymore,” she recited with determination and comfort. It was all she could do to steel herself against the anger she felt in the air, and the uncomfortable suspicion that many unseen eyes rested heavily on her, peering through window cracks and ageing doorways with contempt and loathing. She made it halfway across the central square of the city and paused beneath the canopy of a story telling oak, beneath which her people recanted tales of distant worlds from over sea and time to the unwitting populous. She looked up through the leaves and out beyond to the midday sun, and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the sharp juxtaposition between the Salvarian night and the temperate radiance of Breen in the summer.
A whisper echoed across the square, and Mordelain turned after what seemed like hours of daydreaming to look across the dusty streets to the creature that had made it. The remnants of the city planes once thriving citizen hood had overcome their fear, and let their curiosity get the better of them. They had banded together into a loose knit group of nine, grubby robes and tattered hauberks hiding their emaciated appearance and well-worn hearts. Mordelain set her staff against the trunk of the tree, and turned back to face them with a welcoming smile.
“Come, people of the Kalithrism, and listen to what stories have unfolded in the many aeons it has been since a wonder was spun beneath the branches true!” She spread her arms and bounced with joy, as if the dramatically flamboyant life had been her true calling for far too long.
For a moment, she almost believed her luck. The people of Breen, however, do not so idly forget deeds so dark as those of the Troubadours long ago…hatred had become them, and they could not wipe away the contempt from their faces for even a moment, a fact they confirmed as they silently drew their rusted and cruel blades from beneath sleeve and lapel. Mordelain frowned, and stepped back to the safety of the oak.
“Please,” she rested her hand against the rough surface, and reached out through the folds of reality. Her heart beat anxiously at the thought of conflict, and bile bubbled in her gullet. “Somebody has to listen to me, anybody will do!”
With a step, she walked from the People’s Republic, now a dictatorship, and into the heart of the forest world Bulganin. No soon as she did so, she regretted it. The deep roar that hit her ears foretold of a painful reminder that even those with the keys to the most secret places in the universe, did not necessarily have the automatic right to open the door when they please. The kinship she felt when she touched the oak and the rage she felt at being hated so much had pulled her across light-years, right into the path of a rampaging behemoth – its head the size of a wagon, its horns plentiful and sharp.
She gazed upwards at its enormity, and stumbled backwards as if the extra feet would make the slightest difference to her imminent demise. It roared again, a pulse of energy which rolled through the dense foliage and stripped a hundred trees of their spring fruits. The sound of stems breaking and debris falling gave the impression of rain, and without thinking, Mordelain called on her primal need to survive as the behemoth rose on its hind legs and bore down on the insect that had dared trespass on territory it very much believed to be its own. She covered her eyes and fell feebly once more to her knees, eyes tightly shut, prayers loudly thought of.
The scent of ripe berries and gourds was gone when she opened them. She had felt the pull of the Kalithrism the moment the ground had shook beneath the creature’s weight, and feared for the worst. What she saw, however, seemed to aggrieve her more than the fact that she was indeed still alive. Her need to survive had brought her to the raging furnace, Ixias, and with it, all the perils of being exiled in the annex of the Kalithrism rage and chaos.
“A metaphor comes to mind,” she mumbled as she rose. Her legs shook from spasms of pain and adrenaline, but she reached without success for her walking stick. “Drat,” she pictured it resting against the oak tree in Breen, perhaps now shattered or burnt by avenging hands of the city’s remnants. Though she could easily make enough, and adorn it with ribbons and bells from her headdress, she had been through much with her prized procession to not reminisce over its loss.
“All I want is to be heard, perhaps even believed, but at least heard,” she lamented, subconsciously walking forwards along the narrow metal bridge that was suspended without support over a gaping maelstrom of fire and energy that must have been seven miles wide and too large to ignore if this were the first visitation to the land without control. She kept her eyes on the metalwork as she walked on, utterly alone, without a connection to another world, and deeply buried in her own thoughts and self-loathing.
On the horizon, a mountain range appeared in the sky as dark clouds shifted from view. A crack in reality revealed a starry sky overhead, held aloft by plumes of dark smoke and vortexes of fire. Behind Mordelain, a glimpse of Breen appeared for a second before vanishing again, and each vision of another world heralded itself with a loud crack and a series of rumblings, as if the world of Ixias were being torn apart from the inside. Mordelain remembered the stories she had been told as a child about this world.
“Ixias is the hearth that stokes the Kalithrism. The flames that boil the seas, heat the suns, warm the hearts of the people.” She took a deep breath and embraced the brimstone and sulphur air that rose upwards from the vast maelstrom below. “It doesn’t warm mine…” she lamented, stopping three quarters of the way over the bridge with a stoop in her shoulders and a limp stance.
A clap of thunder brought her around again, uncertain of how long she had been staring at the metalwork. There was no sense of time in a world without suns or days or nights, but Mordelain did not care. In the distance, spires rose from fire walls and ancient citadels and factories appeared and vanished as the shape of the world constantly ebbed and flowed. One moment, there were many cities, the next, nothing but endless roiling waves of heat. Then the ground shook, nearly toppling the bridge and the troubadour with it. She reached out for the rail and took a firm grip, before peering over the edge into the endless expanse below.
“Even the Kalithrism hates us…” she mourned her own words at the sight of the very eye of the storm beneath her, which began to widen and expand. Through it, she could see an endless crystalline sea, and she recognised it instantly.
“Jinkyo…”
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:14 PM.
No gate to that realm or vision of its forgotten landscape had appeared for almost a century. Without thinking, Mordelain softly ascended the rail and fell silently over the edge. She tumbled down, rolling onto her back as the air rushed up past her and grew in temperature and turbulence. She closed her eyes, and drew on the proximity to her home to walk through the folds of the Kalithrism, reaching out with hopeful fingers at the cracks between the worlds.
“Oh do you dream of me…” she whispered, before falling through the eye into the unknown.
In a low, humdrum voice, the ancient force at the centre of the nine worlds whispered into its last hope's mind, its mouth drawing near to her ears in earnest. It spoke, for the first time in many thousands of years, pushed further into silence as it mourned the cataclysm that had ripped through its heart and torn at the tethers which bound the people together like veins pumping blood through a radiant heart. It said what it thought the girl wanted to hear, whatever she needed to make it safely through the breach of lava and ether that spiralled around her, threatening to extinguish the last of the troubadours from reality.
"Yes."
Mordelain opened her eyes with a start, the smell of possibility clinging to her nostrils like the strong odour of smelling salts. The last thing she saw before everything went black again was a vast ring of swirling fire, and the distant stars overhead as Ixias shifted once more, then vanished from her sights.
"I knew it," she cried, tears falling from her cheeks to rise upwards as she fell into the unknown. Her heart pounded in her chest, and the long white tendrils of her elegant attire flapped upwards as the strange atmosphere of one world was replaced with the gravity abiding aura of another. With a push and a twist, Mordelain rolled over and embraced the wind against her face, ignoring the biting cold in her sudden wonderment.
"You have delivered me home..." she stared at the surface of Jinkyo, and even as it lay shattered and torn and ruptured with great scars and vast spires of enumerated growth, it still made her happier than she had ever been.
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:13 PM.
"No..." She whimpered, suddenly realising the irony of it all. "I will not die now."
Mordelain had spent far too long wandering the surfaces of the Kalithrism in search of a way to redeem the actions of her people, she would not suffer a fate like death having found her home again. Bending her will about her like a shield of intangible force, she crossed her fingers and let her arms fan out like an eagle's.
"It was not our fault..." She began to glow, though more through entering the strange lower atmosphere of Jinkyo than through divine providence. "We could not have foreseen..."
Flashes of the great explosion that had erupted from Jinkyo burnt her eyes as she shed tears under the duress of her struggle. A power welled within her, growing in enormity along with the details of the surface which grew larger and larger the faster she descended towards them. She could make out tall stalagmites of rose quartz jutting from rocks a thousand yards wide, broken and shattered and carved with stories from a thousand generations of the Troubadours.
"I walk the path, it does not walk me!" She closed her eyes, and let the rush of air carry her through the folds of reality into whatever place in the many worlds would suffer her transgression.
She vanished.
"You are not alone," said the voice in her head.
Ribbons from her hair, torn from her attire and bells from her shoes fell many minutes later against the crystalline surface of the desolate world. They bounced with a little melody before they came to a stop, battered and bruised but safe. Curious eyes had seen the star girl fall, and curious hands stooped to pick up the trinkets as if they were manna from heaven.
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:14 PM.
The elven kingdoms were strange, yet accommodating lands, divided by war, and the division between the two paradoxes of tradition and change. Whilst the Great Necromancer had waged war against the High Elves and sought to savage the heart of Althanas itself, the elves of Alerar waged war with themselves, trying to placate the Thayne of the machine to tame it's furnaces for their war machines and guns.
When Mordelain had first set foot on Althanas, she had been horrified to find that such places and such deeds existed here. She had chosen this world, above all the others to take refuge, because it remained untouched by the horrors unleashed by the cataclysm. War, looting, lunacy had all been unleashed throughout the Kalithrism...on Althanas, however, they had been free for many millennia, and Mordelain had cried for hours upon discovering this.
Descending towards the sea, Mordelain suddenly finding herself very glad to be back. She appeared with a ripple of air three hundred feet to the port side of a low slung schooner, and a hundred feet shy of slamming into the ornate cobble stones of the principle harbour of Anebrilith. The winds of three worlds carried her fall, and she collided with the water with relished pain and discomfort, and a suddenly overweening scent of cod, sea salt and joy.
The Troubadour of Jinkyo may well despise everything Althanas stood for, but it would appear that her cry had been answered, and Althanas now very much loved Mordelain, welcoming her back with open arms like an estranged relative lost to war and geographical barriers.
She slugged the sea water and bobbed to the surface at the centre of the wave ring crater her fall had made, and flapped her arms to keep herself afloat. It did not take her long to realise she was back where her journey had begun, a whirlwind tour of the multi-verse to escape the very thing that saved her.
"Fitting..." she said wryly, before kicking into a breast stroke towards the shore. She guessed she did not have much choice but to connect with the people of Anebrilith, with all the splendour of its markets and xenophobia, and all the poverty and calamity of the post-war season.
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:14 PM.
From the position of the sun, Mordelain placed it near to midday. She dragged herself up onto the steps and stood slowly, careful not to slip on the stone. Water poured from her in torrents, and she shook her limbs to shed the excess.
"Not the most graceful of exits," she joked with herself, keen to stay on top of herself. Losing your mind in a place of turmoil and a strange land did not bare thinking about.
With graceful steps, she walked sodden up onto the harbour and made quick speed into the first street, weaving in and out of the busy dock worker groups and merchants inspecting their wares as they were unloaded from their anchored ships. She caught a few glances of bemusement at her appearance, and many made comments at how damp she was, but she did not care. She bowed when she was required to do so, and apologised when she collided with someone, wherever or not it was her fault. The people of Althanas, she had learnt very quickly, always thought themselves to blame.
"You are not alone..." she recited, coming to a sharp stop outside a boarded up shop that had once sold armour, according to the sign which hung feebly on one last tether of string overhead. It's red paintwork was chipped and worn, long abandoned by its owner for safer shores at the first signs of the undead no doubt. A well of emotion hit her square in the chest, and she gasped and brought up bile in one convulsion.
A well-dressed gentleman with pierced ears stopped in front of her, startled by her actions, and coughed politely as he swerved around her. A lady with a parasol strolled alongside, but gave the woman who was clearly in distress nothing more than cursory glance.
"I wouldn't be so sure," she cursed, clearing her throat with a harsh swallow and an uncomfortable taste of carrots and gravy. She righted herself and continued slowly down the street, towards a tall spire in the distance. Elves, men and creatures stranger still passed her obliviously, and she stepped into the centre of the street to dissipate into the crowd, and to absorb the scorching heat from the sun as it divided the two shaded shop fronts with iridescent heat.
She wondered as she walked about that voice, and what it could possibly have been implying. She had heard it whisper nonsense when she had stood beneath the Memory Oak on Breen, and again behind the strange roar of the behemoth on the forest world. For years, she had heard these whispers, so why did it chose to speak plainly now?
"I must be growing used to this damned place," she shook a fist up at the sky, and vowed to get to grips with the many customs and cultures of Althanas, wherever it liked it or not.
It was not as if she had any choice. The very fabric of the Kalithrism had started to turn against her, lashing out with branch and flame to spite her transgressions wherever she walked. Here in the madness of war, where cultures and money talked, and legends did not, she was no safer, but she started to belief that peace, and a home could be found.
"Though I don't think I'll find it here..." she wrapped the thin scarf tighter around her neck and periodically stomped her feet to shake any water drops as they gathered on bell end and ribbon tip. After an hour in the heat, she was practically dry, but exhausted from her journey.
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:00 PM.
"That was no daemon..." the oldest of the group said plainly. He sheathed his dagger and tightened his belt to keep it safe.
The group gathered into a circle, pallid skin and dank and sweaty clothes congealing together into a scab of treachery and hate. They stared into one another's eyes, daring one another to speak. The people's republic of Breen had lost its shine and it's spirit.
"It is a trick, she cannot be one of them..." a younger girl, no more than sixteen piped up, shaking her fist threateningly at the elder. "She tried to lure us to the tree, out in the open, to dance us to our death!"
The rickety rooftops, full of holes and laden with bird droppings glowed briefly with golden hue for a moment as the sun crested over the horizon, and the city started to come to life. After dark, the creatures of the night came, and the group started to get skittish.
"If it was a troubadour, and she has started to traverse the Kalithrism in search of others, or perhaps to rally the people together again..." the old man smiled, revealing a mouth of rotting teeth and halitosis. "Then she will have to walk through Breen again."
The group started to talk amongst themselves, hushed whispers and excited news. The elder brought his hand up to silence them.
"When she does, we will be waiting for her."
Their cheers echoed around the square for several cycles, and their haunting promise fell onto the haft of Mordelain's staff as it leant motionless against the Memory Oak's well-worn trunk. As the beasts let lose by the cataclysm emerged from their caverns and the ruins of once great market houses, and the city shook with fear, it remained upright and proud, declaring the hope wielded by its owner for all to see.
It screamed with silent praise across the people's republic, Oh, Do You Dream Of Me, Netherworlds?
Somewhere in the Kalithrism, someone heard it.
At the foot of the Istien University entrance, Mordelain felt threatened, but could not quiet place the origins...it resided in her heart as a heavy burden as she climbed the steps, and she knew she did not have much time before people came looking for her.
"That worry is for another day," she reassured herself, and walked into the beginning of a new adventure.
Spoils:
Echo of The Heart: Mordelain can, once per thread, listen to her heartbeat and send it out through the magic of the Troubadours, and be drawn to whichever of the nine worlds wants her the most. It will save her life, perhaps, or drag her closer to death, and can only be used moments before she is going to die (will not work in the Citadel or Dansdel).
Without Aid I Walk, Without Woe I Smile: Mordelain has lost her walking stave, and is temporarily unable to use her dances until she carves and blesses a new one. She can however hear and feel whatever it feels, and as such, has a temporary binding tie to Breen, and an over view of the city's main market district.
Last edited by Mordelain; 06-03-11 at 12:04 PM.
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