Like The Wind... (Closed)

[Mordelain]

Like the Wind...

Missions from the Cult: Rumours have it that Jya and her Priestesses have been studying some kind of new artifact that was found in one of the ruins. No one really knows what it is or what it does but the Cult has some vague information from some of their followers as to what it looks like and they want it. The Keep is a fortress and a Palace all in one, but this mission will require you sneaking in there and stealing the artifact. However, this needs to be done with the utmost care, needless killing should be avoided. The Cult does not want any attention being drawn to them in this matter, so getting in and getting out without being seen and without killing anyone is the top priority.

Conditions: Quest.
Rewards: A Kukri blade made from Plynt and covered in crushed Mukakkannati.
Status: Open, unique.

[Mordelain]

Standing east of the mighty Zaileya Mountains, the Aduyya tower was testament to the desert island’s former glory; eternally guarded by enormous creatures and inveterate sandstorms. Fortunately, for Mordelain Saythrou, the former was but her mentor, one Suresh Nuhzar.

“This does not feel right,” he moaned.

Mordelain sighed. She knew his concerns for her and their task were well placed, but selfish desires drove him to speak. His was a large man, of ample girth and fondness for date loaf, and the trek across the desert had taken its toll on his physique. What little strength he had left, he spent making her feel as guilty as possible.

“Suresh, I told you countless times.” Mordelain turned. She rested her hands on slender hips and glared. “If you don’t want to come with me, don’t.”

It was a simple enough ultimatum. Suresh volunteered to join her on the assignment. She had not forced his hand. Irrakam, for them both, was just a heartbeat away if they wanted it to be.

“No. No, we’re here now,” he wheezed.He rested forward on his knees for a moment, quite done with stumbling over the rocks that crested the rise.Despite the sun on the sands being hot and torrid, in the shadows of the Zaileya mighty peaks cast calming shade over the ancient scattered ruins.

“Once we’re safely inside we can rest. We can find shelter. Try to find water.”She prodded the fur covered ox stomach on her hip furtively. She felt the strap stop pressing into her shoulder miles back, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

“Yes, let us do that. It would be foolish to die from thirst in a trap filled cavern.” He stuck his tongue out at her before he pressed ahead.They fell silent as they continued to climb the rise. Vultures circled overhead.

“Okay…,” she said at last. She offered her apology to break the ice. “Look. Maybe I was a little hasty taking this mission from the Cult.” She circled him like an excited puppy seeking affection and praise. “Is that what you want to hear?”

Suresh remained stone-faced.They rose up the incline and through a ravine before breaking out onto the Coradan Flats.Here, the Fallien civilisation had once held court.Alular, the capital of the island stretched from where they stood to the eastern seaboard.The merchant stopped. Eyes wide. Heart racing. Rocky fists balled.

“What. What is it?” Mordelain asked.

The desert was vast near the current capital Irrakam, but there were no dunes, or Nirrakal fields, or rivers to break the monotony.There was only desolation. Shattered ruins set against a sandy backdrop. Eight-hundred feet ahead one ruin stood out from the infinite tapestry. It was not obscured by the mirage tricks of the heat jinn or the winds.

“I thought the ruins of Aduyya were empty. Abandoned. Ramshackle,” he mused. Mordelain nodded silently in agreement. “They aren’t anymore…,” he continued. He pointed ahead. Mordelain felt a deep sense of foreboding.

[Mordelain]

The tower’s entrance stood atop a raised incline. Flanked with strange pillars and split atwain by earthquake and time. Jade plinths lined the rocky outcrop that it sprang from regally. Solid great chains anchored the tower’s shaft to the land. It was marvellous to behold amidst desolation all around it.

“Suresh. Promise me one thing,” commanded Mordelain. Her tone was stark. She clenched her fists to mimic her mentor’s tension.

“Anything,” he replied non-chalant. His tempestuous stare fixated on the tower’s tip.

“You must speak to nobody of what you see here. Nobody at all.” He turned and made to object. “It’s not open for discussion,” she continued. She cut him short before could object. “This Tower as you well know is a conduit. It converts the winds of magic, and the sun, into an energy source.” She pointed to its peak and sure enough, the orb in the cage of rock and rubble crackled with lightning.

The sound tore the air and Suresh whelped. The bolts grew in intensity until a storm formed around the tower, and the hairs on their necks bristled. To the Fallieni progenitors, it was a Hydroclast; a fusion of hydroelectric mechanics and mystical arts passed down through generations of shamans. Nobody alive in Fallien, save perhaps The Exile and Mordelain, knew precisely how it worked.

“It’s…,” he mumbled. “It’s remarkable.”

“Just promise me,” she snapped. “Promise me!” Turning him sharply to face her accusing glare, Mordelain bore into his resistant façade with all her strength.

“I promise, Mordelain. Get your hands off me,” he growled. He pulled away and folded his arms defensively across his chest. The orb responded to the emotion, and shot turquoise crackles of light down the chains into the rocks.

“There is only one person in Fallien that knows how to rebuild and work one of these structures.” The tension faded from her tired body as motherly concern grew. She turned to the tower, pointed to the bronze door, and dropped her hands to her sides. “Tell me everything that you know of the Exile who dwells here?”

Suresh pulled a small ornate gourd of date wine from his pure white robes and uncorked it. He sipped the sorry last dregs and shook the container. Tucking it away, he smacked his lips, composed his thoughts, and twirled the bushels of his moustache. His dark, walnut skin glistened with sweat, and his nostrils flared with heavy, contemplative breaths.

“The Exile?” He asked to make certain he understood her question. He glanced sideways at the il’Jhain and nodded when she did. "He is a sorcerer without equal, or so they say. Powerful beyond compare. Long since exiled in spirit and law from the western side of the mountains.”

It dawned on the merchant that although the legends and whispers of the eastern seaboard were well known, he had never asked why. What had Coradan done to deserve the harshest of crimes? What had the long forgotten tribes here done to deserve abandonment?

[Mordelain]

“That’s true. There is more to him than that.” Mordelain long hoped to tell Suresh history of Fallieni fall in better circumstances than these.

“I hope that means you are going to explain,” he encouraged.

Breaking ahead swiftly Mordelain made for the rising slope to the tower’s door. She struggled to recall detail of how to access the labyrinthine madness. A task she had not needed to perform for seven centuries. The last time she had…she shuddered with odious regret.

“The Exile was a member of the Valadon. The pre-Vhadya council, governing body of Alular before the fall.”

Suresh blinked. Long had elders been Fallieni way. Now, though, it was salvation, not parasitic enslavement. He trailed behind the il’Jhain at a much slower pace, sweating more with every step. The lightning seemed to heat the air, even though it arced far above their heads. The power scared him.

“That would make him…” The rumination was all Suresh needed to coax more information from her.

Mordelain stopped to adjust her satchel. She tied up her auburn hair, and made ready for whatever trials lie ahead of them. Her simple garb appeared more and more Fallieni as days went by.

“As ancient and old as I am,” she chuckled. She stepped up onto the slope. Her sandals gave her traction on precarious ground. She began to climb. As she passed the pillars, the upturned pyramids began to rotate. “He is one of Tama,” she said meekly. The words stung her.

Coradan came to Althanas as Mordelain’s mentor, her troupe master, and her idol. Together, they had acted as envoys to the pre-Vhadya Fallieni. They sought to use the isle and its potent industrial golden age as a bridge between Althanas and their homeworld, Junkyo. Suresh charged up the slope after her, huffing and puffing, and grumbling too.

“I thought you said you were the only one of your kind?” She had. She was. She is.

She spat a hateful gobbet forcibly formed from her dry parched lips. She reached the door, pressed her palm against it, and found her strength. Though the bronze stood in the direct sunlight, it was cool to the touch. It vibrated with a vibrancy Mordelain recognised as purely mechanical.

“I am,” she said bitterly. Her tone bridled with contempt. “Coradan ceased to be a member of our order the day he chose to turn his back...”

She closed her eyes. The pang of regret overwhelmed her and her dusty attire in her mind faded. She pictured herself younger, garbed in the troubadour’s vermillion robes, and brandishing the staff that started and ended the Cataclysm.

“We were atop the Orrery at the heart of Alular,” she explained. She recited what transpired to Suresh as it unfolded in her mind. “Coradan tried to veto the unanimous vote for anchoring the Kalithrism to Fallien. There was arguing, and then finally, one other member of the council joined him.”

“Who?” he asked, hanging to every word.

“The jihta Reva,” Mordelain cursed.

[Mordelain]

Reva Zaileya had been the most dominant of council members. Stunningly beautiful and viciously intelligent, Alular had risen to power much on her mind’s merit. The design of the tower and its brethren spread across the desert was primarily hers. The irony of it all astounded Mordelain, even today.

“Reva…Featherblood?” Suresh’s eyes widened to the size of an oasis. He stepped away, the implications world breaking to his isolated purview.

Mordelain nodded slowly, despite the visceral nature of her recollection. Now, the image shifted, and she witnessed Reva and Coradan arguing in the orrery’s heart – the sun chamber.

“They shouted until their lungs bled,” she whimpered. The raising of a staff, the hitting of a slave, and the shattering of bonds unfolded before her. Dark private torment. “I was powerless to stop them. I was too young, too naive, and too innocent to see what was happening.”

Coradan had already begun the connection process. As they argued, the Kalithrism was taking root in Fallien’s geography. Strands of magic tethered the nine worlds to Althanas, feeding off the gluttonous power of its premiere civilisation. It almost took hold. It almost happened. Then Reva played her trump card.

“Reva showed the council what Coradan was. She showed them where he had come from.”

Suresh gasped. “They shunned him as an outsider.”

Part of the Tama’s carefully wrought plan had been to act as envoys in secret. They presented themselves to the council, who had shielded them, and welcomed them as people of this world…of Althanas. Decades of work were swiftly undone the moment the word ‘Troubadour’ began to circulate through the city streets.

“A xenophobia that remains today!” The vision ended as Reva struck Coradan over the head with her staff and the pain recoiled into Mordelain’s tired body. She stumbled back, bolted her eyes open, and flailed her arms with a gasp.

For the first time in weeks, Suresh showed true, genuine, and altruistic concern. He leapt almost, steadied her, and veered around to her front. He came between the il’Jhain and the bronze door, a temporary anchor to the real world.

“You did nothing wrong,” he exclaimed.

Mordelain knew that all too well. She pushed him away gently, to the overbearing backdrop of lightning arcing through fetid air and nodded meekly.

“I still feel responsible,” she replied. She could have paid more attention. She could have questioned her mentor without feeling shy, reserved, and disrespectful.

“You are putting it right now. That is truly all that matters,” the merchant said as final authority on the matter. To change the subject and to give himself time to think, he turned on swollen heels. “You can start on the path to redemption divine by opening this sharmotah door.”

Mordelain allowed the distraction to take her mind off her self-doubt. She took a deep breath, puffed out her chest, and took a defiant step towards the locked portal. Suresh was right, as ever he was. She had slain Reva. Judgement felt passed.

[Mordelain]

“You make it sound so simple,” she retorted. It was, but she was not giving him the satisfaction. “Step back,” she added glibly and with rancour. She glared at him, reinforcing the notion that this was her domain, her expertise, and her history living and breathing all around them.

Suresh waddled away. He teetered on the edge of the slope.

“What are you doing?” he asked intuitively. He tried to peer around her as she tinkered with something on her belt.

“The door is not locked but you cannot open it from the outside.”

Suresh blinked.

“I have to plane walk,” she added, as though she had eyes on the back of her head. “Whatever happens don’t let anyone in, or out of the tower.”

Suresh’s eyes widened and he reached out for her shoulder. It touched only air, and he cursed, very loudly, in the il’Jhain’s absence.

“Oh, ya bint el-haram,” he spat. He wished for more wine.

Mordelain always went off on her own wild adventures. Every time she left him holding the reigns of responsibility or as with the incident in the stables, the wrong end of a dagger. He winced at the memory, and rubbed a spot on his stomach where the aforementioned dagger had punctured his spleen.

“No…a whore would be too good…,” he corrected himself.

He fell silent as he became suddenly aware of the immensity of the surroundings. He turned to face the mountains and traced the jagged peaks east to west. From the eastern side of the island they were more resplendent than ever. On the slopes overhead, he made out skeletal trees and countless shale landfalls. Whatever existed on this side of Fallien pre-Vhadya had warped the landscape beyond reproach. He curled his lips into a wry smile.

“Such power she wielded,” he muttered. He meant Mordelain.

He reflected back on the times before Mordelain’s deranged idea to usurp Jya, restore Fallien, and gift the people of Irrakam cultural diversity. Then, he had firmly been in charge. He took a deep breath. Then, he had been the mentor, gifting his people decades of mercantile brilliance in the arid bazaar of the Outsider Quarter.

“Now I am the student again,” he said. He smiled; he was amused that everything had come solidly full-circle. He turned away from the mountains and began to examine the unique and alien structure of the tower.

It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Irrakam possessed a curious tapestry of architecture. From ancient Fallieni to Bedouin tents, it encompassed all the brilliance of the multitude of cultures that lived within its burgeoning walls. The tower, on the other hand, showed no sign of similarity. Even the western ruins showed no resemblance and that only put Suresh on edge. He frowned. The pyramids on the pillars still spiralled unnervingly, driven to motion by unseen forces.

“What hand, what symmetry, what purpose?” he asked with a pensive expression on his face. He was clearly standing firmly in the yesterday.

[Mordelain]

A few moments passed. Languishing silence that undid Suresh’s usual resolve. He continued to stare across the sands, bewildered by the alien feel of his homeland. This he determined was not his homeland, even though the sand was the same sand, the air the same air. He had wandered as far north as the Outlander’s Outpost and south to the shores of the Wide Sea.

“Not once did I ever see anything quite as strange,” he sighed.

The pyramids felt somehow connected to their arrival. Suresh tried to discern why, but lacked the knowledge to comprehend all the possibilities.

“I hope this job is…”

“Easy,” said a voice.

He clenched his fist, turned about, and produced a multi-barrelled pistol in a heartbeat.

“Peasy…” Mordelain stared down one of the barrels, eyebrow raised.

The merchant cocked the gun to one side and took a deep tense breath. His pulse was racing so hard he had to lean against a pillar, pudgy face scowling, forehead beading with sweat.

“I would have shot you!” he barked.

Mordelain chuckled. She stepped out of the doorway, which had slid open silently at her command and stretched. She had only been gone minutes from the surface of Althanas. Her desert garb was dusty, her knees bruised, and her buttocks grass-stained. Whatever she had gone through to open the tower’s entrance it was anything but easy.

“You wouldn’t dream of it,” she replied smarmily. She jostled something between her fingertips: something that had cost her enough time and effort to warrant care.

Suresh was in the right frame of mind to prove her wrong, but he was overwhelmed with sudden curiosity about what he saw immediately behind the il’Jhain, and not what she was holding.

“Oh my…,” he mumbled, barging her to one side amidst objections. He stepped into the tower’s arid antechamber.

The second Mordelain entered after him the door closed. The lighting orbed ceased thundering. The inverted pyramids stopped turning. A split-second sealed them away and the desert returned to its exile in peace.

“There’s no turning back now, Suresh.” Mordelain sighed. She pointed ahead. Orbs in the ceiling, buried in shadows, began to glow lime green to welcome her home.

“All that awaits me in Irrakam is a badly cooked lamb roast, and my mother’s all too bitter reminders of my ‘lack of station’,” he retorted. He stepped close to the solitary feature as though it were a welcoming campfire.

At the centre of the tower’s chamber stood a miniature orrery. It was made of steel, brass, and mirror gems. All worth more than a day’s work. Each represented a person, not a star, and a month or day, not a season. It was a strange clock, but it had serviced the Hydroclast for centuries and controlled its power for the betterment of Fallien.

“Well, when you see this…,” she mused. She gestured for Suresh to approach and circled so that she stood opposite. There was a hum, then chaos, and then pure wonderment.

[Mordelain]

The tower vanished as the Orrery spewed light, sound, and memory. It overwhelmed Suresh, who could only drop his jaw and stare at everything he could trace in the dark. People flickered into view. Their lives mocked and chronicled by moving sands dancing mid-air.

“This is how much of pre-Vhadya Fallien worked,” Mordelain explained. She was not sure if he was listening or not, but she worked to teach herself, if not her mentor. “Memories have power beyond lightning, water, and steam. They are sages.”

She could not entirely remember how such a strange method had originated. She supposed now it did not matter. Fallien, in this age, and perhaps the next, would be far too weak and broken to wield the true extent of the Hydroclast network. That, today, was not her purpose. Even a modicum of its function would be revolutionary.

“Who…who are all these people?” he mumbled. He walked in haphazard trails around the room, trying to look at faces, signs, and parchments as lives unfolded in a seemingly chaotic pattern.

Mordelain pointed at one of the golden simalcuurms as it streamed past. Of all the faces in the Orrery, she recognised one. She stifled her surprise when it manifested.

“That is...well, Resolve,” she said.

Suresh stopped in his tracks. Finally free of the menagerie of colour’s hypnotic spell he turned to face the il’Jhain, looked at the image, and then stared purposefully at his adapted daughter.

“…the woman you met in Lornius?”

Mordelain could not quite believe it herself. The Orrery tracked the people of Fallien who, for some reason or another, would come to shape its progress through history. Given the exorcist had, to date, expressed no interest in returning to her homeland she had to wonder what part of the girl’s life she was seeing.

“I’m not sure this is a future image,” she concluded. She looked at him, nodded at his question, and then approached the smiling figurine. She reached for it and moved her hand through Resolve slowly.

The image faded, but not before the youthful face turned, smiled at somebody, and let lose a happy, raucous belly laugh. It was only when the sand swirled, and Resolve faded, that the rest of the image revealed itself. Another girl, whom Mordelain did not recognise at first appeared to the right. She was laughing too, wore a simple blouse and her hair up and braided.

“Why would you need to know the past?” Suresh asked. He cocked his head. His white robes danced with golden fire, sparkling tributaries of silver light, and circles of green flourish that marked the end and beginning of more and more memories.

Mordelain mouthed an answer but she felt transfixed by the second woman. She recognised her finally and smiled. The woman she knew as Luned Bleddyn, only a teenager in the skein sliver was the reason that Resolve Curie would shape the progress of Fallien someday. She made to speak but everything imploded and memory became reality.

[Mordelain]

Hours passed and their destination grew on the horizon. It gradually gained size and definition as minutes went by. The remains of structures became populous as they neared, but all were abandoned. Luned was agitated and anxious, and her companion could tell.

"Want to sing again?" Resolve offered; impressively chipper.

The vision blurred, and Bedouin sang distorted the illusion.

"Don't give me that," Resolve retorted. "My ass hurts, too, but we'll be there by the end of the day and can set up a more permanent camp. There are baths to be had!" She punctuated this with a jazzy uplift of her hands, as if hoping to take her friend's spirits with them. It was quickly rendered ineffective.

"I'm not sure what you expect. I can't imagine Eluriand as much more than a glorified graveyard," the scribe frowned, blue eyes set fast on the destination before them. "And the work won't be easy by any means. I'm not even sure if the landmarks on our map are still in recognizable shape."

"We'll figure it out, and maybe it'll even be fun," Resolve speculated. "Maybe there's a dreamy feral elven lad in there somewhere, gone mad from the war, and––"

Luned shot her a dirty look. "Have you been reading Rose's books again?"

"They're more interesting than yours. Abridged History of the Technological Wondercrap of Alerar," the exorcist weighed on one hand, quickly overcome by the other, "Or The Bawdy Adventures of Miss Fanny Price. Which would you pick, honestly?"

The answer was a rhetorical brow-quirk.

"Oh, come on. It has a wild man in a loincloth in it! How in the world is that not better than reading about a bunch of dead guys who wore normal clothes every boring day of their boring lives?"

Her companion couldn't help but crack a smile at that, but more for the absurdity of their conversation than anything. They were walking into what might prove to be a lot of trouble for nothing, and the imminent thing on Resolve's mind was the novel collection of questionable quality and intellectual value that their dear prostitute friend consumed shamelessly by the ton. Not that she was one to knock anyone else's hobbies, it had been a great enough hurdle to get Resolve reading in the first place, but perhaps out of desperation to find humor in the situation, Luned laughed.

The grin quickly disappeared from Resolve's lips, however, as something seemed to catch her attention, a silent signal that drew her pale eyes out to the plains once more. Her horse stirred, tossing its blond mane nervously, as if sensing her sudden change.

Luned's face dropped, a familiar sinking sensation in her stomach. "Again?"

"Several." The exorcist patted her mount's neck reassuringly, the warmth of the creature's hide just as comforting to her as she shook off the eerie sensation of death. "We're close enough now… think we can run it?"

The scribe nodded and they were off, breaking clean for the ghost city.

[Mordelain]

Mordelain and Suresh awoke some three hundred miles south of their previous location. The inertia of him or her suddenly dragged through someone’s memory was indescribable. Had Suresh tried there would have been a lot of swearing, a lot more spitting, and a lot more thrashing about than he currently managed.

“Oh quit your whining,” Mordelain seethed. She pushed herself off the floor, dusted herself down, and looked to her surroundings.

“Whining?” he snapped. He waddled upright with less finesse than the il’Jhain. “You could have at least warned me about…whatever that was!” He did not attempt to straighten his robes or check himself over. He had things that are more important on his mind than vanity.

“Look,” Mordelain said, stopping his protestation with a jab skyward. “The Hydroclast network is still partially intact.”

Suresh, giving her the benefit of the doubt followed her gesture. They were inside an identical tower to the Aduyya save for a lack of activity from the Orrery and a stagnant air. Wherever the tower was, nobody had used or occupied it for decades. Suresh picked out the dim shadows of a dormant lightning orb and somewhere high above; he could hear a deep, barely audible thrum.

“How can you tell?” he asked, genuinely interested. It was amazing how quickly a Fallieni male forgave a misdeed if presented with alcohol, machinery, or sugar glass. “It looks dead to me.”

Mordelain rolled her eyes. She bounced from heel to heel, trying to warm herself up. Inside the tower, sealed away from the sun and protected by thermal shielding, the heat of the desert became a distant memory.

“The sound you can here is a static discharge from the sphere. They never truly die. Unless they’re tampered with...” Perfection designed with longevity in mind. In that, Reva had been successful. Even if the civilisation, which hoped to use it, had long since crumbled to dust. “This may yet work.”

Suresh dropped his gaze and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“You mean there was a possibility it would not?” He really hoped this was not the case. Then again, Mordelain had become entirely happy running them both into unperfumed dangers. Dung, blood, and camel spit were Suresh Nuhzar’s perfume when she was around.

“It is the only way to get under the Keep unseen,” she said, shrugging non-chalant. That was why they were here and that was why they needed the towers.

“Are we here, then?” he asked hopefully.

“I am afraid the network, as damaged as it is, will not allow us to make one singular jump into the Keep. We will have to tread carefully. Just hope, pray, and steal our way across the Zaileya until we reach our destination.” This in itself would be no easy task. For now, Mordelain chose to ignore the fact that when they reached Irrakam they would have the small matter of its guardian to contest.

“I do not know why I asked…,” he moaned. “Will you explain that ‘mirage’ of Resolve?”