Festival (Reina)

I've lived a life where I have come to know gods.

Old and new gods. Pantheons and single entities. Demons and devils. Thaynes and glories. Archangels, personifications, avatars, abberations, monsters of legend and celestials. In Althanas there are many various dieities, as many, perhaps, as there are underworlds, hells and places you can go after death. Some of them are just the different lands in Hadia, realm of demons, and some more serve exceedingly specific religions. For a long part of my life I lived in one called Rahl, ruled by a higher demon, or a minor death deity who called himself the 'King of Death.' Rahl is just one of many, however, even though it is a source of all my pain.

I, personally, am a primordial, one of some hundred. It is expected. I was born at the beginning of time to specifically serve what are now known as the Old Gods, great ancient beings thought to be akin of original essences of life, death and so on, who created the world and then all died. Yet me and my siblings survived.

Hence why I had no religion that I followed.

Yet still, somehow, I ended up in the middle of a festival, right in the centre of the happy city of Radasanth.

The goddess Luna, she was apparently called. Named so for the moon which was her symbol and where she was said to dwell. Her festival day was all eclipses, especially solar ones where the great disc blotted out the sun, being the perfect size to do so. Right now was the third day of revelery, just after the sun had been reduced to that thin ring of shimmering light, causing the sky to dull in shade. Already had the light returned to the world, yet still the people celebrated Luna's grace and beauty.

The streets of the sector where her festival was truly brilliant was alive with colour. Blues, greys, purples and whites, all spread across the streets. Banners were displayed outside of houses, streamers spread from drain to eaves, and people wore the most wondrous garments. They had cloaks and masks depicting the moon at various times of the lunar cycle, along with special constellations that meant personal things to them. As I strode down the streets, watching all this revelery, I was offered foods that were wrapped in icing, dyed for the same colours, and offered drinks of berry juice. I nodded at the famous prostitutes who spoke of their great matriarch, and I smiled at the small icons on windowsills and tables of Luna herself.

The sight made me happy and satisfied: at least some celebrants of this world were able to dance and sing. The problem was I was different. I knew that an apocalypse was coming, and I had a voice in the back of my head.

Or an awareness. Another being who was a symbiote to me, latched onto my soul and could now not survive with out me. She was the source to my darker powers and she called herself Destruction.

Ohh, now she's pretty!

I paused and looked over to an alleyway entrance was. A young woman barstaff was flirting with a patron outside a coffee shop. She had blonde hair, smiling eyes and was in a purple tea dress.

"Hmm," I commented and kept walking.

Then, the building beside me exploded.

Too many sages, priests, and so-called holy men. Far too many.

Whatever this demon had done to her required answers. Real answers. Not some made up garbage used to sell common folk a blessing or totem. She wasn’t interested in a guru peddling a purpose for someone’s child who was a do-nothing nor did she want a magic herb to cure a fool’s unrequited love. Reina simply craved an understanding. An insight to her curse.

Clearly a diagnosis was not something she could procure from the minds of mortals. So why not try a goddess?

Reina had thus far spent one full day in Radasanth. Watching the crowd wax until the wee hours of the morning and then wane as they nursed hangovers and injuries from over eager dancing. It was a comforting sight, managing to distract her from her plight. If only for a few hours.

Now that the young woman had gotten the lay of the land from her first day here she was hoping that this ‘Luna’ would make an appearance. The celebration seemed to be approaching a climax and the rose-haired woman was beginning to lose hope that a goddess was ever going to show up.

As she chewed on an over cooked chunk of meat served on a stick the ground itself seemed to rumble. The roar of an explosion assaulted her ear drums. Down the streets she saw confusion on the faces of street vendors. She blinked and their confusion had been replaced by panic.

Had the celestial goddess arrived?

Screams, stampeding festival goers, and another building exploding answered her question with a resounding ‘no.’

Gripping her katana in one hand, still clutching her simmering snack in the other, Reina took a deep breath and ignored the sweat beginning to form on her brow. She still needed answers and whoever was laying siege to Radasanth was going to provide them.

"Rahl!" I gasped as I scuttled back a few paces.

Rock and brick and cement flew, splattering into the air and across the ground like a spittle from mouths uncouth in their eating. The sound was a crunching of stone and a thunderwave of sonic power, as the building collapsed inwards. A great chunk of the building, torn out as if some fearful monster had gained ravenous hunger, was disconnected from the structure and sent elsewhere. Dust flew up into eyes, people screamed, festival goers fled; and a great round rock rested within the building, rocking until it lay still.

The perpetrator of the destruction.

So barbaric, inelegant, Des sighed in my mind. Extremely dull, what is it - a catapult? Ugly.

The lunar goddess would never come now. Turning on their heels those clothed in her symbol and colour began to run, knowing now what was occuring. Seige weapons, directly on the city. An attack.

A great frown came to my face, having not heard anything about this incoming attack. Surely if an attack was expected then the city would have been teaming with the news and screaming individuals. Instead, this area at least had been celebrating a little known goddess, singing her songs and dancing to her tunes.

And now fleeing.

Twisting I began to run myself, grabbing at the first individual I came across. An old man, eyes wide with fear.

"Ar-army!" He screeched, "at the gates. They - they came so all of a sudden, and we - we didn't believe what they said when ..."

"When what?" I growled.

"When the Assembly told us two days ago that we needed to flee. That we were facing a seige. But the farmers - and the family - and Tylmerande - they wouldn't ... Radsanth couldn't!"

Confusion then. I nodded and let go of him, nodding down the the alleyway, indicating he should head. Myself, I remained calm, knowing that I just needed to leave the city now.

It was then I saw the girl with the katana.