Nine Dreadful Eminences

 

One: The Sphinx

She's called Amsu-ashka. Or rather, the body built for her by Mokbalatar artisans, made of stone and sand and the last limit of sculpting and carving skill, is named this. It's said the body was a vessel to house a sort of cold fire, that holy phenomenon some call Fire Without Change. Not a simple, random stray thought made manifest, but the very tear of one of Them in the throne of heaven who awoke for however short a time and regarded creation and itself. Really, though, all of this is just a rumor: an Angel of extreme potency is stuffed into a great statue, reclining feline, folded wings, and beautiful, serene face. She is curious about things, and so will demand knowledge, and the answers to questions, and sometimes seems unfair requiring responses to puzzles, but she knows many many truths, and if you aren't eaten, and you aren't flensed clean from her pure fire, you will gain your one answer.

 

Three: The Ogre

Up above the heavy clouds that are the garden beds of giants who live upside down in the sky (as weather-watchers, and old weaving-women know), some of the highest peaks clutch crumbling stone piles to themselves, and in one of these he lives. Since it is nearly impossible to learn which one, he sleeps safe. But, with only two of his three eyes ever restful in the embrace of sleep, he sleeps uneasy, aware. If you do find his castle, up above the clouds, he'll rise, and stomp, and dance a heavy beat, and the boulders will rain down. He'll walk across the rubble, then, and out amongst the lands of men. And his name is Thunder and Avalanche and Malevolence. He carries in one hand a glaive called Dawn Above the Spindrift which casts down armies with single sweeps, and his blue face breathes out gales. In his other hand he carries Dusk In the Glade of Blossoms, a great black leaden rod which unerringly slays what single champion might step to battle, and his burning third eye calmly looks into the well of time, and he knows when it is time to leave the lands of man. Then he is warm and hearty, and may assist the broken beggar or weary traveller with fair weather and direction to roads home.

 

Nine: The Stalker

It's a constant trick of perspective. A growing rustling in the eventime trees, whippering the leaves. Huge, large as the sky above the forest, the sweeps of wings or of shouldering tendrils, or a cloak, scattering firefly stars too early in the purple above. But, no! not huge, near, stolen up while you gaped, taking up the same width on the horizon, but only because it's so near. So, when the warm wind that feels like breath is on your cheek (or on your neck, bristling the hairs!) flee fast to your home, to your bed. Because if you don't make it there first, thinking that it's smallness means you've escaped it now, you'll see it's just the right size to fit in the shadows of your door, and you'll run right into it's waiting jaws. But if you are swift and are in bed before it arrives, it will forget that you weren't already there. See it fill up the threshhold. Beware the six? seven? claws, the whipping things on it's shoulders, the bright smiling teeth. Feed it what milk you have. Maybe, for a night, you can sweep along unafraid, into doors and crossing-places, uninvited.

 

Seven: The Hydra

The admixture of elements from vastly different spheres: a vast network of mycellium, an eversprouting night-garden waiting for nutriment; and a porous rock crumbling into the earth, oddly crystalline reverberations echoing a terrible something from its path beyond the sky; and a simple slithering snake caught in the fall. In the warm dark loam, a hungry knot grows. Writhing masses, soft like fungal fruiting bodies, and pale, seek the sky again. If it cannot gain the nebula clouds and stars, it will grow large, screaming a horrible song up! up! And if the things that walk on the surface, that are food for the night-garden, strike a stalk off, why, it will grow a new one. Somewhere. (And a dangerous by-product of its otherworldly heritage mixing with spore-like effluvia is that it so easily distorts the mind and senses, seeming like a nightmare, or forgotten altogether.) It is also delicious in a dark sauce, apparently. And if you ask the right chef or the right midwife, they'll tell you how people have had lost limbs grow back and grave injuries restored.

 

Eight: The Vampire

It's old and hungry and fast and, if you're a scientist who studies such things, elegantly streamlined, and hungry and loves the things that you are that feeds it a little too much. And hungry. It burns so much energy existing at such feverflame intensity. Since it wanders between moments like that, though, it ponders things slowly, savoring a sort of mismatched flow of time like honeyed purrings across its skin, noticing every pore on your thigh, noticing every nuance in the exhalation you produce warm into the night, noticing every heartbeat. It doesn't understand people anymore, not really. It's just a smear across reality for those it wants so badly to savor, to be savored. And then it's still. But, if it's sated, and found, at that moment that it's still, its mismatched time and yours jitter close, and your yearning jutters close, and you can't help but to get near, and ask for that golden moment to go on forever. Ask it. Ask it now for the merest sip of forever.

 

Two: The Black Knight

There's often something guarding The Way. Spaces in between, gates portcullised, river crossings, borders. That's where you may find him. Mors Intepestivus, he is an impassible martial forbiddance. He is a challenge at the threshold that can't be refused, he waits implacable, shrouded in iron and darkness and flame that licks like sunset behind his bascinet, the seams of his vambraces. Boundaries are what he knows because he exists on a boundary. He is unkillable because his will rages hotter than death, but he no longer lives because nothing can thrive in the wasteland between moments. However, it is possible he can be defeated. It is possible that he has some intrinsic weakness, or a key to pass, or a mercy that can be dredged up from some time-forgotten memory. Step to the pas d'armes of the Death Knight, and attempt the token, and take the Olifant Horn to call down his iron fury to you in a time of need, to destroy all who stand in your Way.

 

Five: The Wolf

Howling at the borders of the settled lands, running wild but hungry always hungry; not in the impoverished way of so-called civilized creatures, but the hunger of a smile, the hunger of a welcoming warmth, the hunger of rending, and of breath. He's bigger than you think, and you think he's familiar, and he is, but he's bigger. His breath is the storm. His claws are the shattering hail. His eyes are the lightning. You hide in the basement, in the cellar, only to emerge to the whole land being flattened, only bricks remaining, powdered and exploded right to fundamental dust. In the open, unmatched, a fell wind screaming across the plains, the snow, the fields, even the mightiest fall to the rending, dropping exhausted, torn apart. In the forests, the tight spaces, even the cities, a wrong seeming toothsome smile invites you to be swallowed whole where the only way forward is to become part of the pack, a wolf too, rending your own way out. Then, howling your blood red song you can call down the storm around you, breathe desire.

 

Six: The Devil

There's a handsome figure, you heard he deserted his battalion (they all perished anyways), that you can consistently find at the crossroads out in the empty fields, or by the lone inn, or in the strange town (but only at midnight; some say just on the full moon, others say only once the tavern or bar has made it's last call of the night). He carries: a stringed instrument that makes sounds no one had heard before, a deck of obviously marked cards, a bottle of amber heaven, the smile of your closest friend. Sit a moment, listen to the song, that's alright. Share a sip of sunshine, that's a little more alright. Play the cards, talk about things past and future, and wants and wishes. You know this tune. If you can win (you can't win), if you can outplay him (you don't know the tuning), if you can outdrink him (it turns to fire then madness), if you can just stay up the night, you might get your fondest wish. More likely, though, in a week or a clutch of decades, you'll find yourself at another cross-roads, another place, and hear the growling of something on your trail, coming to take you down down down. But, there's always a chance. There's always this one particular time. There's always the gamble that you might be different from all the rest. 

 

Four: The Insect Queen

In the end she is triumphant. She is in all of her children. They all sing to her, and she to them. They adapt, they proliferate, they thrive, they evolve into the myriad of forms necessary to sit atop the remains of everything at the end of all things. She is horror in the flesh, and locust upon the fields, and and fang and mandible warring upon sad, lonely, isolated-thinking meat things, and death. She is all iridescent beauty, and perfect engineering, and grace, and her song leans close to the all encompassing infinity, harmonizing waves floating along a million million children, ecstatic with purpose and love and efficiency. The Queen is reborn with each new environment, each new world to conquer, pulling herself and and her triumph along with her, beautiful and adaptive. She may not be bargained with, and no one can ever seem to quite eradicate her. But she can be allied with for a time, a dangerous diplomacy, if only you open yourself to her song, her implacable, benevolent command. Perhaps disguised as one of hers, or invisible, forgotten monstrosities and omnifactorial invulnerabilities and weapons forgotten in dreams may be grasped from the very materials of her children, and the humming soulsong of the Queen who will walk upon the end of time, triumphant.

The Bright Spans Pt 4: The Rise of the Orchidium and the Era of Wizard Oversight

 Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Farms collapsed, crops perished, communities were erased from both the implacable ice sheets moving south, as well as the howling winds blowing dry sands northward.

The noble houses, without heirs, and without marryable children to reinforce ties to other nobles, went into disarray. The structures of governance were in many cases left to languish, instead funds were often put into the arming of knights and the equipping of expeditions to search out and find the missing princesses and heirs. Or to fortify themselves against the catastrophes of weather and monsters. 

The strongest centralized countries had cities their populations could retreat back to. The northern mountains, especially Lys Yraht shielded the worst of the final march of glaciation, the land rising up to nestle the Valelands and their mighty forests. Zelemja, bordered by the tall peaks of Lys Vyreth, and sitting on a high plateau dotted with it's own forests, absorbed a large population of refugees. However, even these relatively verdant sites became frost-rimed, and difficult to farm. The feeding of the people within the Spans became of paramount importance.  

Near the location thought to be the last place the twin forces of sand and ice would converge upon should the worst occur, a large estate grew. It was comprised of many buildings conjoined as if from a town where there were no streets, but courtyards opening up from only the surrounding buildings, a labyrinthine mansion with a taller tower-like edifice in the center, and glass panes covering gardens protected from the elements spanning rooftop to rooftop. This was the expanding tower-site of the first Gardner, the wizard Yan Afelsam. 

Yan studied plants extensively, and although a Wizard of Greate Power, was also a devout follower of the Goddess Miara, and was known to have divine favor. This rare combination allowed him to explore natural sciences especially in the means in which one may allow life to flourish. Most of which he originally used to grow flowers. However, along the way he learned some rare combinations of the Elemental Languages (that holy types as well as mages speak), gained many students, grew flowers, and divined the coming of a woman to replace him, who he called the Orchid (he was fond of the flowers anyhow, so most people just figured he was unsure of who exactly this successor was going to be). His Tower, as well as the always growing maze of buildings and greenhouses, he therefore named The Orchidium.

Understanding the necessity, and with magic formed from language that tapped into the generative forces (and a good sprinkling of the knowledge of Shevóram sorcerers he had the foresight to bring into council), Yan was able to grow and cultivate extraordinary amounts of fruits, grains, and vegetables. Swelling the ranks of his Gardeners, they nearly single-handedly fed the Spans during the worst years when the sun barely crept from behind blowing clouds of snow, and the sands buried much of even the once huge Salt Sea, also known as the Zorál, that once extended far to the south. 

With the survival of the peoples of the Spans hinging on the production, and eventually dispersal of the bounty flowing out of the Orchidium, the Gardeners, Yan's council of magic-users, became extremely powerful, both in temporal power, as well as arcane power. More arcane knowledge gravitated toward his demense as students and diplomats were sent from neighboring regions. One, the Nilatese orphan called Uma of Alsates, rose into the ranks of the Gardeners, then into Yan's inner circle. Younger than most of the others within his council, she brought ambition as well as skill and a drive to gather spells from other magic-users. This, then, was Yan's Orchid. 

He retreated to chambers at the top of his inner building, living with Uma, and seeing only his closest friends and highest ranking Gardeners. Eventually he closed the top chambers to all, with the instructions that Uma should inherit the Tower and responsibilities of the Orchidium. 

Now known as The Luminous Petal, Uma of Alsates became the most powerful individual in the Spans. And with the resources at her command, she found that the works of the Rectification were healing over; the wobble was slowly but inevitably returning and the world was shifting. Her astrogeomancers assured her that the ice and sands would soon be retreating. Despite her earlier ambition, she had no wish to become mired in the duties of a despot. She knew that the nobles and governing bodies of the various regions would become a constant headache, an ongoing responsibility when the worst of the emergencies were past. 

So, although the strongest wizards could certainly become absolute rulers, she set down that the major Towers would have oversight in particular areas and activities in the Spans. This would allow the wizards to be able to do what they most wanted to do (gain magic knowledge and power), while still being the wisest people around (as the Archmages all think themselves to be, obviously), and theoretically keep any one Tower from becoming to powerful (like Balthazar and the catastrophe of the Rectification). 

Tower L'Athos would have the region of Pridwia pretty much to itself, Nicodemio and his apprentices free to deal with whatever horrors pressed in from the north. Tower Dharsati would keep an eye to the desert, as well as keep the Iridescian Wakes under observation. The Dharsati family graciously agreed to this, as they were making gold hand over fist siphoning the raw magic and materials to the Merchant Families of Nilato. To the west, the stolid, battleready mages of the Tower Svedra, lead by the enigmatic wizard known by the callsign Falcon 1 keep a weather eye on the unknown quantity of Balefire and it's alien inhabitants, the Tropæan Ocean, but especially upon Azageer's ambitions upon Nilato and it's wealth. Tower Orchidium remains near the center, close to the Queen's Cross where the major roads meet (and the area that remained untouched by either environmental extreme) settling disputes, and keeping the lines of communication open between the Archmages, and being the last recourse when things get really out of hand by adventurers, meddlers with powerful artifacts, and princesses' curses. 

Hey! My janky map! It has more scribbles on it now!

Next?! Powerful Princesses, Masterful Monasteries, and Ass-kicking Assassins!