1629, Fire Season, Death Week, Wildday
Context
The group has decided to seek the shade of Broyan for help in choosing a new King, and the darkness where he died is trying to bite them off and chew them. Session S5-W.07.
Events
The sky is the colourless grey of the time when dawn has not yet arrived, but Yelm is no longer dead. Three times so far the darkness has tried to advance, and three time it has been thrown back. Grandfather has been pacing around the fire, and now he throws more coals onto it, and kneels beside the fire on the opposite side to Serala. His horse end is lying down, but what he is doing does not have much call to be used in speech that assumes the speaker has two legs. He watches Serala across the fire.
Serala watches the flames, their reflected gold casting a strange dance across her steady features. She is sitting cross legged, still as a statue, save for those moments when she in her turn casts more fuel to keep the fire’s light bright. Not once does she allow her gaze to turn in the direction where the darkness lurked… lurks. Still waiting for the unwary, but Serala and her group are warned now. Warned and armed to the threat.
Grandfather speaks, or at least his lips move, but it is the fire that speaks to Serala. “It will be back.” The voice is half his, half crackle.
There is the briefest, slightest nod of acknowledgement from the Grazelander. “It will.” Agreement, prophesy, simple acknowledgement of a truth that cannot be turned. “It hungers. It has sat in the dark… been the dark… for seasons, turning to years. It will not rest now. Not until it is quietened.”
“Hunger and darkness have struck before,” says the fire, with Grandfather Centaur’s voice, and then the light catches her eye.
The flames writhe into shapes.1Serala passes POWx5, and so the vision comes easily and has depth. Haggard people around a fire, and darkness outside. A young warrior picks up his spear, which has been resting its in the flames, and walks to the door with the weary anger of someone who has done this before and will have to do it again. Kneeling on the other side of the fire from him is Grandfather Centaur.
There is a slight shift from Serala, a subtle motion to move nearer to the fire, to view.. her ancestors? “You have watched over the light warriors before?” she asks quietly. “You know how to settle it to sleep?”
Nobody but the centaur looks up. “Since before the people of the light conquered Prax, I was with you.” He stands up, human in this form, save for the mane instead of hair. “Before you came from far away, I was here, and I was there.”
The ancestors are dressed roughly, although gold glints here and their, in rings on fingers and arms.
An inclination of her head, before she looks to her ancient ancestor. “You have wisdom, Grandfather.” she acknowledges. “Your eyes have seen more than I can ever imagine seeing, you understand more than I can imagine knowing. Is it solely the battle of light versus the darkness, though? Yelm always rises, but the darkness always comes again. That exchange is timeless. This…” Still she will not look towards the battleground, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the goldenbright images before her. “This is .. hunger.”
“Darkness is hunger, and our enemy. There was a time when Yelm would never rise again.” He gestures to the fire, which twists and flares…
The flames show another vision2Another pass on POWx5, forming into a bucolic, beautiful landscape where people of searing brightness move. They dance in joy, and then quake in fear as the sun shakes in the sky and falls bleeding from his throne. The sky burns on, but there is no longer a purity at the centre of all things. Everyone stares upwards, but for the horse with wings that follows the path of where the wounded sun must be.
“When Orlanth killed Him.” Half statement, half question. “But He did rise again. He was restored?” She lifts her gaze to Grandfather, brow furrowed.
It is the horse that answers, in the voice of a man not dissimilar to the centaur’s. “Or will he be? Will you trust in that, or will you you despair? What will you do while you await his return?”
Serala shakes her head, setting her jaw a little, “I will never despair. The light will always come again.” she counters. “If not by His own strength, by the strength of His warriors.” She comes to her feet, a lithe motion, deliberately reaching to place another coal onto the fire, blowing lightly to encourage it to burst into flame, feeling its heat blossom on her skin. “There will always be those that will fight the darkness.”
As she does that, the vision of Yelm’s death fades, and she is back at the fire of her ancestors. The warrior from outside comes in from the cold darkness, bleeding as if a great beast has bitten at him. His spear is tipped with ice, and he has Serala’s features, bronzed like she knows them from mirrors, or more so. Those sitting around stand to help him. Some are ancient, some merely old. A few are wisps.
Serala looks from the vision, to the spirit of her grandfather, unconsciously seeking any sign of scars, that might come from a similar moment. “Can this even be fought with spears and arrows?”
As the young man hands over his spear to a scarred woman, and as Serala looks up, someone walks right through her. They are not noticing her3Failed POWx5; Serala is hardly here and can gain little.. It is pre-dawn, and still dark, and a centaur sits across her at her fire, eyes narrowed in thought. Faded paint from the past peels off him into smoke and nothingness.
“It depends,” he says. “Whose spear? One you bear in your hand, or one you bear in your heart?”
“Does one not depend upon the other?” the warrior counters. “What use a spear in your hand if your heart is not strong? And what use the fortitude of spirit if you do not have a weapon to strike?”
Grandfather Centaur smiles. “A coward can kill,” he points out. “Are you brave?”
Serala opens her mouth to declare her bravery in an instant, a trained-in response. No warrior would be anything other than brave, unless it is perhaps in the silence after the battle, when one can look at ones shield-sibs and acknowledge, briefly, the truth of what has gone before. And it is that truth that Serala offers to her ancestor now. “If bravery is never feeling fear, then no. If bravery going forward when there is a cold fear in your heart then.. yes.”
Her ancestor nods. “Then, you are brave and you have skill. What more do you need?”
“No warrior can stand alone.” Serala counters. “Whether it is the living, your friends and family at your side, bleeding and battling with you, or whether it is the ancestors, offering their strength and wisdom… no warrior stands alone. Even on a lonely field, with no other present, the knowledge, the learning, the life you have all shared beats within you.”
“Far from home,” Grandfather Centaur says, “You must carry all of your ancestors.” He stands, and limps around to Serala. He is bitten, just as the young man was. “If you would always have friends, decide. Will you be the friend of all who ask, or will you carry your past with you?”
Serala tilts her head to one side, thoughtful as she considers the question. “Everyone carries their past. And there are some that deserve no friendship.”
He tilts his head in just the same way, an echo with no mockery. “One truth, and one thing you think is a truth. Learn to carry your past, child of light.”
For a moment, Serala remembers the echoes of sympathy for Sanra Eel, the ghost of Lunars in her head, the understanding of those that she believes… believed… believes.. beyond redemption. A muscle twitches as she clenches her jaw shut, but she makes no comment.
As Grandfather Centaur starts to reply, the darkness begins to attack, and Serala feels more than hears that there is someone behind her. It feels more like a friend is there, than a threat. The centaur whirls to defend the fire, of course.
She comes to her feet, spinning to stand against the darkness, to stand with whichever of her friends is at her side. Trusting Grandfather to hold the light, and readying herself to reach for the sunlight.
There is a young warrior there, with her features. He bows, and says something she cannot understand, but he is offering an ember4Special on POWx5, and pass on Spirit Combat to live up to being tested..
- 1Serala passes POWx5, and so the vision comes easily and has depth.
- 2Another pass on POWx5
- 3Failed POWx5; Serala is hardly here and can gain little.
- 4Special on POWx5, and pass on Spirit Combat to live up to being tested.
