1758 words (7 minute read)

1.1 - OPEROSE ENCUMBRANCES

(In the Age of the Godkind Men) - 25 Caën otThir, 614 (Restored)

Night has fallen, quietly smothering the last embers of day, and the star strewn heavens billow like a dark cape tossed carelessly aside by the Olden Men who hang high against the opaque sky. Under the rubicund light cast by those waning crescents, the Ever Anagar, that protean osprey whose stone like ovules are possessed of curative properties, wings its way south and east of the Andivans, and gliding beyond the foothills of those indomitable mountains, it sails above that marvel, that Living Garden which stretches several hundred hectares wide towards often chill horizons—where the hoarfrost barely settles itself upon the land past sunup on even the grayest of mornings—, only to dip low over the glistening waters of Anagard Lake before finally entering into Ana, the civil heart of Eve Kyra, kingdom of the Kyran.

Of their origins, the Kyran maintain that it was Caena, Goddess of the Rolling Meadow, the one called Spirit of Nature, who gave unto them this life. “Caena,” an azure eyed beauty once took up, forsaking her toil upon the fertile land in favor of a moment’s rest and dialogue with the protean, “sated her womanly yearnings with Ẕithr the Masculinewho is get of the Artificer and Tala Gift Giver. Nature then bore unto the Elemental Realm a multitude of fey daughters.

Collectively,” the mystic further detailed, tucking a dark strand of hair behind a shortly pointed ear and wiping her still sweating brow with the knotted edge of a discarded veil, “the get of the Spirit of Nature are known as the fhir-Caenant, and when those first Elves, those acolytes of their Mother Spirit, grew long into womanhood and began to yearn for get of their own, they raised their hands in supplication. Nature took pity upon her virgin daughters and implored the elder gods in their stead, whereupon the Artificer and Ẕithr the Feminine, twin to the Masculine, crafted a people whose forms were fashioned from the loose soil which drifted about the realm and charged the fhir-Caenant with their nurture and defense.

So came to be the Kyran.”

Once within that place that came to be the Kyran’s civil heart, where the faithful came to congregate as broken remnants of a once glorious society, where they sought renewal after a most grueling exodus, a soft voice drifts—pleasing in the way of the undine, those perfidious sea folk—lambently upon a gentle breeze, inciting virulent flames to sudden existence. ~ Come scepter, come being, ~ the supposed siren sweetly urges, ~ come child who is my Wrath. ~

At this, those bright and unnatural flames surge, becoming a conflagration not easily quenched, an inferno that easily engulfs the temple palace which lies at Ana.

~ Come unto me that we might tear Destiny asunder. ~

Melodious in character, there is vicious malice in her address and savage cries of fear rise from the once distrait—who upon attending to the contest of divine wills that at present takes place, they come to be disconsolate tenants of the now failing Divides. ~ Where found are the Anodecum? ~ the accursed jeer in turn, casting wider their necromantic nets, ~ they are fallen beneath our crush, bodies now suits, now naught more than husks that dangle in the Depths upon the Harvesters strings. ~

Laughing wildly, the siren exalts, ~ Come unto Gendesh! ~ her power a tremendous call, ~ reap with me the fruits of the challenge that was sown! ~

Still, storm clouds seek to press in, a prognostic and unrelenting squall. For loosened, the Woe becomes a hard and chill rain that zealously falls, and gradually, the aberrant flames douse and about the ruins smolder swells thickly. A dense plumage, so dense that it... suffocates and chokes... Chokes—

Arcing into harrowing awareness, Jisreen lurches violently out of the dream, screaming hoarse spellcraft into the still calm of the shadowed, small hours. Her knighted lover, awakened by her shouts and persistent thrashing, attempts to pull her strongly into his arms. ‹ Qkhĕmĕt qăshrī Gĕndĕshĕn, › she fairly shrieks, wrenching out of his hold to throw herself to the floor, where she dryly retches, heaving nothing but stuttered air over the stones, merely gagging on the sulfuric bile which assiduously attempts to climb the back of her slender throat.

She rises, and painstakingly accomplished, Jisreen then stumbles across the spacious extent of her private chamber to kneel weakly before a dressing bureau. From the murky recess of the vanity’s bottommost drawer, she retrieves a small chest crafted from Er’sūrian Blackwood. Flourishing ideographs, units of Magian Ashvelsūrin meant to inspire nonobservance and disregard, stream across the box’s smooth surface, causing the polished wood to gleam insidiously. As she opens the chest, the symbols cease their diagonal procession, and taking up the wide bangles that lie within, she slips them onto her left wrist, where they three settle much too comfortably.

Qkhĕmĕt qăshrī Gĕndĕshĕn, › the tribeswoman timorously whispers, uttering the wards a third time, ratifying her spell. The bangles—ornate and antiquated in design—chime unobtrusively and become softly imbued with a ruddy light. Pressing a hand to her mouth, Jisreen stymies the cry of frustrated grief she longs to release. “Know you truly, Fate,” she queries instead of the room at large, sinking easily into her native Elsūrin, “the proper course of every life? Or do you err, at times, and assign operose encumbrances onto forms unbecoming of such trials?”

At this, her lover moves to kneel behind her, and pushing aside the heavy fall of her dark, chestnut hair, he lays a kiss upon her dusky nape. For long moments, he strokes the doleful lines of her bare body until, inevitably, it lifts into the strength of his, bowing toward the soothing touch. Yet more, those familiar hands soon send longing spiraling through her, and Jisreen—unable to resist the magnetic pull of desire—turns to touch her lips to his.

Wintus responds instantly to the advance, kissing Jisreen deeply, despite the acrid taste which lingers at her soft palate. Bearing his fondness from the cold floor, Wintus conveys his heart to the bed, and once stretched beside her, he shifts to draw her supple form beneath his. Long fingers then play over willowy ribs, trailing across the concave curve of a lissome waist to curl briefly about a smooth hip. Yet, along a silken thigh, they pause to grip, to hold, to persist in oldest urging. Now fluid, eager, alight, Jisreen hums a soft assent. Ingress then follows into sainted design and sensation soon begins to coil, to expand. Breaths soughing, she clings—graceful limbs twined about the hard set of his unyielding shoulders, about the solid molding of his orderly waist—and plaintive sounds break from her, rippling toward the split heavens.

Tell me,” Wintus says in accented Kyri, for the tongue is not natively his own, dispelling the contented aftermath borne by their passion. At her silence, he clenches a fist in the slightly coarse tresses of her sweat dampened hair. “Even those born Ǣilfrin share the weight of their individual burdens.”

I am not Ǣilfr.”

Raised in the desert monarchies of the Tribes of the Sand, tragedy brought Jisreen back to Eve Kyra nigh on a decade ago searching for the father she had never known. A mere babe in swaddle when her mother, Ti-Orin, absconded with her, Jisreen’s only knowledge of the man had been his title. For fourteen years, the El’sŭūrin tribeswoman dragged her stoic daughter about the southern Central Divide until, while in the kingdom Cor lam Dírín, Ti-Orin took ill with scarlatina and never recovered. As much as Jisreen had loved her mother, Ti-Orin’s death came as a reprieve. A sedate woman at her best, possessed of an air of calm intelligence, Ti-Orin’s worst, however, had more than distressed Jisreen. At times wild and feral in behavior, at others placidly serene with inertness, the cruelest consequence of Ti-Orin’s brand of bizarre madness was the constant desertion. The recollections that loom largest in Jisreen’s mind are of those instances when she would finally find her mother—often in other townships sprawled in various public squares, more often detained by local constabulary, hair knotted, clothes unkempt, body unwashed and pungent with the scent of her menses, with urine and excrement and—

Does that make you less deserving?” Wintus demands in an aching whisper. “Accept my suit.”

She burrows into him, seeking forbearance. “My fealty is already twice pledged.”

The noblesse and the miserly gods be damned.”

Blasphemy!” she rebukes.

“’Tis nothing more than sport to them,” he contends. “On all accounts. Why tender such allegiance, such devotion?”

Well queried, sir knight,” Jisreen scathingly retorts before touching her forehead to his and sighing in soft contrition. “If for naught other than the Duchess Lyrias sake, I must accept that my destiny is irrevocably tied to hers.”

Wintus sighs in turn, laughing shortly. “Such a strange amity is ours.”

Eventually her lover departs and rising, she dons the night rail she placed beneath her bolster when the high stand came of the eventide. Taking up a heavy handled brush, she sets her hair to rights before stripping the bedclothes and calling for hot water. A slight sound, an osprey’s shrewd tremolo, draws her notice and she moves towards the large curtained doors which open upon her mezzanine.

Shall I set out the round dress, mistress?” her lady’s maid inquires upon entering, diverting Jisreen.

That vulgar thing?” Jisreen sneers, turning to redress the bed. “Who have I to impress?”

The lord prince was arrived by the midst of the small hours,” the amber eyed woman lightly offers.

Leaning a hand against the closest means of support—the foot board, in this instance—, Jisreen sways. “Tell me, Ederna, how you would meet your chosen fate.”

Ceasing the directives she aims toward the maidservants now filing quietly into the room, Ederna spares Jisreen a laughing glance, stating simply, “At my most fashionable.”

Ederna’s recompense a diffident smile, Jisreen acquiesces. “Aye, the round dress.”

Nodding once with approval, Ederna makes for the chamber’s armoire, her mistress the partitioned bathing area. Rounding a latticework panel, Jisreen rapidly divests herself of her night rail, and sinks heavily into the warmth of her bath, long held perfidy a cold weight upon her chest.

Next Chapter: 1.2 - THE FIRST VIRTUE