The Sunburst Throne
When the blood pools about her feet, it is still warm.
The dream is vivid... as dreams of this kind always are. She smells smoke and ash on wind that rustles through the trees in a forest she does not recognise.
Deshanna steps forward with ears twitching, trying to catch sound, but the forest is silent save for a faint, grave, and haunting kind of music. Nothing breathes but for her, nothing moves but for the blood pooling about her feet. It runs now, gathering like a stream. As in the nature of such dreams, she follows it.
To the right, she passes the skeleton of an aravel, its tattered sails hanging loose like skin on the bones of the dead. To the left, a toppled structure - the sort only humans build these days - its stone-bricks crumbling into dust. There are leather-bound tomes, tarnished staves and shattered vials amongst the rubble. A circle tower?
She soon passes the origin of the music she heard. Cracked and bloodied husks of templars, their hollow armour catches the breeze and creates that strange and solemn music, like wind through pipes but reduced to a hum, almost inaudible but so incessantly there. And up ahead, towards the source of all the blood, a faint, golden light. It filters through leaves like shattered sunbeams.
"Dirthamen'enaste," Deshanna whispers, calling on her namesake for guidance as she so often did in these troubled times. The forest floor is littered with relics from every people of every age, chantry symbols, wooden carvings, trinkets and prayer books. Nothing escapes the bloodshed. "Ma ghilana mir eolas*. Reveal to me the meaning of these dreams, that I might guide my kin to safer paths," she prayed. She has been haunted of late by dreams such as these, demonless but full of despair, full of death. When she speaks of them - which is seldom, they are her burden alone - her son, her brave Mahanon, tries to console her. He tells her that they are but worries of the human's rising conflict, but she knows better. She has tasted this tang of the dreaming before. This is a warning.
Deshanna steps over a corpse larger than any she has passed so far, its charred horns twisting up from beneath the undergrowth. She sweeps away a low hanging branch and in the distance, she sees it once again, as she knew she would.
The sky runs red with all the blood their bruised and weeping earth could not hope to contain, and churns with a malevolence that chills Deshanna to her bones. Beneath it, there is a throne atop a mountain of corpses, splintered through with jagged crystals of violent red. There are warriors and peasant folk, mercenaries and children, nobles and farmers of every race. There are thieves and highwaymen beside chantry sisters, all the white of their robes stained crimson. She sees the faces of her clan among the dead, too, but in the cruel nature of dreams she cannot weep, cannot scream, only look upon the lost and despair.
The humans call it the Sunburst Throne. It is the seat of their Divine from which she preaches hope, love and light while her people subjugate and discriminate against all others - the Elves, the Dwarves, the Qu'nari, even their own if they show any signs of magic.
The throne glitters and glints even now, casting off a dozen rays of fractured light that piece the mass of dead beneath it.
This, Deshanna realises, is the point at which despair usually overcomes her and she is thrust back into waking with a heaving chest and heavy heart. But it is not so now. The dream is changed. She feels it in the tingle of warm blood about her ankles, tastes it in the ash swirling through the air.
Just then a bird caws, interrupting the haunting melody in her ears. She casts her eyes towards the sound and spies a raven sitting atop one of the arms of the Sunburst Throne. It casts a beady eye down at her before spreading its wings and swooping past her. Its feathers flutter but a hairsbreadth from her cheek. She turns to follow it, and gasps.
"Da'len," she whispers at the figure behind her. The sound echoes. "What are you doing h...?"
The child - her child - a young face she has not seen in many moons, stands looking solemnly up at her. The raven perches neatly on her narrow shoulders, the black of its feathers indistinguishable from the sheet of her hair. The child's large grey eyes grow wide with supplication, and in outstretched and bloodied hands she lifts a pure and spotless sword.
Curious, Deshanna looks closer. On the surface of the sword she sees reflected not the dismal, baleful world around her, but a different scene. No blood, nor despair, nor torment. Her clan, alive and well. The human nations, warless. The sky, blue and serene. She sees a world safe and whole and right.
The child gestures with that heavy sword to the Sunburst Throne, her eyes reflecting its golden light like a mirror, and says but a single word:
Din*.
Deshanna returned to the waking world with a jolt; cold, shaking, breathless. She sat bolt upright, clutching her chest as though afraid her heart might make its frantic escape at any moment.
"Mother?"
Deshanna blinked, trying to catch her breath. Eventually, she was able to focus on the familiar but concerned gaze of a pair of dark eyes before her. The wrong pair of eyes. A moment ago she was staring into grey.
"Mahanon?" she asked, disoriented.
"You were dreaming again," he explained slowly. He lifted a cloth to wipe her brow, so tenderly for one with such a fire to his temper. "They're getting worse."
"Itharia," Deshanna said suddenly, her eyes darting around the tent. She began to lift furs and blankets in the hope that she might suddenly appear beneath them.
"What?"
"Itharia," Deshanna repeated.
"Itha?"
"Yes, Itha!" Deshanna cried, suddenly exasperated. She was beginning to piece together the implications of the change in her dream, and she did not like the direction it had taken. "Your sister. Where is she?"
Mahanon frowned, as he was recently prone to doing whenever Itharia was called such. Though they shared no blood, Deshanna had raised the pair as siblings. It was clear they cared for each other dearly, yet she had suspected for some time that Mahanon's affection for her ran deeper than a brother's love. There were rumours amongst the youth of the clan that he had other designs for their future, and the pairing, though odd, would be no scandal... but that was a conversation for another time.
"...You think you've figured out what it means, don't you?" Mahanon surmised, his brown eyes glinting keenly in the dark.
Deshanna nodded. "The dream has changed," she elaborated. "And I must speak with your sister. Do you know where she is?"
Mahanon's eyes tightened, and he nodded.
*Ma ghilana mir eolas. - Guide me towards knowledge/understanding.
*Din - Death.
A/N: Just a prelude for another short story that's been rattling around in my head. Any and all elvhen included is thanks to fenxshiral's amazing lexicon.
Please don't be shy to leave a comment or criticism, I'm always interested to hear what other people think of my writing. I've been away from FF for a little while, and it's so lonely out there. Don't be afraid to show a girl a little love! Haha, jk, Kinda. I do love follows and comments hahaha
Anyway, thanks for reading. Peace and love!
~ Indie