Prologue: Beginnings and Endings
The Wheel of Time turns, the wind blows, crops grow, and people live and die – some sooner than others, and some much later than others - and Ages come and pass. There is not one beginning, or one ending, to the Wheel, but there are beginnings, and endings. The Wheel has seen life and death, famine and plenty, war and peace, destruction and rebirth, and terrible, terrible silence innumerable times, and will do so until the Day of Return, when time fails and all things end. In some Ages, there have been Dragons, Forsaken, Aes Sedai and Wise Ones; Aiel, and Seanchan with their damane; in others, technology was the way and the rule, and in yet others, entire Ages where no civilization exists as we would know it, but there have always been Ogier and Nym and overall, the Creator ruled in the Light, and the Dark One in his prison, ruling over the grave. There have always and will always be ta'veren and Treesingers, Makers and Weavers, Dreamers and Seers, and in some Ages, new beings will grow, or old be spun back in. There is also not only our world but also the World of Dreams; the worlds of Ael and Eel, the Finn's of myth, granters of wishes and knowledge; the worlds of if and what may, that may go thousands of years without visits from our kind. But overall, encompassing and nurturing, is the True Source, the divine power that drives the universe and makes the marvels of Aes Sedai and Wise One, Dragons, Forsaken and damane, possible. Hear now the story of the Day of Return, the Sixth Age, an Age that only a few knew to exist; the end of times and the decline of the True Source, the Light that powers the universe.
We begin, as always, with the wind. An old wind, for an old time. This wind remembers the dawn of the Fifth Age, and the twilight of the Fourth. This wind remembers Darkfriend and true man, Myrddraal and Trolloc; this wind remembers the near death of humanity, and the huge sacrifice of the Light's chosen one, the one called Dragon, to bring an abeyance to the Wheel's turn, and a resurgence of old ways, Talents, and powers. This wind recalls Foretellings of the Light and of the Dark, and the hopes and dreams of a world on the brink. But this wind is an old wind, and it knows it's time has come. West it rushes, over what was once the Aiel Waste, that Three-Fold Land that was an anvil for this Age's mightiest warriors. No waste, now; now it is a land of sparkling water and rich soil, of splendor, under the banner of Rhuidea on the Rhuidean Sea, and spends its last breath dying on the shores of that clear and sparkling water.
A woman, well into the prime of her life, feels the last breath of the winds dying, and she shivers uncontrollably, feeling for the tiniest of moments the weight of Ages and Ages of life and death and rebirth before the wind plays out its final playful tug on her long, unbound hair. Dressed in unrelenting black, with skin tight leather tooled into her high-neck blouse, all at once hiding everything but concealing nothing, her name is Ariella Nemanren, and her memories go as far back as the second century after Tar'mon Gaidon – far for a human, far indeed. She looks out over the Rhuidean Sea, with the gigantic city arrayed at her back, and feels a moment of trepidation about what she has been called to do. Thinking back to that last fateful meeting with her Master, she shivers again before visibly pulling herself together.
Stupid girl, she thought, letting old Foretellings shake you. You should know better, after six hundred-odd years! No matter what, no matter the changes you've seen, the Ages ending or Beginning, you have your destiny. None would believe you, back when you called yourself Aes Sedai, even though they gushed over you for coming to the channeling so late, and how they missed your ability even though it is mothering strong and Talent-filled; they reviled you! They would have killed you as a heretic and a Darkfriend for the Foretelling you received portending the end of the Wheel! With that final thought, Ariella took control of her thoughts and once again reined saidar, the female part of the One Power, to her will. From the pocket of her skirts she pulls a small item; something that she had spent decades and centuries trying to perfect in order to meet her destiny, and had only just recently succeeded in creating. Seeming to be a sphere of obsidian, only just as large as the palm of her hand, it was in fact a ter'angreal, a tool of the One Power, created to complete her task – a task which would ultimately require her life, otherwise; hopefully, this ter'angreal would preserve her life for, as demonstrated many times in her past, she was a coward, and her greatest fear was death itself. In that way, she was like Moghedien, the fabled Spider of the Forsaken, always afraid of losing her place in the world and as afraid of death itself and meeting their Master as a failure in the hereafter. There was no way to know whether she would survive the task ahead; she had not had a chance to test her creation before this day, and if it worked, the results would be rather…lackluster, at first. The amount of the Power required was shocking, though, and she was in no way certain she would survive any backlash that occurred.
Enough woolgathering, woman! Fear only slows you down, you know this! Get to work; the sooner it's done, the sooner you can be gone from here! Expelling the breath she only just realized she was holding, she settled herself to the ground and spun out a lace-like weave of all five Powers, establishing a link with the ter'angreal in her hand and initiating the process it was designed to complete. Once the link was established, Ariella changed the tone of her weave, adding skeins of Fire and Earth as an overlay to the linking weave, thus initiating the second stage of her destiny. The orb in her hand began to glow, first a deep blue, then into a bright red, before slowly incandescing in her hand to a light as bright as she imagined even the Choedan Kal used to shine. At this point in the weaving, the ter'angreal began drawing on the One Power of its own volition, sustaining the reaction she'd created with her first two weaves and propagating it into something greater. Of the greatest surprise to Ariella and the Aes Sedai who discovered her ability those many centuries ago was not that she had been passed over before for training, but that her greatest talents lay in the realm of Earth and Fire; of the Aes Sedai of that day, only the legendary Amyrlin Egwene al'Vere had the same strength Ariella now displayed. Fool woman, getting herself killed because a man died, Ariella thought bitterly before turning her mind back to the task at hand.
All Aes Sedai have a trick, it is known, but while the vast majority of those tricks are just different ways of doing the same thing – getting Papa to buy you that dress, or being able to listen to conversations people want to keep hidden – very rarely are these tricks actually a resurgence of old Talents once thought lost. Ariella knew her trick for a reborn Talent when she first stumbled across the fact that while many women and most men could feel the veins of the earth beneath them, to find ores, strengthen them, and bring them to the surface for easy mining or as destructive forces, she could feel the actual blood of the earth itself, that fiery hot liquid stone, metal and earth that was the Earthfire of the entire world. For a long time, her ability was of minimal interest; only useful to her when near one of those places where the Earthfire ran closest to the surface. When her Master came to her, though, she was shown the vastly number uses for this ability, and through her skill as a Maker, her destiny. The ter'angreal she had created for this task acts as an amplifier for this Talent, taking what she is able to do on her own and providing the power of a full circle to maximize the effect, which she was just now beginning to sense, at the very extent of her sensing range.
The ter'angreal, and by extension her destiny, existed for this very moment in time, to herald the end of the Fifth Age, an end come early to herald the end of Ages. With a final twist to the weaving linking her to the ter'angreal in her hand, the final stage of her destiny was initiated, and she prepared to set the weave of Air that would send the obsidian sphere to the center of the vast expanse of water to complete its purpose. As she set the last weave in place, alarm bells sounded in her head; someone was channeling very near to her location! Hastily she completed her work, and as she watched the obsidian sphere sail out over the water, growing brighter and brighter, the vertical slash of light heralding the opening of a gateway sprang into being on her left. At more than three paces high, she could guess that there were at least a full circle of female channelers coming to subdue her and try to stop what she had set in motion, and she set herself to defend herself while she readied a weave of her own to Travel away from this place.
All her preparation was for naught, however, because suddenly she was assaulted by the backlash of a failed weave. The ter'angreal! She thought wildly, trying to control a rising surge of terror at her predicament. What is hap- no! This can't be happeni-
Her last thought, as the obsidian sphere failed and with the matrix of her ter'angreal disintegrating in front of her, was of her failure, and how even though her destiny was fulfilled and the energy she had set in motion was being discharged into the Rhuidean Sea, the only place in all of Westland with the right combination of weak tectonic structure, the dissipation force of that energy wasn't going to be enough to cause immediate cataclysm, and her Master was not patient enough to wait. A catastrophic wave had already been generated though, and as her body was consumed by the wrath of the One Power she'd tried to command, she at least had the pleasure of knowing she would take some of the vaunted Aes Sedai and the entire Aiel nation with her.
)*(
As her gateway stabilized, Meirallan Sedai readied herself to take her circle through and contain the force of whatever was occurring with the One Power on the other side. An Aes Sedai for forty years, she was the youngest Aes Sedai stationed in Rhuidea, but as the only Aiel sister in residence, she was given pride of place and allowed to meld the flows of the twelve older, more experienced women.
When she stepped through the gateway, all thought of pride and her sisters fled in the face of the largest wave she'd ever seen heading toward her; weaving Air and Water with the full strength of her circle, she set an icy breakwater to try and deflect some of the force of the wave away from the city while she Delved the depths of the sea to try and discover what was wrong. As the wave hit her shield wall, she felt the strain begin to force a buckling effect, and poured more of the Power into holding it; as she did, she came to the abrupt realization that nothing she could do would be enough, and that what was coming was going to be far worse. Whatever had been done had unleashed the massive ocean of water contained in the depths of the earth underneath the Rhuidean basin, bringing it forth in force to fill what had once been a great ocean.
Turning to her sisters, the look on her face was all they needed to know that the worst had come. One by one, she met each of their eyes, and one by one each woman closed her eyes as she came to terms with the end of her dream, and the dream of her people; when the last woman had closed her eyes, Meirallan Sedai of the Great Waters sept of the Jenn Aiel closed her eyes, released the Source, and woke from her own dream, into the next.
Chapter 1: New Things, and Old
As Ages come and pass, so too does the wind. Today a cold, damp wind was birthed high in the mountains, mountains which were in one age known as Teeth, and in others, Ael's Tears, and in yet others, names that we no longer know to speak of. The wind was not the beginning, but it is a beginning, and it is here our story begins. The wind howls east down from the peaks high above a huge, sprawling city, and gathers force as it falls, becoming a wild gale bringing storm and thunder from the World Sea just beyond its massive peaks. It crosses massive farms with huge buildings overseeing them, and tiny men and women, along with their less tiny Ogier and Nym brethren, run for shelter from the storm's fury. Further east the storm rages, passing by the fields of crops, and into districts of orderly housing, before finally slowing to a more leisurely pace and calmly raining down over the sparkling towers of metal and stone known as the city of Rahien'Aldazar, in tongues of old, Eagles Dawn.
Millions upon millions of people called the beautiful city home, for it is not only the seat of governance of the great Westland nation, but also for its knowledge centers, it's universities, as for many millennia it has been a trove of archaeological artifacts and has birthed countless untold generations of Scholars, men of power and Power, and their Aes Sedai servants, the female counterparts. These scholars study well the time of changing, the close of the Fourth age and the rise of the World Sea, their books and their ter'angreal holding the past for them in stasis so that they may revisit it to learn anew from the errors and triumphs of old. Throughout the centuries, though, use of the One Power has been replaced by a study of the natural world, leading to technologies and medicine that render the more useful faculties of the One Power if not obsolete, then at the very least to a level more associated with vanity than utility. Scholars and Aes Sedai both were widely respected for their knowledge of the past and their devotion to study, but their ability to use the One Power was something more often glossed over than actually mentioned as a part of the great works they did.
The wind remembers the end of the Third Age, when the victory of the Light over the Darkness saw the sealing of the Dragon's Peace and began the Fourth Age, and the people of Westland have held true to that treaty after centuries and millennia through use of diplomacy, the One Power and of war to establish and maintain their borders, from the Isle of Man to the South, to Shayol Ghul in the north, a once barren waste that is now an idyllic farmland, and it remembers the beginning of the Fifth Age, with the creation of the World Sea which reclaimed the lands once held by the warrior Aiel race, who have sadly passed from the face of this world in one of the greatest tragedies of that Age, to hopefully be seen again when the Wheel weaves them anew. The wind also remembers the passing of other races, those dark and twisted counterparts to the Ogier and Nym; thankfully, the world has not seen the likes of Trollocs and Myrddraal, Draghkar and Worm, for many generations.
Over the great Collam Daan University of Rahien'Aldazar the old wind spent its last breath, coming to rest finally in the great Grove of the Ogier, a huge forest surrounding the University buildings containing every tree, even a Great Tree towering over them all. A young man, of no discernable parentage, felt the last of the winds passing as he stood before the Waygate portal that had been grown there two centuries before. As the seat of governance for the Westland nation as well as the seat of power for the Scholars and the Aes Sedai, it had been deemed unnecessary to have a Waygate that led to the great city's Grove until then. With the advent of permanent gateways, an efficient Travelling ter'angreal system that made mass transit very easy, it wasn't until the Ogier called their last Great Stump of this world that the leaders of Westland agreed to have a Waygate within the bounds of their city. At the completion of its growing, the full Ogier nation had travelled to the Grove at Rahien'Aldazar, their circle of Elders, including the great-great-son of the legendary Loial, son of Arent, son of Halan, with their sacred Book of Translation, which they opened with great ceremony on what is now referred to the Day of Passing.
The man, a Scholar by trade, looked to be about 22 years old, but as will all users of the One Power, appearances can be deceiving. He had slowed early, being exceptionally strong, and was accounted a very quick learner in all things when he graduated to full Scholar status. With no great research achievements under his belt however, eh had made it the purpose of his early life to study the Waygate network and the old stedding they connected to in order to try to puzzle out what had caused the Ogier nation to make the decision at that time to move on from this world into the next. As of yet he'd made no progress; the stedding that he'd been able to search so far had all been frustratingly empty, with nothing left behind that could hinder the continued health of the ecosystems the Ogier had left behind and within the Power-damping border of each location, he'd been unable to use saidin to search as well. Adding yet another level of frustration to the already damnable task he'd set himself today, he was set to travel the Ways to the last of the stedding on his list; Sherandu, one of the great stedding, which had once been swallowed by the Blight and the Dark One's touch, but stood now as a testament to the beauty and life of the Ogier people. Behind him floated his sho'tran, a small transport vehicle meant to be led by a single person on short journeys. Smaller than the silvery jo'tran and mighty ve'wing transports, Scholars and their Aes Sedai typically used them when travelling for small expeditions.
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain, the young man thought, looking to his companion, a young man just eighteen years old who is an Aes Sedai, or Scholar-in-training. "Are you ready, Setekagan? If we are going to reach Sherandu today, we must leave soon."
"I stand ready, Arjai-m'hael," the young man stated confidently, if a bit formally. "We can depart whenever you're ready."
"Good then, let's get to it," said the Scholar, who's real age was closer to fifty years than it was to the Aes Sedai's eighteen. Stepping up to the Waygate's face, he reached out and plucked the Chora leaf from its place of prominence in the center of the vines and leaves carved into the surface of the stone in front of him. Once a symbol of peace and prosperity, the Chora tree now flourished mightily and was seen as just another tree, its wood sought after for furniture, but not much else. Taking the Chora leaf and pressing it to one side of the Waygate itself, it stuck there, and the familiar windless rustling of leaves played over the surface as the two halves of the stone seemed to split and begin to swing open. Stepping back, he marveled once again at the beauty of the beauty contained in the surface of the actual Gate into the ways, a mirrored and water-like reflection that spun back his own image and the image of everything behind him. Momentarily seizing saidin he triggered the sho'tran behind him into 'follow' mode, and stepped through the gate, Setekagan at his side.
It is said that the Ways were once dark, dingy places, where the islands were nothing but barren sand and stone Guidings, and travelers moved along in an eternal night, but that was no longer the case. When the Dragon cleansed saidin, the male half of the One Power that was used in the creation of the Waygate network so many millennia ago, he also triggered a cascade effect in the Ways. First to disappear was something called Machin Shin, loosely translated from the Old Tongue as 'The Black Wind,' a creation of the tainted One Power that caused insanity and loss of higher brain function in those that were caught within it. In the decades following the end of Tar'mon Gaidon, the Ways slowly brightened, becoming a place of light and life, with paths between Guidings filled with soft grasses, and the Islands themselves filled with fruit and vegetable bearing trees. There was no animal life within the Ways, but the fruits and vegetables were always a welcome addition to traveler's rations.
As Arjai moved throught the Waygate event horizon, time seemed to slow, and then snap back into place as his body broke the surface on the other side. Stumbling a bit, he thought to himself, almost a decade, and the dilation effect still gets me, every single time, before turning to watch Setekagan move through the gate. He was overly protected of the Aes Sedai mentee, both from a sense of responsibility as well as a sense of deeper feeling that neither of them ever really acknowledged but acted upon daily. Setekagan was closer to him than anyone ever had been, male or female, and they shared secrets easily, and kept their confidences close. They shared a home, and while no one thought differently of them or their strange ways, there were also no other pairings like theirs in the entire city of Rahien'Aldazar, and so they were seen as something of an oddity as well.
Setekagan traversed the event horizon of the Waygate with no apparent difficulty, sparking envy in Arjai of the Aes Sedai's lithe gracefulness. Smiling, Arjai shook his head slightly and said, "Alright, it's a three day walk to Stedding Sherandu from this gate. Do you have any questions you'd like to ask before we start our journey?"
Setekagan thought a moment before answering, "Only one, m'hael. Why take the Way's at all? As a method of travel, wouldn't Traveling be a faster alternative?"
Arjai gave his mentee a look of consternation, one that you might expect to see from a favorite teacher when you've missed the point of the lesson completely. "Why do we travel the Ways? We are studying them; we are trying to learn some small part of why the Ogier people decided to leave this existence when they did, and what it could mean for humanity as a whole! Over the last fourteen generations, we've seen first a drastic increase in the number of channelers being born, followed by a decrease just as drastic that has begun in the last two. No Scholar has been able to discern why – every theory has been disproved almost as quickly as it is theorized. The Dark One has not returned, the True Source remains as un-tainted as ever, and Scholars marry other Scholars ninety-nine percent of the time, and still we are a failing breed! The Ogier left this world for a reason, and I am one of the few who believe that the reason for our decline is hand-in-hand with the reason for their leaving. That is why we travel the Ways, as I have told you many times; we are coming to the end of our research, though, and are no closer to any recognizable breakthrough than we were when we started. Sherandu is our last hope, the last stedding reclaimed from the Dark One's blight, and the last on their list to search and study – something will be there, or it won't, to prove or disprove our theory of why we are slowly being bred out of existence by the Creator of the Light."
Setekagan had adopted an abashed look as the tirade went on. "I am sorry, Arjai – I know the work is important, but I've never understood why we study the Ways from inside them. There is nothing here but trees and grass and stone; I've long since stopped paying attention to the journeying part of our studies because there is never anything to be found; I lost sight of what we're doing, and I stand chastised. Please forgive if I have offended."
"No, no, you're fine," Arjai apologized. "It's me who's torn up inside about this. If we don't find something in Sherandu…my reputation as a Scholarly laughingstock will be hard-set. 'The brightest mind in a generation' can't even develop a viable theory for the most pressing problem in the world. It's maddening!"
"Focus on the goal, m'hael; isn't that what you always tell me? We will find what we are looking for, or we won't. If we don't find it here, with this theory, then we will find it somewhere else, with another. We have a lifetime of research ahead of us, many normal lifetimes, and there will be other ways to build your reputation. I for one think you are the smartest of today's Scholars – that's what drew me to you. I need no fancy talk, or proven theories – you have sound principles and you make solid decisions. That is what is important to the pursuit of knowledge. Not how many answers you get right. Now, let's get moving. Daylight's wasting."
Arjai laughed ruefully and nodded his head. "We are, at that. I stand educated, by my student no less. You will be an amazing Scholar someday, Setekagan. Wise and powerful; maybe the last truly powerful generation of Scholars, led by you. Let's go. We have research to do!" and with that, he set off with a purposeful stride to the first Guiding and the first leg of the journey ahead.
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The three day journey passed with no great events. Arjai spent the time instructing Setekagan in the ways of Scholarly pursuits and the One Power, imparting bits of wisdom gained in almost thirty years of study. Arjai had come to training in the One Power late, being one of the last with the seed born in them to be discovered after they'd already begun channeling. He'd had a block – associated with intimacy – and had only really come into his ability and begun to realize his potential after he'd come to terms with who he was as a person, not only as a future Scholar, but also as oni'kaina, someone whose romantic interests lie within their own gender. This sub-group of humanity had only recently become apparent in any real sense; Scholars studying the phenomena posit that as the world's population has grown in the era of peace and prosperity following the fall of the Aiel people. No more than two generations currently showed any great proclivity toward oni'kaina, and anyone older than that was usually either Scholar, Aes Sedai or one of the few remaining Wind Finders of the Sea Folk nomads.
Oni'kaina were not disparaged in modern society, though there had been a period of approximately fifty years where there had been as much animosity toward them as toward any rebel faction since the Seanchan pacification; before the Scholars had studied the changing demographic and realized it was a natural phenomenon and as such, of the Light, oni'kaina men and women had faced ostracizing and abandonment throughout much of the world.
Luckily, we no longer have to deal with that, Arjai thought ruefully. Love is love, and as long as it is healthy, it is of the Light. That is all that anyone should care about. "Setekagan? We should arrive at the last Guiding within the next hour or so, at this pace. Before we leave the Ways, I have a gift for you. You'll most likely be called to begin your own Scholarly pursuits here once our research is completed, and while I know we'll remain close – and I love you – we will not spend every day together as we work toward the understanding of our own lines of research. The Scholar that completed my training had a gift for me on my graduation day, and I have a gift for you. I know it's early, but I thought now was a good time to give you yours, as it may excite some small comment at the University and I wanted to give you time to think on how you will respond," Arjai finished in something of a rush, a sensation of nervousness growing in the pit of his stomach.
You'd think, after 5 years with Sete, I'd be used to giving someone gifts, little pieces of myself, but no…Always the nervousness, the fear that he will reject what I want to give him…
Setekagan, though, was showing no signs of rejecting anything Arjai would offer him. A delighted light had grown behind his eyes that spoke to Arjai of their bond and their relationship. Relaxing finally, he stopped walking forward and waited as the 'tran floated up to stop in front of him. Reaching into his travelling luggage, he pulled out a small fancloth bag – he'd bought the bag months ago to hide the graduation gift in once he'd finished creating it because Sete is as curious as a cat – and with a smile on his face, handed the small parcel to Setekagan.
Setekagan's answering grin was wide as he opened the ties of the bag and upended it onto his palm. What fell out of the bag was something that he didn't expect, at all; a palm-sized piece of cuendillar, black in color and formed into a stylized flame that seemed to grow warm in his hand. "Jai, what…?" Setekagan trailed off into stunned silence, before finishing in a small voice, "…an angreal? For me?"
Arjai laughed out loud at the stunned look on his student's face. "Oh, I hope it's not too much, Sete. I rented the Seed to grow it back a year ago after we made things official, and if you'll remember for three months last winter I made you perform every task that came up involving the Power; I told you it was a testing, but really it was because I was busy growing this for you as your gift. Be careful with it; it's fairly strong, as angreal go – three months of growing plus a few extra days here and there have actually made it a far sight stronger than I'd originally intended – but I didn't know what line of study you were planning on starting when you'd graduated, and at least now you won't go broke if you decide to go into something like Great Works where you're required to have an angreal to participate in the circle work."
As Setekagan burst out with praise and thanks for the gift, Arjai thought back to the studying he'd done regarding the creation of angreal and sa'angreal in order to make sure this was something he was ready to do. Apparently, in Ages past, these items of the Power had been created using any personal item the user could think of, and this created some interesting and sometimes fatal problems in later times with Aes Sedai of the times not knowing what they were working with until it was too late. In the year 908 of the Fifth Age, a law had been put in place by the administrative department of the Scholars that had stated that any form of angreal or device of the One Power must be shaped as something representative of its use. Thereafter, it was also decreed that angreal and sa'angreal would always be of a style, as well, with male-oriented angreal in the shape of the black Flame, and female-oriented in the shape of the white Tear. Sa'angreal would be in the shape of the two separate pieces joined together with male-oriented devices being black dyed, and female-oriented being dyed white. All angreal and sa'angreal are made of cuendillar so as to ensure that anyone who decides to create one would be forced to consider for a long while if the cost was worth it as the material was absurdly expensive to manufacture.
The device Arjai had created was of similar strength to one he'd taken time to create himself shortly after his own graduation thirty years ago, and would serve Setekagan very well in years to come, he was sure. As Setekagan thanked him one final time, Arjai took him by the shoulders and kissed his forehead before saying, "It has been my greatest pleasure, teaching you these last years; I wanted to give you something that would explain that pleasure to you even when we are far apart, and something that would be useful for you too. Now, let's finish this last leg of our journey. On with you!" And he swatted at Setekagan with a light whip woven of Air, playfully suggesting that he start moving down the bridge toward the Guiding ahead.
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