Chapter 1: Fall From Grace
AN: This chapter sort of turned out much longer than I was expecting,
Tina awoke to the sensation of falling. It was distinctly falling, flying felt different from this uncontrolled tumble; Grace as opposed to sprawl. What was worse than the falling was the fact that her wings appeared to be useless in halting the rapid descent through the blackness. Glancing over her shoulders there was the familiar sight of her two dark purple wings against her crimson fur and beyond them shone the omnipresent darkness. As always for bed Tina wore a long night-shirt that fluttered gently in opposition to the rapid fall. Only her presence of mind allowed her to attempt to banish the apparent void; the light that flared up around her wings revealing hundreds of winged figures hurtling through the void around and askew from her; the clan mark of Shevan stood out on a few of the nearest Cubi but most were too far away to see much detail.
Her mind instinctively brought up lists of possibilities, discarding mountains and other fabricated locations as the source of the fall; even with the tallest mountains she would have hit the ground by now, same with all other works of architecture. That left portal loops and powerful creatures; most likely in conjunction. Sighing she anchored a light spell in place and waited patiently as she fell past it, seeing how long the falling loop was. Ten then twenty seconds passed and there was no indication that the loop was about to begin anew. So loops were out then, that meant only one force could possibly be responsible; the Fey. Looking around Tina could see that the Cubi were starting to come out of their sleep, most quickly coming to the same conclusion. All the ones Tina could see tried their wings, only to continue on the exact same downwards path. Sighing Tina set herself in a meditative position and waited; falling through the darkness and ignoring the cries for help coming from all around her. Reassurances would be hollow at this point and Tina wanted to remain unbiased.
It was only a half-hour or so, falling at terminal velocity through the unending darkness before the sound of wings cut through the artificial silence like a knife. Strictly speaking the sound of wings was not entirely necessary, but then again the Fey were much like Cubi in that regards; performing actions with reasons known only to themselves if at all. A being of winged darkness settled in beside Tina from nowhere, unconcerned by the downwards motion. Certainly one could see the general outline, especially in the ever growing light, but the features and patterns of the body and face remained a mask of shadows; hidden from sight behind a mask of magic that made Tina's eyes water.
"Greetings to you; Tina Shevan of clan Shevan." The figure spoke in a musical midrange; unidentifiable as male or female.
"You know that shadow effect is quite annoying" Tina responded to the shadowed figure before adding "Hello to you too" as an afterthought.
"So I have been told" The figure replied "Most find it highly disconcerting to speak to a being of shadows, this is why I find it useful. Please do not let my form influence your judgement, that would be rather unfortunate."
"Well it isn't as if I was planning on attacking you, that would be counterproductive; as far as I see it there are a limited number of scenarios. One, I'm the only one here and the rest of these individuals are all illusions. Two, you've somehow managed to transport what looks like the entire Clan Shevan here. In either case I'd be interested in your motivations and unlikely to attack without provocation."
"That is amusingly well reasoned; as to our motivation, because it is reasonable that you know our motivations, we have acted to both save your clan and affect the future towards a course that you would see as beneficial." The figure responded before shifting position in the downwards spiral, floating so that it was directly above Tina.
"That does not reassure me in the slightest"
"Rest assured that we are not saving you from ourselves, but that is the truth; had we not intervened everyone you see here would be dead." After a short pause the figure added "...Well, except for us."
"Please, do continue. Tell me exactly what you know. How would we have died? Why have you brought us to wherever this is; a side universe by the looks of it."
"Excellent questions, to answer both of those let me remind you that there is a war on; Dragons would have slaughtered not only your supposedly hidden village but those of clan Abrin and Tarman as well. If it helps you may think of it as our good deed for the century"
Tina paused and then asked "So why are we still here? return us to our homes and be done with it. Or is there something else you would have us do?"
"Your fate has already been decided. To leave you on Furrae would be disastrous, all of your kind present here would be dead within the decade; that result is distasteful. As to keeping you in a constructed universe, the sanity of all present would suffer. There is only one viable alternative."
"You would leave us in a separate dimension, one unconnected with our own." Tina replied, suddenly nervous. "Do I have the right of it?"
"You do." The shadow responded, voice becoming colder "To actively transport such a large group between prime branches is unpleasant, as such the universe you will find yourself in is merely the shadow of a reflection of the original. The Cubi there will not age beyond their majority, nor will any offspring, however the Cubi magic will be partially bound in recompense."
"Why that particular arrangement?"
"It is the bargain between your leaders and the Fey, you will remain in the dimension we provide for you until such a time that the specified conditions are fulfilled and we save the Cubi present from their predicted demise during the Dragon-Cubi war."
"Specified conditions" Tina said "please tell me that it isn't a prophecy"
"It is indeed" The shadow replied "we thought it for the best"
"I suppose that you won't tell me what you're actually getting out of this? I mean, it's not impossible that you are doing this for completely altruistic reasons; but altruism would save us once, not set us aside for some purpose. There's some other motivation to this, but then again when you Fey let loose with your powers you typically play for the endgame; which in this case might stretch anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years off. Utilitarian reasoning at its finest if I might say so."
"Thank you" The shadowy creature chimed, sounding pleased before continuing on "You act most unusual for a Cubi, with what I am allowed to remember in the here and now I recall your kind falling towards emotional extremes. Is this a quirk of the individuals I have met or is it a general trait?"
"It is a feature of the entire Cubi race; the emotions upon which we feed making us more vulnerable to rapid changes of mood. In essence we feel too deeply, what would make a normal being angry has the potential to drive a Cubi to an almost unstoppable fury and things of that nature. I and a small few others of my clan recognized this as a problem and worked on emotion suppression techniques. Originally we were going to use runic stones triggered by bursts of emotion but we settled on combining a more stable version of that with meditation."
"Very clever, I'll try to remember that for future encounters with your kind."
"You must realize that it takes years of practice, the shortest amount of time it took was two years and a week. You use the emotion suppressor to alert you when you're getting too emotional and slowly reduce the power until the mind is able to stabilize the emotions on its own. It personally took me three years to learn, although that was mostly due to unexpected circumstances."
"Might I ask what those circumstances happened to be?"
"They involved a plot to murder our clan leader. More I will not tell you without her permission."
"I will not ask for more, sometimes secrets are not meant to become known"
"The reports of Fey that I have heard mentioned that you have true omniscience" Tina said as she realizes that this piece of knowledge is what has been bugging her throughout the conversation "You must know what I am about to say; you already know all of my secrets. Or are you impotent?"
"While it is true that our omniscience is real you have not heard the entire truth. It is part and parcel of our powers that our interactions with other planes of existence take place as if we knew only what we found out there. By interacting with Furrae we lose our omniscience; and even then it is not true omniscience for we cannot see the results of our own actions. To change things we must fling ourselves into the world, trusting to our own diminished abilities to intersect with the events we wish to be changed. This is the tenth time in the entirety of Furrae history that we have actually had the opportunity to interfere. Our last attempt was to warn Cyra of her disastrous plan to take over Hishaan, we failed and some part of the war became our doing because of that failure. Beyond that we have made attempts to prevent the slow decline of the Angels; there has been some small success with that project. Even with this there is an ulterior motive, one that will only make sense a very long time from now."
"So we become your arrows, launched into the far future. You have chosen us because we will not be missed from history, our disappearance blamed on the Dragons as our deaths would have been."
"Exactly; you will have millenia to gain knowledge and experience, time to prepare for the challenges facing you. But now it is time, the conflux approaches" The figure started drifting downwards into the blackness "Prepare yourself, I am sorry that this will hurt."
From all over the falling Cubi the Fey that had been conversing with them drifted downwards so that they rested below the mass. Forming a circle they began weaving their magic together in preparation for sending the Cubi across dimensions. Slowly a sphere of glowing magic formed around the falling Incubi and Succubi and a wave of pain passed across them. It hit Tina like a brick, pain wrapping around her like a cloak before abruptly ceasing as Tina slammed into the suddenly present ground. All around her Cubi hit the stone with a crunch, and then there was darkness.
She was pressed further into the grey stone by a couple of Cubi landing directly on top of her. Tina was amongst the first to get over the shock of landing; pushing herself to her feet with graceless efficiency and managing to get out from beneath the pile. As Tina reached her feet a stack of books appeared in front of her; the contents of her bookshelves at home plus a number of large leather bound books with unfamiliar titles. Amongst the ones she did not recognise two stood out as being the most useful; one book on basic tool making while the other was on geography.
Tina took a moment to examine the cave that the gateway had connected to, solid walls of stone circled the cavern but what really caught her attention was the physical manifestation of the path between worlds. Set against one wall of the smooth cavern stood a gigantic stone archway; obviously designed to serve as a conduit between dimensions. Beneath Tina's inexperienced eyes, until now she had had no interest in runes, the doorway was aesthetically pleasing; each rune positioned so that functionality was equally balanced by form. It was obvious that the gateway was once filled with energy, however that fact was contrasted against the reality of the current situation. Standing next to the gateway Tina felt rather than saw Shevan herself; actual body present instead of it being an avatar.
Gasping in surprise Tina gathered up her books in her otherspace pocket and hurried over to where Shevan was standing in a triangle with two other Cubi. Her suspicions that they were the leaders of the other two clans were confirmed when she saw their third set of wings. Unsure of how the three would react to her approach Tina stepped forwards so that she was clearly visible from the plateau the gateway was stationed on. Shevan herself was much like Tina in appearance; red fur clashing against purple wings in a manner that almost made the interface appear blue. Catlike faces with eyes of a dark slate that looked out upon the world in a cool and calculating fashion. Next to Shevan stood a tall reptilian male with a strange pattern stretching across his scales; odd symmetrical patches of green and black that gleamed in the reflected magelight that almost every assembled Cubi had flaring around them. Hanging behind the group was a short grey female wolf with silver wings that seemed incongruous amongst the group of tri-wings but was probably the most powerful individual there.
Seeing Tina's reluctance Shevan beckoned her forwards to join the trio. "Glad to see you here, it has been a long time since we last talked Granddaughter; five-hundred years ago if I remember correctly."
"Ah, yes. It was for your first millennial birthday, quite nice party as well." Tina said, sensing how the conversation will go.
Grandmother had always done this sort of thing, acting completely stupid in public and dropping the mask in private. Everyone knew that she was doing it too, and Tina had a suspicion that Shevan knew that everyone knew it was an act. What her possible motives for it were Tina had been left in the dark and so had two options-one; play along-two; try to get Shevan to see sense. Tina thought that under these circumstances the second would be expedient.
"Grandmother, while this facade might have been of some use to you back on Furrae we are not there anymore. I need to know more information and you three are the only ones that might know it"
Shevan let out a long sigh before replying "Force of habit I suppose"
The other clan leaders shared a covert glance of relief.
"Thank you for that" the snake said in a pleasant bass "I am Abrin, of the clan Abrin. Normally I would add on a whole laundry list of titles and accolades onto that fact, but this is not such a time that we should stand on ceremony" he added, slithering forwards towards Tina. "My compatriot is Tarman, again of Clan Tarman. Speak your questions unto us and we might see them answered."
"What is the prophecy the Fey spoke of?"
"The lost Prince will come into his heritage as one of the people and regain his throne of books. That which is thought to be three, is four, will become five. He who flees will be faced with new knowledge. That which was once sacrificed will be regained and the death without dying reversed. The three will become four and stand before the ancient door, while the four of a beginning will regain their heritage and hold back that which opposes." the three chorused in time.
"Sounds like nonsense to me, but as with all prophecy I'm sure we'll look back on it and find it blindingly obvious." Tina sighed "Some things are obvious. The ancient door is that gateway over there, the death without dying is just mundane death as opposed to soul-death. Aside from that I have no idea what any of it means."
As the last Cubi got to their feet a desk appeared in a clear space. "RIght" Shevan said in response "We need to start getting everyone organized, what do you prefer; Clans separate or mixed?"
"As much as we once fought I think that we will need to start working together" Abrin replied "I think that we should each handle a separate branch of talents. Shevan, you take the thinkers, I'll take the craftsman, and Tarman can take the mages. Anyone belonging to more than one of those groups will be chosen by their strength in each area."
"Sounds good to me" Tarman replied as Shevan gave her assent.
Tina walked away as the three began negotiations over the best candidates from each Clan, already knowing that Shevan would get her.
Unnoticed in the midst of the confusion a pair of Cubi slipped away from the rest and vanished.