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I
Great tragedies have a way of shaping our lives.
-Nakra the Wise, c. 125-174 AS
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The wind whistled over Air's Rock. Small rodents, wary of the midday sun, darted into shadowy crevices and caves, while reptiles lay in repose in the warm light. Plants, clinging for their lives to the stone, bowed their branches to the sky and begged for rain. Somewhere on the rock, a great eagle cried in triumph at catching his lunch.
On a solitary ledge, hidden beneath a cliff, was a small hut. It was typical for Osenian peasantry - straw and grass woven together, cemented to the ground with mud. An open doorway and a small window allowed the dry breeze in.
A figure emerged from the house, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. He carried in his teeth a bucket, beaten up and dented from years of use. Stretching slightly, the figure got on all fours and padded behind the house. His name was Mahel, son of Maha the Learned, and he was one of the unlucky.
Mahel placed the bucket under a stalactite, where a steady stream of water gushed out from the inside of the sacred mountain. Watching the bucket slowly fill up with cool, clear liquid, he thought pensively back to that terrible day, thirty years ago. Oh, what a normal day it had seemed to be! The people of Garoh had been doing their usual preparations for the full moon, which had been inching higher and higher in the sky. Mahel - then only a boy of nine - had the job of setting up signs and a false path leading through the Devil's Gate - a small canyon west of Garoh - into the desert, long enough to get any potential travelers out of harm's way until daybreak. Maha had seemed uneasy that day, constantly glancing at the sky, glaring hard at the moon and sun.
"What's wrong, Papa?" Mahel had asked cheerfully.
"The sky... it is moving slowly today," his father had answered. "Something is going to happen. Put out the signs and get back here quick."
Mahel also looked at the sky, but it had just looked like plain old sun and rising moon to him. The stars might be out a couple hours early, but who cared? Not Mahel, and probably none of the villagers either. Only Maha seemed to notice these things.
The young lycanthrope had hoisted the two baskets of signs, painted with lies like Town of Andula This Way! and Oasis in 2.7 Miles!, onto his back, and carried them out of the village. Mahel had taken the sunny route, which was definitely longer, to absorb some heat before the long night began, but for some reason, each ray of light had seemed as chill as ice. Curiously, Mahel had dipped into a patch of shadow - and had felt heat flood his body again. Weird! Mahel had liked it like this, and soon had started dipping in and out, in and out, of the shadows and sun, forgetting his father's warning.
By the time he reached the Devil's Gate, he had stopped feeling affected by the coolness of the sunlight, and started leisurely plunking the signs down. Skipping down the canyon, placing signs and posters intermittently, he remembered how Maha had told him that, if he did his job well continuously, he might get to be one of the 'real wolves' who got to scare away any visitors who actually got to Garoh. How cool would that be, for a job - scaring people away from your village? Protecting your people?
Mahel hadn't been able to help himself, and he sprinted out into the open desert, howling all the way, dropping the signs in the sand. Who cared? He could blame it on a stray Venus Djinn in the morning.
The boy had reached the top of a grass-covered dune, and had been looking down at the rest of the desert surrounding Air's Rock. He'd always wanted to climb that giant, beautiful stone, such sheer cliffs and amazing views of nearly all of Osenia. Here, he was barely a fourth as tall as the giant relic, the surrounding dry hills and desert dwarfed by the immensity of Air's Rock.
And then the icy sun seemed to explode. To his west, a purple beam of light exploded from the continent Atteka and shot northeast. From Gondowan came an earth-colored pillar of light; from Imil in Northern Angara, an icy blue stream that spat snow across its path. And far, far to the north of Imil, a red light shone in the northerly darkness, cutting across the ice, flames spiraling out from its sides.
Mahel had cursed himself and cursed himself again for not running. For not recognizing such danger when it stared him in the face, for not springing to the base of the Air's Rock and hiding from the Elemental Lighthouses' pure, Psynergetic power. Instead, he had stood there like an idiot, watching in awe as the colors arced across the sky.
They crashed into each other in central Angara, the collision shaking Weyard to its core. Mahel fell to his feet, dropping the rest of the signs and staring in awe at the Golden Sun. The colors swirled around each other, a whirling nexus of light that turned from red, to blue, to purple, to brown, to gold. Gold - it permeated the old, decrepit light of sunset, filled the sky with a golden shine, and grasped Mahel in sacred warmth. The boy sighed in utter comfort, swathed in a blanket of heat. Then suddenly, he felt it, the change all lycanthropes dreaded. Fur grew along his arms, his face, his muzzle. His body began to change, lengthen, and his hands, increasingly furrier, fell down to the sand, unaccustomed to holding him up for so long. The golden light sped up the process, and soon Mahel was a full wolf, and one much bigger than he usually was. Was this the effects of the Golden Sun, he thought to himself?
And then the pain. Searing pain, rippling up his shoulders and down his paws, through his head and tail. Pain, pain, pain, nothing else but burning pain on his fur. Pain. It wouldn't go away, it never hurt this much to change, what was happening to him?
When it was over, when the pain had subsided and the golden light dissipated, he lay, a prone figure on the hill, for many days. Blowing over him were the grains of Air's Rock, dislodged by the catastrophic Golden Sun event. Hundreds, thousands, flew over him, lightly touching his fur, imbuing him with the power of Jupiter. When Mahel would awaken, he would still be a wolf, many days after the full moon had passed. And so he would remain, a wolf, forever and for always. . .
Water splashed over onto his paw, waking Mahel from his day-nightmare. He had forgotten about the bucket again, and here he was senselessly wasting precious drinking water. A brave lizard licked the liquid from the ground, inches from his paws. Toggling the stalactite slightly, he closed up the passage, leaving the water to build up for the next time he needed it.
Mahel concentrated, and a small, controlled whirlwind sprouted from the ground. Picking up the bucket for him, it flew to his hut's window, leaving dust in its wake. Tired from a long, sleepless night, the Jupiter adept padded to the edge of the ledge. Rising in the distance, pulsating over the ruins of Mount Aleph, was the light which he so hated. The light which he prayed would one day be plunged into darkness, punishment for murdering his identity like this, for ostracizing him from his people, from his father.
"Look what you have done to me!" he roared to the Golden Sun, and the earth seemed to tremble like it did thirty years ago.
()()()
Vande stared, unimpressed, at the young human before him.
All around him, the peaceful village of Kolima was rebuilding itself. The villagers had been quick to learn that the monsters of the Eclipse couldn't climb trees, and had built a small camp in the middle of the maze of branches, far away from their tree homes, remaining there until the impenetrable shadow had lifted. When Vande was sent by Queen Sveta to check on the villagers, the boy had immediately introduced himself, telling him that he wished to be the beastman's apprentice. He hailed from the Hesper Sea, and had been plying his trade as a bard in Kolima when the Eclipse hit. Using his limited powers as a Mercury adept, he had frozen the door of a house shut long enough to escape to the branches. Vande had found out from the villagers that the boy was well-known in Kalay for his trumpet playing.
Or so they said. Vande couldn't help but stare down his nose at the boy, who smiled nervously and waited for Vande's verdict. He had played a little rendition of Grigory Mokotsk's famous Salute to Morgal, attempting to suck up to the golden-furred beastman. Vande had played it many years back with the Tonfon orchestra, for four hours straight… Memories, memories!
The wretched sound of a throat clearing came to his ears. The Hesperide boy was tapping his foot, smile strained, as he watched Vande daydream.
"Er… it was, ah, fine…?" Vande stuttered, unsure of how to reject him. During his travels in Morgal, beastmen musicians knew they had to have mastery of their own instrument before being taken on as an apprentice by the great maestro, or the Muzykant as they called him in Belinsk. During his lifetime, Vande had only taken on one apprentice, and she… she was long gone now. In and out of his life like a piccolo's trill.
He shook his head free of the past and looked back at the young man, who seemed to be waiting for a bigger response. Vande took a breath.
"Well, you hit all the notes in a difficult piece, to be sure," he began. "You have talent. But it is lacking…" How to say this without sounding like a cliché? "It is lacking heart. It is lacking your own special twist that makes this your piece."
Oh great Sun, he did sound like a cliché.
"Obviously," the boy said as if Vande was senile. "Music is what's written. You can't change music!"
So he was one of those people, was he? Those so-called reformists from the west end of Belinsk, saying that music was as it was made. Before the… earlier in his life, Vande had gone undercover to a meeting of theirs and was appalled by their beliefs.
"Music is made to be changed," the beastman shot back, his golden fur rising. He was in his element now!
"Really?" the stupid child shot back. "Well, then change something for me! Go ahead!"
Vande had been waiting for this. All his life he had been a bit of a show-off, though he managed to be subtle - none of his tutors and professors at the Belinsk Opera House Academy had a single criticism after his senior year recital, when he played the bizarre Ginhok piece called Blizzard of the Mistreated and Ignorant, an overture that was reminiscent of both soaring woodwinds and pots and pans being bashed together. He had heard the piece once before, with… with friends at an opera house. Yes, that was the piece he would play to prove this reformist wrong.
Vande placed his hands on the ground, willing his Light Psynergy to come to him. Seeing as he had been sent to Kolima by the Queen, he hadn't brought any musical instruments with him. He smirked. Good thing his particular brand of Psynergy was oriented the way it was.
A trailing wisp of gold went from Vande's spread-eagled palm to the grass below. It shot up the roots of one of the ancient trees nearby, and spread throughout the entire vicinity until everything was kissed by a little bit of extra shimmer. Apollo-touched was what Queen Sveta had called it, and Vande supposed that was the truth. They all had been touched by the Apollo Lens in some way, whether it was visible or not.
"So?" the boy challenged. Children these days! "We all know that the great and wonderful Muzykant has been blessed with a new coat of paint on his fur. Get to the point!"
"Well, you certainly don't seem eager to be my student now, do you?" Vande chuckled. "To be a master, you must be a learner. And learning means both criticism and praise. If you cannot handle criticism, you are not fit to be a musician."
And, with a deep breath, Vande began to play the piano.
To the casual observer - such as this idiot insisting on calling himself an artist - it appeared that Vande was solely twisting his hands through the air, Vande saw a thousand musical instruments waiting to be played through his Light Psynergy. There were percussions in the tree, woodwinds in the grass, strings from the house nearby, and everything else in the air. Blizzard came back to the beastman instantly, his nearly unlimited musical knowledge producing chords he had barely been able to play in his younger years. With a breath, he played one more measure, and - eighth rest - the strings came in. Eighth rest - woodwinds. Eighth rest - several different drums, hailing from Western Gondowan all the way up to Imil and Prox. His symphony was coming together.
Smug, Vande focused back into the real world, leaving his beloved instruments behind for a moment to view his adversary's reaction. The boy's trumpet lay on the grass - so did his jaw, nearly, dumbstruck at the sight before him. Vande had received similar reactions prior to this disagreement - "it's air! You can't play air!" or "It's not a real instrument if it isn't there" - and taken them in stride. He could be happy with the fact that his critics were just supremely jealous.
Vande allowed himself to get lost in the music. The three times he had played the Arangoa Prelude in his life, innocent bystanders had told him that it was the most beautiful, enticing music they had ever heard. The first time he had heard it - played on a hand-carved wooden flute by his teacher, Dimitri - he had thought so, too, butto him now, Blizzard of the Mistreated and Ignorant rose even higher on the ranks.
Distracted, he slipped up on the violin two section, but turned it into a fiddling free-style, altering the tempo and the time signature to accompany his mistake. The other parts of his orchestra faded into a quiet rhythm while the string section all joined in a harmonious solo.
It was the grand opening of the opera Perléz and his Many Troubles, an opera set in last century's Harapa, back when it was a kingdom in its own right. Vande, purple-furred and sleek in a fresh-pressed suit, walked stiffly through the crowd towards the Belinsk Opera House, savoring the cool air of nighttime on his body. More humanoid beastmen and women watched him in apprehensive silence as he passed by, intimidated by his animalistic look. So the suit didn't help him. Shame.
The lights of the Opera House glowed in an ethereal way the street lamps of his city didn't. They were warm, inviting, offering you a seat in a special box where you could converse with intellectuals of your own kind on the superb aria in act five. Offering a beautiful stage where, during eighteen-hour long rehearsals for opening night, musicians could lounge with their instruments, friends, and a cup of strong black coffee. Ever since Dimitri had taken him under his wing, Vande had been thrust into the elite circle - although he had been warned by his teacher not to mention his peasant heritage. That would get him kicked out of society faster than hitting the wrong note at a recital.
At the red-velvet steps leading up to the Opera House was a line of twelve humanoid beastmen carrying boxes full of tickets. Vande located the man towards the end, who held the box V-Z, and approached him.
"Vande, student of Dimitri," he stated. The beastman's slightly furry hand waved through the air, and, in a showy display of Jupiter Psynergy, the tickets were flipped through until one was pulled out. Thanking the man, Vande climbed the rest of the stairs and entered the Opera House proper.
Taking several flights of stairs, Vande admired the opulence of the whole place, nothing like his apartment in Central Belinsk, which was a sorry, Lilliputian affair, with brick walls and no fireplace. Nothing like this grand palace of a building, more spectacular than the Palace itself, where everything was velvet plated with gold. Or platinum.
Standing in the mezzanine, the room leading to several of the box seats, was a group of elegant beastmen, mostly humanoid, chatting while adjusting their monocles and sipping the latest Border Town Bordeaux wine. Vande had confided in his friends from Central Belinsk all the secrets and drama of the rich peoples' lives, and this particular group - called the Mezzanines, which to be quite honest sounded like a traveling comedy act - were of great interest to them. Only they said, "the bouquet leaves something to be desired," or "C'est magnifique!" or "the peasantry are being quite uproarious in the square today." A bunch of buffoons really - but among the rich, most were buffoons.
Vande nodded a nervous greeting to them, trying to keep his cool. Buffoons or not, they were rich people with connections, and the more he appealed to them - the conductor and musician being trained by Dimitri, who had patrician's blood going back for ten generations - the better. One beastman, a wolf humanoid with a monocle, a dangling pocketwatch, and shoes that looked to be diamond-encrusted, nodded back. Vande let out a relieved sigh, and walked to the door of his usual box.
He sat in the second row, acknowledging Lezzo Mirani, an affluent man from Kalay famed for his lectures and essays on many operas. Unfortunately, he had written an article on Escaleo's Journey, a popular opera in Belinsk, criticizing it, and he had been shunted to the second row. Vande and Mirani had sat together for the past several shows, but the seat to Vande's right had been unoccupied since Cordoran LeMont, a Bilibinian aristocrat, had suffered from a heart attack.
Lezzo and Vande chatted amicably as they flicked through their programs.
"A little bird told me that Vanessa Irigiano, that girl from Tolbi, has quite the aria in Act II," the Kalayan whispered conspiratorially.
"I'm waiting for the quartet at the end of Act I," Vande responded, and Mirani's eyes lit up. He had always had a thing for quartets, so they began to chat.
This was when Vande really enjoyed high-flying society. His friends in Central Belinsk, while he had known them all his life, had never gone to see a show at the Opera House. While they were artists and writers, they had no knowledge of the works of the stage. Right here, sitting in his best attire above the Belinsk Opera House, talking with another intellectual about an opera that was opening that night! Just thinking about it sent a pleasant shiver through Vande's body.
"Hello," a distinctly feminine voice said from behind his head. Lezzo's eyes popped open. Vande slowly turned around to see a beautiful beastwoman. She retained only the slightest of bear-like features - brown hair, lightly furry arms, and, of course, the rounded ears poking out from her head. The girl's human portion was stunning - no other world to describe it - like a statue in the middle of a grand museum. Perfect, radiant… Vande could stare for hours.
"I'm told this seat isn't taken?" she inquired.
"N-n-n-no," Vande stuttered hurriedly, beckoning to the chair. "Please, sit right on… down."
Smoothing her dress out, the beastwoman settled into her seat.
"I'm Anna Vozova," she introduced herself, holding out her hand to Vande. He made to kiss it, only to find himself being vigorously shaken up and down as Anna pumped her arm up and down. "I learned that greeting in Suhalla - I've been spending a lot of time there recently, volunteering after an earthquake hit the place - and thought I'd try it out here! It's called shaking hands, what do you think?"
Lezzo looked slightly put out that the girl had interrupted the conversation, but Vande would have been glad to have been discussing kitchen utensils with her, so long as to hear her melodious voice. Oh great Sun, what a glorious creature!
Their voices continued to whisper, to the annoyance of their surrounding opera-goers, even after the lights dimmed and the curtains swished with anticipation. Only when the first piercing piano note hit their ears did they fall silent, listening intently to the Blizzard of the Mistreated and Ignored, hands cautiously touching the whole time.
Vande finished the piece with a single, high trill on the flute, leaving the note sparkling like dew in the air. A booming round of applause surrounded him, making him nearly jump out of his fur - surrounding him the whole time had been a plethora of people, both tourists and locals, listening raptly. The reformist boy, shamed, bowed his head, picked up his slightly dented trumpet, and left the scene. The crowd rushed up to the golden beastman, bombarding him with questions, eager to know more about the Muzykant. As the relentless horde encircled him, he wished more and more to be able to go back to the memories of Anna, to the thoughts of their nights walking the piers of Belinsk together, but that was not to be.
"…chosen an apprentice yet?"
Vande turned, curious. "I'm sorry?" he said to the speaker in question, a Kolima Villager with straw-blond hair.
"I said, why haven't you chosen an apprentice yet?"
His golden muzzle was tinged with red for a moment, before Vande composed himself enough to answer, "I- I did, but… the apprentice in question left."
"Left?" the same villager repeated in disbelief. "Why would anyone leave the apprenticeship of someone as great as you?"
The Muzykant fell silent. He stared at the ground for what seemed like an eternal rest note, a forever pause in his piece. "They said I was too rigorous." Too cold-hearted. Told me never to mix love with work, and look what I've gone and done now.
Vande tuned out the rest of the chatter, and finally, when the crowd began to thin, he walked away from Kolima Village, out of Saha, and turned west to go to Belinsk again.
But then he stopped. There, in the corner of his eye, stretching from horizon to horizon, was the Endless Wall separating Morgal from Sana. Behind that wall lay the city of Tonfon, which was slowly reaching back out to the beastman country due to a series of coincidences - the ruler's son being friendly with Queen Sveta, or something similar.
Once, in Belinsk Square, a little Sanan boy - barely nine or ten - had sat down right next to the stage Vande used, and began to play the flute. It was extraordinary - a wail of power that bounced around the square. Vande had considered stopping and talking with the child, but he had had a luncheon with an affluent composer, and…
He wish he had stopped. Stopped and listened, like less and less people seemed to do nowadays.
Vande turned on his heel and walked towards the Endless Wall. Boy with the flute was behind that wall. Waiting.
()()()
Other things wait too. A child in Contigo waits for dinner. A blacksmith in Yallam waits for the forge to heat up properly. Two royal parents in Yamata City wait for their daughter to return from her journey.
On the outskirts of the world lay many pillars of land, rising from the void, one last geological imprint of the Golden Sun event. Here, there was no sound except for the roar of Gaia Falls. To attempt to get to the pillars was suicide - even if you had a suitable boat to jump the nothing between water and land, the currents of the edge of Weyard would smash your boat to smithereens. In the earlier years after the Golden Sun, everyone from adventurers half-mad from lack of food to tourism companies attempted to reach these tiny, isolated islands, a place more novel than the ocean pillars of the Hesper Sea. The arrival of the Mourning Moon drowned out interests other than staying alive, and these defiers of Weyard's logic lived in peace once more.
East of Tundaria, that formidable icy fortress in the south, a lucky wreckage lay caught between two rocks, its prow dangling over the side of the world. The wood was rotten, but sturdy enough for a child or an underfed adult to stand on - one death-wish jump away was a large pillar, flat in landscape, and covered with grasses.
On the pillar were seven giant airships, blotches on the deep nothing skin of the void beyond. The people who patrolled the soundless grass, wearing boots of iron to protect from the gale-force winds of the Falls, were stoic and only spoke when in the incredible sound-proof airships. In a small clearing off to the side, several scruffier-looking recruits fought with swords that clanged deafly and throwing knives that didn't make a sound as they scraped through the air. The better-dressed patrollers didn't bother with such nonsense - they saved that for when they could hear one another.
Inside the largest of the great airships, looking out of a large room made out of windows, was an ancient man who needed the assistance of a cane for movement. He was alone, his most elite ranks guarding outside the door. For such matters he needed quiet.
The old man walked to one end of the glass room. Beyond the airship, beyond the edge of this little prison, was a band of pure darkness, pure, beautiful, darkness, that penetrated his soul and liquefied his reason. He didn't want to hurt anybody with his passion for that darkness - that's another reason he stayed alone for his thinking time.
He turned to the other side, where he could see the enormous Gaia Falls cascading in great arcs over the side of Weyard. Tundaria's bleak, empty landscape stared at him beyond the Falls, and beyond that the vague outline of Osenia, but what the old man really cared about was that water, pushing and sending itself into the void. What was at the bottom? Was there a bottom? Where did the immense amount of water needed to sustain Weyard come from? Did the water recycle through and then come out again through some giant underground spring?
"Weyard, you are mysterious in your ways," he mused in a hoarse, dry voice, chuckling quietly. "Even I cannot predict what your next move will be. That is why we must outdo you, if we are to achieve our goals…"
The old man trailed off as something in the corner of his vision caught his eye. Hobbling away from the Weyard-window, he looked raptly at the blackness, staring at where he thought he had seen-
There! Across the way! A faint sheen of mist wobbled and wavered against the forever behind it, barely a speck on the endless horizon. As the old man watched, more mist seemed to appear - then a solitary drip-drip-drip that, up in this soundproof room, cut across the silence like a knife through hot butter.
Could it really be? Were his plans falling into action?
He tapped twice on his temple, where there was a single hand tattooed on his skin. Soon he felt the airship rumble as the entire populace of the pillar gathered inside. Grabbing hold of his cane once more, the man hobbled his way down the staircase, down to a small door leading to a balcony. The balcony, which leaned over slightly, looked down upon hundreds and hundreds of eager faces, staring straight back at him.
"My people," he croaked, and they fell silent. "It has happened. It is returning, we will return to our rightful place!"
Cheers echoed throughout the airship.
"We will wait until it is more developed than at the moment," he continued, "and when the world beyond the Veil is whole again, we will leave this wretched wasteland called Weyard. We will be liberated from the burden of Weyard's problems once more."
He stopped speaking, and the tongue of every Tuaparang citizen slithered over their lips, once, twice, before they all said in unison, "And then, we will take back what's rightfully ours."
The High Empyror looked at his people. They were waiting.
He was waiting.
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