Summary: No-War, No-Factions AU. Festival of the Five: They were two stars circling a single gravitational point. One driven by faith, the other by desire. They came together only with the blessing of the Guiding Hand, and when they did all of Cybertron was caught in their orbit. They weren't destined for each other, but as Primus said: There is destiny, and then there is destiny.

Warnings: Sexual Content, including one (mild but detailed) tactile interfacing scene. Cannon-typical violence. Alien Religion and various issues thereof.

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Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Part Two: Festival of Solomus cont…

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His leave officially approved, extra energon packed, and his flight plan to Altihex filed with the officials of no less than four city-states Sunstorm had only one more task before he left on his long solo flight.

The primary military compound of Vos had a perfectly adequate chapel dedicated to the Guiding Hand for ornly use, but for larger events and holidays a penitent needed to travel to the primary temple-spires in Vos itself.

The bright yellow and orange seeker landed lightly on the entrance balcony and made his way into the temple-proper. Solomus was not as popular a god in Vos as, say, Epistemus who had created the various airframes, from the generally science caste shuttles to the mostly labor caste cargo helicopters to the military seekers. After Knowledge Personified, Adaptus had the most followers among civilians and no military-caste mech ever failed to at least pay lip-service to Mortilus when it was appropriate for even an atheist to. So if Solomus' House was less shiny or ostentatious than some of the other temples in Vos, it was not due to a lack of devotion on behalf of those few who were called into His service.

Crux, the youngest permanent priest who still happened to be several centuries older than Sunstorm, greeted him warmly. "Be welcome in the House of Wisdom Incarnate."

"Wisdom is not found in a House, but in life," Sunstorm answered, a ritual rejoinder that very few these vorn even knew. Crux had taught him when he'd realized his newly sparked visitor was not going to lose interest in favor of trick flying. He was the one who'd taught him to read and write as well, as well as any number of things that a military clone would never have been able to find on his own. The priest was a helicopter-alt, originally sparked for the medical caste, and still had the markings of a volunteer search and rescue medevac painted beneath his various symbols of priestly office. His wisdom, he'd confided in Sunstorm one very late night filled with enough lessons to exhaust them both, was in realizing that he had a spark meant to teach and only in the temples was there anything left to learn. Few and far between they might be, but in the temples they still had students rather than just downloading everything that their caste "needed" to know.

He'd never been willing to divulge why he'd come to Solomus in his search of students rather than Epistermus and Sunstorm had long ago stopped pressing him. There was a whisper of the divine there, old and faded beneath mortal contentment but it's presence was answer enough to Sunstorm.

Crux was shorter than Sunstorm's standard seeker frame, but he smiled down at his pupil anyway. "No need to ask what brings you here; it's that time again. Of course you have my blessing."

"I still have an orn before I need leave. I was hoping to visit the Pool first." Yellow wings twitched slowly. "Life may well have granted me wisdom, but it is within the peace of the House that I best integrate it."

The priest laughed. That wasn't ritual, but uniquely Sunstorm. "Of course. It's what the Pool is for. I'll give you my blessing for the race before you leave."

They chatted lightly as they made their way to the Pool. The temple was more crowded than it usually was, mechs who usually felt no need to visit Solomus' House coming to pay homage for His upcoming festival. Still they managed to find a quiet spot for Sunstorm's meditations.

"Pool" was a misnomer. It actually was a volume of clear oil held in an anti-gravity field in the middle of the room. With no gravity the viscous liquid formed a single scintillating globe above their heads held together by surface tension. Sunstorm settled in, set his chronometer so he wouldn't miss his departure time, then closed his optics and opened his Sight.

The Pool glowed with the light of the divine as it always did, and this close he allowed it to fill his entire Sight. He held no expectations of what he would See. Perhaps nothing, just the pure unending glow of the divine, and if that were the case he would still take the peace of this moment out with him, having cleared his thoughts before the race. But Solomus, along with Mortilus and Epistermus were the keepers of Fate and if this Festival like the last two was going to be another stepping stone toward whatever he could sense on the horizon then here and now was his best chance to see it.

That thought snagged his mind even as he tried to clear it of preconceptions and he allowed it. He could force his thoughts to silence, but Crux had taught him it was best to let his thoughts run their course. If absolute silence of thought was needed, then it would come, but sometimes they—he already knew what the Guiding Hand had to say to him and his subconscious only needed the opportunity to speak.

So he thought of Solomus and Fate and how Primus had come to give over His custody of Fate to His fragments, long before Mortilus turned violent and agressive. Primus, the Life Giver, of course had held all of Fate when He spun each of them from the Well, but he was at his own Spark the Life Giver and had grown so weary of spinning out both life and death for each of his creations that for a time he ceased. No sparks came forth new from the Well, no matter how deeply those first priests of Vector Sigma (who regarded the computer itself as a god) prayed for the joy of children. No sparks returned to the Well, even as bodies failed and they suffered and they prayed for release. Then Mortilus who's duty it was to escort the sparks of the fallen to the Well came to his creator and asked why he'd had no one to guide lately.

Primus explained how he could no longer bear to take the lives He had given spark and Mortilus nodded gravely. This made sense to him and he let his creator be.

Epistermus came to Primus next. He knew with the certainty of Knowledge Personified what Primus' actions was actually doing to Cybertron. But his logic failed to sway Primus. Eventually he too let his creator be.

Then Solomus came to him, and though Primus expected many great and varied arguments from this fragment, Wisdom said only, "They are suffering." And Primus finally looked outside Himself to the people He had nurtured on His skin and saw that this was truth.

And so because He had come to realize the damage He in His weariness had wrought. And so He divided fate into three parts and gave them to these three of His fragments. To Mortilus He gave the moment of death. To Epistermus he gave the knowledge of each Spark from the moment it came to life in its shell until the time of its death. And to Solomus he gave the decision to pass a spark from one to the other, so that the exact moment of a mech's death would always be chosen with wisdom.

This had worked for a time, but slowly the threads of fate became so tangled that the three found that even Epistermus, whose domain it was to know all, could unravel it. Primus had, but great as they were, they were fragments of Him. Part of this was Adaptus' doing. The youngest fragment, had take up the mantle of slain Unicron and sown chaos in His efforts to promote flexibility and adaptability among mortals. With his interference the three fate keepers could not keep all the threads strait. For a time they tried to get him to stop, but Adaptus refused. "Change is part of life. And are we not each a part of the Life Giver?"

Solomus granted that this was wisdom and that to be the keepers of Fate, they too needed to accept change. He asked Adaptus how best to do this. "Adaptation isn't just about individual capacity to change, but potential within a population to endure trial." And then the youngest god took a new form and flitted off to cause further mischief.

The three fate keepers looked to one another, uncertain what, if anything they should take from that.

Finally it was again Solomus who gave voice to the truth. "Fate is too large for any of us to keep even the small parts we've each been assigned alone, but Primus would not have given us a task we were doomed to fail. Perhaps together though…"

And so it was that the three Fragments of Primus came to hold not only their individual tasks in the weaving of mechs' fates but to hold the whole of Fate as a shared burden.

Sunstorm's thoughts quieted and in the aftermath of reciting the story to himself the divine light of the Pool became his whole existence. It rippled in time with slight variations in the anti-gravity field, vibrated in time with every sound. Not that Sunstorm could hear those sounds any longer. There was only the coil of divine light at the heart of the Pool. The veil of the future remained opaque.

The future is not for the eyes of mortal mechs… the thought came and went in the emptiness of his thoughts and all he had in response was …faith.

Then what do you seek, Seeker… and this time he truly had no answer at all. He hadn't come here for insight about whatever it was he could feel the gods arranging on the horizon, nor had he come for insight about the upcoming race itself, though both of these things were on his mind. He'd come here seeking nothing in particular but only knowing that it was important that he come and open himself to whatever, if anything, the gods felt it important to convey. Even if it was only the insight into his own spark that would be granted by the meditation.

There was a sense of scrutiny, then conference, then a new thought both his own and not as the others had been … fear not… and it occurred to him to wonder what he could possibly be afraid of, for even death, even suffering, was all within the bounds of fate and part of the gods' will…faith… and then it was like dawn breaking while he flew so high it almost counted as a low orbit. A miracle of light that brought the world from shadow to Primus' brilliance…and that always frightening drop, the moment of blind free-fall while he switched from sensors to sight before he righted himself and the world was more perfect for the momentary scare…fear not…

…This is not a thing to fear… and as his disorientation ended he realized that he had reached up towards the globe that still filled his entire vision. More significant, the globe had reached down toward him, wrapping a tendril of light around his arm and steadying him through the not-vision.

They hung there, a union of perfect clarity for a long moment…

…And his chronometer beeped that it was nearly time to leave. He opened his optics and found himself standing beneath the Pool exactly as he had been when he started. He was not reaching up. A tendril of the divine was not reaching down.

Still disoriented from the transition back to the physical, he moved. Hydraulics protested, joints locked, energon pumped only sluggishly and he started to stumble, fall—

"Hold up, youngster. Not so fast."

—was caught. He blinked and found himself clinging feebly to Crux, who was busy siphoning a small cube of medical grade energon into his secondary fuel port. "My thanks," he tried to say, but his vocalizer had switched itself off at some point during the meditation and it came out, "kkkkrsht…mmmmrrrxxx…" and Crux chuckled softly and simply repeated. "Not so fast youngster. Your mind's been elsewhere for most the orn. Give your body a breem to catch up."

It was good advice and he did so, focusing on his HUD as the influx of energon slowly brought each system out of standby and he essentially performed a soft reboot.

When each system was back online he tried moving again. This time his joints were still stiff but his body obeyed his commands. He got his feet under him and pulled away from Crux's steadying embrace. "My thanks," he repeated to the priest.

"It isn't a problem. We don't often see someone other than one of our own get that lost in the Pool, but it's one of the reasons we keep the medical grade on hand. You good to fly?"

"I am," he stretched his wings, tested his heel-thrusters. "I have a message to deliver, but first I must win the right. I can't be late."

Crux only nodded, as though that made perfect sense. Perhaps it did, to him; he was a fellow believer. "Then go." He traced a trio of glyphs on each of Sunstorm's wings with his finger, leaving no marks though his Sight could perceive them for several breems after he finished. "My blessing was yours the moment you landed on the threshold to ask for it, but go with it now."

"My thanks again," and with that he let himself out of the temple and transformed as he leapt from the balcony, blasting off towards Altihex.

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tbc