A/N: After many, many hours, I've beaten the DLC...and I am dead inside.
What. Was. THAT ENDING?! How am I to sleep after that?! What a gut punch! The DLC also screwed up a few story beats in several of my stories for Elden Ring, while, oddly enough, making some better. Runt of the Litter -Naruto reborn as Godrick- and Forget Me Not -Naruto reborn as Miquella- come to mind. To say nothing of my other stories.
In other news, I have a vehicle again...I just owe a lot of money on said vehicle after the repairs. Now I need the bloody brakes fixed and the AC besides. I can live without the latter, though it'll be hot and uncomfortable. The former...not so much. Truly, the world runs on money these days, and this is what I get for having the same car for so long. Still taking care of my sister until mid-July, so that's eating into my time as well. But once that's done, I'll finally have more time to write...I hope. If not, I just might shatter like the Elden Ring.
As ever, I own no references, quotes, themes or memes. They're tributes to legends far greater than little 'ol me.
I'm just a humble author trying to make his way in this wild world, one word at a time.
Time and feedback will determine if this remains a story. Simple as that.
In other words...its up to YOU, the reader. Do let me know~!
"Be weary not to jilt the kind.
For all their capacity of ephemeral goodness.
When pushed to it, their righteous fury shall boil eternal."
~?
Kindness of Gold
Marika watched her aunt die.
It had not been the first Shamen she had seen subjected to the profane practices of Bonny Village, for the greed of the Hornsent seemed to be never ending. Once resignation turns into learned helplessness, most loose the capacity to weep and hope for things to be better in favour of accepting that the harsh reality of the now could not be changed.
In many respects, perhaps that was why Marika was considered a precocious child, a prankster if you will. She tried to inject happiness into the drab moments and anger into those where her kin would abide to silence. In that way, she seemed to be the only Shamen to still comprehend the full breadth of this indignity, and weep openly when her Aunt was unmade.
They had come for them in the light of dawn, a brace of Hornsent Inquisitors coming for their monthly tribute in flesh. Her people had never done anything to offend the horned abhumans yet according to the Grandmother of her village they had been coming since even when she was a young lass. The only thing that had changed in the epoch since was the frequency of their visit and amount of Shamens that had been packed into carts bound for that blasted hell.
The Hornsent were callously cruel in a way that only those who thought themselves in the right could be, framing their grizzly pastime as a religious experience worthy of song. Her aunt and two dozen other of age women were selected, two dozen more dragged on to watch the profaned sacrament.
Marika had watched her friends and relatives be whipped with a whip of jagged teeth, looking on as their once familiar features grew bloated and corpescent from pus bubbling from under the skin, more meat for the pot as the Potentates had cruelly joked. She had simply stood with her mother and watched.
Watched in mute horror as the Hornsent sliced her aunt up and stuffed her into a jar piece by piece, heard her screams when the flayed flesh of a score of unclean prisoners was sewn into her frame, gargling around septic blood that was no longer her own. The mark branded onto her head supposedly marked them as saints, but to Marika it was nothing but a symbol of their oppression.
Mother tucked her head into her shoulder, even if it earned her a beating from the rowdy Potentate guards. She was attempting to shield Marika from the anguish of the persecuted. But she needn't have worried, the sadness had boiled away long ago and this latest act of barbarism had given Marika's emotions a name.
Hate.
She hated the Hornsent. Wretched creatures that came in the night, abducting her fellow shamans from the village, stuffing them into jars to become "saints" and all the while there was nothing she could do.
She could still hear them, their wretched lamentations. See them when she closed her eyes. Such was what became of the condemned, those who were sliced up and stuffed into jars to become abominations, all because their "masters" wished it so.
"Why do they do this to us, Mother?" She had asked her mother as she brushed her hair one morning.
"Oh, dear sweet child." Mother sighed. Brushing and braiding Marika's hair was a special activity often dolled out when the younger Shamen was upset. "They do it for the same reason that all peoples of these lands go about their lives. From the Giants to the Dragons, they do it because they believe it is right. That they are blessed."
Marika had gnashed her teeth at that, earning a sympathetic pat on the head. Her mother saw that her answer had left her daughter wanting and sighed, making her daughter sit across from her.
Raising her hand above her head, she snapped a branch from a nearby tree and began to sketch a rough drawing in the empty space between them. Marika watched in rapt attention. The first image was of a rhombus with an oval in it, "Divinity comes in many forms, child. The right to do something for which you are connected to, and for every people there is an interpretation. But the Hornsent believe in the Crucible." Marika's mother explained, tapping the depiction of the fabled vessel. "Life produces variety and that variety is boiled within the crucible with myriad others to produce new life, different from that which came before. And we Shamen are… a catalyst."
Marika's golden eyes narrowed.
Drawing the stick up from the crucible pictogram, her mother sketched the rough outline of a figure, arms outstretched. A second figure was drawn behind the first, their arms uplifted to the heavens. "If the crucible is that which brings life together into a new form, then the melding of the material world and the spiritual are the wind of this primordial kiln, becoming a spiral that reaches for the heavens." A spiralling helix was drawn, linking the rebis and the crucible by spiralling tendrils. "As you know, we Shamen are much like the trees we worship. One who can become two and two who can become one."
Marika looked at the image of this double bodied Rebis and how their four arms touched both flows of material and immaterial. Her blood boiled at the implcation. To the Hornsent, her people were little more than the glue by which their confounded crucible could make their foul creations.
What was the point in living if she was earmarked to be nothing more than the product of the hornsent playing a godhood they would never achieve? She'd rather die right there.
But to die would bring the Hornsent joy. Their arrogance and religious further made them delight in the suffering of their lessors, propagating their belief that they were a chosen race and that all other branches of humanity was inferior.
Marika knew what they were though, and she was the only Shamen willing to admit it.
They were a wretched breed to be extinguished and tormented at their leisure. She would not have it. She would never have it!
She was not inferior! She was not condemned! She would not be sliced up and stuffed into a jar like the rest of her family.
She would see them avenged, show them that there was a brighter path. But not for the Hornsent.
She hated them. She knew that the hatred would put her on a path that she could never avoid. Even if she didn't know how that blessed salvation and long overdue vengeance would come/
And then one day the answer came to her. A falling star.
A boy kissed by the sun.
(.0.0.0.)
The Lands Between had always been a beautiful place full of a variety of vistas that were so different from one another that you would be hard pressed to say if they were part of the same world, let alone the same continent. The Eternal Cities of the Hornsent were grandiose in nature despite their morbid building material, but their great size and unique requirements meant that their homes were either grand edifices to their acetic religion or ramshackle huts where their lower castes lived. There was no in between. What this meant was that there were large swaths of untouched natural beauty where a traveller could quite handily seclude themselves.
Marika looked over her shoulder as she rode through the rough forest track on the back of her Spirit Steed. She wore the simple black dress of her people in addition to a matching travelling cloak. The light of the day was fading into early evening which made her spur the horse to up its pace, hoping to reach her destination by nightfall.
As a Shaman, the hum of forest light should have put her at ease but instead she sent furtive looks over her shoulder, ears pricking up on the off chance that there could be those following her.
It had been just like this when she had set out on her journey a week ago. The blonde Shamen had been tending to the plants of her small village when all of a sudden there was a terrific screech in the night sky. Looking up, she had been awestruck as the penumbra of evening was split by an arc of purest gold, a star falling from the sky with a trail of majesty left in its wake.
The world had fallen silent before the horizon exploded with a boom so loud it had seeped into her bones, making the ground shake from even leagues away. But even as the initial shock and excitement of witnessing a fallen star had passed, Marika had been seized by a strange feeling.
There had been a voice on the wind, no, voice was the wrong word. There was no sound but the whistling of the wind. It was something that spoke through the fabric of nature itself like the bleat of a wounded animal. And it called to her.
For reasons she had yet to fathom, Marika had grabbed her favoured spirit mount and ridden out into the wilds, drawn on by the voice that was not a voice.
"What are you trying to say to me?" she asked aloud, the horse hopping over an outcropping of trees before coming up short. Her eyes widened. The meandering path of the forest had been broken by a series of smashed and shattered trees, like something had struck them at awesome speed and, unslowed by their presence, continued to carve a gash through the forest.
She gave a tug on the reigns and rode on, her progress broken for another hour until she reached the end of the carnage. Marika and her mount stood on the edge of a colossal crater, easily a few miles across. But if this was an impact crater then there was something off about it. Despite being fresh, it seemingly already had vegetation clawing its way from the pulverised soil, growing into a small wood at its centre where whatever it was had struck.
The 'voice' was loud here, saturating into every blade of grass like fresh spilled blood. There was a verdantness to this place that was as if life itself was crying out simultaneously in mourning and exaltation and Marika could't explain it. As the sky darkened, she began to pick up a light in the very centre of the forest, a golden glow that grew and dimmed periodically and she knew that this was what she was supposed to find.
With the appropriate coaxing of her steed she soon reached the ground level of the crater and dismissed the horse, causing it to vanish into particles of blue white spirit light. Marika slowly walked through the newly born forest, her eyes locked on the warm gold at its heart. Running a hand over one of the freshly grown trees, that heady mix of life and melancholy reached her, pulling her ever onwards until finally the crater unveiled its secret.
Lying curled up in a ball in the centre of the crater, wreathed in golden flame, was a young man no older than herself. Seeing the flame, Marika baulkeed, initially feeling a wave of revolution. Fire was bad, a taboo amongst the Shamen who worshipped nature. But after a few moments she realised that this fire was nothing to fear… it was like nature itself, and as a child of nature she could not help but want to get closer, a moth drawn to the moon.
The light dimmed to a smoulder and the trancelike affect was broken, letting her see for the first time just what the figure actually looked like. It was a young man her age with spiky gold hair, but what caught her attention was not his looks, it was his condition. His body had been riddled with dozens of ominous black rods.
All of them skewered the curious blonde horribly, rammed through limbs and poking through his torso like a pin cushion. That mysterious golden energy flowed as ichor from each wood, down and out along the rods and into a pool at his feet.
The man twitched, causing Marika to freeze in place for fear of his response. To her surprise, he began to groan and grunt hoarsly, speaking in a voice full of anger and pain.
"...rns….em…rs" he whispered, most of his words rendered unintelligible.
Marika walked closer, trying to hear what he was trying to say.
"...Horned bastards… damn them alll… they killed them all… damn them to hell." he said in his pained sleep.
Was he another who had been persecuted by the Hornsent then? A feeling stirred in Marika's heart then, one she hadn't felt in years. It was difficult to place at first before she realised it was compassion. Here it seemed was another unlucky soul, his brilliance rendered to a pincushion by the ambitions of the horned menaces. With only fleeting trepidation, she climbed into the pool of golden energy and waded towards him.
That, in hindsight, may have been a mistake.
A feeling of pure euphoria enveloped Marika the moment she came in contact with the power, the tangible liquid of its form seeping into her body through her bare feet. It took her a second to overcome the feeling before she could get to the bleeding blond to try and help.
Grabbing one of the black rods, she grimaced at how disgusting they felt, like all that was unjust and malevolent had been condensed down into a physical form. Whoever had done this to this young man, she hated them, for any and all who would persecute those like her. She pulled the first rod clear with a whispered apology, knowing it must have hurt. One by one she pulled out the rods and tossed them aside until finally there were no more to pull.
The pool of golden power at her feet began to bubble the moment the last rod was free. Marika looked down only to let out a yelp of surprise when the power surged up in a small piller, sending her stumbling back to the lip of the 'pool.' Terror gripped her soul when the golden liught began to shift, taking on the shape of a vulpine maw.
A Hornsent Incantation!?
"Leave him be you confounded beast!" Marika raged at the thing, causing it to notice her for the first time.
"Leave."
Marika blanched in surprise, she had seen hornsent incantations like this before but never one that was intelligent enough to speak. "Leave that shamen alone!"
The fox did not respond to the yelled threat and instead maintained an intense stare, one that Marika did not back down from. But curiosity built within her until finally she asked, "What happened to him?"
The spectral head closed its eyes, conveying a great sense of sadness as it looked down at the slowly healing man. "They happened. The pale horned ones. The seduction and the betrayal…"
Marika watched, listening to every word. It was only after getting over her initial shock that she realised that the fox was not speaking the same tongue as her, yet for whatever reason it rang through in meaning even not in nuance.
"...he's… broken… angry….but… still kind…help Naruto-"
The fox was able to utter before flickering out of existence, leaving Marika alone with the now named Naruto.
She stared at him for a long time, not noticing her veins slowly turning gold as the leaking power was drawn into her, energising her in ways she didn't yet know. She knelt and lifted her fellow blonde onto her shoulders and carried him away.
"We'll make them pay for hurting us." Marika resolved to the sleeping Naruto.
In that moment, the helix of heaven had forever been changed, its trajectory on the future shifting.
Gold without order was born from ephemeral beginnings.
A/N: We'll cut it here for today~!
Well? Did you like this story? Yes? No? Maybe? Would you like weekly updates? By all means, speak up! Make yourselves heard! Your voice matters~!
Silence hurts worse than any flame. Looking forward to reading your feedback when I get home from work~ If this chapter gets a ton of feedback-hopefully!-then I'll do my best to ensure another early update again. If not...I don't know. I really don't.
Once more, we're sticking with the "Embers" rule for this story.
If folks don't like this, it won't be continued. Meaning that if the story itself isn't popular? It will remain, but it won't be continued! I'm working two jobs to keep the lights on, as such I barely have time to write; as such, I cannot afford to write something folks don't enjoy. So by all means, speak up! Your voice matters! Make yourself heard! As ever, reviews are the fuel that sustain me. Without them I cannot write a single word. Simple as that.
So in the Immortal Words of Atlas...Review, Wouldst Thou Kindly?
No previews. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
Its going to be...legendary.
