Fantasy Come Winter's Light

[Arynne]

"So...you didn't ever meet the, the patron that Exalted you? Or talk to them at least? I'd have been really confused if mine hadn't spoken to me. Well, more confused. And it sounds like the two vampire-Exalts met with someone too."

 

[Flowing Ink Words]

Meanwhile, In Mizu's Spare Room...


The young Secrets caste is tossing and turning in her bed, anyone close enough to it would likely see the glimmering green of her caste mark through her hair.


Inside of that head, a nightmare is rolling. A war against, or maybe it's with, a lady in red, never-ending, never-ceasing, but never the same. The reasons for it obscured beyond cloaks and shadows of darkest green, the paths to the battles paved in yellow. Places of rest sheathed in silks of blue, and funerals proceding in purple finery away from the battlefields. And then... something happened. A dark something howled, and began to devour the colors, the light, the beings. Sun, Moon, and Stars swallowed by the void.


And Mizu's body just tossed as the dream repeated itself.

 

[Epiphany]

Anne does indeed need Bran's earlier offered backrub. She's tense and distracted, thinking intently about what to do with these weird prisoners. And if Kip was ever going to regain consciousness. Did he need a hospital? If only this had hit her a few years later in her military career, maybe this would all be easier somehow.


And then there's the bigger cosmological issue. "So, Ceila. Isidor. Hychainth. Lucian. Even the Black Jade Emperor. Every religious figure I grew up with is a lie, a truth and probably my enemy. Tall order. I'd pray for comfort but they'd just laugh at me."


Sighing and shaking her head, Anne looks at Bran and says "You made the right choice, you know. Freeing yourself, joining us, being here. Maybe they can offer you a throne but at least our way will help you earn your own, the right way, the way it should be done. And you've got me, Bran. Always me. Just tell me how I can help and I will. I'm supposed to heal the land and set its people free. I'm happy to start with you first."


Once Morena's had a chance to eat, Anne helps the other Zenith settle down to sleep somewhere in the house. She'll even tuck the other woman in with no more touch than a companionable tap of affection.


One by one, Anne checks on everyone and makes sure people are getting a spot to sleep. "Let's get some sleep and meet back up in the morning, okay?" she suggests, one by one (though she leaves the sleeping Sidereal alone. "We still need to decide on what to do about those prisoners."


"And you owe me a story on how you found out Charity's a Sidereal," she says at last to Bran. "Maybe we should pay her a visit. Assuming she knows what you are too."

 

[FeMChara]

He took a breath. "Her name was Sister Aradia. The sister that everyone said got transferred-the one who would drag hellraisers by the ear. She was always pontificating on how the Angels were watching-but. You know. They aren't non-existant. Some are even kind; just... not as we were taught. But from now... we could heal Meruvia and write new stories of the Sun. Restore the old and maybe... maybe raise some new. I should introduce you to my followers, Anne. Infernals are usually taught a few years by someone. I kinda slid for a while with help from my sister. Part of my runaway days were kinda... wierd. Nobody seemed to recognize me and forgot I was even there." He describes the phenomena of the Sidereal's curse.


He smiles at Trina. "Hey, be back in a while? Gonna go look after Anne here."


He hustles Anne upward to a room and gives her a nice backrub, seeking places of tension and working them out. He is utterly gentle and eventually pulls a blanket. "It's a bad idea for me to sleep here-but you sleep well, okay?" He kisses her cheek. "I'll find a way-and I will always be faithful. Always." He promised.


He returned a bit slower, looking thoughtful. "Lightbringer would be a good name for the Conquered Sun." He muses.


Jiji harrumphed. "It does have a ring to it." The old man clasps two sets of strange manacles on the Abyssals. "You. Infernal. Help me bring these pieces of work to the basement."


Bran did so without comment, save a rolling of the eyes. Jiji hit the boy behind the head. "No disrespect in my house, Angel-prince." He grouched.


"Fine." Bran helped drag the two off before returning. "Heavens, the ugly one smells." He noted in disgust.


Kip snores from the couch-apparently something that Amne would recognize from the past.

 

[Mei]

Morena just lays in the bed that she was offered for the night. The whole Anne thing was all a blur as Morena pretty much passes out the moment she hits the mattress. But even in her exhausted state, she gives off a glow... An actual glow. Her bite-wounds start to knit at astonishing speed.


[dice]1068[/dice]

 

[FeMChara]

Morena's neck would be healed by morning... but dreams she would have of a bronze-skinned youth with golden hair. He wears... surprisingly ordinary clothes, if out of date by a few decades and a circlet of what appears to be gold. He smiles at her, a bit sheepish. "I'm glad to have chosen you. You've fought so well." He tells her.


Yet... somehow in the dream, in the way dreams things are just known, it's clear that he is the sun. "When I was young, I was The Unconquered Sun."


He looks off into the distance. "How beautiful still my Creation is. Even through these bars of fire."


If she looks the direction he does, creation sits off in the distance.


He sighs. "But you won't be able to physically reach to these bars. You would die if you came to this place, even with the finest of artefacts. War is coming. Many wars. Many places will find people displaced, secrets kept and unearthed... loves united and parted. It's already begun. The prisons of the Maidens are not so absolute as mine. Or as the usurpers thought. One seal breaks... and the others will crack. They are connected. The ones raised in shadows didn't understand it. They couldn't, even the two who called each other brother and sister. They cannot possibly understand-but your Twilight companions will, with help. I can only help with what is already upon Creation... except for this. I was waiting for this day-for this night's end-for a very long time. Your circle is the dawn we have all been waiting for for a very long time-if you make it. I have one more gift for you-in time, it will reach the fullness of its power. When everything looks its darkest... you will be the corona that lights the way. Your new friends can choose it. This light, this hope."


He turns, easing off his crown. "Each of you will be getting a special gift for the times ahead-each of you chosen by me." He holds out his crown-at the center of it was a solid disk of that same almost-gold, with a core and ring of silver, true gold rays, half of the disk a rose-colored gold. "I am the past... but you and yours will be the future. It is my gift to you: this choice. Will you embrace it and save this world? Will you put it out of its misery? Or something else? It is your world, the world of humanity's to mould. It's in your collective hands-none other. I will not abandon you-but I can only manage these parting gifts. This will help you in your hour of need, the darkest hour of winter."


He places the crown on her head and bows to her. "Sleep-and wake healed."


The circlet feels warm and alive, as if the solidified light of the sun sat on her head... and yet when she awoke, it would not be a crown-but a necklace of orichalcum.


Hers would not be the only gift that night.

 

[Esbilon]

Sophia is used to long days and longer nights, but this particular set has on one hand taken more out of her than any other, and on the other given her far more energy to face the world than ever before. Her life is not the same as it was, she reflects as she retires to the room she has secured for herself in the large house, yet she is still herself, only better. She can do much more, she can achieve much more, she smiles to herself as she lays down beneath her borrowed covers, she will achieve much more.


As she drifts off to sleep, futuristic vistas fill her mind; gleaming cities of boundless productivity and learning, halls of knowledge and beauty. People across the world free from suffering and want. She'll make it happen, no a voice speaks to her just as she crosses the threshold and goes into true dreaming, we will make it happen.

 

[Arynne]

It's been a long day.


It's been a very long day.


How can so much have happened in so little time?


Trina wants very badly to go back to the cool stillness of her apartment and lie down. It's why she has an apartment, after all, instead of renting a room in someone's house. It leaves her living on cups of noodles and wearing threadbare clothes, but she desperately needs the space and quiet. More now than ever.


In her soft-spoken way, she says her goodnight and walks to the bus stop.

 

[FeMChara]

The night is cooler than the day and the bus is pretty sparse, one lady with hot-pink hair only to liven it up, humming to herself. She grins at Trina before she gets off. "Have a safe night, toots."


...was that pointed ears tucked into her hair?


In any case, the apartment she comes home to is untouched. It's still and silent.


And in her dreams, she sees a paintbrush with silver threads. No pot needed. There's a set of colours, each with the handle of the colour it paints with-but no pots of ink. In her dreams, she paints the most incredible places... and steps in.


She dreams of placing them into a brick whenever she was done working, walking outside with the beautiful one, veiled in public. The building has a façade that is familiar and yet not... the books she had read would tell her the tale-and address-that she would need.


Such simple toys... weren't they?


Sophia's dreams show her with an assistant, bearing an orb, a second with a staff. She sees the orb being cast into a statue, though the staff... that one's fate she does not see.


It's a famous statue, one nobody would ever think of destroying-which was the point. The orb would be safe.

 

[Arynne]

Trina wakes up with a start, not sure where she is.


After a moment, recognition returns...then unhappiness. It was only a dream.


Was all of it only a dream?

 

[FeMChara]

The night holds no answers-but perhaps the internet would.


The clock read fairly early, but perhaps a few coffee shops and internet cafes were open.

 

[Mei]

Morena wakes up, eyes blinking open as she tries to sit up. She rubbed her neck to find her bite wound all gone and... A necklace that wasn't there before. Morena inspects it as her dream comes back to her. The Sun spoke to her again. Her brows furrow and she gets up, heading to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her... Oh, wait, she forgot to bring a toothbrush.


The Zenith just makes her way to the living room with a sigh. And waits for everyone else that stayed at the old man's place to get up. She needs to tell them her dream.

 

[Arynne]

Trina digs out her battered, cracked, five-year-old laptop and heads for Dharma Coffeehouse. They have free wireless, she remembers. Necessary, with so many students. And they open early.

 

[FeMChara]

Bran is still there, in his suit, sitting and sitting... feet under him, hands on his knees. He looks... not at peace, but definitely focused. He opens his eyes. "Good morning." He greets Morena. "Jiji has manacles of night. Nasty things-they sap essence, making it perfect for the awakened like us. Neat necklace. Looks real familiar." He comments. "Where did it come from? It's radiating essence like it was alive." He is staring a bit.


=======================> The Tower


The search takes a good while, but 'Shining Star Mausoleum' pops up finally. It talks about how it was once one of the most impressive works in architecture for its day but nowadays, it's guarded by the outer shell, which an angel of the Black King Emperor who'd loved the maker so much that her mourning had raised it in a single day after he died. There was no known entrances, save for a sealed arch, which stated 'Only that which carries the soul of Five Moons may enter here'.


...well, that's convenient!

 

[Arynne]

Not for the first time, Trina muses on the complex nature of the soul she now possesses. Human beings have two souls, one bright and one dark. This is well known, and the subject of many sermons and works of art exhorting the believer to uplift her "bright self" and not be led into sin by her "dark self".


She still has the souls she was born with...does she now have a third? Does her Exaltation truly constitute a soul in its own right, or only a power battery with memories?


What will happen if she approaches that archway?


Trina clicks through the 'net some more, looking for information on the mausoleum's location.

 

[FeMChara]

It's on the outskirts of town, near the wildlife preserve. It's being swallowed by suburbs, so it's not as in the country as it once was, showing pictures of the changes in the neighborhoods, some paintings. A number of artists painted it, creating stories of the enduring romance that had lived within the halls, some pondering if the angel had stayed to watch for it.


Something whispered to ask Bran or Jiji about the soul.

 

[Arynne]

Trina chews her pencil. She does this a lot -- so much, in fact, that Leah used to get her peppermint-flavored pencil toppers...


She could go back to the house and satisfy her curiosity on the nature of Exaltation. She could take a bus or taxi to Spider Creek Park and walk to the monument. But...she looks at the clock...she cannot bear the thought of being late to this meeting by even a single heartbeat.

 

[FeMChara]

Professor O

left

Are you ready, Catty dear?

Well, that's promising timing.

 

[Arynne]

Trina finds her fingers shaking a little.

Professor O

left

Are you ready, Catty dear?

right

Yes, Professor. Ready and waiting.

right

That's not a way of saying you're late. Just saying I'm here.

right

Sorry. No pressure! :sweat:

 

[Mei]

Morena looks over to Bran and smiles. "A gift from the Sun himself, it seems. Or if my dream is to be believed."


She leans back in the couch, sighing. "It was a weird dream."

 

[FeMChara]

He got up and stretched. He took a look. "Interesting. All the symbols in one..." he paced around her. "The bearer is the sovereign of Yu-Shan, huh? Well. Looks like Sol Ignis gave you quite the gift." He notes. "It glows with essense like it's alive." He sounds quite impressed.

 

[Mei]

"I'm the what?" Morena's brow furrows. "Well, it was his crown, so that makes sense..."


The tall woman shakes her head and gets up, grabbing her jacket. "Gather up everyone while I'm gone. We all need to talk. And I need to go out for a walk and clear my head."

 

[FeMChara]

He went and tried to wake up everyone not a Sidereal, rationalizing that they wake up when they need to be awake and no sooner.

 

[Mei]

Morena steps outside. Last night while driving, she saw a park. So she heads there to get some alone time.

 

[Flowing Ink Words]

Mizu is downstairs, making coffee already, before Bran is finished waking the others. She looks like she didn't sleep well, but has her hair pulled back into a ponytail as she sits down and frowns a little, pawing at her face as she sighs. "That felt like a day of sparing with Old Man... and I was asleep. Joy." She grumbles lightly.