Stars and Scars in the Dark

I watched from the withered wicker of the rocking chair as the drone arrived, delivered its bearing, and retreated into the space beyond the clouds from whence it came. It took me some time to even consider it, the package in question, as I consciously avoided scattered memories from this exact space, as I did frequently with task after task or a sedating mixture of tea leaves. Though in all the instances before, in which I drank my steaming nectar from a fired ceramic mug, I had not yet seen such an occurrence of visitor and courier. We remained there, myself and this delivery, eyeing each other down across a long lonely porch and steamy barrier, for a long while it seemed until I sighed that wall of vapor to ruin and placed its source upon the sturdy table that often bore it as a crown.

It was a light and airy thing, the parcel that awaited my calloused touch. For decades now I had buried my flesh in anything to keep the memories just as unearthed and free of exposure. Countless times had my palms and fingers been stubbed, poked, and slashed, resulting in the now coarse pads that held the starchy parchment.

The letter itself was written with a bizarre starlight-like ink that would glow and shift across the page as I moved it. It was tantalizing and alluring, clearly inscribed with magic, I couldn't even begin to tell you how it worked, but it was beautiful all the same. The message upon it, however, was just as striking, but much more upsetting in its impact.

"Greetings, Rhyonian,

I, Poluskan Gemjaw, Chief Zardon Charter of the Eldritch Observatory, humbly write you this letter in hopes that it finds you well! It is my great honor to inform you of your imperative role in an upcoming expedition for the Eldritch Observatory and the Citadel of the Arcane. It has been divined that, yourself, and four other Champions, are descendent from an ancient Rhyonian people who’ve vanished from the face of Rhyonis around the time of the legendary Quelling of the Fire Worn Spires. There has been narry a trace of these ancient people, known as the Zardoniclasts, apart from three lighthouses we’ve discovered to be referred to as “The Beacons”.

We implore you for your presence at the Eldritch Observatory by the 80th of Winter, 7548, as we believe you and these Descendent Champions are the key to accessing the impassable Beacons! This is a thrilling and daring adventure that could lead to one of the greatest discoveries and solutions to a long standing Rhyonian mystery! Please, it would be a great honor to meet you and your fellow descendants and to work alongside you in this matter. If we do not recieve a written or magical response within the week, we’ll be sending an in person envoy to your closest and most recently scryed upon location. Thank you in advance for your cooperation regarding this endeavor and, with the utmost sincerity, we hope to hear from you soon.

Till then, in a cold and dark world, we are each other’s warmth and light! Sincerely, your humble servant now, and hopeful companion in the near future,

-Poluskan Gemjaw, Chief Zardon Charter of the Eldritch Observatory "

It, the letter, sat there, in the otherwise empty box, and in my mind for some time before I stomached the nerve to remove it from its static spot in both. The chill of the cool night air struck me before the actual fading of the light did. That strange sensation of Rhyonis passing from Dawn's to Dusk's hands always had a striking way of so seamlessly passing; the simplicity and smoothness of anything in this life seemed so implausible, yet this same occurrence happened every day before and after my life began, and would continue to do so long after my time has ended.

A heavy sigh rattled within my lungs before finally escaping as a thin cloud into the air of a late autumnal evening. I chanced a glance through the dusty pane of the window that once framed the breakfast nook that was the domain of my love. What used to be a warm space full of love, the colors of her paintings, the smell of her cooking, the taste of her lips in the morning, now adorned nothing but dusty memories and a matching sparring dummy. The latter often caught my rage when those memories would find themselves exhumed to the surface of my thought, but this time, as I looked upon the long-forgotten armor, over the mannequin's shoulders, I knew it was my turn to don it once again.

I'm getting too old for this shit. . . That damn Phantom was supposed to ensure no one would find me. I thought, pondering those scattered fragments that seemed more like dream than memory. The recollection sent a chill down my spine and I could swear I felt her eyes on my shoulders once again, as I always had when my mind conjured her to its forefront. "What was any of this for if you didn't hold your end of the bargain?! I've done all you've asked and wrenched my heart asunder in the process! I just want to be left alone in my misery, you phantasmal bitch! Dammit!"

The tears met no dam this time. There was nothing except agony as I fell to my knees and screamed at the taunting stars, watching me like a heckling crowd of millions. They were alone in their gaze upon me in my broken state, for which I was grateful; the city of Valedaryn had played my home for some time and I didn't need any part of it thinking less of me than I did at that moment.

By some volition other than my own, the battered bones within my body supported its own begrudging weight and carried it around the porch. Away from the dummy in the window, away from the letter in the box, away from those memories, and towards different, just as painful ones. Just behind the shed of the vegetable garden I tended for my own kitchen, where I had once abandoned a forgotten past life, a near-silent shifting caught my ear. There, within the shadows of the toolhouse, I could sense something lingering.

I made the choice to play it coy, casually tending to my business whilst ignoring the looming sensation of being watched. Fervently troweling away the earth with my bare hands, dirt and root pulled away from the casket that contained the corpse of my former self.

"Ahh, there you! Hello, you bloody bastard. It's time." My hands were trembling, for exactly what, I couldn't tell you as there were so many emotions coursing through my entire body into them. The physical chill of freezing muck, the mental tension of knowing there was something unknown just on my flank, the existential turmoil of clutching the mud-caked oil cloth I swore these hands would never touch again.

Then, within those damned shadows, a twig began to crack beneath the step of my careless voyeur. With a well-practiced spin on my heel, it seemed these old bones still had some muscle memory wrapped around their bitter selves, I uncoiled the bound wrapping from my quarry. In its movement, the cloth fell away to reveal a beautiful, intricately engraved, gleaming sky-metal warhammer; its shaft broken in place during my service to a different cause in a different life.

"Tell me you the fuck you are, NOW! I am in no mood for more unwanted arrivals!"

All at once, the world flipped upside down, turned around, and was pulled inside out. A skull-splitting noise screeched out from seemingly every direction and forced me flat on my back, reeling in pain. There was an endless reverberation, like a ringing in my ear, that continuously grew until it reached a climax where it seemed to divide infinitely and harmonize, flare, and dissolve. Had the intensity of volume and magnitude not been so extreme to make me violently ill, it would have been an almost beautiful sound.

"You're lucky you're a Miracle, boy." It was a gruff, raspy voice, full of more contempt than even my own. There was a heaviness to, and power behind, it that demanded silence, attention, and respect. I was still deafened by the alien noise that had me scrambling to see straight, let alone move. "The Architect and another have plans for you yet. Now, get up, in order to take on what comes next with that damnable letter, you must relive the past you've so desperately tried to kill off."

I felt paralyzed by the pain and fear of whatever was confronting me, and what I had yet to confront myself. With the fading echoes of the note, came the completion of the crack of the twig in the shadows. Faster than the blink of an eye, THAT note and my crash trailed on the heels of my addressor.

He emerged from empty shadow, appearing from it as he stepped, not from within it. At about six and a half feet tall, the apparent elvan man loomed with an exaggerated, fae-like grace; clothing, limbs, and hair elegant curling and drifting away from his lithe body. Though he spoke not another word, his face shrouded in stark black leathers that seemed to devour the light that caressed it, those silver-specked jade green irises shouted symphonies in their silence.

In a soundless flash of morning light, he produced two daggers that resonated, like tuning forks, producing a visible vibration into reality around them. Each was nearly identical to the other in shape and design, but where one dagger was shining like a hilted nova, warm and light, its companion was pale blue, like bound starlight, cool and dark. Though they didn’t come within a foot of my flesh, as this mysterious assailant held them between us, their faint vibrations knicked the skin beneath my damp, stubbled chin.

Through quivering lips and faltering words, I stammered my less-than-stoic response, like the frightened child I was before this person of such intense power. "Wh-who a-are you?" With each syllable, the blades vibrated faster to a breakneck fever pitch, as if responding to my voice, until their resonance overtook me. My body fell back, casting my mind skyward in a sort of agonizing transcendence. The pain was unfathomable, wrenching me from myself to a timeless, colorless space, to observe alongside the man from the shadows.

"It matters not who I am, simply that I am. Nor does it matter whom you believe yourself to be, or have been, but within the falsehood of those beliefs, lies the truth of who you were meant to be; a Miracle." With crossed arms, this stranger began to sit back and, where I expected him to fall, appeared and solidified a simply sitting chair from the shadows. A twin to it sprung up to his left and he gestured to it, his hands now free of those mind-wracking knives.

"Take a seat." His tone was almost friendly. Were it not for the curt abruptness with which he pointed out his suggestion or the piercing way his eyes never left mine, it may have been a peace offering. But as the shadows swirled around the separate seats at my thought to push them further apart, I knew he was truly just an impatient individual. I could respect that.

I acquiesced, settling into the surprisingly supple cushion of shade and, with noticeable intention, slide the seat several feet further away myself. Though his face was primarily covered by his wrappings, I could see the faintest crack of a smile raise his cheek and he slide further away as well.

Now a solid ten feet apart from one another, myself refusing to look in his direction, and his refusal to look in one other than mine, I surveyed our surroundings and found them to be nothing. An endless void of black shadow, cut off from everything. Even emotion and sensation were lost and we just sat. "What is this place?"

Still gazing through me, he parted his lips to speak in a hollow drawl that spilled into the air like water through a broken glass. "A space between Rhyonis and the Grey-Lit Path. You could say this is what is truly hiding within the dark, or you could say this is the dark. Simply put, it's my pathway, but I need you to walk it, as She's requested."

"Alright now, who is She?" I could feel my temper rising, even in this space that culled any feeling from one's self. The way these answers only provided more questions felt like a game and I was not one to be toyed with; life had done enough of that. "Answer plainly or for the love of-,"

As if made of light himself, at a speed that should have been impossible, he dropped my seat back to the black below and held both of his stowed blades to my temples. Our eyes were inches from each others and, in his, I could see everything reflected from within mine.

"You haven't the slightest idea of the powers your fate has fallen into the hands of! Beyond your own, beyond Malirica's, beyond even this mad thing dare I call Her anything more than an abomination! I could erase you from Time entirely, leaving you to this void where you will never fade, trapped in this darkness and that with which you suffocate yourself! Now, remember!"

He screamed, as did I, and plunged the sharpened points of both blades deep into my temples. Words couldn't possibly describe the turmoil that level of excruciating agony caused me, and only the flash flood of memories could compare to it in pain. Instead of blood spilling from the sides of my skull, as he withdrew the radiant stilettos, pulsating with glowing magic I could see through my delirium, were glistening motes.

Muttering through pain and bewilderment, I managed to attempt to say, "What did you do to me?"

He paid little mind now, my eyes were finally free of those cold green stones, as they desperately asked for answers. Through my blurred sight, I could see him arranging the sparks of motes to pull images from them; memories played out as scenes from my vantage, just as I saw dancing in his eyes moments before.

"Hush, please, and rest." His words now were spoken with a calm, soothing tone, working diligently to sort through the pieces of who I had forgotten I was. "I'm sorry, Martus, for more than you'd be able to comprehend in your state, so, for now, simply for my part in it. I set you on your path that has led to the Amethyst Nightmare and the eye of the Observatory. For it is the fate of all Miracles to fall into their role one way or another, by whatever ironic twist of fate Malrica's forced my hand to write. Yours, poor soul, is a particularly cruel one made all that much more twisted by the whim of a mad woman playing at being a goddess."

Consciousness drifted to and from my mind in those moments like the tide of the Continental Sea, but in my delirium, I could sense the sincerity in his words now. This felt raw, honest, like a guard or act had been let down and deep pained regret took its stead. It was a sensation I could relate to all too well.

He kneeled to my level, taking a similar meditative pose I had seen other elvan folk undergo from time to time. What seemed like the first instance in which he closed his eyes, they remained shut for a short while. As he did, the motes drifted to swirl around us, casting glimpses of projected images into the darkness. Whether I would have wanted to or not, I watched my entire life flash before my eyes, while my companion's remained closed. As these smothered recollections bubbled to the surface, conjured from the motes by this chanting, I tried to drown out the scenes that plagued me but everything feel ecstatically numb and I laid into them like a warm blanket.

"You see," he stopped the chanting to address me coolly, cutting away that numbness. "This is you Martus, who you've lived as and have become, but this is not the Time you were born into, though meant to be in. I am the Erlys Yedalyn, the Shadow Singer, Hand of the Time Architect. It isn't for you to understand, but I am the hand of time that guides the Miracles to where they must be along the Fixed Moment Timelines. As this is true for countless other things you will never witness, it is for you too. It's an unpleasant role you play, but you are connected to another who is also tied to the Timeline, but in ways different than yourself.

I dare not speak Her name, lest I draw Her ire, but from the moment I delivered you unto the Time you're meant to walk, by Malirica's design, She's had you front and center of one of Her games, toying with you, driving you to the purpose She now calls you to serve. If you accept, and I know Her word to be binding as it is for all deities, you will finally be free of the torment of haunted memories and nightmares. All you must do is take this shield, step into the shadows, destroy the wyrmling, and you'll be free to find your peace. Please, for your sake, will you do this?"

Reverberating thoughts wracked the inside of my skull like a sledge tearing at the walls of a crumbling foundation. If I were to survive with my sanity in check, my answer was already decided.

"Yes, I'll kill whatever I have to."

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As always, remember, in a cold and dark world, we are each other's warmth and light <3