4 Spring, 1023

Year 1

When he opened his eyes, the child found himself in a strange, unfamiliar street. I say street, but it was more of a cobblestone path built wide enough to let two carriages pass one another on each side. Case in point, an example was being drawn down the street in on the right, ambling along as pedestrians darted out of the way, moving along toward whatever purpose they themselves had waiting for them at the ends of their journey.

I recall, the first thing he noticed was not the quaint houses, the antique clothing that made the style of the town around him, but rather the smell. It was like he was standing in a giant outhouse, the wisps of human rising from the street so thick that he could taste it in the back of my throat. Even as the child looked on, taking in the strange sights and sounds and smells, the world continued around him. Oblivious to his confusion and disgust.

Memories still swirled in the child's head, fading almost as fast as they came. For a moment, he still remembered the steel shaking underneath his feet, still felt his stomach twisting up into his chest as the world fell away from under him. The child's father's words echoed again in his ears, resisting the forgetfulness of morning for longest of all. "I love you," he could still hear, "Don't worry buddy, I got this. Just hang tight, ok?"

He held on those words, long after everything else fell away, the other fears and terrors fading from his mind like a half-remembered dream. Desperately clinging on to the familiar sound even as he found himself in the midst of an unfamiliar world.

The child was lost, and he was afraid. Somewhere in the back of his mind, though where he had learned it, he was no longer able to say confidently, he remembered that lost children needed to find a policeman. He knew that policemen were supposed to help him find his way home, could be trusted. And yet he could not find anyone who matched the image in his head, of an adult in a blue uniform, in this unfamiliar place.

There were, however, men with swords walking down the cobblestones. A police would carry a weapon, he somehow knew, and walk with a confident, measured step. While the uniforms did not match what he knew, what he half, almost remembered, the rest of the details seemed to him to be close enough. And he shot off through the streets toward the figures, dodging the menacing horses and buggies and men that would stand between him and his objective.

As the child approached one of the men, he cried out, "Sir, help. Help me, please? Help?" straining to catch the attention of the man as he walked. He waved, hopefully, as he drew nearer, hopping along. "Please, sir? Over here?"

It took a few moments before the man realize what was happening, frowning down at the child for a moment and glancing away. It wasn't until naught, but five feet separated them that he finally looked back, quirking an eyebrow and, ultimately, taking a deep breath, "Out of the way child, go find your parents before you get yourself in trouble."

The man's voice was deep and hard, rasping in a way that was one part endearing and two parts intimidating, but no anger sounded from the man's throat. Only impatience and a hint of worry. The child spoke up, closing the distance to barely a foot, "Sir! But sir," he began, released as he only then realized that a part of him had been holding its breath, half expecting the words the man spoke to be as strange and unfamiliar as the rest of the world around him. And yet, it was not so, and the sound of a human voice only empowered him, antagonizing him on to figure out where he was. To find out what was happening to him. " Sir, my parents are gone! I cannot find them!"

The man with the sword frowned, looking down at the child as pausing, as curiosity edged on the purpose that had been driving his feet forward for a moment. "What do you mean they are gone? Just run along home then, I'm sure they will find you soon enough."

The child scrunched up his face. Apparently, he was very deep in thought, but the way his eyes searched, back and forth, it became evident that the idea that he was reaching for was out of his grasp. "I... don't live around here," the child paused, "I think." He glanced up at the man's eyes, "I don't know where I am!."

The man bent down, the movement was brisk, impatient, and the metal clothing that he wore jangled against his sword as he moved. He put his hand on the child's shoulder holding the gaze, "Well, that shouldn't be too much of a problem really," his eyes glancing over to the side, half closing and seeming to read some invisible script for a moment. "We just need to pull up your information here and..." The man paused.

Scrunching up his eyes harder, he seemed to narrow his focus, concentrating and tensing his hand around the child's shoulder. The moments stretched on, the child blinking and squirming in confusion, as the strange behavior began to eat away at the edges of the relief of finding someone to help him. Finally, the hand moved, but it did not let him go or relax into the comforting gesture it had felt but a moment ago. Instead, the man's hand squeezed tighter, and, eyes wide with shock, he pulled the child toward him.

"What is your name, urchin?" The man spoke his words as harsh and cold as the pressure of his hand. "Why don't you have a name?" The question started as a mutter, almost as a person talking to themselves, but as the sentence breached his lips, it grew in strength. What started as a statement of wonder and confusion turned on its head and became the command of an authority figure. "Tell me your name."

The child hesitated, his mind striving to remember, catching at the fragments of his own life, his history, but too quickly falling away. Something whispered to him, as if from far away, but before he could catch the words they blew away, seeming like leaves ripping apart from their trees in autumn. "I... don't know," the child muttered, now feeling fear creeping in. It began, too, as a question, a statement of wonder and confusion, but it ended now in a place of fear. A place of terror. With a quiver in his voice, the child once again found the eyes of the man, "I don't know."

The moment gaped in front of them, the two staring at one another dwelling upon the unanswered question in front of them. Their eyes held in a seeming eternity of moments, weighing each other with the problem stretching between them. The man was the first to break the silence, "Follow me, brat. Now."

. . .

The stairs of the administrative building were a long shining marble. The middle of each step sagged, as steps and rain had worn away rivets in the stonework after much use. The child and the man trudged dutifully up toward the building, saying little but frowning deeply.

They twisted through the hallways of the building's interior, walking with purpose against the flow of bodies leaving. The man led the pair into a small room at the end of a far hall, closing the door closed behind them. The child thought of running several times as they walked, but when he weighed the options before him, finding himself suddenly in this strange place with little memory of where he was or where he had been, his instincts told him that there were far worse places he could find himself were he to run away.

Inside the room sat a little man with a beard, hunched over a stack of towering paperwork. There was a long scar down the side of the old man's face, from eye to chin-hair, and despite the age, the old man's skin showed signs of a hard and violent life. It was some time before he looked up, noticing the pair standing in front of him.

The old man's voice was cracked, but firm. It rasped out of his throat in slow waves, "Arnold. my man." The man squinted his eyes and stared closely at the child and the man in front of him. "Well, well. What is it that you've got there, hurm?"

The man, Arnold, spoke quietly now. In stark contrast to how he had belted out his words on the street, now they whispered from his lips as if afraid to wake the piles of pages that lined the desk and the corners of the room, "An urchin I found on the street, Lord Archibold." Arnold bowed reverently.

"Yes, yes," the old man, Archibold spoke. "I can see that, after all. I do have eyes still. Despite what my granddaughters say. But let's see," trailing off, he muttered as though he was talking more for his benefit than any other. "But what makes this one special, hurm? There are urchins out on the streets aplenty, after all."

Before Arnold could provide an answer, the old man leaned in. His eyes took on that unfocused glare as if he was looking past the child's face rather than at it and soon alighted with quiet understanding. "Oh, I see, I see! Yes, this child has no name." Blinking, he muttered to himself, "How peculiar. How peculiar, indeed, hurmmm?"

Arnold stood with his back ridged toward the side of the room as if understanding that no response was required from him. And in fact, after several seconds the old man continued, oblivious to the thoughts of the two in front of him. "Let's see, yes? Let's see," he muttered, walking over to a shelf and pulling out a large book. As he paged through it absently, he whispered, "Even if a baby's parents had died before giving it a name, one would have been assigned to it, I think." Flipping quicker, "The world-soul would have corrected the oversight in a matter of days, yes. Not," glancing at the child quickly and looking him up and down thoroughly, "a matter of some decades. No."

The child blinked, confused for a moment. He knew he was not supposed to speak back to adults, but the old man needed some help. "Excuse me, sir," he began. "I'm ten years old," he informed the man with some authority, holding out ten fingers to be sure he was understood.

Lord Archibold and Arnold both opened their mouths for a moment, as if to speak, but then closed them. In Arnold's case, it appeared as though he had thought better in the middle of the intake of breath, whereas Lord Archibold's eyes started to twitch in the middle of forming the words, catching on a page in his book and devouring the words with ever-increasing energy.

Looking up after some increasing few seconds, the old man exclaimed, "Yes, yes, I think I've got it right here." Nodding, "The summoned. Or recycled, as it were." He scanned the pages, "Hurm, yes. The Court of Twilight. Tricky ones, those." Looking at the child intently, as if only then remembering that he was still in the room, "You are most lucky, child. Yes, there are those who would murder you on sight, if you had appeared in their cities. Quite brutal, some of the practices described herein." Flipping a page, "Yes, most uncivilized indeed. But then your lady Goddess never was popular with the Empire."

The child's eyes widened, as he tried to decide if the old man was merely strange, or whether to consider the chance that the old man was, instead, simply batshit insane. Pardon my french. Unable and, in fact, probably too young to leave his questions unvoiced, he spoke quietly up at the old man, "My Lady Goddess? Unpopular? No, I don't think so." He paused, scrunching up his face, "Mommy always said, I think, that God was a boy. And that he didn't much approve of girly things. Well, at least, not when I wanted to do them" Pausing, he squinched harder. "Mommy... Mom. I had a Mom? I think? Why can't I remember her face?"

A glance of pity caught in the old man's eye for a moment, before the next idea seemingly caught his attention. Oblivious, seemingly, to the child's tears he shook his head, "No, no. I suppose you wouldn't remember that. For the best really. No, no, whatever it is that you think you know you should quite certainly forget." Nodding, he bent over the pages of the book, "Yes yes, it shall happen soon enough anyway, I think. But have a care! Do not be spouting madness on the streets or a similar fate may befall you as befell other children of the Dawn."

Lord Archibald waved his hand, drawing up a paper and pressing a stamp upon it with his other. To Arnold he spoke, barely skipping a beat, "Take the child to the Sepulture for the night. Sleeping within its walls should resolve the situation, as well as any lingering soul-sickness. After that, you may collect the child and deliver them to the northeastern orphanage. Of all of the city, the northeastern block will likely be least concerned with asking questions of our little immigrant here, I should think."

Taking the parchment from the old man, Arnold nodded and put his hand once again upon the child's shoulder. He moved to steer the two of them out the door as the old man, seemingly finished, started hobbling back toward the cushion of the chair at the desk. With a certain amount of relief and appreciation, feeling like going to the guard and seeing the old man was a very wise idea indeed, the child shouted as he was turned, "Thank you, Lord Archey!" The words were leaping forth in a child's sing-song, "Thank you lots! I hope you have a great day and stuff!"

Lord Archibald merely let out a huff as they moved to leave the room, and the door was shut behind them.

...

Arnold had delivered him to a stone building, looking very much to the child's mind like what a church should look like, though it didn't quite match the vague, fading memories of the ones he had seen before. The steps and the walls here were made, not from marble as the building had been earlier, but this time from a stable, granite stone. It only now occurred to the child how much these constructions mismatched the wooden houses and long, one-story brick shops that lined the other sides of the streets. These critical facets of the city, buildings of government and prayer, being having seemingly been erected by a different hand or method than the rest of the town.

Inside the building was dark, the torches lining the walls in the sepulture alongside the church lighting their way but also serving as a stark contrast to the long windows of the administrative building, or the slowly lowering sun outside. The hallways never seemed to end, there in the darkened structure, flickering on and on in the dim light of the flames. After some five long minutes, Arnold turned the child to the right, entering a small room upon which rested a thin slab of stone covered with a generous helping of straw.

There lay a bucket and a jug alongside the stone, which Arnold pointed to as he directed the child inside. "Safer to be in here a bit early than roaming the streets outside," the guard stated with some authority. "Just try to get some sleep. Use the bucket if you feel the need and there should be some water there that is safe enough to drink. I'll be along in the morning to collect you."

There was a smell now, that was beginning to register against the child's overstimulated nostrils. Not of human waste now, but somehow it felt worse. The building smelled strongly of mold and rot, and the odor crawled its way down his throat and, seemingly, into his very soul. "You're going to leave me? Here?" the voice came out incredulous, quivering.

Arnold reached into his belt and pulled out a tuft of unleavened bread, tossing it into the straw of the makeshift bed. "What? It's safe enough, I assure you. None would dare assault a resident of these halls. And as creepy as it may seem, I assure you, there is no better place for one to come to realign with the Dreaming."

The child frowned, reaching out unmollified, "Please, sir. You can't just leave me here!"

Arnold quietly moved to shut the door. Just before the edges clasped closed, he said in a softer, more compassionate voice, "Relax, girl. I'll be along first thing in the morning."

The child heard a wooden latch slamming shut on the far side of the door before he found the will to close his gaping jaw.

. . .

Chapter 1:  Epilogue

The child rolled around in the needle-sharp straw, trapped and scared. He strove toward sleep, but sleep itself was a long time in coming as the straw and the stone poked and prodded underneath his body. Come through, it did, and eventually, he found himself drifting off into a disturbed slumber.

At first, in his dream, he heard screaming. He felt the steel of the airplane shaking and striving against the wind underneath him. There were echoing bangs sounding and echoing through the small interior of the plane. Boom. Boom. BOOM. And even his young mind recognized the sounds of gunshots as he huddled in his seat. Every time a low, masculine voice echoed through the chamber following the shots, he relaxed just a hair. For the resonating sound reverberated through his heart, familiar and comforting music that was the voice of his father.

Eventually, however, the nightmares faded away, and he found his dreaming self somewhere else entirely. Somewhere quiet. There were green rolling hills around him, tall, healthy trees climbing up to the amber hue in the sky of an exquisite, late sunset. For some minutes, he merely took in breaths, sucking in the fresh air of his dream and allowing his heartbeat to slow.

Eventually, he became aware, as one tends to do in dreams, that he was not standing there alone. Off behind him, over his right shoulder, there towered a tall, snow-white horse. No, a unicorn. The beast staring ahead at the beauty of the setting sun just as he was but moments ago. The two quietly stood there together and watched the world around for a time that seemed to stretch on without end, before finally, the unicorn itself broke the evening's silence. "So, child. You have questions," the unicorn's voice was lower still than that of most men, rumbling deeply inside of the beast's chest and cutting through the stillness. "We may not be able to see each other again for some time, milady. So I would suggest that you ask them now."

The child glanced up at the unicorn, mind awash with wonder and yet, still, running faster than his mouth could match. After a long pause to collect himself, the child finally said, "Who are you?" eyes wide and face aglow in the orange-lit rays of the evening. 

The beast nodded, looking down at him. "I have been called many things, child. But you have already given me a name. As we were running through the breach between worlds, between your old world and your new, it was I who carried you. And in that time, though you surely will not remember it, you did name me 'Toby.'"

The child frowned, thinking. "I don't remember. Really." He paused, "Toby?"

The unicorn, Toby, nodded. "The name seemed dear to you, I think. And as such, with this rebirth as your partner, I shall wear it with pride. From the moment you gave it to me until the day that you die a final death."

The child quaked at Toby's words, looking up, "Until I die? But I already did, I think?" He breathed, "But I don't remember."

"My lady has many tasks, it is true. Some are benevolent, and some may be somewhat ruthless, it is also true. But one of those tasks, the greatest, is the salvation and protection of innocent souls." The beast's deep voice echoed through the child's body, each word resonating his toes and his teeth, "Even across worlds; it is sometimes possible for the Lady of Dawn and Dusk to reach out. To pull the doomed and the dying to safety."

Toby looked down at the child with compassion, his eyes wide and gleaming a pure, unguarded tenderness, "You, child of a hero, innocent and doomed, yet with a thread of destiny strong enough to one day bind together worlds themselves. Your senseless doom did not go unnoticed by my lady. And she reached out with her power, small as it is across worlds and time, to awaken a bit of your dormant potential."

The unicorn's horn began to glow as he spoke, pulsing with the words and the emotions that smoked across the surface of his equine expression, "It was enough to make a hole, a tear, and it was by that that I was able to cross into your world for but a moment. To take your soul upon my back and carry you across the void itself."

The child looked up, eyes wide as he absorbed the words of the creature. "My soul? So what does that make me? Am I dead?"

The beast, Toby, shook his head, "The stuff of that world was base, unyielding. It was firm an hard. Whereas the world, the universe, I suppose I should say, in which I live... the world in which we now live..." the beast corrected himself, "well, it is not built of nearly so base of stuff. We are... closer to energy," the beast said, even as the child felt some small, unfamiliar hand rifling through his own thoughts, through the words in his mind, looking for a phrase. "This is not a world of matter and immutable law, but rather, of energy. Much like the astral realms that your people were tapping into when you created your... computers. And your internet."

The words were familiar to the child, though the images and the memories that were associated with them were even then fading out of his reach. Toby continued, "This world is one of far more potential, and likewise of danger, than the one that I think you have been used to. But your destiny is strong. The Lady had told me as such herself when she had sent me to you. And if you choose I expect you may rise above all who would stand in front of you."

The child nodded, his mind too muddled now to even alight upon another question to ask. He finally settled on the one that echoed the loudest in his young soul, "But I'm so lost out there. What should I do now? Where is my family?"

The unicorn bent his neck, his eyes darkening and sad. "Your family is gone, I'm afraid. Left worlds behind, across a void that I no longer possess the power to cross. All that is left is for you to choose."

The child looked up, "But you came and got me before. I'm alone now, I'm afraid! What am I supposed to choose? I choose my family!" His little voice was quivering, but still defiant with all the authority that a ten-year-old can muster.

Rather than answering, the beast looked out across the hills. And where before there stood only trees and sunset stood three figures before them. There was some distance between the people and the child with his unicorn, but even as he looked into the distance itself seemed to shorten. The figures became larger and larger in front of him without taking a single step until they towered over the pair by several feet.

They were female. Each had a small set of stubby horns on their forehead like the dormant nubs of a doe, and each had long, pointy ears jutting from the sides of their heads. The faces were all the same, but beautiful still in a way that no human face could match. Of the three, one had significant, protruding forearms, broad shoulders, and looked as though she could stop a speeding bus with nothing but the flat of her hand. The power in her limbs was telling and profound, and her eyes shone with the kind of natural confidence of one who knows there will never be a sole in the world who could overpower her.

The child looked over to the second. This one had deep, knowing eyes and a weary, almost sad smile. It was almost as though she were forced to sit in quiet amusement as the world itself blundered on around her. Across her hands, and around her face, however, tiny almost imperceptible lights danced, as though glitter, made of pure, undiluted energy was sparking off her skin itself.

The third figure, however, was somehow more beautiful still than the other two. Her face was soft and kind, and something about her posture made the child want to jump into her arms and cuddle there until the sun itself was no more. The woman, the elf, danced back and forth as she stood, an almost imperceptible movement, and yet more graceful even than the Olympians he had watched in the world of his birth. The balls of her feet pivoted and glided across the earth beneath her as she merely shifted her weight. Each moment was tiny, minuscule, and yet the woman's posture coiled as if she were ready to dance away with her next breath into the setting of the sun behind her.

Unthinking, unhesitantly, the child reached out to that third figure, moving his hand in a sudden need to touch the woman's dress, to ensure that she was real. But before he connected all three figures disappeared into the twilight air, fading from the world as if they had never existed. The unicorn's voice broke that empty stillness as they had faded, proclaiming quietly, "And, again, you have chosen. As you did once before in the void between worlds."

There was another voice now echoing through the child's thoughts, and the world began to fall away, fading even still like the woman had just before faded away, leaving him alone in an unending void of darkest black. Toby's kind eyes watched him until the very last moment, a comforting and yet forlorn expression on his face until he too was gone from the empty world of darkness.

Another voice, a woman's voice echoed then in the darkest threads of black, and as she spoke the child was bathed in the most profound shades of twilight. Rays of yellow and orange light cutting through the darkness around him. From nowhere and everywhere the child distinctly heard, "My child, I am with you. Know that you have chosen well. Beloved daughter, I name you Aziza of Twilight, for even as I stole you from the doomed world before, so now I adopt you as my own in this place. 

"I am so, so sorry for your loss. I am sorry for the pain in front of you. But always know that I am with you, watching over you. I wish I could spare you from the pain that is to come, but I fear that I cannot. For the beauty of innocence lies not in its incorruptibility, but rather in its maturation. Like the dusk and the dawn of my namesake, all things must have their beginning as well as their end. Know, instead, that I am watching over you. And fear not the abyss for, the blood of my blood, I shall always be with you."

Shapes and images then sparked in the child's mind, until they began to mesh together. His struggling, mortal mind peacing meaning together from the strange energies that swirled around him. He couldn't say if they were seen or if they were heard, exactly, but words began to mesh together in front of him as he drifted back into the empty void of silence.

Primary attributes have been chosen: Dexterity and Charisma. Allocation and distribution locked until Aziza Awakens to the first Circle. All allocation to primary attributes increased by 200%.

Template Added:  Daughter of Twilight

The Goddess of Dawn and Dusk has personally adopted you as her child and imbued you with a fraction of her power. Spells and abilities may now be unlocked from the following restricted category: Divine. Such gifts will still be primarily dependant on meeting the applicable prerequisite circles and accomplishments.

Aziza has previously met the prerequisites for the following abilities:

Child of Dawn

Prerequisite: Daughter of Twilight template; Primary attribute Charisma 

Mana points and regeneration will now be generated based upon Charisma rather than Intelligence. Note: Arcane powers and ability unlocks are unaffected and still require intelligence thresholds having been met.

Divine Gift

Prerequisite:  Daughter of Twilight template

Access to divine spells aligned to the Court of Twilight. Primary attribute for all Court of Twilight casting is: Charisma. Current spells available are: none. 

Nephalim

Prerequisite:  Not born to a mortal race; physical body generated from a divine agent ranked at: Demigod or above.

Penalty to attribute increases has been removed. Nephalim's patron may now intervene on their behalf on a limited basis. Spellpower increased. Lifeforce increased exponentially.  Psionic resistance increased 50%. 

Virginal Knight

Prerequisite:  Female; knight has not given birth to a child; knight has given a name to fey creature: unicorn

Familiar added: Unicorn (Toby)  

Elf Wildling

Racial: Member of Elf Wildling race

Lifespan:  Unlimited. Fertility: Low. Increased Dexterity +10. Increased Mana +50. Psionic resistance increased 35%. Error: Psyonic resistance may not be increased beyond 100%. 

Alien

Achievement:  1+ years spent in extra-dimensional space

Skills and knowledge adapted and adjusted to intra-planar varients. Memories from extra-dimensional sources are locked: level 3 restriction. 

Abilities added. 

Error, access to meta-data restricted to first circle awakening. Aziza meta-data may not be viewed at this time.

View access denied.  

. . . 

As the child, Aziza awoke to the stone room and the cold straw, he rose quickly to relieve himself and drink from the vase. This time, the dream did not fade from his mind but stayed with him as he went to pull the drawstring of his burlap pants. 

Burlap? He considered, something about the material did not seem right to him, but the details seemed to flee from his thoughts even as he strove to remember what material it was that his pants should in fact be. It was this confusion, in fact, that distracted him as he finished pulling the string and went to raise the bucket up to his hips. He was so distracted, in fact, that he failed for a moment to see that all was not as he had expected it to be.

He... no, it was beyond clear now just how wrong that descriptor was. Instead, 'she' rather, moved the bucket to the floor and quickly squatted over it. Desperate she was to relieve the pressure even now tearing at the walls of her blatter. Her mind fogged with the edges of sleep, she felt the water pour out of her - dazed but intent on the task.

Once she had finished, noting that the smell of the sewer had already started to crawl into the room, so familiar from that of the streets of the town, she pulled up and re-tied her trousers. Her mind was unwilling to try and correlate what she had seen to what she had expected to find beneath the cloth. Instead, she bent over the jug and started to raise it to her lips, intent on the cooling relief of the waters.

What she found when she looked into the torchlit reflection of the water gave her pause, however. For in the glittering surface of the liquid she saw a pretty, much younger version of a familiar face staring back at her. And in spite of herself, rather than drink, she instead reached her hand up to her forehead, grasping at the tiny stubs of doe horns protruding from the skull.

The woman she had seen in her dream - of the three images, the woman she had chosen... It was now quite clear to her that the woman was, in actuality, nothing more than an older version of herself.