[https://64.media.tumblr.com/1754f0dd75f5d8628aedeff54a5f20d7/85e0a7c7020ea4f7-89/s1280x1920/4d0a2567dadcef72d796e62e59644f9f4da22c5b.jpg]
(Artwork: "King Gesar", Nicholas Roerich, 1941)
When the world was young, Quasicrimson took it upon himself to be the “Shaker of Worlds”. Aside from being a general nuisance in the heavens, Quasicrimson would periodically descend to the world and shake things up when they got too stale. He was forgotten to all except Sakura, the King of the Gods, and a few mystery cults hidden in the mountains of the world.
Now, Quasicrimson decided it was time to act. The world had grown quite stale indeed; a serpentine empire spanned its surface, regimented in every facet of life and soulless in its dogma. What was once filled with the free trade of ideas and goods now ground to a lifeless, monotonous halt. And as was below, so was above.
At the empire’s head were a grand emperor and empress, both experiencing fertility issues. Once they expected their firstborn, Quasicrimson decided to act. As was tradition, they called in a midwife to aid the process, once with a talent for the earthly magics and sciences. When the baby was born, Quasicrimson swooped in and removed the girl from the midwife’s arms.
The royals were appalled to find their child missing, and had the midwife interrogated and imprisoned. Halfway across the kingdom, the renegade god placed the infant in a crevice in the ground, snug and safe. The child was found by nomads who wandered these distant steppes. Not being too creative, they named her ‘Foundling’.
Her childhood was spent roaming the frontiers of the kingdom with her adoptive family, riding horses, learning to use every part of a yak, and migrating through miles of mountains and valleys. Occasional fights would emerge with other clans, but their lives were spent for the most part following herds with the change of seasons. Shamanistic rituals and offerings to local spirits were the only breaks they had in their itinerant lives.
Skull cups, daggers, animal blood; flowers, incense, sweet nectars of springtime. The rituals were coarse, but meaningful. They were meant to reflect their world — one of change, uncertainty, and freedom that comes with accepting these facts.
One winter, a caved-in mountain pass forced their clan into unfamiliar territory. It was at this time that guards from the kingdom began patrolling the frontiers, arresting “barbarians” and “practitioners of witchcraft”. The king had a vengeance, and so did his god, say the priests.
When Foundling’s clan was seized, she was away skinning a lamb at a watering hole. She searched for them for days to no avail. Returning once more to the watering hole, the figure of Quasicrimson appeared to her and instructed she head into the woodlands. There, he promised, she would find her family.
After many days of traveling, she arrived at a small village. Taking disguise, she observed civilization for the very first time.
She saw foreign kings act like despots, taxing the people into poverty and vilifying vassals in the process. Old temples and shrines laid in ruins, replaced with an ever- present imperial cult. Servants and serfs were worked to the bone, their bodies left to rot with no ceremony or remembrance. They merely worked day-in and day-out, living like machines, placated with bread and circuses.
And the only force driving their lives was fear: fear of the law, fear of the king.
Elders told her of a time long ago, when there was enough to eat and when the gods were plentiful in number and rewards. They quietly sang tales of great heroes which, if sung too loud, got them jailed.
Foundling assumed a life of banditry, raiding the coffers of the nobles and giving them back to the locals. Welcomed by many and wanted by the law, she wandered from village to village assuming this lifestyle. A band of fellow do-gooding bandits formed around her.
After some time, Foundling and her bandits raided a lord’s castle, doing their usual routine. Much to her surprise, she found her aged adoptive father locked in the dungeon. He told her all about their enslavement, his attempts at freedom, how their numbers had been dwindling for years, and who was behind all this. She weeps as he takes his final breaths.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Rage, seething rage fills her body. She had a vengeance for the man responsible: the emperor.
From the dungeon’s depths, say the poets, she was granted the divine eye of the rogue god. Prosaists say she instead plotted her revenge, sussing information out of those imprisoned.
She liberates what remains of her clansfolk and, having overthrown the local king, installs a people’s rule in its place. A few volunteers from the village emerge, joining their ranks.
Together, their army traveled the four corners of the kingdom, learning the local languages and customs, liberating their minds and traditions. They wandered deep in the forests of the north, through the ruin-speckled deserts of the west, wading across the marshes and jungles of the south, and taming the plains of the center. Soldiers emerged from the lands they entered — some friendly, many foes, all either assimilated or vanquished.
Word spread quickly of her hordes. To some she was the “Madwoman of the Steppes”, to others “the Great Liberator”, and to most “all around just not a nice figure”. She was feared, revered, reviled.
And as below, so above.
Up in the heavens, Sakura’s stronghold grip loosened. Local gods were now regaining powers they once lost. Fights broke out, alliances emerged. The world was once-more breathed into life; volcanoes erupted, the northern lights painted the sky, typhoons wreaked havoc on coastlines.
The Lord of Lords tried stopping Quasicrimson in his tracks, but the efforts were futile. The god now had his own community, and grew stronger with each day. It wasn’t just those below, but now the other gods that chanted his name. Sakura feared for his crown, for the world-order he fashioned.
Down below, the hordes marched ‘tward the Imperial Citadel. They left nothing but smolders in their path, a far cry from the good-hearted redistribution of their earlier days. Rows of horsemen and soldiers sieged the walls of the city and plundered its contents.
Concealed in a secret compartment, the emperor fears for his life. He thinks back on his reign. It all started so well; things were nice and orderly, the people lived content lives. He saw chaos brewing, and tightened his grip. When he lost his wife and child, he was destroyed. Did he take it out on his kingdom?
What ever happened to that child, he wonders? Did the witchy midwife steal it, or was it still alive out there, somewhere?
And now his whole kingdom was collapsing from underneath him. The hordes embodied everything he loathed; rebellion, revolt, chaos, the revival of the old, irrational traditions, and the destruction of the righteous ones.
The door to his cell burst open. Soldiers kidnapped him and dragged him to the throne room, where Foundling stood waiting. He felt there was something... oddly familiar about her.
She didn’t want answers. She didn’t want land or wealth or power. She just wanted him gone.
Something finally clicks in his head. He utters a word, but it comes too late. A slice and a thud can be heard from the room.
Meanwhile, in the courts of heaven, Sakura’s throne is flooded by mobs of rowdy gods. He can’t fight them off. He gets thrown off the throne and tossed to the world below.
Quasicimson emerges from the crowd and holds Sakura’s crown triumphantly. They cheer him on, expecting him to wear it and take on the mantle of Lord of Lords.
Instead, the deity smashes the crown. He cackles and descends into the world. The other gods look at each other, confused.
----------------------------------------
Here lay the remains of her father.
She stood there, shivering. The imprisoned midwife was called, and confirmed it. Even Quasicrimson told her when she asked.
She spent the rest of the afternoon in deep thought. Family. It’s a word most everyone knows.
As she looked back, she noticed it was the one thing she strived to find, strived to rectify. And without knowing it, she destroyed her true family.
An entire world left in smolders, all to destroy her only true parent.
But... were the clansfolk that raised her not her family? They taught her to conquer all terrain, and gave her the skills to survive.
Were the bandits she raided the rich with not her family? They taught her to lead, to learn from the people, and to work for the greater good.
Was Quasicrimson not her family, providing her with strength and guidance every step of the way?
The birds in the trees, the animals who gave the skins she bore, the running streams and mountains and coastlines, the peoples she met and subjugated... were they all not her family?
Had she treated all of them, truly, like family?
It was at this point in time she realized the whole world, in one way or another, was her family.
Now she had it in her hands. Perhaps it was time to treat it like family once and for all.