To the Skies

She had awoken out of the deep sleep, the long sleep, the sleep that heals. She had been dying when they had placed her in the healing chamber and now, she was awake, full of power and life, far stronger than she had ever been. But where were her attendants? Where her royal guard? Her husband? Her children?

She had great difficulty making her way through the debris (Debris!) that littered her path to the outside. When, finally, she had emerged, though she knew it not, it was for the first time in a thousand years. Had she not been in the fullness of her power in the interim, she would have died long since, crushed by the same sands that had buried and reburied all that she had ever known, all that she had ever loved.

Gazing at the remains and realizing her fate, she sank to her knees crying out.

And Old World answered back, through the restless winds and shifting sands, “Welcome back Daughter.”

Caught in her anguish and not hearing, she grieved on.

And thus she was found by a desert raider who sought to make her his own. When he spoke to her she ignored him just as surely as she had ignored the voice of Old World. When he reached out to touch her, he hesitated. Glaring at her sobbing form hunched over before him, he growled and the touch became a grab, ripping her ancient robe away and revealing a wealth of precious metal jewelry draping her body.

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Old World spoke to them both, voicing his displeasure at the raider’s actions and howling with an anger that penetrated even the woman’s shocked condition. Brought back by Old World’s anger that shook the sands to the very bedrock itself, she realized what the desert raider had been about to do. She gestured, making the sign of rolling death at him, and spoke the words to an ancient spell that none alive had ever heard.

The raider screamed in agony, falling down, feeling his bones begin to break, hearing the loud pops as they crumbled. As he lay broken and dying at her feet, he gasped in amazement as she took his prize camel by the reins and whispered in her ear. The camel bellowed in pain and pleasure and the last thing his eyes beheld before he slept the Final sleep, were the wings that erupted from the beast’s shoulders. Glorious, powerful wings!

“I remember the first time I saw her, not long after her arrival on Bridgeworld. She came flying out of the mists of a golden time, a golden era at the dawn of man on her world. Her steed was a gift from the god of Old World, created from a collective magic that had been steeped in the waters of sweet eternity and hung on a spell of infinite intensity.

She was a Bridgewalker like I was. Fancy meeting her at a time like this. Her name was written by the stars themselves. Cassandra, Witch Queen of the Bolshani Dan, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and Empress of Dreams."

Dalton at the Siege of Eagle’s Nest.

“Our Patterns are etched upon the sands,

Erased by wind til Life has fled,

Bedamned to the gods what Fate demands,

To the Skies,” she said.

by Tartan (TLM)

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