The runaway. Out of breath. The oakenstone courtyard around The Spring-Sworn Syrib was loud with human sound. Above the clouds and into sunlight: through triumphal arches won bloody under curled roofs she had great vantage and survey of sun-swept Hadaeon - misty with distance its mountains that had not been hammered into winged towers yet, and the older volcanoes glowing with their last light, pouring their dominated lakes into the wilful moulds of angelic smiths. To cool repurposed.
∞
Wind searched for her - cold on the bald-shaved half of her head - rushed through her four thick locks of hair, for this was Haven-o’er-Hadaeon, the high city well in flight.
∞
You read correctly. Leaving Serib a while it is ‘The Spring-Sworn’ we follow now, whomever that may be. Her name is Syrib and indeed there is little difference between the names Serib and Syrib. Constants the same and variables rearranged.
∞
We know how Serib will reach this place through wood and rune, but how did The Spring-Sworn? How did she get here, to this courtyard of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon?
Let us go back - to explain how one is not like the other.
One night when nights still were, before she and Old Gadail were due to begin the long astral road to Hadaeon from Ehl’yiteth to answer Ithuriya’s horns and bells, Syrib stole a salve from her master, its alchemy of farbark and other materials.
∞
Such mixtures of certain reagents allow a shaman’s spirit to travel far beyond their body, and the line between body and spirit blurs. ‘Allowing the spirit to be as a body, and the body to be as a spirit’ it is said, not without debate.
Serib was drinking something similar in her first chapter, waiting on that steel pier that was once a giant’s spear, by the lake that Haven’s absence made; a Human chasm Nature filled.
∞
Syrib however stole the salve that night, for louder than the ancestral call of shamanism she heard different words upon the wind. A human voice where Nature should be loud. Promises. For just as Serib had, long had Syrib wished darkly that her hand would raise and all of Tragedy would shrink and Evil writhe under her Goodness. And when she wished this first, eyes opened in a distant prison cell. Limbs thought severed by Hunter Lord Ahlzvyr and the other allies of Time began to regrow.
∞
All in one go she had drank the stolen salve undiluted by tea, and separated herself wholly from her body. A cup now and then Gadail would have staggered the tea across their journey long - alas. And her body there lay breathing with life but without spirit, unable to wake and unwilling, and to the winds Old Gada’il cast his difficult courage, his easy despair, and himself set out in search for his apprentice now wayward.
Ancestors had come with concern from their scattered realms, and not few swore to guard her slumbering body in her master’s absence.
And in that absence they debated difficult things fondly as shamans do, ancestors more so - had Old Gadail’s lessons failed? Where many quickly forgot, one remembered:
“No.” And that one to speak was Grog’il The Small, whose pointed ears were big, himself Gadail’s master. “The parents failed these two sisters Shay and Serib, for one followed her fear of the future into Grief and the other did too little until it was too late.”
∞
When Syrib’s spirit ran away from her body - when souls most with mystery she would meet, she took to calling herself The Spring-Sworn - to remain hidden from Gadail whom she knew would try to stop her. For if the human promises on the wind were true, she could return with such power that he no longer needed to be powerful, wisdom would alone be hers, and all others blameless.
And then the name Spring-Sworn befit her more and more, for in her untouchable fantasies when all of Power was hers and she was the shaman strong, Spring would be the only season; where the Winter of her master’s life would to Autumn’s colours recede, and could she perhaps reverse all things? Could her two families become one, her parents and her sister sit by the same hearth her own, finishing stew with Gadail? And if all this for her, why not for all?
∞
And so. Do you know what most she heard upon the wind instead of Gadail’s call, and from that all the rest of her dreams seemed possible? A whisper, a weakness though the bars of a prison cell:
‘Time is dead… and we have killed them. Come, seek The Lightning Crown.’
The words of absolute freedom, if one had bravery enough to seize Timelessness controlled into a new order, and would only Tragedy under the heel be bruised and not the heel itself internecine?
∞
Just as Truthdom has its pillars of Justice, Courage, Moderation and Wisdom - named Earth, Fire, Water and Wind by some - The Spring-Sworn saw a different reality around her, a future already true where there would be no Death Indifferent and Life Proliferate; not with Evil conquered and Tragedy erased. With these four dismantled or rearranged, all else of their spawn would fall.
She heard rumour that The Grand Scarab - emblem of Life and Death - had by assassination or invasion fallen.
So the first had been topped by others of similar mind, why not the rest?
And Entropy, 'whose might with Time is alway’, would at last be no more. Or so it felt to Syrib hearing of ‘The Lightning Crown’ - lightning that force of Nature to which Humanity most responds with attention and respect. What higher ground or dwelling-under is shelter enough when wrath makes such sounds? A crown of such a force would be the crown of all.
Despite Gadail’s teachings, still Syrib and Serib carried that fear in their one heart, their mother’s fear, leaving them susceptible to that whisper a weakness though the bars of a prison cell as has been said:
‘Time is dead… and we have killed them. Come, seek The Lightning Crown.’
∞
When first she heard this voice of freedom on the winds, she asked her master Gadail The Windlord what he knew of such a crown. He told to her no lies, that his youth too had been a quest to find it. Crownless he ended his quest, having in his words ‘regained far more’.
He asked where she had heard of The Lightning Crown, and she recited what the ill winds had bid her. To hear from Syrib the phrase ‘Time is dead’, Old Gadail retreated into contemplation across the fire of their camp. Her Far Sight thereafter eluded her, which should have been no surprise with Time’s depart, and when Gadail returned from his thoughts, under stars long they spoke by fireside and riverside as master and apprentice, of the effects Time’s disappearance may cause. Or already had caused! Their extrapolation expansive into the extremes of thought.
By Night the stars had strange orbits rippling from their exchange - their duel of words - and some even fell from the skies altogether, dropping as though from shelves, from dimensions upheaved. All that once was orbiting had become meteoric, unbound and boundless so.
∞
And though both master and apprentice were loving, they could not agree.
Syrib wished Gadail would go with her and hear as she heard, yet in her growing loneliness and her anger, their ever-returning argument of old was pollution she could see through, or he through it could not see her Truth, and again she raised to him her utmost fear:
“Can you not see I am trying to save you from this sickness?”
For his limp was worse, and he slept less or not at all, his appetite thin. His armour looser.
“What sickness is old age at the end of a good life, Tusker? Mine better than most! And with Need conquered, with Greed on the way, all will have a life good as mine has been.” Gadail said to her, rubbing his sore knees, his belly full of tea. “I know. It is in Love’s wandered name that you try, for Love has wandered us to the ends of things, and finds itself restless in our peace, in our relinquishing of so much beauty. It asks as it always has rightly: surely there is more we can give? Our work is not done yet, we still have far to go together, into this new age still young. I suppose, we should not be shocked that Time has been attacked. Time is all that is left. Was there not once a prophecy that cakes would not suffice?”
∞
Young Syrib saw hope in Time’s depart, while Old Gadail comprehended only despair.
It was that night when nights still were that echoing across Ehl’yiteth, the horns and bells of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon sounded from Ithuriya’s call, shaking the cosmos-all of those attuned, and Gadail resolved to answer, to take Syrib along with him.
Alas that when his back was turned in preparation, Syrib drank the salve in full.
And so Gadail, searching for his apprentice lost instead, could not turn his presence nor guidance to Haven, could not meet its Wing Marshal cleaved and calling out for aid. And all the variations that caused at once, and one of those inky threads we follow here.
∞
The journey from Ehl’yiteth to Hadaeon, two worlds that share no stars, would have been impossible for The Spring-Sworn alone, especially dosed with tripping-salve as she was, opening at once too many paths. Mad with fantastic hope. Few other than master shamans can navigate such roads where the cold songs of solar systems ring. Though Syrib had the words to guide her through labyrinth field and fog - wherever they were loudest she leaned her young steps:
‘Time is dead… and we have killed them. Come, seek The Lightning Crown.’
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Towards that journey’s end and another beginning. And so she came to Haven-o’er-Hadaeon using the stealth of her smaller size and lies against those Truthdom-souls whom can tell no lies - until she reached where we now meet her - out of breath in the angelic courtyard of oakenstone.
∞
Syrib hid behind pillars, in flowering shrubs, inching forwards whenever she could without being seen. You see and so does she: angelic sentinels armed with spears and shields were guarding an entrance to The Gravestone Column - suspended endless stair - where Lillian the supposed murderer of Time awaited incarcerate. Lillian’s words on the winds Syrib had been following, spun from a wish. A dream in these variables rearranged.
∞
Never had the words been louder to Syrib than in the courtyard, loudest from the guarded entrance, the path-after beyond obscure. A sheer drop into open air she saw and a pier to which no ships were drawn and yet:
‘Time is dead… and we have killed them. Come, seek The Lightning Crown.’
She long had wondered along her trip if The Lightning Crown was a totem; for hammers were known to her as those Gadail wields. Necklaces, bangles and armour were not unknown. Why not a crown? A crown to end the endlessness of Life Proliferate and Death Indifferent. Why not then in that age between ages, between Need and Greed?
∞
In awe she lost herself gazing at the commemorative pillar taller than all of Haven - depicting the life of Lillian Grey. A pride to which all bridges had been severed. All this she learned climbing from Haven’s depths to its heights. Once Courtdom’s Heir and a champion of the last victory over Falsehood, Lillian had become a prisoner in her birthplace. Half the angels Syrib met were in mourning and the rest rejoicing, while so many at heart in truth had no care at all, content with their cakes.
∞
Her lightning robes were tattered at their ends from the starry road. The streaks dull and tarnished, helping her better hide. She tried to learn the patterns of guards patrolling, making her way from obstacle to obstacle closer to The Gravestone Column’s gate, hiding behind lavender bushes. Almost to the end she managed, alas, just when one guard was dozing alone too many would arrive to replace the one, all of them confused, unsure when their watch should end or start, and no pattern could she pull from the Timelessness.
A strange feeling of having been there before.
∞
Quiet as she tried to be, exhausted from her journey alone, for all her panting all the air was stifling. Just as she was summoning what little strength was still hers to rush or sneak past the remaining guards, a shadow twice her height loomed behind her.
“Are you the lord of Ehl’yiteth we have waited for?” the corner of her eye saw a clawed hand reaching for her shoulder.
Syrib turned to see a Werewolf tall, broad in his steel where the banner of his tribe was bright across his curiass; stitches of a claw shattering a spear its image. Yet as Syrib stared frozen and off guard that threaded spear was bladed at both ends, and only one blade of two had been broken. Her knowledge came to her, of Hadaeon’s history that unique banner was two woven into one: the spear of the angels and the spear-shattering claw of the werewolves from Gap’elyhond. A unity of the angels leaving something behind and the werewolves’ part in that.
∞
It could have been no clearer to her then - Syrib knew the werewolf-tall was loyal to Truthdom and Time, to Haven-o’er. If she wished to find whoever had been calling to her upon the wind through the cosmos, the werewolf would be of no aid to her.
∞
Either end visible above his shoulder and from behind his hip, a greatsword was strapped across his back, curved and easily unsheathed from its crescent-scabbard if need was right. Taking Syrib further by surprise there was in his eyes a shamanic glare, a grace though raw as hers, and she wondered if he too was an apprentice. Grey around his snout yet he did not have a master’s presence, though strange it would have been - for an old veteran to hear the call and start a new journey in apprenticeship - with all the look of a Warrior that long had walked a very different road.
In some moment of kindness far from the darkening desires of her heart, Syrib hoped this werewolf was not one of those hunted and scalped by Ahlzvyr in lineages other-than. Here living, later a trophy sewn to the dwarf’s chainmail she did not wish to imagine.
You see, Syrib so far has avoided The Stalker, having heard only rumour of him from the angels tender or foolish enough to hide her in their homes. For all had seen the posters of her likeness, her eight or four great locks of hair, both versions bordered abreast each other.
∞
Then her darkness spoke to her. If this somehow-old apprentice could not tell she clearly was no lord, then the moment was hers to control. Away from Gadail’s traditions and The Stalker’s threats. She would not turn her back on the winds when their call was loudest, louder than the ancestors bidding her return, muting the gales of Gadail searching for her, runaway as she was. She would save them all, bearing what could not be and yet would be - impossibly - in Timelessness.
∞
“I am.” She lied to the tall werewolf - and it is from these choices of whether Truth or Falsehood leads us that such legendary falls can begin - and the return from such falls all the greater.
∞
“Your name, my lord?” The warrior bowed.
“Syrib, The Spring-Sworn.” Stumbling already, she had forgotten to add the honorific ‘il to the end of her name and hoped it would go unnoticed.
“A strong name. I am Sentinel Iron-Chest. I wonder, do you see that I have answered the ancestral call of shamanism, or I try to? When I heard a master had been summoned, I made sure to frequent this post.”
Do you remember the name Iron-Chest? Engraved though hidden by grass, in the foot of that statue holding the withered angel deaf to Human sound? Our Serib nor this Syrib had seen such words. However, the name Iron-Chest was known to them and many, and Syrib did not wish to dwell on the loose trappings of her lie for long:
“You glow with the grace of shamanism. I have heard of you, Sentinel - do you feel restless still, a veteran of Falsehood’s last defeat?”
“Not only Falsehood’s last defeat, I was tired from a few defeats before that, as well. But we tread on, don’t we?”
Syrib tried to smile kind as Gadail would, alas that more than kindness was on her mind, as Love ‘without Reason’ steered her course.
∞
“You are here to assist us in this Timeless matter.” Iron-Chest raised his grey chin to the column, the hairs long enough for a braid.
“I was summoned.” Syrib confirmed, better guessing as she went. “I answer Ithuriya’s bell. Where are the other lords of Ehl’yiteth?”
“I hoped the first to arrive would recount the whereabouts of the rest. Though summoned, they have not come as bid, and Ithuriya is not pleased. You have a great presence for your size, Lord Syrib’il, that will perhaps abate her.”
The tired girl was relieved that the other lords were not there to expose her, that Iron-Chest so far had accepted all she said. She began to settle until his next question worried her:
“Why do you hide your greatness in different ways? I see about you only a feint glow… As bronze left to the wear of wind and rain. As a sword in blood to rust. Shall I take you to counsel The Wing Marshal? See to you some warm bread and a blanket, as oldest poems go.”
∞
Comforting as warm bread sounded, having struggled through her first lie, the rest came quickly as they with truth were blurred:
“I am weary, Sentinel, resting before my next climb, from a long road through the stars that has not yet ended.” She thought of what else Gadail would say, visiting a lot so proud as the angels of Haven yet speaking with a werewolf: “And you will know when you are a master yourself, that it is best to hold your presence back. You may appear threatening with the simplest gesture, when Humble’s name is best.”
Speaking as Gadail would, Syrib felt for a moment able to drop her state of runaway, to be The Spring-Sworn no more and call out her true heart that her master would hear her, and the end of all their distance. Alas she imagined going back there to his increasing age, his slowness burgeoning, the onset of a final Winter. Fearful of deathbeds, indignity and speechlessness. Fearful of powerlessness.
The veteran sentinel had an affirming growl in his throat: “I know already how these angels can be.”
Syrib looked at his armour and measured what a mixture he was. A Werewolf wearing an angel’s armour, the curved greatsword of unknown kin the weapon he chose. Being a ‘Were’ he would never be far from elemental majesty. In image alone a fine shaman he could make, if his prime was not already gone.
∞
“Will you show me to the prisoner’s cell? Before we go to Ithuriya. I must know for myself.”
Syrib received no resistance as she had expected:
“Come, my lord Spring-Sworn of Ehl’yiteth. Wish you a seat at my shoulder? It would be an honour for this old wolf, if you are weary enough.”
Iron-Chest knelt before Syrib, and though she was strong as crag and cliff, too long had been the way alone and spiralling the path ahead continued yet. With some gathered strength she hoisted herself atop the broad shoulder of the armoured sentinel, holding the pommel of his greatblade as he walked.
From afar - some would later say she steered him - his hilt his rudder.
∞
The angelic sentinels bowed and bid welcome to the visiting lord of Ehl’yiteth, arrived at last. Though small, she was not the smallest shamanic lord to grace their halls, though the tale of ‘Grog’il’ is not one for this tome.
∞
Iron-Chest walked with young Syrib on his shoulder past the last arches of the floating courtyard, letting out a deep howl and all that was dark seemed less. She held his pauldron tighter: if he did not stop walking he would fall from the courtyard tower along with her. Her heart drummed faster though before she could object, angels - their wings sparkling with dust and pollen - coated as yet invisible steps in their flight. From their pollen-snow a way was made clear - from the quiet courtyard to the massive Gravestone Column - across waves of sand obeying the column’s orbit but not the world’s gravity.
“To be winged in Haven must be well.” Iron-Chest commented, at the mercy of a strange road.
∞
The way was not straight nor curving; it fell and rose changing always to mask sense from those that would intrude, and Syrib saw in the motions of the sands these were great stone or steel blocks shifting apart and slotting into each other, forged as to always change and confuse - as though invisibility would not thwart enough! - and it seemed uncertain that they would ever make it across. The entrance to or the way out of a prison indeed. Unseen if not for the pollen-snow coating their puzzling gyrate.
“I feel my heart is loud up here.” The Spring-Sworn spoke, the air thin and tough on her chest as The Sentinel walked over the sparkling nothing.
“I hope this is well of me to ask as you are here, lord. Have you an apprentice? Do they not travel with you?”
Syrib knew better than others, if an apprentice was not with their master, they were on a trial to gain their totem and imbues as was custom. Just as Gadail sends Serib off though willingly as to let her grow - though always The Wind was at her back.
∞
“I do not, and I sense what you are to ask next. When did you first feel the call of your ancestors and of Truth?” Syrib answered.
“When this Timelessness erupted. I felt less ancestry, and more the call of those who still live; werewolves and angels alike lost in this, what should be Prosper’s age. At first I thought my Winter had begun, though all my waking and my dreams are serene by the grace calling my name, the grace demanding the best of me. A warrior old yet I have been called to shamanism! And it has been said by those wiser: life is barely long enough to be good at one discipline. So I wonder what Chance is up to, nudging me - an old droop in Autumn - to keep on growing as though it were Spring, to give that I am not spent. What is your answer if you know what I am to ask… could you be my master? To help me make sense of this, and serve Truth all the more?”
Syrib’s lie was swallowing her.
∞
“Are you not needed here as a sentinel?” she gripped his greatsword’s pommel as the way grew tougher and Iron-Chest made ease of it, making incredible leaps across invisible gaps landing on the stone cubes of a puzzle barely there.
“I am needed. Yet I can speak freer to you here than in the courtyard of my fellow bulwarks: my shamanism has shown to me how I die. And this old sword on my back was a sword no longer in my vision - it was a totem, large as eyes the gems in its fuller. And just as your eyes with lightning-bronze are bright, your dirty robes as well, I saw my eyes the same. Would this in your view be Far Sight? Foresight?”
“There are two shamanic thoughts.” Syrib answered, bobbing along from Iron-Chest’s shoulder. “Some believe history informs Far Sight. Others believe in true prophecy.”
“I know not where to draw such lines…” He interrupted himself. “What is that? Do you see it?”
The symbol both Syrib and Iron-Chest saw glowing ahead was unknown to them - carved into one of the invisible blocks - filled with sandy starry pollen, the manner of its making full of gravity, beckoning specks into its groove. To be filled perhaps with dust and else, and hide itself revealed.
∞
It glowed to their approach, they both at once believed, as the block spun around for a moment hiding the symbol - the block fulfilling its duty in the maze of many others. Glowing brighter with each spin. Closer it flipped across the waves of sand until all they saw was the infinity of my design.
Our Serib meanwhile, still stands in a similar courtyard dazed, though back to her we shall go when it is best. Let us follow where Syrib and Iron-Chest have been carried off to, as prey into a lair.
As thread spun back to a spool.