"From the Mantle of Light she spun away the Mantle of Shadow. From the weavings of Fate she spun away the Mantle of Purpose. From all things, she spun away the Mantle of Boundaries. Thus, our Obsidian Queen was born. May she ever walk in your shadow." -A Priest's sermon.
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Chapter 1 - The Consequences of Desire.
To stand at the Gates of Desire and be rendered unable to enter is a hard thing. Her gaze was firmly locked on the shifting, swirling colors of ambient potential outlined by the grey, chipped gateway. It wasn't fear that stalled her progress, but the visions that swept and congealed about her head. Her dreams, ambitions, and desires made manifest by the cloud of magical potential issuing from the open gates. Their intensity was staggering, and each one that passed her gaze transported her. She lived each one in a brief whirlwind of gut-wrenching hope and hunger.
[The pure and uncomplicated joy of being seven-years-old. The smell of dung, sweat, and cooking meat. The shuffle of feet and the roar of many voices. The elation of her father buying her the stallion she so adored.]
[The awkward and unusual experience of being fourteen-years-old. The smell of flowers, clean summer air, and her own stale perfume. Servants bustled around, serving tea. She sat with an elderly wisp of a woman. They talked about the ceremony for her marriage to the woman's handsome, powerful, and altogether kind son.]
[The confidence that comes with harsh experience and tragedy. The smell of blood and death. Screams, sobs, and gibbering echoed in her head as she raised a glistening blade in her hand. She struck, the rending of meat, tendon, and bone felt all the way up her arm. She felt satisfaction. Her enemy lie dead at her feet.]
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It was hard, pulling herself away. The clouds of cascading visions popped audibly as she did so. She shook as she took deep, gasping breaths. Her father never bought her that horse. The boy she was to wed was dead. Her family passed in the same manner. Her entire culture burned, book by book. Revenge was out of her grasp, for now. For now.
She took complete control of herself. She stepped forward and through the Gates of Desire. Her reality changed as she passed to the other side. Everything changed. She had been fractured before. Torn up by grief. Broken by time. But she never once wondered what it was like to be unborn. It happened in those precious few moments, caught between ambition and fear. The Gates of Desire didn't kill her, they unmade her. She stopped being human. She was free...
[...]
A violin played somewhere in the corners of her mind, a distant memory from her past. The pain had stopped, replaced with calm. There was no anxiety, fear, or grief. Just peace. Purpose took hold of her will. She didn't open her eyes so much as she chose to see. Opalescent darkness greeted her gaze. She was floating, with no sense of what was up or what was down. She raised an elegant hand and, with a thought, changed the shifting darkness. It condensed in the direction she chose as down. She glided, flipping and spinning, and landed with stiff, sure grace. Her feet clicked against the shadow obsidian the darkness had become. Joy suffused her mind and she laughed with it, though her lips did not move. Her laugh echoed through the emptiness despite her apparent silence.
A gesture and a thought, and the rebounding echo of her laugh changed the ceiling of shadow. Light seeped in. It was slow and gradual, like a window that faces the approaching sunrise. She watched the light swirl and spiral outward. It soon assumed the shape of a multifaceted wheel. Its spokes were many thousand, each a different shade of light. There was an entire world behind each delicate thread. Each pulsating with life. Each waiting for her growing influence. It was in this moment that she realized that she stood at the center of it all. That this was her realm, and that it touched upon all other realms.