Interlude 2 - The Tapestry of Conflict.
At a point of metaphysical significance stood the statue of a woman with three faces. Their features were ordinary, unappealing, but each was marked with a heavy burden that was impossible to ignore. The tragedies and hindrances of human experience summed up in three simple expressions. Grief. Suffering. Hope.
She held her arms out, a supplicant gesture. Her hands grasped a long cloth tapestry of many multicolored, shimmering threads. Rainbow patterns, gilded in gold and silver, radiated from end to end. The colors were an echoing reflection, revealing the present and probable future of entire realms.
A priestess lit ritual candles and incense bowls at the feet of the statue, the scents of beeswax, lavender, holly, and sage. She wore a three-faced porcelain mask and shapeless, grey robes. Like her patron, she displayed the visage of what the worst of humanity could do to the weak, the vulnerable, and the innocent.
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She reached out with gentle fingers, examining the tapestry, her stance serene, her gestures rote. Each shade and pattern she touched projected a series of multifaceted images into her mind. It formed a tree of possibilities, forever etched in the halls of memory. Later, she would sit at an easel and paint out the images in her head. They would be grand murals, all depicting pivotal moments in time and space. This rotation included the Realm of Glass, and next she would look at the future of Cusp, a prosaic, primordial realm. Just a few of the images she turned to art would come true, but that unconcerned her. Truth and history was a job for the scholars, historians, and seers, whom would sift through events as they occurred.
From one moment to the next, the tapestry shifted in hue. Dark shades to black hopelessness. Light shades to red suffering. Gold and silver to the cold grey of conflict. The priestess gasped and stepped away, her hand knocking an incense bowl to the marble floor.
"O Mistress Gestalt, why? Why has this happened?!" She cried and collapsed to the floor.
She curled up, her mask falling away, her hands grasping her head. Her mind crumbled as images coursed through it. They broke apart like glass, a temporal dissonance impossible to ignore. Soon, her shuddering ceased. Her eyes stared unseeing. Above her, the tapestry shifted swiftly, the future entirely uncertain.