A Moment in the Summerlands - Prelude
Lutia stands atop the vast Obsidian Disc and stares into the night beyond the safe walls of House Betelgeuse. Down in the valley, Noon Point and the Courtyard of Five Lights glow eternal, as they have every night for eons now.
Titi-tet was an Astral who could not bear the midnight hours, and so her thralls kept her favorite places lit in case she wanted to grace them. Nearly half their clan was out there and not all of them enthralled.
Some of the Arcanites who knew they would be immune had chosen to band together to keep the enthralled safe from Titi's careless and potentially fatal whims.
Saber, who couldn't leave Verbena because he and Galbana would not survive the loss of another child. Carnelian, who refused to leave Stellaria because he knew it would crush her when she came out of thralldom and realized what she had done to Arcanus. Rubedo had gone in, claiming ice dragons made poor thralls and their clanmates could not be left without medical attention. Copernicus had followed to assist him, and Lamium had followed both to keep them safe and guard their minds. Hitth had not been able to take him, it wasn't so unreasonable to think a light astral would find no purchase against moon-touched nature.
Safiri was also among them. The mother of their clan, who knew her way around spoiled children. Keeping Titi-tet away from House Betelgeuse was certainly her doing.
Lutia's fists curl. The energy of the Seat went into the barrier that kept them safe, but every day demanded vigilance. The eons had not softened the insult of Titi sending lazy, indolent Rieslingale to try and sabotage them from within. And occasionally, as if hearing a mandate in his dreams, Malu would rise up, singing before the closed portal in his broken voice until someone came to retrieve him.
Lutia knows she is doing something important, but that does not change that Betelgeuse has become a cage for her and all the others who fled the eastern part of their lands.
But it would not be much longer now.
A familiar scent is on the wind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carnelian smokes even though the astral hates it. Thrall-maker or no, Titi-tet is merely a child at heart. A cruel one, entirely without compassion or empathy, but with plenty of fear. And Carnelian has no hang-ups about showing his more violent natures just because she looks like a hatchling.
She had tried him once. Dared to believe he wouldn't actually hurt her. He had happily snapped off one of her glittery little horns and sent her crying to Pistis. It had come back on him sure, but Titi lacked imagination that her elders didn't.
There were four imperials in Titi's little court. Stellaria, Lamium, Verbena, and Carnelian himself. The rest might come and go around him, but he was never far away from Stellaria.
Could Titi-tet enthrall an emperor? Perhaps. Who could say? None of them, even under her thrall, were willing to find out.
He was bullied in whatever ways Titi could think up, but even her crueler acts don't mean anything to him. She relies too much on her 'friends' being important to him, but they aren't. There is only one person in the astral's entire stolen entourage that he cares about enough to not punch in the throat on principle.
He also endures this pariah status because it keeps the others safe. Over the eons, the thralls have grown as petulant and jealous as their master. They fight each other for Titi's attention. Sometimes physically. Sometimes with viciousness that even he finds disturbing. Mother Safiri was able to cool their conflicts early on, but ever since the eon of Brighsthine began they have been near frenzy. He steps in for her not out of any loyalty or care or even the threat of Lutia. It is Hart’s wrath that he fears. Luckily, merely by being present and offering a word of blasphemy against the being that has dazzled them, he turns them on himself instead of each other.
It isn't a problem. A pressing lack of oxygen quickly becomes a deterrent even for a thrall.
And he's very practiced at the fine art of the choking others within an inch of their life.
He raises his eyes and regards the sky through the veil of his cigar smoke. Greenskeepers is past and light is rising, but there is something else on the air. Something that reminds him of the last eclipse.
Outside the everlasting carnival Titi demanded, Sornieth was changing again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lavi cannot feel his right arm. He has taken to wearing long sleeves to hade the winding cracks that have spread up and will soon begin creeping across his chest. He prays his head will be last.
He stands with Azricai far from Horizon's Landing, on the cliffs overlooking Windstar Bay. She is gazing at the Vortex with no trepidation at all.
These past eons he has become as awed by her will as he is of Arcanus' loyalty. The unholy day when Lavi found Rebis, Arcanus, and Rubranova near death just outside of the Pact Site, she took care of matters in Analemma.
The evacuation and quarantine of Noon Point and the Courtyard of Five Lights had been executed with swift and terrifying efficiency. Travelers were ushered out of territory. Citizens, long-term merchants, and those too ill or weak to make journeys back to safe land were packed into House Betelgeuse. The hospitals and nurseries were emptied, and the artisans’ guild was abandoned. She had a controlled fire set on the edge of the Summerlands to burn a physical boundary between them and the beastclans to let them know it was not safe to enter Analemma lands.
When Lavi sent for Coagulum on Rubranova's behalf, she came through alongside the blood mage and immediately ordered the Portal sealed to prevent any subterfuge.
With Rebis in the state she was in, it wouldn’t have been far-fetched for her to temporarily take the mantle of power. She had expertly crisis-controlled a situation where Lavi would not have known where to begin. Yet her very first action was to kneel before her queen and make her report.
Lavi knew the clan's history so well he could have recited it in his sleep, but seeing how neatly and quickly she worked with those who had made the Exodus so many cycles before left him astonished and Rebis infinitely grateful.
That moment was the first to truly make him understand why Arcanus had found it so difficult to trust Azricai when they were young. She has the experience and the social status to move the clan in any way she puts her mind to.
Lucky for them, she loves her clan with her whole soul.
She glances at him from the corner of her eyes. "You're worrying, Imperator."
"As is my nature, Lady Judge."
"Fretting does not provide solutions. Think clearly about the problem."
"Titi has been manifest too long. Rebis may no longer have a chance." He grips at his arm, but carefully. Experience has taught him that he can puncture his own skin and feel nothing. "I should have gone with her."
"Rebis has taken every pain to be ready for this. I can't say I agree with such an open confrontation, but she feels it is her duty as queen to make this right in the most straight forward way possible. We may not need that sort of proof, but our eyes are not the only ones on her."
He laughs gently. "You're talking about Rebis the Queen, but Rebis my Sister's motives are more personal."
"Yes, they are. And you must know that your queen- sister feels responsible for your condition. She would never allow you to repeat what you did with Katasomata after you confessed your affliction to her."
She deliberately moves to take his left hand. “Your life is one of many Rebis feels she owes this to.”
He closes his hand around hers. It's cold, but he is grateful just to feel anything at all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ashlesha flutters down and lands before Lavi and Azricai. Where once he may have been envious to find the Lady Judge holding Lavi’s hand, he now finds he wants to hold onto her as well. This is not new. Ever since Arcanus arrived in tatters, he has found he frets for those Lavi loves most.
It frustrates him, because it has reared its head in unexpected ways. It would be one thing if he merely didn’t want Lavi to be hurt, but with Arcanus in particular, he often caught himself passive-aggressively vying for the older guardian’s attention.
Arcanus told him once, when they were alone, that Ashlesha reminded him a little of Lavi when he was a fledgling. Ashlesha had brushed it off at the time, but the thought has never gone far from his mind.
Clutched close in his hands, he carries a scroll none of them have ever seen before: the fruit of an effort to provide a suitable back-up plan for the queen.
“This is dangerous,” he whispers.
Azricai nods. “It is. But the astrals will not be bound in common forms, or so you say. And so we need something extraordinary.”
Ashlesha presses his lips together, and curses Abankhit for the thousandth time. He hands the scroll to Azricai. “Good luck.”
Lavi lets go of her hand. “Winds be with your wings.”
She nods and casts off her shawl. Deep green wings spread from her back, and the glamour vanishes with a gust. She flies directly into the Vortex. They watch for what feels like hours until the howl of a gale wolf splits the clouds, and she shoots east like a living tailwind.
Lavi sighs and rests a hand on his head. “Did you find anything else?”
He looks up at Lavi, and for a moment he is as lost in him as the first time they met. If only he could close his eyes and melt into him. How perfect an end that could be, but he has business that not even Lavi can deter him from.
“I know where the Auditor is.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebis bears little resemblance to the wide-eyed young kite she was only a few eons ago. The shame and frustration of being ousted from her own kingdom and prevented from returning have sharpened her into a weapon. She is an archmage in all but name now. The density of presence that she always envied in other older or larger dragons is finally hers, but the price was so much more than she ever wanted to pay.
Not a day has gone by that she has not thought of Telos and planned for the reclamation of what was passed to her. Her focus was and remains on how best to make herself worthy of the exalted queen's faith and the faith of the clan continues to place in her despite the disastrous conditions Titi’s presence has created.
They had to take the long way back to the Sunbeam Ruins. Walking a trail the clan had once walked before, after losing their homes. Keeping to shadows and taking long breaks to avoid detection. The Umbra Wolf, still under thrall, was looking for them. Looking for the Smoke Gyre who would be guiding their steps.
Now that they are finally back, Rebis stares up at the sky of the home she has not seen since Arcanus took her and fled through the Starwood Portal. The stars are dimmer than what she has grown used to, but her power swells with the coming rise of her element and her return to its native land. There is one place she must go before she reclaims her clan’s home: The Beacon.
She swears on the light in her eyes and the proud crown on her head that they will not be driven out again.
