For Jinorah:
"My parent of night and stillness, hear my prayers in the dark. I wish for slumber at last, under a cover of stars"
For Myrcella:
"My Parent of day and all that is lively, I sing to you this song of cheer; so you will stay beside me. I wish for nothing but the love and a bit of luck, so please parent of the light, wont you guide me?"
Ancient prayers to constellation aesirs:
"Listen you who wander in the sky, won't you send protection over me and those of whom I love so dear. Hear my voice of calling, I am kneeling down for thee, all I want is a blessing over well-being."
(ADD IF YOU WANT WILL BE CONTINUED)
Companion information for the map of the major cities and way points of the North. Info provided by Stu, I just re-typed it.
Northern Aesiric Settlement:
Most famously Houses the Northern Aesir of Jinorah, his Temple and their Lake of Creation. It is mountainous and is deathly cold to any but a Northern Aesir. Heavy snowfall and short daylight hours mean its residents live in darkness for most of their day. It is surrounded by deep green pine forests and natural cloisters of crystal – though in their clashes with the humans almost all of this crystallised energy has been stolen. Many of the Aesir make now their homes inside the mountains as extra defence against the humans who plunder their territory.
They erected a gate and sectioned off their territory with the humans. It now remains closed to all but Northern Aesir and not many Aesir venture down past the gates themselves.
Ostelkany:
Once a small farming community, it experienced rapid growth due to the excessive farmland that surrounds it, and now boasts territories larger than that of the New Capital. It is designed in a way similar to Le Mon St. Michel in that its giant expanse is walled off, uphill and tightly packed together in cobblestone streets, markets and residencies. The Castle of House Dundaire seats atop the hill overlooking the city below. With the farmland dying across the continent and Ostelkany still with fertile soil, the city is experiencing a rapid increase in refugees. Ostelkany is the prime Royalist supporter, with its Lord having marriage ties to the Royal Family. It pays a significant portion of its profit, stock and food to the rest of the country and is therefore allowed to operate with such a large territory as pay out. This makes it one of the richest cities on the continent.
Wellfield:
A small farming community. It is unsympathetic to Aesir and is often engaged in looting the North. The people here are very pious and do not have much to do with their neighbouring city of Ostelkany, due to it being a territory that is sympathetic to Aesir.
Lightmarsh:
Swampy territory that is primarily only occupied by nomads or travellers. Its tough land makes it unsuitable to grow crops and life for anyone who lives here is very tough.
Mielind:
An affluent city that neighbours both the Capital and the rich trading port of Udea. Mielind once had the highest level of access to the goods of the South Aesiric Settlement until they closed their doors. Despite the cut off they were able to maintain their wealth through having close political connections with the Royal Family and their neighbouring trading port of Udea. Mielind is seen as a city of high culture.
Udea and Uctosh:
Two trading ports and the home of the Royal Family’s Navy. These two ports trade with far away continents to the West and are a multi-cultural society – with the exclusion of Aesir.
Erkitt:
A small, self-sufficient island that is not largely populated due to its hard-to-reach rocky nature. Fishermen make up most of the trade here and have small political rivalries with Udea and Uctosh; who stamp down on the island every time it tries to assert itself as a trading post of its own.
Valdell, The New Capital:
After the chaotic destruction of the Old Captial in the South-East, the Royal Family and the residents of the capital upped sticks and sectioned off a once much larger Mielind into the newly named city of Valdell. It is the scene of high society and houses the Great Courts of the People alongside the Castle of the Royal Family. Only those chosen by the Royals and the residents of the city can make their residence here.
Because it neighbours two trading ports it has a much larger variety of goods and is awarded protection by both the Navy and the citizens of surrounding Mielind.
Highkeep:
Highkeep is the name given to the mountainous terrain that leads down to the South. Not many have settled here due to its close proximity to the old, cursed Capital.
White Port:
A small, old city that used to have strong trading connections with the Nomads of the South and the Southern Aesir. It fell into ruin once the popularity of other trade posts entered the fray and is now a poor seaside town that rarely receives visitors.
Had some fun playing with something you wrote a little while ago, Mer. :3 (I did my own take on Myr though)
Jinorah
The thick marble pillars that supported the mountainous roof of the temple glowed as white and cold as the snow that lay over the North. The sheer size of the hall that the God had claimed as his was intimidating, cold and unnaturally dark. The platforms and walkways extended up to great heights above them and the lake underneath lay still, casting an ethereal blue glow. Aside from a few candles dotted haphazardly around the pillars, it was the only light source the entirety of the hall had to offer. In front of them a long, single walkway lead up the steps toward the altar. This was truly the resting place of a God.
The Admiral’s knee’s quivered and his breath stayed short in his throat. The quiet, deafening atmosphere within the temple was so strange and unknown that none of them dared to speak. They had fought their way toward this end point, but now they could barely move.
‘Sir..’
His heart banged painfully in his chest as one of the men next to him fearfully tapped at his arm and broke the silence with a tiny, whispering voice. Even that tiny breath of a word had been enough to utterly dislodge the energies of the room. He gritted his teeth and suppressed the urge to whip round at the young soldier in panic. After all, he had been personally chosen to carry out this task for the Royal Family for a reason.
Without answering, he took a slow step forward. The sound of the metal caps on the heels of his boots clinked loudly against the marble as he ascended the platform and made a slow, careful approach toward the circular platform in the very back of the room. His men remained behind, still and silent in their fear. By the time he drew short of the altar a mixture of rage and fear coursed through his veins.
The God the Aesir called Jinorah, who until that moment had been as still as a statue, finally looked up. His eyes were unwavering and dark with flecks of gold and green that seemed to swirl and move as he locked his gaze against the Admiral’s. That cold stare was as piercing as a sword through his throat.
The Admiral knew the God was considered ageless and yet, he did not look a year over the end of his twenties. His eyes were dark and focused in a way that seemed almost predatory; and yet, his expression was calm and his voice was soft as he spoke.
‘So, you came.’ He smiled. The Admiral gulped. He gripped the handle of the blade at his waist and made an attempt to come across as fearsome, but his voice sounded wobbly and childish.
‘J-Jinorah…I’ve come for your death.’
The God got up off the pillows he had been sat cross legged on with a measured grace the Admiral had never seen in a living thing before. Every moment was calculated and slowed; as if the life that weighed down upon him was taxing even for him.
‘I know.’ He answered in a voice that seemed too calm for the situation. ‘I am Death; and the Silence, the Cold and the Darkness.’
The Admiral felt that. He had felt it the moment he burst open the heavy doors to the chamber and barged through into the dark and the silence. He had felt it, and so had his soldiers. There was no way the Aesir standing serenely in front of him was not speaking the truth.
‘Do I frighten you, truly?’ Jinorah asked. The small measure of mirth in his voice sent the Admiral stumbling backwards.
‘No…I…I don’t fear Aesirs.’
Jinorah looked at him, blinking slowly.
‘…Or Death.’
It seemed impossible that this had come to pass so easily. The Aesir had not fought against the onslaught of the sell swords he had brought with him to take hold of the North. They had not lifted arms or tried to defend themselves even when the blood of their priests ran crimson down the white stairs of the Temple. And now, they were here, facing their God; and no one had come to defend him from his own impending death.
Jinorah was eyeing him slowly.
‘Well, then. I’m right here.’
The Admiral wanted to take a step forward, but for some reason his feet remained firmly planted on the floor. Even the grip he had around his sword did not tighten.
‘Are you…really their God?’ He asked, voice shaking.
‘Yes.’
‘If I cut you, will you bleed?’
He could feel the eyes of his men on him from the entrance of the chamber, waiting for Jinorah to do something. Anything. This Almighty God of Death and Darkness that even the King had cause to fear.
Jinorah took two steps toward the Altar and the Admiral turned slightly to look at him. For a moment he had thought the God might try to escape, but he stopped and picked up a small blade that had been resting on the table. In panic, the Admiral drew his sword; but Jinorah lifted a hand to stop him. With one quick, clean motion, he sliced across his open palm and held it out for the Admiral to see. Red blood bubbled up through the cut and ran between the gaps in his fingers.
‘I bleed as you do.’ He said simply.
The Admiral stared, transfixed as the drops fell to the floor and stained the glistening marble underneath it. His hands dumbly took the small blade as Jinorah offered it to him.
With a surge of adrenaline and panic, he rushed forward and grabbed Jinorah by the neck of his shirt, pulling his neck back to expose glowing white skin to the steel of the blade. Jinorah did not flinch. He simply looked at him, his gaze still and tranquil.
He didn’t dare to. He didn’t dare cut him. It wounded his pride to admit it, but he didn’t dare to do this. He couldn’t. How could anyone? It was only now, standing face-to-face with Jinorah that he understood that, yes: this was Death. This was Silence. His very presence was cold and stiffening; his eyes were so piercing and full of depth and darkness that seemed to only overspill the longer the Admiral gazed into him. Only He had seen the time before existence and the Nothing. He was truly, utterly terrified.
Jinorah smiled and closed his eyes as the Admiral let go and withdrew, his hands shaking.
‘I think that will do.’ He said, looking toward the water underneath the walkway. ‘It suits me better than the sword.’
The Admiral jumped as Jinorah spoke, interrupting his own suffocating silence. ‘W-What is?’
‘The water…’ He looked at it somewhat wistfully, like it was a bed he longed to rest in.
The Admiral glanced at his soldiers uneasily, but they merely looked on; confused and frozen to the spots they had stood upon. They didn’t appear to be hearing or seeing anything; everything was so deathly silent and yet, they were not reacting. Was it Jinorah’s work?
‘…Are you truly death?’ The Admiral asked.
‘Yes.’
The Admiral shivered against Jinorah’s soft, direct answer. ‘What happens if I kill you?’
Jinorah closed his eyes as if he was tired, his hand waving out to the darkness of the room around them.
‘I created Death. If the Parent dies, the Child does not.’
‘I…I can’t…do this…’
Jinorah’s voice was reassuring in the strangest of ways. This man had come to kill him and all he had done was welcome him with open arms and speak to him in the manners with which one might speak to a frightened child in need of comfort.
‘I will die, by your hand or another’s hand. It does not matter how, who, or why. I will die. Death is the only certainty.’
‘But-‘ The Admiral swallowed.
‘You fear me, I know. Your kind always has. You fear things you do not understand or know. My Children do not fear me because they know and understand that I am peace. It is only the living who suffer. I am not pain. Myrcella is pain.’
He turned toward the stairs and began to walk down them, to the bank of the pool’s edge. Before he could think on his actions, The Admiral found he was following. Even as Jinorah stepped into the waters and the ripples lapped at their waists, he followed. They had an understanding. He was going to kill Death.
‘It’s alright.’ Jinorah said quietly. ‘Do what you have come here to do. I am tired.’
The Admiral placed his hands onto Jinorah’s shoulders and with the lightest of touches, pushed him back into the water. Jinorah gave no fight, no resistance as he sunk below the water’s surface. There was something numbing that seemed to rush out over him as his hands clamped around Jinorah’s shoulders. Bubbles rose and broke at the water’s surface and the Admiral’s breaths came in heavy, laboured pants of anxiety. He barely dared to move his hands. He couldn’t move. His arms were locked and still as he stared down at the calm face below the surface, accepting Death as easily as one might go to sleep. The Admiral was drawn to the dark pits of his eyes, ceasing any thought from running across his mind. Something inside of him dislodged.
Eventually, the bubbles stopped. Jinorah’s wings unfurled themselves and spread out like white satin under the water’s surface. The God’s slight smile had not faded, but his eyes were half lidded and glossy. The starlight and golden flecks had vanished. The water was still once again. He was still. Everything was still, and the world was once again silent.
He couldn’t tell if Jinorah was truly gone or not. He didn’t dare move to check.
‘Jinorah?’ He whispered like a frightened child, only now realising he had been gripping the God so tightly that his hands had turned white. He stood up properly, relinquishing his grip and Jinorah remained in the water as he slowly, achingly stepped out.
Everything around him slowed even though time seemed to run again. His men cheered and a chorus of voices flooded through into the Temple, breaking the Silence that had once been. It dissipated like a blanket thrown away by the wind and noises that had previously not echoed began to.
The Admiral had killed hundreds of people before, Aesir included. But this? This was different. This carried a sense of doom and dishevelment. He looked down at his hands and felt as though they were cursed. None of his men would ever understand what he and Jinorah had shared in his last moments. They raced outside in their victory but only he remained, sinking onto the step with a heavy thud.
Myrcella
The world suddenly seemed to drain away from him and his fingers did not move to grab at it. His eyes suddenly felt like windows that looked out upon the world impassively. Outside the shrieks and despairing wails of the Aesir filled the land that had once been peacefully silent. He could hear the life, the pain, the noise; but it drained away from his very being the moment it washed over him. He stood alone, gazing at the world beneath the Temple with Death’s grave behind him. It was only when he felt a mighty presence behind him that he slowly turned around. For a split second he thought that it was Jinorah.
She stood by the pool, staring down at her beloved with hands that lay uselessly by her side; her expression lay blank like the skies before a thunder storm. The white dress she wore swept across the marble floors like mist and the pale gold of her hair tangled in choppy curls down the length of her back. He watched as she unfroze herself and stepped into the water, her arms reaching forward to pull him out.
She cradled him on the steps of the pool and placed his head in her lap, stroking the dark, wet hair from his face. She had turned him to face her and her eyes welled with tears as she gazed down at a lifeless face that still smiled for her. Now the Admiral understood. Jinorah had not smiled for him. He had smiled for her.
Her sobbing turned to crying. Then to wails of agony that echoed over the domed ceiling and pillars of the temple hall. She had closed his eyes with her hand and had curled over him protectively, shrieking her anguish as though she had been stabbed.
It was different to stand in Myrcella’s presence. Jinorah had terrified him with his blanketing silence, his darkness and death. But Myrcella was terrifying in a different way. The world around her seemed to reach and pull toward her, desperate for her to give it air to breathe. She was a giant flash of lightening and a roaring fire that overpowered anything that might stand too close to it. All at once, the Admiral remembered what Jinorah had said.
‘It is only the living who suffer. I am not pain. Myrcella is pain.’
She sniffled and kissed him a final time before his body began to fade in her arms. She murmured something in a language he could not understand, a language that had existed for the two of them before anything else ever had. Soon, there was no more Jinorah in her arms. No more starry dark eyes full of wonder, no more silence to comfort her and bounce her loud noises against. Nothing else in the world would cool her down, nothing and no one who gave her gentle smiles and sweet kisses; nothing that would sleep soundlessly next to her. He was gone, and she was alone once again.
There was no way to describe it when Myr lifted her gaze and looked towards him through the strands of hair falling over her face. Her eyes were red and sore from salty tears that ran in stains down the sides of her face. Her bottom lip was cracked and bleeding from her teeth biting down onto it. Steam rose in puffs around her and every atom of her being seemed to shake with her rage and grief. The air around her bustled up and her chest heaved as she let out a shaking, laboured breath.
It took her only a second to get in front of him. She was so close that her hair swirled around him at her sudden stop. Their noses nearly touched.
Her eyes were alight with fire and emotion, contrasting heavily to Jinorah’s dark stillness. They screamed, ‘You did it’ and he knew she could read his eyes replying, ‘Yes.’ He was prepared. Her presence was the only thing that has stirred any emotion inside of him from the hours that had passed since he had held her beloved under the water and watched Her Life drain away from Him. He was waiting for her to claw his skin off, to scream in his face and push her fingers into his eyes in her rage. Something. Anything.
Instead, her eyes glistened with something; like he wasn’t worth whatever punishment she had intended to exact on him. She narrowed her eyes into pink slits of contempt and breathed. The steam around her was so hot it burned his skin.
‘May his Silence eat you alive, human.’ She spat. Tears fell down her cheeks like little sparks of fire, climbing over her skin and cracking it open. ‘Carry his burden until your own Death.’
She screamed at him then, fire cracking through her skin as she struggled to contain herself. It was so loud and piercing that even he could tell the World outside slowed and leaned an ear to it. The fire sparked and burned at her dress, burning in patches and turning the silky white to a blackened, burning mess. She staggered away from him with her hands clutching at her face, screaming as though the sheer insurmountable grief had maddened her.
‘He’s dead, he’s dead…there is nothing! Nothing! No shade for my light, no cold for my heat. There is nothing! No silence, no dark…no comfort left in the world…do you know what you’ve done?’
His throat had dried from her heat. Every instinct would tell him to run, but she had burned them all with the slightest breath upon his face. He merely stood, watching the poor woman stagger around as though something had blinded her, her voice echoing in pained shrieks around her.
‘Why didn’t you like my gift? How could you do this to me? Jinorah…Jinorah!’
He had never seen a volcano spill before, but he felt he was watching it now. The ends of her hair curled and embers jumped from them as if they too would turn to fire at any moment. Cracks of fire glowed through her skin as she tore herself apart, her tears drying before they could even reach her cheeks. The floor around her buckled and cracked as the gravity of her emotion weighed down upon it and the Temple seemed to shudder.
‘Mother, no!’
Through the door a Priestess ran in bare feet, her arms stretched out in panic as she ran to the flaming figure stood in front of him. She pushed him aside and with hands unfearful of pain, grabbed at Myrcella’s arms and pulled them down from her face. Myrcella’s once pink eyes now glowed a hot, scalding red even as she looked upon the child who had stopped her. His back thumped against the wall and he slowly slid down it, looking on in wonder as the fire lapped around the white hands the Priestess had clamped around the God of Life and Noise’s arms.
‘Mother, please…’ She begged. ‘Not you too. Please Mother!’
Myrcella shook her head, her mouth open but wordless as she struggled to contain herself. The flames licked up the arms of the girl desperately trying to comfort her parent, but her eyes lay only on the face of her beloved Mother even as her own dress began to burn.
‘Mother! We need you! Please don’t go!’
Myrcella lifted her arms and wrapped them around the girl. All at once the exploding energy that had filled the room softened and slowly ebbed the way a fire dies when it has nothing left to burn on. The red madness of her eyes slowed and faded but the life that had been in them before was gone. The pink that remained was shallow and tormented; glossy with despair. Steam rose up into the air around her and the mighty Goddess stood, holding her sobbing child in her arms with a blank expression. Her dark skin rubbed with blackened ash, the cracks bleeding painfully and staining the floor underneath in shades of black and red.
‘I can’t stay.’ She murmured through cracked lips with a voice devoid of life. Of herself. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’
[][][]
He had wept the entire journey back to the Palace and his soldiers had averted their eyes in discomfort and confusion. It was a victory. It was HIS victory. Why would he not celebrate with them? The threat of death was gone. Their revenge against the Aesiric race had been exacted, and so easily!
None of them understood. None of them could. Not even the King and Queen when he was forced to stand in front of them and recant Jinorah’s death with a voice lacking emotion and bravado. He did not accept the reward he had once so highly coveted. He walked out of the Palace with his sword on the floor and his life in tatters. The War against the Northern Aesir was not over, but he would no longer be a part of it.
Instead, he journeyed to the South. The look of grief and the screams of sorrow haunted him even in his waking thoughts. Nothing else lay in his future now except for her, and her hand.
When he came upon the Southern settlement, no one stopped him and yet, everyone seemed to know who he was: the man who had killed their Father. They looked on at him warily and whispered as he climbed the steps of the Temple. The Priests and Priestesses there met him with silence and cold faces, lifting only to point at the lake when he asked where their Mother might be.
He came upon her as the sun was beginning to sink into the horizon. She was dressed in pink silk and gold that swayed in the breeze and hid nothing from his eyes. Once, there had been a time where he would have found her strikingly beautiful and averted his eyes from her from in embarrassment; but now, nothing in the world was beautiful to him. The colours faded into shades of brown and grey.
She was piling wood in her bare feet, the impressive lengths of her white-gold hair tied behind her shoulders as she worked. Her hands and knees were filthy with dirt. She was a Goddess and a Mother to all her children and yet, she was slaving here under the hot sun in filth and sweat.
‘…Myrcella.’ He managed after a while. She stopped and stood up straight, letting the wood she had been carrying fall to the floor with a noisy clatter. Slowly, she turned to look at him.
‘…What do you want?’
She asked in a tone of voice that expressed no emotion. No anger or sadness lay in her eyes as she gazed at him. Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and carried on her task.
Her skin had not recovered from the flames that had poured out from the cracks he had seen not two weeks before. Moving seemed to pain her and drops of blood stained her dress in thin lines as it made contact with her skin. He watched droplets trickle down her bare legs and land in splashes in the dirt underneath her feet.
‘…I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did to him. And to you. To all your children. I was…I was wrong.’
She regarded him cooly over her shoulder.
‘I have not come here to ask for forgiveness. I…I came here to ask for Death.’
‘You have come to the wrong person.’ She scoffed. ‘And you killed the only one who might have given it to you. No, human. I will give you neither forgiveness nor death. You chose your path in life and now you must live with it.’
‘But I-‘
‘No.’ She snapped. ‘How dare you.’
She took steps toward him, but she lacked the ethereal speed with which had rushed to him before.
‘How dare you come to my home and ask that of me. How dare you!’
‘I-I’m sorry…’
‘Do you know what you have done? Does your tiny human mind comprehend what you alone have done to this world? You have taken the silence, the dark and Death. You have left only me and my noise, my light and my life. Do you have any idea what you have done?’
He staggered backwards a little, shaking his head. Around her feet the earth seemed to grow and change; flowers and grass growing and springing up between her toes as she paces around him in a predatory circle.
‘There will be no dark. There will be no silence. There will be no death.’ She hissed. ‘He and I may only ever exist together. Soon my light will lap at the earth and burn everything it touches. Soon my Life will overspill the earth until there is nothing but noise, chaos and confusion.’
She threw more wood onto the pile significantly growing in height and, for the first time, he realised just what it was she was doing.
‘You have destroyed our world and you have the sheer…’ Her lips curled back. ‘…the sheer…audacity to come to me and ask that I give you an easy exit. ‘No. No, no, no. You will carry the burden of your actions until he sees fit to release you from them.’
The Admiral knew what she was talking about. He had tried, several times and very unsuccessfully, to end his life. It had not worked. Every time something had gone wrong, or he would black out only to wake up later in a blurry haze of confusion.
‘I didn’t know…’ He tried to choke. She cut him off scathingly and shook her head, her hair falling over her cheeks as she did.
‘And here I thought there was no other thing alive more selfish than I.’ She laughed mockingly. ‘Of course you knew. Get out of my sight, human.’
He licked the dryness from his lips and looked at his feet in a numbed shame that barely felt genuine. Nothing did, anymore. The weight of his actions did not weight on him. Nothing did. She recognized that and shook her head, looking at him as if he was something so disgusting she could barely stand it.
‘Get out of my sight.’ She repeated. ‘Leave mine and my children’s home at once.’
‘I-I know what you’re doing.’ He gestured to the pile of wood at the bank of the river. ‘…Let me help you.’
She lifted her nose into the air and looked at him in silence, her hands twitching around the log she had picked up from under the shade of a nearby tree. Disgust and rage filled her face, but to his surprise, she relented and nodded.
‘…How poetic.’ She spat. ‘Yes. You should be the one to light the flame.’
They worked in silence. By the time she was satisfied with the pile it was as tall as both of their heights and then some. The evening light was fading and the sky was awash with oranges and pinks. But since his death, it never faded to blue. The sky hung in a perpetual state of sunset before it would once again rise to its full height in the sky. This is what she had meant. Soon, the earth would crack and splinter under her heat. There was no cool of night to comfort a world that was tearing under her light. She climbed into the pile and sat on it as if it were a throne, looking down at him as though she was intending to burn him too.
‘Well, then.’ She mirrored Jinorah’s words to him in an eerie coincidence that deeply unsettled him. ‘I am right here.’
‘What about your children?’ He asked. Only then did her expression soften and her gaze turned upward to the hill above the bank, where the homes of the Southern Aesir resided. She sighed through her nose and closed her eyes.
‘…They will live without me the same way they will die without their Father. It has to be this way, now.’ It was the softest way he had ever heard her speak.
No more words came out of her. She only began to sob as he lit the fire and extended it toward her, but it was not fear that caused her tears; only grief. Before he could touch the fire to the wood she extended a hand out and took it from him, setting herself alight unaided. He staggered backwards as the flames curled and licked at the air and the sound of her crying drifted up into the evening sky. He had thought she might scream or wail as the fire tore apart her skin and melted the very fabric of her being into the earth underneath her, but she only sobbed. Eventually, even that too fell silent and all he was left with was the black smoke of a God that had once given life and a fire so large it seemed to touch the sky.
