The Legacy of Alatharyael Nirees-Singreen

So you left the first city and you’re wandering, as the sun dies in the sky, purpling like a bruise over the distant jungle. You’re walking towards it, a new labyrinth to replace the one you lost, along the uneven roads, which have only slowly been repaired after the conflagration. Still, the world is warped by history’s horrors. Shifting strangeness as the sun dies, in the corner of your eye.

Now it’s dark.

But there are lights in the gloom, and you know them for what they are. Not stars, not hermit-lanterns, but the signal fires of the rebellion, burning bright defiance against the night, before the descent, the grief-stricken tide that sweeps away the slavers in their crystal dreams of cruel perfection. So many people died, and yet now, at last, there’s freedom.

You turn and you realise it was a mirage, a game played with mirrors, so close lights seemed far away. The eyes bore into you. The teeth grin.

Boo.

And you are hurtling, tumbling, down a hill you hadn’t seen, until a hand reaches out and catches you. A stranger pulls you up again, before your wings can remember to beat.

Questions form inside you, like lilies blossoming before the canker-worms come for what sweetness remains.

Is this phantom from before we fell a jester or a hunter?

You set up a campfire (another light in the darkness), and share what food you have. It’s unbelievable. Just like the tales said. The wandering stranger who’s always there, in your peripheral vision. The strangeness in the night. The laughing god who disrupts whatever needs disrupting.

You play a riddle game, to prove they’re who they claim.

Then, you ask the largest question.

How did things begin?

They tap their stick in answer.

With a one… a two… a three…

That’s one of the rules, you see. The pattern-lanterns that guide us through the dark.

Arc-Us…

They wave the stick in the air, an endless, trailing cycle.

And Ris…

They point it at you.

And Vee. That’s me.

Again, they smile.

But how did things go so wrong? How did a city of art and dream and symbol give way to such evil?

Who ruined it, that utopia before reality began? That glorious sunrise before the first breath?

Maybe there was a villain. A saboteur. A murderer with jagged knife or beak.

Who could it have been? Outlines were fuzzy, so it was hard to tell.

The Thief? Clearly the fall guy. Stole the flowers so you all might live. I’m a hero. No need to applaud. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

The mother, with her garden of wonders, her eyes that drank in endless futures of unchanging glory, doomed to never be?

Or was it that tragic murdered innocent whose name-kin ruined countless lives? The one whose martyred self-righteousness still wraps itself around the Flower of Ingenuity in your heart, choking it like a worm?

Again, the stick. It nearly comes into contact with your chest, but stops short. You exhale.

Or is it simply in every sweet thing’s nature to decay, when it touches the air? Was it a tragedy of errors, with no one of us to blame?

I suppose we’ll never know. Only one who could say for sure is a Scoundrel… and I’m not telling.

There’s not much humour in the voice anymore, and the reflections of endless dead stars dance in the eyes.

However you got here, you’re stuck here now. Your ancestors made their choices themselves. No destiny compelled them. Now, you get to do the same.

Go your way now, Kallimari. And keep going. Until the workers of the galaxy are free.

When you wake, the sun’s just started to rise again. The bruise is slowly healing. You pass Rissi and Xhuva, working in teams to clear away the sickness that seeped into the land. You catch snatches of laughter and stories on the breeze.

You walk into the jungle, and gaze up at the vastness of the trees, as sunlight streams through the branches, dancing like Ris once did. You listen to the sounds of bird song and the rustling of mammals.

You keep going. Facing the future.



Written by Luke P.