Rise Above

[Lynnea Timandre]

7th of Spring, 512 A.V.
Six bells.

The early morning air spun with the scents of a thousand different worlds. East, west, north and south; they came from every direction, over long distances to finally collide at that singular location the Alvads called the Patchwork Port. And a patchwork it was; ships from all over Mizahar anchored here, traders from Syliras and Riverfall and even places as far away as Black Rock. They all met, they all gathered in this great bazaar that served as both a temporary stop and final destination. It was a threshold, of sorts; a threshold into Alvadas, and a threshold to the rest of the world.

Lynnea could hardly take in it all.

Scaled feet, soaked to the bone, made pitter-patter across the rickety boards of the port. The light bounced off the fishscales of cream and white, highlighting the austere grace of the northern island known as Konti Isle. The woman's form was dulled by the simple dress of cotton she wore, and the angry red marks of a past life. The scents of various goods caught her nose, the noise of a microculture working in time to services those who used the port's such as her. The storm had left ugly, bleeding scars across Alvadas (and Mizahar as a whole), not the least of which was the bleeding effect of the illusions. Even as she walked now she could see odd things flickering at the corners of her vision. Despite this, in general this corner of the world seemed to be recuperating quite well. More than recuperating, in fact - actively coming back to life. It was impossible to resist. Quickly now, Lynnea joined the mongering crowds.

This is just a detour, she had told herself, you are not here to sightsee. And yet, Alvadas was impossible to resist. It was simple the change. First it had been Ravok, and then Riverfall; Lynnea had been stuck in these two places for so long, the change in scenery seemed almost unreal.

But she was doing it. She was leaving, and she was going home. And Alvadas was the first stop of the journey.

The conviction to up and go hadn't been gained overnight - or, rather, it had. But what a night it had been. The storm that had rocked Lynnea from her sleep had done something, something odd, to her. It not hurt her, no, but it infected her with something more damaging than any physical wound. It was fear. Fear, borne of alienation and loneliness, had festered within her in the middle of the night. These were fears that couldn't be soothed by any hands save that of her konti sisters. She needed to go home to Mura – needed to, needed to...there was a part of Lynnea that told her she was deluding herself, that her experiences had driven a wedge between her and her former life. But if the prisoner saw a way out of their prison, would they not take it? If the slave had a chance for freedom, would they not take it? Lynnea would. And she did.

The passage to Alvadas had been conducted aboard the Rivarian ship known as Light of Valkalah. Lynnea, rightly or wrongly, had poured every miza she had made into the venture – every miza she had made working, rebuilding Riverfall, and undoubtedly there had been coins in the coffer that had been gained by a bit of begging here and there. It was all for a single bed on what was perhaps was the first ship to leave Riverfall since the 1st. Trade marched every on, as Captain Koryn had said, and his march – and Lynnea's – led to Alvadas, city of illusion. From there, or rather, here, the konti maiden would find passage that would eventually lead to Mura.

Or would she?

There was something, some persisting doubt that Lynnea couldn't stave off as well as the others. For the first time in her life, she was free. Free from responsibility, free from the demands of others. Free of it all: she was her own person now. She didn't have to go home – Lynnea could go any way she liked. The possibilities before her...it was almost hard for Lynnea to take in. What exactly was she supposed to do?

A smile slowly melted into a frown. The crowds, once seeming so light and cheery, all of the sudden seemed too close and too loud. The earth beneath her feet felt alien. It was too much, too much. Dismayed and confused, a woman lost herself within the masses of people, reduced to naught more than another face in the crowd.

[Ulric]

The crows lazed.

Ulric inclined his chin, regarding their prickled roosts. His gaze forced over bearded moss, the jut of beams through slabs pocked by clefts. The mortar crumbling around dulled rims, the projection of vanes and windswept, faceless inlay. There were fissures, petering out and  plunging to gulches, lofted by unsullied rafters that wept a thick, dark resin. “G’way,” he grunted at them, cuffing the dust of hazy dreams from his eyes. “G’way, it’s too early for mockery.”

They didn’t listen, though.

Typical. Taking a fistful of dried corn from a lidded urn, he cast it into the dirty lane. The crows ignored him, mostly. There were a few takers, squawking as tawdry wings carried them to jostle together as they pecked the kernels from the chimerical wink of a gravel of garnet, amethyst, and topaz. The chunks mocked him, too.

Ulric groaned, plopping down on his squat bench with a clank of unruly scales, metal plates jolting against leather. Running through his head was the thunder of a dozen, hide-stretched drums. The tish of bronzed gongs and the skirling of infernal pipers, making a ruckus. His bones hurt, even.

Harshly, he glared at the low mound that swelled blocky against the leeward barrier of his temple. Rubble, plaited by ruddy rust. The revenants of effaced cloister. Tangled by tiny sprigs of thorn, tufts of grass conjuring from sharded schist studded by jet flares of mica, the camber of clay, and flaking plaster. They’d need a mattock, but he was loath to disregard the potential. This bedlam would presently bloom, perhaps with burrs of persimmon and violet. The garden of gnarled prayer, culled of neglect and restored to a luster.

He’d always liked flowers.

Ulric guzzled from his corroded goblet, a harsh, vinegary wine whose dregs he’d watered to erode its potency. The pink tip of his tongue furled over chapped lips as he looked at the buzzing throng, with its discord of rags and robes quilted by calico visages. Their skins were a confusion of hues, ranging from cinder, to umber, to pitch. The intonation of hundreds, crammed into confines of brick. They didn’t cease. Xhyvas, let them find you, he scowled. There’s a time to muster, and a time to become. There’s no dispute in my fervor, but you’ve sat on your arse long enough, and left me to linger. The priest’s sermons are garbled in vain when he just belches words, like a flagellant and his ineffectual, coaxing flail.

Lifting the goblet, he took another pull and absently wiped at a bead of sweat tracing over the ridge of his cheek. This morning was inclemently warm, he thought. Deftly, nubs of fingers fumbled at clasps, unfurling wedges of rattling plate as he disrobed to long strips of scales and the padded jack. The brazier inside was reduced to pewter-gray coals laying in its twisty cage of metal, which rested beside the scruffy altar and a splay of low benches. The vaulted barrel-ceiling lent the chamber a sepulchral guise, but also a grinding hush. There were nests, and a squeak of pearl-furred rodents, but they’d no fear of him, only the prowl of scrawny cats. 

As he drank, his scrutiny lifted to a lily varnish of porcelain, inwardly curving with the flanges of tiny scales. A pretty fish, if you can forgive the gills, Ulric pondered, inexorably prying over pale tresses, the cheap furls of linen that hung over her. He’d not seen many of her kind. He wasn’t sure that he cared to, either.

But she’d a bereft sway about her, as if she was more suited to a turtle’s shell than her scales. Her eyes spoke to him, and with only a brush of their depths, he was intrigued.

“You’ve got the look of a fish out of water, girl,” Ulric grunted, lips creasing in a wry grin. “You’re seeking the bazaar, or maybe a bar to croon your siren’s song for its few, shabby mariners? Taste a bit of brine, maybe.” He gave a chuckle. “It’s never the temple, y’see. Nobody prays here but me.”

[Lynnea Timandre]

The woman looked up, and she remembered.

The wind played with her wet blond hair as curiosity brought an expression back to the ex-slave's face. For the moment, troubles were discarded in favor of a stolen interest. Who was this man to speak to her? It made her pause. Those very same eyes that intrigued Ulric so were brought to bear against him, soaking in the words he uttered. She opened her mouth to speak in turn, but no words pierced her lips just yet.

For Lynnea had no idea what to say.

Finally, she found some, though they were poor substitutes for the messages her mind wanted to convey. “I am not looking for anything just yet,” She spoke in careful Common, the dialect clearly still unfamiliar to a tongue raised on far off Konti Isle. Even now a lilt that rang from words long past carried on to ting her voice. “And I do not have any 'siren's songs' to sing.”

The boards creaked as she shifted position, elbowing a mariner to get into a more advantageous position in which to speak. Her eyes flickered up and down the accosting stranger, taking in every detail; here now stood a man with a checkered past, a colorful past, one that had no doubt seen a bit of bloodshed. But who in Mizahar had not? Lynnea could get past that...but not past his eyes.

His eyes.

Those were eyes that carried shadows as dark as sin in them, eyes that brought back memories of a dark time in her life back to her. They brought back memories spent under full moon and behind ivory bars, the latter discarded in time for silk that proved no less suffocating. They brought back memories of a life she'd rather forget, of pain and evildoing committed in the dark of night. Those eyes, now those eyes scared her.

But there was something else there as well. A light in the darkness. It was that which emboldened Lynnea to speak once more.

“You say there is a temple here? To whom?”

[Ulric]

Ulric regarded her, taking another lingering sip of wine. Maybe, he thought, his shoulders lifting in a turbid shrug. Maybe, just maybe she’ll listen. His faith was sturdy, but neglect had left him jaded, glaring at deriding bystanders instead of preaching to their benefit. There wasn’t much left for him in these chimerical lanes. They’d given him hope, but he’d mislaid their quietude. He’d ruptured them and rended the blocks asunder, only to find, on the verge of his voyage, that he’d shreds of regret.

Haphazard quorks rose from the rafters, and he brusquely hissed for them to stifle clacking tongues. Their sordid presence didn’t belong in this roost, though. They were his, the revenants of his defiance.

The girl was random, the flush of her nearness upon him. If he’d not plucked her from this whirl of bedlam and racket, all cornsilk locks and querulous eyes limned by errant sparks, would she have again crossed the sweep of his gimlets? “Why, to Xhyvas,” he inclined his chin, looking for something, anything.

“Xhyvas is the departed god, returned to his rightful throne,” Ulric clarified. “His realm is of possibility, of transcending the fetters of body and mind to foster inestimable potential. Xhyvas takes us up, and lets us become something more.” Fervor oozed from his chapped lips, and he tipped out the goblet, dribbling its dregs over a gravelly carpet of creepers.

Ulric lifted himself from the bench, gesturing for her to pursue him inside the pocked confines of granite. The ambiance was fusty, swathed by an unceasing gloom, but at least it was quieter. There was a single, guttering candle impaled on a sconce, and he tucked the goblet over its waxy projection, making the soiled curves of metal into an ersatz snuffer. “Xhyvas defied them, you know. Though the others believed him slain, he refused to vanish. There was a veil of secrets, biding for thousands of years until his designs arrived at a reluctant fruition.”

“Think on it, girl,” Ulric grunted, fondly tracing his fingers over the altar. “There’d be hope in the black, swelling cyclones if only the sailors would listen. There’d be verdant fields and twists of metal that’d dazzle your vision, if only we’d listen. The immensity of flinty barrens bearing fruit, if only we’d reach out and discard our paltry squabbling.”

Eagerly, he gazed at her, waiting to see if he’d made any kind of impact with his rhetoric. And yet, he felt a vague, bitter choking in the base of his throat. If only he’d speak to me… 

[Lynnea Timandre]

“Xhyvas...”

Was this some sort of joke?

“I have never heard of Xhyvas,” Lynnea said, her eyes caught on Ulric. It was neither statement nor accusation, caught somewhere in between. In truth, his words confused her, empty promises without any teeth. How could she knew he spoke the truth? How could she know this departed god he spoke of was nothing more than a mummer's fancy, a tale spun to deceive the unwary?

And yet, there was something, some tingle of unknowable power that said he spoke truly. Alvadas seemed filled with these petching leaps of faith.

His claim was tantalizing, but his intent unknown. Teeth chewed on a pink bottom lip in a nervous tic that was quickly becoming a habit of hers. Should she, or should she not? She knew what her mother, Amaris, would say. No. Pay attention only to the task at hand. Don't let yourself become sidetracked.

But damn Amaris.

“Alright, I'll come in,” Lynnea said in response to his unspoken invitation. “But give me some of that wine.” She held one hand open, even as she followed him into the temple.

His words washed over her even as her eyes searched the temple. There was some queer expression in her eyes. Longing, perhaps? Or maybe suspicion?

Even she didn't know.

There was a lull in his speech. He was clearly trying to garner a response from her. Lynnea was standing amid the pews, but now she turned to face the altar, where the would-be priest stood. She searched for the right words, and found them.

“Why do you have so much trust in this departed god?”

[Ulric]

Ulric’s palm reached for the altar, brushing over its flaking veneer. Though he kicked the dais, he wouldn’t trudge any further. The girl probed at the blocks of his temple, found a chink in his coat. That only made him falter. Why d’you trust him? The phrasing wouldn’t join, so he just fiddled with an eddy of wire. Then his jaw tensed. “If I do, it’s because I must.”

Bleakly, he surveyed her, found her lacking in many regards, yet judged her enough for the regalia of revelation. “You won’t believe me,” he grunted. “You may just laugh, and jeer at my kernels of professed vanity, but the truth is that I’ve lived with his essence for many years. I didn’t know it, though. I believed myself just a man. It wasn’t until the least of Xhyvas’ tusked viziers finally kenneled me on a plague vessel’s canting deck.”

Ulric’s palm skated from its roost, plaiting over his leather padding. Pearls of sweat wiped away, he skewed it to dully regard the inlay of tiny whorls over his fingers. Desank, where’ve you gone? That chimerical presence vanished so keenly, like wisps of smoke. You lapped at them, he frowned, thinking of what he’d mislaid. Uneasily, he coughed. Thumped at his clavicle, then intoned again, muffled by an intensity he’d fruitlessly tried to banish. “Didn’t think much of it, but my askance swiftly veered into incredulity. There’s no way to describe it, that sandpaper jogging of his tongue, but for the impermanence of an instant, I was a god. I whiffed the boozy laugh of a sailor, and knew that he could transcend. Instinctively, I sensed the tarry stay of the jib, the furl of jaded sails, the rudder’s creak, that salty whisper, I and knew exactly what to turn, to tug, to nudge that we’d go swifter, smoother.

And then it was gone.”

Punctuating it with a snap, he scratched at the bristle of his chin, regaling her further. “Thought it was over, truly. That’s when she interceded, the lady of time. Though lacking from those tarry planks, she carried us in retrograde. The deluge of thousands of years undulated by, trickling in vortex. Bobbing over swells of jet, plunging over gulches and fissures in the currents, undying, unfathoming what’d been inflicted on my essence. Finally, when I’d begun to dissolve, I crumpled over a gulf of onyx blocks, chapped by pillars. The moorings of his temple.

Abruptly, he grasped her arm, his gimlets suffused as if by a fever. Jerked her closer. The clasp was hardly kind, but it quickly jerked away. “Xhyvas’s visage was mine, his voice as well. Not dazed by any means, but puzzled for an instant. Hardly troubled, though surely he’d surmised his looming depletion. By the flush of braziers, he explicated many matters, his viziers crowding us until they nearly brushed me with their plumes. The inevitability of demise, yet also the leeway of his resurrection. The slabs were laid, the mortar crushed and slicked over brick, leaving only the ingress of time. Though he’d languish, and men’d forget, his viziers ossified, and bided stalwartly. They dispersed like chaff, looking for the wild clatter of knuckles, everything risked on a solitary, worried throw.

Just stay alive, he implored me, though I was pigheaded, and kept digging for other ways of rescuing his divinity from the suffocating gravel of disregard. This was before, though. The levy of his burden is gone, my yoke sorely pitted, and eroding under the deficiency. That was seven days prior.” Ulric lifted his palms, wriggled a cluster of fingers. “Dredging from the ashy mutations, the dreadful quakes, he transcended.

Xhyvas has returned.”

Vainly, he tried suppressing a giggle. 

[Lynnea Timandre]

Abandoned, the hallowed hall had a sort of mystique to it, drowned in musk and incense. It was a giant in slumber, its fires burning low and with only spiders and cobwebs to sign praises from the pews. The forgotten god's only priest had tried hard to tidy up the place, that much could be seen, but Lynnea thought she could see more. For the briefest of moments, as her touch lingered over wooden trestle and she felt Ulric's hot breath on her nape, she dreamed of what the temple could become. She saw people, not the shadows of glory days long past but living, breathing people, swarming the pews to pray to Xhyvas. She saw a temple celebrated all across Mizahar, a temple in which Xhyvas's presence was felt by all that walked through the doors.

And then, she blinked and the vision scattered like so many doves.

A breath, a beating of the heart, a pause. She stopped to consider what she had just seen. Is Mura my only chance for salvation?

She turned back to the unsung champion that had ushered her in through his door. “You are a strong man,” she murmured in his ear, for though he had released her they still stood close, alone in this cavernous hall. “To stand by this god alone, I mean. Your...experience was life changing, that much is obvious. But was it enough to pray for and fight for Xhyvas by yourself?”

She was cutting too deep, she knew, delving too far into the history of some strange man she did not know and probably didn't want to know. But there was a part herself that just didn't care and that part controlled her mouth, and so her words flowed on without end. “How hard has it been, to stand vigil alone? To be the only one to wait in this hall, to be the only one to sing your patron's hymns?” The Common language had never come easily to her, not as easily as the language of her birth, and yet something in her had freed her tongue and given it the words to express the thoughts she wanted to convey.

She looked up, no longer afraid, no longer lost, but instead gazing with bright suns in her eyes to meet Ulric's own. It was there, an understanding of sorts, a shared empathy. She no longer saw his devotion, but felt it as well.

“Have other risen to your god's cause? Have others championed it as well? Tell me,” she begged, “Are there others as devout as you?”

[Ulric]

Xhyvas, was it enough?

Probably not.

Ulric surveyed Lynnea, grimly. Those queries sliced to the quick, inscribing a sliver of doubt over martinet pretensions. They’d dogged him with the veracity he craved, trenchantly rendering it a nuisance. Though looming over his head, he feared they’d unravel his deceit. The rafters knew, with their cadre of crows plucking at his strings. If only you knew, he bit his lip. I’ve no real faith, neither for gods or men. I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t want it, but it fell to me. I was his just vessel, the dented lantern confining a djinn. It did it for him. I did it because it was right, and I persist in this because I must. I won’t let a god perish for neglect. It’s wrong, it doesn’t jive in my head.

I served him because I didn’t have a choice, but mainly because he asked. I was tired of being told.

Ulric’s jaw tugged with resignation, stalwart in his zeal for the dispossessed. “Maybe it’s enough,” he admitted. “Maybe it has displayed the trail that I must venture down, but I’ll admit it. I don’t know, I just don’t. I’ll do anything he asks, but I can’t stand it when nobody listens.

Heavily, he kicked at the ground by the altar, scuffing his heel over the dirty blocks. “Xhyvas has finally returned, and maybe they’ll flock to him, offer homilies in return for guidance. Really, he needs their aid, for the gods’ll inevitably seek to slay him again, strip him of anything for sake of this madness of supremacy. But for now, this hall is empty.” His palm spanned the brazier, wiping cinders from its rim.

“Maybe he’d gain adherents, and they’ll swell, raise grander temples while we glean prosperity. That depends on us, though. There were few, so very few who’d think before of taking this hurdle of faith. To pledge themselves, and pray at this altar. There’s no use in praying to departed gods, they thought. There’d be no laying of sigils, no divine powers to guide them, and bring their goals to fruition. That only displays what’s inherently wrong, that faith is conditional on its recompense, not the sacrifices we make even when it seems there’s no hope.”

“Maybe they’ll make me a saint,” Ulric jeered. “Saint Ulric. That’s got quite an unpleasant ring to it, for a man who’s stained this badly by transgression. There’s always more to it, though. The vigil is mine, if only because I’ve been willing to bear it. There are no others like me,” he shook his head bleakly. “There’s only me.”

Abruptly, his chin lifted. “But the vagaries are endless, after all.” His mouth fringed by traces of a grin. “Xhyvas implores us for prayer, and we’ll give, slowly but increasing in volume, until we drown the sea itself.”