017 - Wardstone
PRINCE LOHR: Forsooth! The ORIG-AH demand of mine kingdom a price terrible, a gild tyrannical! I am a destroyed man, fatherless, kingless! Destroyed!
THE SUN HAG: O good Prince, Heir to the House of LOHR. I shall advise thee like I hath advised thine father and thine father's father, with the words of THE PROGENITOR, who left wisdom behind beyond mortal ken.
THE SUN HAG: ‘Tis the wisdom of the PROGENITOR that all peoples shall shelter under the VE'UN or perish, sharing in that GIFT OF NOR left to mankind through HER wisdom and HER KARR-E-VARR.
PRINCE LOHR: Aye, t’may be truth you speak, HAG. But LOHR shall be beggared under that VARRAN yoke, plundered and brought to heel. Nay, tis no choice at all. I must prepare, HAG. To battle!
PRINCE LOHR exits. THE SUN HAG monologues.
THE SUN HAG: Thou hast doomed thine kingdom to THE SHADOWED DARK, o foolish PRINCE LOHR, for the ORIG-AH speak with the full confidence of the KARR-E-VARR, heirs to the WISDOM OF THE PROGENITOR.
—Excerpt from the Varran tragedy Prince Lohr, written c. 230 Y.S.
It was just before sunrise, The world teetered between the fear of the dark and the dawn of a new day.
Ai stood near the edge of Outpost Avna’s existing Ve’un barrier, the air-conditioning spell on her robes keeping her—and Aru, who was once again ensconced under her cloak—warm against the night chill. Ahead of her, Karravar Benessel and Aspirant Sarila walked toward the Outpost’s new shrine to Nor. The ritual they were about to perform was, in a word, formal, the real thing that Benessel could only attempt to replicate out in the field.
Behind them, what had to be half the town had gathered to watch the proceeding, kept behind a line drawn in the soil by Avnan soldiers under the direction of Lieutenant Baior.
Captain Iorec had come to watch as well, attended to by a small cadre of aides. He looked well considering the circumstances, though his arm was in a sling and he was leaning on a wyrmbone cane.
Sari began to recite a prayer, though perhaps it was more accurate to call it a mantra. Her voice was level, melodic but not in a sing-song way as she recited a [Prayer to the Dawn], gently pressing the semiotic link into reality with her Semblance. Her voice was far from loud, but it carried across the area in the silence of the early morning.
Now watching the pair conduct the ritual, it was clear to Ai that the Ve'un that Benessel had cast while they were on the road was an abbreviated version of the full one unfolding in front of her. Each step the Karravar and his Aspirant took was measured, deliberate, and clearly well-practiced, a single component in a spell woven of centuries of tradition.
The two were wearing fresh robes stiff with starch for the ritual ceremony, their silhouettes a picture of rigid order in the gloom. Their movements were, in conception and practice, somatic components designed to align themselves with the magic they were about to weave.
Beyond them, pressing against the barely perceptible curvature of the current barrier, were the Veh.
There were hundreds standing silently in the dark, a sea of wispy shadows and hollow malice. They were motionless, faceless, but still somehow recognizably staring into the Ve’un, as if peering into the light of civilization at the feast which lay inside.
Ai’s gaze drifted to the shrine itself, a simple pavilion of white stone. It was built just inside the edge of Avna's current Ve'un barrier, so that there would be some overlap in case one or the other failed—nobody was planning for failure, but it seemed that preparing for the worst possible scenario was something that was burned into the Varran mindset.
At the center of the shrine was a raised platform, upon which laid the wardstone that was the focus of the ritual.
It was a nonagonal disc of polished black stone roughly a meter in diameter. It possessed a prismatic sheen, shimmering with the slick, iridescent quality of oil on water. Carved into its surface was a complex lattice of spellscript, spiraling inward toward a central, nine-pointed star—
[Nine-Pointed-Sunstar].
—the emblem of the Varran Republic.
Even from twenty meters away, Ai could feel the stone ache. It hummed with a hollow longing, seeming to be yearning for connection to the greater network of Ve’un that spanned the continent.
The sun crested the horizon.
“It begins,” Benessel whispered, his voice carrying in the stillness. He and Sari took their positions on either side of the wardstone. They raised their hands in unison, their movements synchronized down to the millisecond.
The first rays of dawn struck the desert floor, a wave of light rushing toward the Outpost.
As sunlight hit the mass of Veh outside the barrier, they simply ceased to exist. Like ink dropped into clear water, their forms dissolved into wisps of black dust that swirled for a heartbeat before vanishing entirely.
In seconds, the threat that had loomed over the night was gone, scoured away by the absolute authority of the [Sun].
In their wake was left only sunlight.
Ai watched with a critical eye. The timing of the ritual was, of course, deliberate. The ritual was keyed to [Sunrise]. In a culture that venerated the sun god Nor—a deity Ai herself had cobbled together from dozens of gods each representing some form of [Sun], [Humanity], or [Protection] during the Titanomachy—the dawn was more than just the rising of a celestial body. It was the ultimate symbol of life, victory, and faith. The modern ritual seemed to be designed to draw on the massive well of power that was this core cultural belief.
Benessel added a new chant to Sari's. He spoke in the same rolling, melodic tongue, as her mantra, full of soft vowels and trilled consonants. It was High Varran, of the kind spoken by NPC nobles during A Dirge for the Sun.
The air around the wardstone lensed and distorted in a way that Ai’s eyes refused to process, but was perfectly legible to her magical senses.
[Sun]-[Perpetuity]-[World]-[Humanity]-[Divinity].
Benessel wove the foundation of the Ve'un first. The concepts locked into place, grounding the spell into the bedrock of reality.
[Twentieth Sun-Ninth Moon-Seven-Hundred-Fifty-Eigth-Year]-[Humble-Request]-[Beseechment-Blessing]-[Certification-Karravar]-[Republic-Sanction].
Then came the modern additions to the Ve’un, a bureaucratic process of ratification of the spell through the authority of the state, tying the function of the magic to the legitimacy of the Varran Republic.
[Extension]-[Authorization]-[Demarcation-”Avna”]-[Supplication].
The wardstone flared with a blinding golden light—and in that instant, Ai felt something massive brushing up against the edge of her Semblance.
It came from somewhere far to the north of Avna, and if Ai remembered her Varran geography right, from the general direction of the crater-city of Varranir, which had apparently become the capital city of this new Varran Republic that now ruled the land.
The presence was vast, an SSS-Rank existence of its own. That eclipsed any single mortal individual by definition. The presence felt at once like a warm sunbeam and the implacable, geologic movement of a glacier.
Is that you, Nor?
"Nor" reached out, feeling like some sort of Semblance amoeba extending a portion of its existence over vast distances, blindly groping for the new wardstone at Karravar Benessel’s request. Its touch washed over Ai as well, and for a split second, she held her breath, wondering if it would recognize her. She was, if you thought about it, its long-estranged mother. But it passed her by without even acknowledging her presence.
Ai didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
It seemed that Nor, and everything seemed to indicate that this was indeed Nor, was at best an aloof god. Friendly, in the way a warm blanket is friendly, but utterly impersonal. Nor hadn’t shown up before, when the caravan was in transit. Why? Did it have to do with the modern history of the spell, how it had changed and been changed by the Varran Republic?
As she pondered, Nor latched onto Benessel’s spell.
[Connection].
The golden light of the wardstone pulsed once more, then expanded outward in a shimmering dome, passing through Ai, through the walls of the outpost, and pushing at least three kilometers further into the desert.
[Approval-Integration].
Seconds later, Ai felt Nor’s Semblance recede from whence it came. Soon there was nothing that indicated it had even been here, save for the now fully ratified and active addition to Avna's Ve'un.
It seemed that Outpost Avna’s new territory had indeed been reclaimed from the dark. There was a moment of silence, where none dared to speak.
“It is done,” Benessel finally announced, his booming voice ragged but triumphant. “Let Avna grow under the gaze of the Sun.”
A roar of approval went up from the watching crowd. The Varran garrison banged their spears against their shields, and Gihn laborers threw their hands in the air in joy. Yet Ai stood still, her mind racing.
She hadn’t felt any of the dark, rejecting malice that had shredded her own attempt at a Ve’un days ago. Nor felt nothing like that dark entity had—it was simply performing its designed function, just like she had hoped it would. The thing that had stopped her was coldly, actively malicious towards her.
Did the darkness inhabit the Ve’un network? Or was it something external? A parasite, something structural? An automatic system or something with its own malicious intent?
The only logic she could imagine at present was that, while she had created the player guild Karravar [kava] and was arguably the first ‘Karravar’ in Varrah, she was far from a Mage of the Varran Republic. Sort of an authentication mismatch, though she was loath to compare spellcraft to software. But it was far too simplistic a theory. The outright enmity that was directed her way had to have a more sinister reason behind it.
[Fenocian] fucked us, Ai, [Stormold] had said.
The crowd began to disperse, the tension of the ritual bleeding away into the mundane bustle of the morning. Ai scanned the faces of the people. Just days ago, Gihn locals had looked at Varran soldiers with suspicion and fear, and vice-versa. Now, beneath the shimmering safety of the expanded Ve’un, their expressions held a cautious, fragile optimism.
Unconditional safety, it turned out, was hard to beat.
Seeing that the ritual had been completed, Captain Iorec detached himself from the group of Varran Army aides who were accompanying him, and approached Ai.
“Lady Ayle. In the confusion after my rescue, I haven't had a chance to thank you properly yet. Thank you, truly, for saving my life, and stopping the rogue mage who kidnapped me. Without you, he might have succeeded in stealing our new wardstone, and establishing a rebel foothold in the Southern Acquisition.” Iorec raised a closed fist to his forehead in the Varran gesture of gratitude and respect.
"Do you have a moment to speak on the future?” Iorec asked.