IV - Initiation

Year 349 after the War of the Gods, Summer

North of Ardport, Grave of Titans

Leisurely the donkey trotted behind master and student. It had been carrying their burden for hours now. When they set off, the sun had just been about to set and now the moons - Sénbhe and Dhénia - were already high up in the sky, bathing the three of them in pale light. The silver-white sisters watched silently over the sleeping world  below as they travelled their ever-same paths up there in the endless sea of stars. Dhénia, the smaller one, always a little faster, always a little ahead of her big sister. Dancing across the night sky while their mother slept deep under the sea in the west.

“How much further?”, Iora asked her master, who hadn’t said a single word the entire time. It had made her increasingly nervous, as he usually tended to remain silent very rarely. What she wouldn’t have given for a lesson right about now. The silence on the other hand was gnawing at her. That was what made Iora even more uncomfortable than facing gods.

“Do you see that pillar up ahead, growing out of the Grave of Titans?” Without turning around, he pointed far into the distance with his outstretched arm. In the darkness she could barely make out what he was pointing at. “That is where we have to go. That is where I etched the runes into the stone all those years ago. That is where the Daevas will accept you as one of their disciples.” That explanation did nothing to ease Iora’s mind.

Afterwards, the master fell back into silence. The rest of the way to the bridge that would take them to the stone platform, he didn't speak another word and left her to her thoughts. He had often told her to use the time he wasn’t teaching her anything to think about things for herself, but in this silence there was no time to contemplate the nature of life or the development of different species. No time, no space, no peace. Her mind was a sky full of startled birds and dark clouds and a coming storm, carrying loose leaves and dust plumes in its wake. And she stood there trying to coax at least one of the birds back into its cage. She failed.

She had prayed for strength and for clarity. She didn’t know if it did anything. Had her ancestors even heard her? She didn’t even know who they had been. Riders in the steppe to the far south? Hunters in the Ironwoods? Her parents… Why had they left? In any case, it didn’t feel like they were going to stand by her side in this trial. Maybe the fault lay with the prayers themselves. Theology was one of the subjects her master had taught her, but that was nothing but theory. Family trees. The nature of the divine. How rites have changed over the centuries. But how to pray properly? Not the slightest clue. Did the knowledge that Irdorath was mother and father to all elves help her in any way? Hunter on the wind? Not really. She had tried to speak to her. Asked the god to stand by her if something happened, as she suspected one did such a thing. An answer she did not receive.

Finally they reached the stone pillar. One of many islands in a sea of nothing. Darkness, stretching into the abyss. And the only way to cross the black, which was no water, was a barely trustworthy bridge. It creaked and swayed under every step, but in the end they were back on solid ground. At the center of the plateau then the mage gave a sign that they would stop here. Iora tied the donkey to a withered, gnarly tree, which, despite all the odds, had chosen this barren place as its home and was clinging to the last remnants of life still left within it. She saw something poetic in its struggle for survival out here. She was not sure what that was.

While the master swept sand and dust over the edge of the plateau, the student lit the braziers the poor donkey had to carry for these last couple of hours. And whenever the teacher discovered another rune, she rushed to his side and poured either water or oil over it as he instructed. A circle. A sickle. A lightning bolt. A… tree?

Finally they were done and placed a last, ornate bowl at the center of the circle. The master seemed pleased. Here he stood as mage and ruler over the forces of nature. The flames flickered in the light, warm breeze, danced, leaped and their unsteady light clothed him in the superhuman. His features obscured. The shadows deeper and ever moving. The creases in his face undulating vines sprawling across his skin. His eyes, mirror to the flames, embers in their sockets, a pale light, a reflection, a gate. Right here he was no mere old man.

The furious jitter of the fires in the wind had chased away the calm light of the moon. The cold nervousness gave way to burning tension. Iora had had her doubts, certainly, but hadn’t she waited her entire life for this single moment? Hadn’t every moment of her studies prepared her for this? Eight years the apprentice to her master… This would be the culmination of all her patience.

She turned the thought over and over while her master knelt in front of the bowl and began to burn herbs and inhale the smoke. Apart from the soft wind and the crackling of the wood it was terrifyingly silent. Iora would have preferred it so much more if it had been loud; if something had happened. Now she could only watch her master as he threw another handful of - whatever - into the bowl again and again, changing more and more with every passing minute. She had never seen him like this, his face taking on a horrifying look. In Ardport– In Ardport she had once seen something like that. With the dust addicts in the dark and deserted alleyways where nobody dared to go. Mangled, inhuman faces, bleary eyes, their senses no longer in this world. He laughed. A thousand voices from his throat.

“Iora, heir to the name of the Windweaver, daughter of Irdorath, you heard the call of the Daevas and followed it to them. For what reason do you want to submit to them?”

“What?” He had never mentioned any of that. A price, yes, but not that. She didn’t want to submit to anyone. Hadn’t he raised her to live free? “You never–”

“You accepted my offer without hesitation. You have agreed to pay the undetermined price. So state your reason. Their eyes are on you now and your soul has been promised.” He spoke in a voice so cheerful it turned her stomach.

This had to be a test. He wouldn’t just sell her out like that. But what if he did? No. Eight years. Eight years he had prepared her for this moment. Of preparing herself for this moment. She would not back down. She saw Ardport. The streets, the snow, the boots, the blunt end of a spear. Felt them against her flesh and her bone. Felt the knife at her ear. She would not back down. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. And it was as if she breathed only smoke, not air. It ran thickly down her throat and spread throughout her body. She coughed. Tears gathered in her eyes. She exhaled. She would not back down. Again she inhaled. Felt as her body relaxed. How her mind relaxed. How the warmth crept into every fibre of her being and when she opened her eyes again, her thoughts were as spring water. The answer lay before her as if asked her name. And she was surprised herself.

“You surely want to hear power. Is that it? The Daevas would rejoice at my striving for power. If I would offer myself to be their hand. Their instrument in this world. Kill in their name.”

She looked deep into the eyes of the figure opposite her, who no longer had much of her foster father. Something else was sitting in these sockets. Something that shouldn't be here. But it was too late to turn back.

“But that is not who I am. I strive for knowledge. More knowledge than is contained in the Great Libraries. More knowledge than what the old masters wielded before the War of the Gods. Knowledge of the great whole and the smallest part. The brick and the house. The source, the stream and the ocean.”

“You want knowledge? Knowledge you shall have. Enough for you to drown in it. Enough for you to wish you could forget.”

The vessel of the Daevas spread its arms wide. And when it opened its mouth, no sound came past its lips. Silently it formed impossible syllables. And the stone underneath her feet spoke for it. And the rock screeched and on to her left and right the stone disappeared into the deep. With it the tree and the donkey tethered.

Iora had long wanted to run away. This whole ritual was so much more than she ever wanted to go through, but no muscle in her body obeyed. She was nothing more than a witness.

“Receive our sign.”

With ash from the adorned bowl the gods drew a rune on her forehead and one on her chin. She felt it on her skin and beneath. Then her master’s body rose and disappeared from her vision. All clarity had gone from her mind since the demonstration of power and now she was there alone with her fear and her surrogate father, who had cared for her like a real daughter, was so far gone from her it was impossible he would inhabit this body ever again.

This had to be a test. None of this could be happening for real. This had to be a test. Something wet ran down her cheek. This had to be a test.

She was the dirty child from the streets and the guardsman had caught her with the apple in her hand.

And her fate was no longer her own.

Behind her something tugged at her collar and then she heard and felt as her simple tunic was cut open. It slipped down her back. Then the hand - no longer her master’s - brushed aside her hair. Shivers run down her back.

She wanted to beg, plead, scream, cry. Not a sound escaped her lips.

“Creature of the wind, you are ours.”

The point of the knife pierced the skin on her neck. She couldn’t move; could only feel. First just dull pressure until her senses caught up with what her mind already knew. A straight cut down her back. For Iora it was as though the marionette would paint deep into her with white hot metal. The second cut described an arch from her left shoulder blade to her right. And again the pain from her back extended into her mind. She screamed. From pain and from desperation. She didn’t scream. Not a muscle twitched. Not a bit did she move.

The next symbol was a circle on the small of her back. At that her body gave in. Her mind had already drawn back and only observed the white lines forming in front of her inner eye. The blood ran down her back in small rivulets. But the Daevas yanked her back up and worked to complete their bloody art work. With no regard. Sanguine stroke by sanguine stroke. A painting in her being. Iora's body hung lifeless in their grip as they completed their work.

“This scar, this glyph is our contract. It binds you to us and grants our power.”

And so she understood. This was the end to her soul. And when the veil of unconsciousness finally fell over her to release her from the pain, she welcomed it with open arms.