Risen From the Ashes

[Megaera]

A once proud people had fallen. Nightsisters had dominated the land for generations. They had dealt with uprisings of the Daughter's of Allya, with invasions by off world societies, and in every recorded instance always their superior strength and numbers had prevailed. - But when it was Dathomir Herself that rose up against them, there was no victory to be had. The best they could hope for was survival. To that end, the ragtag group of Sisters, Brothers and slaves that had banded together in the Cataclysm of Fire now found themselves dwelling in a cave system beneath the roots of a great mountain, far from the lands that had once belonged to the Burning Mist Clan.

The Fanged God wanted to know if they would submit to her rule, name her Mother? They might..but that was not the destiny that Megaera, Daughter of Matier, wanted for herself..

Deep in a recess of dripping stone walls, Megaera worked at the task of placing crude wooden bowls along intervals in the cave. One of the primary reasons that they had stayed here this long was that the cave provided a seemingly never ending supply of water. Not the poisoned sulphorous leavings polluting the rivers and groundwater. Fresh water, dripping down through the veins of the mountain from snows somewhere high above. For them it had been life.. Sacrifices to the Fanged God had been made, and they had stopped to regain their strength. All wanted to know what their next move would be..

Sooty, chewed upon, fingertips braced against the coolness of the wall, as the Nightsister Shaman tried to hear the voice of their God, guiding her. Or to feel the presence of the Honored Mothers who both haunted and advised her, but today, the spirits were all silent. She was on her own..

Almost.

[Tristan Alastor]

It was a bleak existence. Tristan had spent too many hours to count, now, crawling through dirt and slime. Hunting, some of the others called it, though the word was said with a heavy slap of cynicism. There was no hunting outside the cave, not in a landscape where fire and ash had made charred bones of the very prey that the tribe would seek. Rare was the chance to down some substantial game. Instead, they dined on cave larva and the other eyeless, translucent-fleshed creatures that skulked in this cool underworld.

Pulling in a slow breath to try and push down the vexation - the frustration that felt like it bordered on the kind of petulance that his old self might have indulged - he ducked into the cavern where he could feel Megaera at work.

There was water, at least. That was a small mercy, and the cool air had not yet become tiresome, after so long in the stifling heat. He watched as Meg tended to the cups, her movements slow, almost ritualistic.

"How long would he have us stay here?"

[Megaera]

Without turning, Megaera set down the larger bowl she had used to collect the drippings from the other smaller containers. Placing it atop a relatively flattened surface of stone, she wiped her dampened hands on the folds of her tattered apparel. It was not enough.. The water had been flowing constantly at first, but each time she repeated this process, less was collected. They were running out of time here, spirits will or no.

Disturbed with the knowledge, she turned to her mate and shrugged wearily. "The moons have darkened twice now since He spoke to me. I do not believe we are meant to stay here."

Leaning against the same upthrust hunk of rock that held the bowl of water, Megaera peered around Tristan, making sure they were not yet overheard. They were far from her Mist now, yet she carried it inside her being. She could feel that they were alone. "The water is running slower now. We will not be able to stay much longer. We have to keep moving. Find somewhere untouched by the fire."

[Tristan Alastor]

There was only one He that the clan spoke of. In the gloom of the cave, Tristan frowned somewhat. He had come a long way in his understanding of the Mists, of the power they concealed, but to think that a god could be walking among them? It was proving hard to wrap his mind around. The irony of that - given his background, on a world where the monarch was revered as a deity - was not lost on Tristan, but it did not make the concept any easier to accept.

He pushed a hand back through his damp, slicked back hair.

"Where can we go?"

Dathomir was as vast and unknown to Tristan as the rest of the Galaxy was. Now, he supposed, the fire had made it unknown to Megaera too.

[Megaera]

"I...don't know." Megaera admitted.

While she was no less tired, no less drained, than the rest of the survivors, she had not yet given up trying to fight for their continued survival. She needed help, from the Fanged God, from the Honored Mothers, from Dathomir. Yet, no one seemed to hear her plight for attention today. She was on her own and had to figure this out, for their people.

Crossing the distance across the floor of the cave to Tristan, she slumped against him tiredly, fully committed to hitting the cold stone floor if he let her go. "There has to be something I can do...something I am missing.", she mumbled into his chest.

A squeaking, amplified by the echoing space beneath the mountain, startled the Nightsister. Turning her face from her mate's chest toward the sound, she chuckled. "It's only a veshet.."

The Nightsister frowned. A veshet... The creature seemed suddenly more significant that a mere rodent sniffing after the leavings of the new occupants of the cave system. She watched it, intently...

[Tristan Alastor]

Ever since arriving on Dathomir, Tristan had relied on Megaera. She had been the one thing that had kept him standing, kept him fighting the face of what often felt like futility. The world and its people were so strange, so alien, to him and yet Megaera knew it all like the back of her hand. Now, to see her so drained... it was his turn to be a source of strength and comfort. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand stroking hair hair.

When a skittering creature caught her eye, however, he drew back from the embrace. He could... sense something unusual.

"What is it?"

[Megaera]

Keeping her arms around the solid strength of Tristan, Megaera continued to frown thoughtfully at the little creature. "I think... I might know something that can help us."

Finally releasing her mate, Meg rubbed at her bleary eyes and then sorted through what few possesions she carried with her, collected along the way. She found the Book, bound in what she believed was dragon flesh, and containing what spells she had recorded herself, and a few others that some of the other witches had contributed from their clans. She remembered Matier's Book containing something about the Sense of a Veshet..

Sitting crossed legged, she carefully thumbed through the pages, some still freshly inked in the last days. It seemed a desperate attempt to leave a record of their ways, should they perish. Megaera had not yet given up hope though. It was the way of the Nightsisters. It was how they had come to be, being cast out from Allya's grace they had learned to do for themselves. To survive. To please the Fanged God.. and it was He who had gifted her this tome.. maybe for this reason?

"I might be able to enhance our senses. Our hearing.. Our sense of smell. Rodents are survivors. They always find a new home when they've been smoked out, or poisoned. We can learn much from such a noble little creature."

[Tristan Alastor]

Tristan looked down over her shoulder at the book. He could almost smell the dried flesh and paper that it was made from, even standing over Megaera. The Fanged God had instructed the clan to make the book a complete record of their travels, to record in it everything that they were, everything that they learned. Tristan wasn't sure why, but in his time with the Dathomiri he had learned that they placed great value in the chronicles that the tomes became. It was another custom that he couldn't quite parse into Hapan, but one that he was learning to respect.

He crouched beside her, eyes moving between the pages of the spell-book and Megaera's face. He wanted to help. There was so much he had learned already, so far that he had come, but he still had far to go.

"Show me - teach me how."

[Megaera]

Curling backward into Tristan, she pulled the tome across her lap so that they could look together for the spell she searched for. She had promised him, she would never withhold knowledge from him, ever. Any spell she might utter, any curse she might doom someone with, she would forbid him nothing. Tristan was not her maleling, kept confined behind a proximity shield, dragged out when she fancied a tumble in the dirt. He was her equal in all things.

"It should be something like.. 'the nose of a wolf, eyes of raven..'. It would have been transcribed by one of the Hunters. They use this skill to improve their range when tracking. Which is exactly what we will do." Megaera turned her face from the Book toward Tristan.

"Rather, what you are going to do. Find clean air. Fresh water. Things that still grow green..", she explained. "This cannot have spread to all corners of Dathomir."

[Tristan Alastor]

Tristan nodded along with her words. No matter how wretched the world might seem, he knew she was right. They all had to know it, though that knowledge might have been buried beneath the bitterness and ashes. The piece of Dathomir that had been their own was gone, but they had not claimed all of Dathomir as their lands. Even before they had encountered the refugees of the other clans that had been hit by the cataclysm, Megaera had told Tristan tales of the other witches that roamed the lands, witches who worshiped other spirits or goddesses, witches who could shift their shape or would ride on the backs of monstrously large spiders. It had all sounded like fairy-tales at first, but Tristan knew better than to doubt what she said. How could he, after all that he had seen - after all that he had done?

If Meg was wrong about this, about the possibility that the fire had not touched every part of the planet... well, they had to know that for certain, too. At least then they could set about trying to leave Dathomir. The prospect of that muddled Tristan's emotions. He frowned, looking down from Meg's face to the Book.

"How should I begin?"

[Megaera]

After carefully turning through page after page, Megaera realized the spell she sought had not yet been inscribed in their Book. "I cannot see it here."

She bit at her thumb, a growing habit born the stress of all that had happened. For a moment, frustration threatened to rob her of any kind of constructive reason. Megaera did not allow that, she had too many people depending on her. Squaring her shoulders she snapped the tome closed, setting it aside for now. She had a theory, and if she was successful she would return to the Book, record the spell for future use. If not.. they would find another way. The Fanged God had not let them burn, she had to believe He would not let them perish here, wasting away to husks in this cave.

Turning to Tristan, she took his hand in her own, holding tightly to him, drawing strength from his nearness. "So I'll make a new one. When I was small.. the Honored Mother's told me that in time I would have the ability to shape spells of my own design. If that was true then I am not limited by what others have recorded before me. So let's begin as we mean to carry on. We do not fail. Right?"

Set to her purpose, the Nightsister rose, crossing to the passage out to the larger room of the cave system. It was where the other survivors, those they had picked up along the way, huddled around very small, very contained, fires in the dark. All seemed endowed with a newly refreshed sense of respect for the destructive element. She spoke in a low voice to one of the young witches. The girl crossed to one of the pits and returned with something she handed to Megaera.

Returning to Tristan, she turned over her hand revealing the lump of charcoal in her palm. With natural gracefulness, Megaera lowered herself back to the floor, before her mate. "Our spells are spoken.."

Without hesitation she climbed into his lap. "L'mai d'natha kal'daka. L'solen d'natha oreb." The nose of a wolf. The eyes of a raven. That was the core of the spell she knew as Sense of the Veshet. She would trust the spirits to know how to shape her will. Their will. Tristan was going to be put to the test as well.

"Think that. Say it. Feel it become part of you."

She crushed the charcoal in her hand. With her fingertips, she began to make a band of black across Tristan's eyes, nose, temples. All the while repeating that phrase. "L'mai d'natha kal'daka. L'solen d'natha oreb."

[Tristan Alastor]

Tristan closed his eyes as Megaera pulled her thumb over his eyelids, blackening his skin with the crumbled charcoal. With eyes shut, the smell of the smoke from the nearby fires seemed stronger and sharper than before. He breathed a deep lungful of the scent.

"The nose of a wolf, the eyes of a raven."

There was power in words. He had always known that, even as the Crown Prince of Hapes. Words could make or break that future of entire worlds, just as easily as weapons could. On Dathomir, words took on a greater power. Megaera's words had brought him to the witch-planet. Words had allowed him to touch and shape the power contained within the Mists.

"The nose of the wolf... the eyes of a raven," he repeated, the sound of his voice reverberating softly off the cavern walls, perhaps even though them.

[Megaera]

Tristan never failed to amaze Megaera with how quickly he picked things up. His mind was continually open to learning whatever she would teach him, whether it was a great or small. From the most complex spells she knew, to the most mundane of tasks. If he did not know how to do a thing, and do it perfectly, he pushed himself to master it. This would be no different. She believed that. Already she could feel the difference as his senses stretched outward, seeking the very qualities his voice quietly chanted as words of focus.

While Megaera finished darkening her mate's eyes, the traditional mask design their Hunter's wore when a ritual hunt was called, she began to call upon the magic of her people. "Nym'uer uns'aa, Dathomir. Nym'uer dosst Dalharil, Megeara.." She continued this prayer, until the flickering stubs of smoky tallow candles flared up with green light.

Ichor..

Untapped wild energy surged through the Nightsister, flowing through her from the land itself. It rose upward through the roots of the mountain, through the damp soil beneath them, into her body. Her hands turned upward, beseeching the power behind the Mist to manifest her will upon Tristan. "Belbau uns'aa l'zhaunil d'dosst ib'leua aterruce, l'Veshet. L'mai d'natha kal'daka. L'solen d'natha oreb."

The green light reacted to her words, spilling forward from the source of the candles taking form instead as tendrils of energy that slithered forward, serpentine, swirling around her chosen recipient, Tristan. "Nau'thal dosst Dalharuk, Tristan. Belbau ukta l'z'ress ulu ragar l'i'dol.."

She prayed for Dathomir to give Tristan strength. To bestow upon him the gifts needed to save them all..

[Tristan Alastor]

The flicker of unholy green light was visible even through his closed eyes. The smoke of the tallow candles tickled his nostrils, the smell trapped within the cave's low-ceilings. More than that, though he felt the power of the words. The beating of his heart was in time with the rythmic murmur of Meg's voice. I need to see, Tristan told himself, trying to project his wish and will beyond himself and tap into the ethereal power that he had experienced on Dathomir before. I need to see beyond this place.

"The nose of the wolf, the eyes of the raven," he repeated, again and again, his voice barely a whisper but his lips shaping the words until he'd spoken them so many times they were almost meaningless - as if the meaning had been stripped from the syllables so that it might be grafted onto him instead.

"The nose of the wolf," he began again, "The eyes-"

Tritan's body suddenly jerked stiff and stick. The sound caught in his throat as if he were being choked. He gasped and, with his head thrown back, his eyes flew wide open: pure white and staring into and beyond the stone.

[Megaera]

Enervated as she was, Megaera committed herself to the shaping of this spell. Her hands settled lightly on Tristan's shoulders. She could feel him there with her, not just in the body of the man beneath her, but also the impression of his will reaching out to connect with and empower her own. She was aware of it almost as though he were stretching out with unseen fingers for her. Entwining them both into something stronger, becoming one undeniable force, capable of commanding the ichor.

It was the push she had needed.

All at once Megeara's awareness of the ever present spirit world returned. Her sight returned, her eyes blazing with the same green light as the spirit ichor. The Honored Mother's had not deserted her, as she had nearly allowed herself to believe in moments of hopelessness. Magda was there now, just behind her, one gnarled hand upon her shoulder, chanting right along with her and Tristan. Behind the shade of the departed Nightsister shaman, her own spirit sisters Helebor and Avarice each had hands set upon her bony shoulders, lending her their combined strength.

The green ichor spiraled into one constant moving path. One which ran right through Megaera. Into her back, through her body and into Tristan, until it disappeared and he shuddered and went rigid. Her grip on his shoulders tightened. She watched as his head was thrown back, his eyes...

His eyes..

They were the same apathetic white as those of their Fanged God.

Trembling fingers slid up his neck, cupping his jaw between her hands. Her thumbs rubbing over his cheeks. "Tristan..."

"What do you see?"

[Tristan Alastor]

“You are lost.”

Tristan's voice was not his own. When he spoke, it was as if another voice echoed him, distant and yet paradoxically near enough to be whispering in the listeners ear. A sibilant undertone slithered under his words.

“But I can show you the way. There are places on this world that even your most revered mothers do not know.”

His head lolled forward, sightless eyes swinging towards the three, departed witches.

[Megaera]

Megaera knew that whisper accompanying Tristan's own voice. It was present in her own voice at times, when the Spirits spoke to, or through her, but she had never heard it from anyone not a shaman. Certainly not from Tristan. The spell had been meant to increase the range of his senses, and it seemed to have worked, if not quite as she had intended.

Still holding onto her mate, Megaera looked over her shoulder to the Honored Mothers. Avarice and Helebor shrugged at her. Magda on the other hand looked positively tickled with whatever was going on. It was obvious by the sight of her remaining teeth and ghostly gums. It was horrific, but Megaera knew it was smile. The departed shaman had always had a thing for Tristan. It could be a good thing, or a very bad one. Probably not too bad, as the apparition was now untwisting her ropes of hair, combing out her long spectral white locks with a bit of a cackle.

"Tristan..." Turning back to the prince, Megaera grew a bit more insistent. "What is going on Magda?", she demanded.

[Tristan Alastor]

“Come, this way,” Tristan said, as much to himself as to Megaera.

Nausea swept through the Hapan Prince as the cave pulled backwards before his eyes. The disconnect between what his body felt – the hard, damp stone was steady beneath his knees – and what his mind saw and felt was enough to throw all sorts of internal checks and balances into disarray.

The power of the spell was quick to work however, and within a moment the disorientating pull-back elicited only a deep breath. With each jump in perspective, a shallow gasp passed his lips and his mind's eye – the eyes of the raven – drew further and further out of the underground and to the world above them. The reverse-magnification continued, until he was looking down on the blighted land from dozens of feet above.

In the cave, Tristan's skin beaded with sweat at the heat he was sensing above. His hold on Megaera tightened as he looked down from his raven's eye view on the landscape. He didn't fear the great height, but instead felt a shiver of excitement at it. There was no time to indulge it, however. As his eyes searched, his other senses also called for his attention. In the cave, his nose – blacked by paint - wrinkled. The nose of the wolf. It wasn't scents that he could smell, not in any traditional sense. Instead it was... something else. Something that he couldn't quite parse into words.

[Megaera]

Magda was not forthcoming with any kind of meaningful response. Her antics seemed to imply she intended that she and Tristan would be seeing a lot of each other.

Behind her Megeara could still hear the low hum of voices talking quietly in the gloom. All that remained of their people and what survivors they had encountered, those that chose to remain with them. Safety in numbers had made them strong when less disciplined, more desperate, souls had come to take from them.

It was not the direction Tristan was leading her though. He was heading away from them. A second of indecision only, and her wrist was tugged forward by the insistent stride of her mate. This was what she had woven.

See it through... The Spirits advised.

Her steps followed the Nightbrother prince, through the darkness, letting him lead for a change.

[Tristan Alastor]

"There is a path through the stone," Tristan said, in the voice that was not wholly his own. Though he didn't know what he was going to say until the words passed his lips, from the second he did Tristan knew they were absolute truth. As if whatever the spell had conjured had not granted him some new sense or sight, but unlocked a part of his being that was previously concealed.

The cave ahead stretched out into darkness, away from the light and safety of the temporary camp they had made, yet Tristan moved with sure steps. For a heartbeat, he was in awe at himself: a child born to a life without darkness, in the endless light of the Hapes Consortium, and now he strode in the shadows without fear. He squeezed Meg's hand and as they walked turned briefly to regard her, his eyes blazing white with the power of the spell.

"It begins not far ahead. Though it is long, and though it cuts through... old, forgotten places, you need only follow it to find the sanctuary you seek."