Chapter 1: Ruins
A chilling north gale pierced the stagnant air above the jagged bluffs where the ruins stood. The hollow, roofless structure swallowed the howl until it became several shrill whistles. As the wind blew, droplets from the surrounding white mist pricked her skin like small ice crystals while the aroma of morning rain lingered in her nose.
All signaled the changing season. Winter would arrive in three full moons.
In three full moons, Kikuyo Quill would celebrate her twentieth winter. Along with it, her choice.
Kikuyo was as tall as most men. Her slender waist, long, toned legs, and raven hair that reached them, along with her pale, bluish skin, made many see her as the embodiment of Mother. She bridled at the resemblance. And intentionally restrained her bosom to discourage further comparison.
Not that she thought Mother, a living Titan who dominated the skyline, unworthy of praise or epic tales. Kikuyo was an apprentice Lorekeeper after all. But she did not share such a fate, nor dared or desired to.
As she turned her attention back to the ruins, Kikuyo placed her delicate hand on the rough, white stone of the tower. A large moonstone, or even a signal fire lit on top of the tower, would warn passing ships of the dangerous shoreline.
Closing her dark eyes, Kikuyo imagined the mist as sea spray and the howling wind as the crashing of waves. Scrunched her sharp nose at the tangy salt. But when she opened them, the sensations vanished, save for the bleached, lifeless rocks below the bluff.
No sea touched this shore. Not anymore.
Not since Mother and her children, the Sisters, erected a large, gleaming seawall and drained the northern seas. New fertile lands where they constructed their capital. The Valley of Peace, they ironically called it. Proof of the Titan’s power.
However, Kikuyo did not travel to a distant, forgotten shore for the white tower. The adjacent ruins were her true pursuit. Inside, a primitive telescope rested, with logbooks and precious star charts kept in decaying cabinets nearby. She pursued knowledge not yet recorded by the Lorekeeper Order. This did not please her mentor, Master Lorekeeper Edera, at all.
Her foster mother’s voice echoed sternly in her memory. “The past is not simple stories, child. The past serves as a shield against ignorance, but chaos can also wield it as a weapon. Our duty is to preserve it, unchanged, unchallenged.” Preserve it, sure. But never question it? Never challenge it? A tradition Kikuyo chafed against. Why pursue knowledge without question?
Her bravado aside, as she lifted her long gray robes so her lithe legs could climb into the ruins unfettered, Kikuyo had to admit the truth. Up to now, she had only found star charts which agreed with the 997-year precession underpinning current history. She discovered charts within these ruins that date back to the first century. She fervently hoped to discover something from before, a truth challenging the prevalent narrative. Still, only a single rundown cabinet remained.
Kikuyo kneeled, pulling the handle, and the door, crushed by the cabinets, broke open with a crack, filling the air with musty, rotten splinters. Inside, she located a large, bound star chart that she eagerly read. A gleeful smile erupted on her face. Tucked between the middle pages, she found texts in an archaic dialect, simpler than that taught by the Titans but still decipherable. It spoke of dates a century before the millennium.
Edera will be thrilled. Kikuyo closed and hugged the chart book. Or angry. Either would carve a deep smile between her dimpled cheeks. Edera would question it, of course. Challenge it, for certain. Kikuyo felt certain the ruins’ isolation would shield the chart from judgment.
Edera’s meticulousness would vindicate Kikuyo’s pursuit.
Kikuyo unfastened a patch of leather she had bound within her robes for a situation like this. She placed the patch on the ground and gently laid the bound star chart upon it, securing the leather around the tome with twine.
Then she placed the leather-wrapped star chart aside and looked for a false bottom in the cabinet. A productive habit that Kikuyo employed often with significant results.
It proved fruitful once again.
Her hand easily broke through the rotted wood, revealing a hidden hardbound logbook. As she perused it, the contents became clear to her. A manifest! An order for large power supplies, both moon and magma based, and the metal containers to contain such power. Kikuyo thought the supplies strange for such a building, even prior to its ruin. Celestial forges would better suit them.
Perhaps they only stored them here. She thought. Perhaps they intended these for the celestial forges in the new capital, but never delivered them.
If true, what a find!
Kikuyo tapped the hardbound logbook against her rounded chin as she paced through the ruins, searching for a trapdoor that would lead further down. Then a creak, revealing a floor separation at a corner joint that met the outside tower. She slipped the logbook inside her robes and pulled on the flooring to reveal a metal staircase.
Then, Kikuyo pulled out two glowing stones from a burlap pouch that hung from her waist. A moonstone from Mother, which covered everything in a bright blue. And a magma stone from Father, changing the hue of her hand to a dim red. Not a destructive moonbeam, like the Sisters wielded. Nor a cleansing fireball that the Sons possessed. Both had their uses; however. One illuminated the path, while the other started campfires, expelling vermin.
Properly equipped, she headed down the staircase, red from rust, groaning under her every footfall. An icy breeze blew on her back from above. As Kikuyo continued her descent, the light from the two stones began to fade and flicker. She shook them as if to heal them through violence.
“Titan cursed gifts,” her words failed when her last step found no purchase.
A missing basement stone? Or perhaps a rotted floorboard. Kikuyo didn’t have the time nor the inclination to ponder.
The fall was quick, the impact of her body even more sudden as she landed on a metal plate that rang like a muffled bell. The air left her in a sharp, metallic wheeze. Her robes, which lagged, fell softly against her back.
In her hands, the stones faded completely as they came into contact with the metal plate. Before they winked out, Kikuyo glimpsed the hue of the plate. It was pewter gray with gold embellishments. In the center sat an embossed sigil she didn’t recognize, nor saw again. A thread of brilliant molten gold escaped her bruised palm and fell into the inner circle of the plate.
Kikuyo lost her breath again. Her vision narrowed as the grinding of gears hummed through the plate until the inner circle rotated away, revealing a small chamber beneath. An amethyst glow from within caught her attention.
Reaching in, her fingers brushed against cold, smooth metal. She pulled it out.
The waning glow shone on a bracer, simple in design, forged from a material that drank the faint light. It was severely unadorned, save for two fading opals, one red and one blue. Yet it hummed, expectant.
Before she could properly examine it, a jolt, like static shock but orders stronger, shot up her arm. She cried out, trying to fling it away, but too late. The metal scorched her wrist, not burning but attaching, merging with her skin, like frost and blaze in tandem. She became enveloped in a dark shadow.
She was floating. Or the world was falling away. A vision manifested.
There was no moon. No world. Only a void, a darkened sphere, and two shadows falling into it.
One was of impossible scale, a planet-sized mass of inky, bluish-black flesh, a tentacle sheared clean from some cosmic horror. A weapon of equal magnitude impaled through its core. It was a shaftless golden blade, a halberd’s head radiating a cold, sterile light.
The other was a hand. Of similar size to the mass of flesh, bright red and grasping a broken shaft, the other half of the halberd. They tumbled in a silent, cataclysmic ballet.
The impact, though silent, radiated light and pure unmaking force.
Together, the tentacle and the hand struck the darkened sphere. Reality shattered. Molten rock erupted, a sea of fire consuming everything. The shockwave of their death throes blasted a colossal chunk of the world away, sending it spinning into the void to become the pitted, watching Moon.
As the new, wounded world cooled, its surface a churning hell of fire and water, the two impactors sank, drawn down into its molten heart as if returning to a grave.
Kikuyo gasped for air.
The shadow that enveloped her had dissipated. A lingering smell of brimstone filled her nose. The vision was gone, but the echo of it rang in her bones, a phantom vibration of creation itself.
When she opened her eyes, Kikuyo saw the clearing sky. As she turned her head, she caught vanishing wisps of black smoke. The howl of the wind caught the top of the ruins. Beside her lay the leather-wrapped star chart she had left behind before her search.
She had returned to the ground level.
How?
Kikuyo looked at her wrist. The bracer was there, fused to her skin from forearm to wrist. It was no longer cold, but matched the temperature of her skin. As she watched, the severe, plain metal changed, etching itself with faint, swirling patterns of red and blue. The opals had darkened.
A slow, icy dread pooled in her stomach. This certainly wasn’t preservation, but a challenge. A challenge to everything the order had ever taught.
She scrambled to her feet, patted her robe and burlap bag, surveying her situation. Her moon and magma stones gone, along with the hardbound logbook, likely still on the pewter plate below.
Kikuyo had to leave. Now.
She had to return to the scriptorium’s clarity before nightfall. Back to the safety found under Edera’s wing. A prospect made difficult without the guidance and protection of her moon and magma stones.
Kikuyo picked up the leather-wrapped star chart and made haste to the main road.
The wind whispered through the ruins, and for a moment, it changed. It was a voice, ancient and weary, sighing a single word directly into the core of her mind.
Heresy.