- Once there was a Man...
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First he was a Mortal....
who became a Mendicant.Once there was a man of Whitewall who lived his life. That he did this may seem trivial, but he did not think so then. This man was a mine foreman, like his father and grandfather before him. Times were occasionally lean but there was always food, clothing, and shelter. The family had heat in winter and enough time for leisure that their spirits were not ground down.
Eventually, only slightly younger than was expected, this man was married. Her name was Elenore, and she was a smiling young woman he thought beautiful. Their first child, a healthy boy, was born not long after. The child was the light of their lives so they named him Aiden. Six years later a daughter joined the family in the spring. The day she was born there was a rainbow around the sun so they called her Enfys because she had brought new color to their lives.
For many years the man of Whitewall was content. When it pleased heaven there were difficult times or easy but the man was wise enough to know the same was true for everyone. Whatever he did later, it was a decent life and he knew it.
Two years ago his father was killed in a tunnel collapsed. For years the output of the mine had been dwindling and so the owners had directed the foremen to dig new and more numerous tunnels in the hopes of uncovering a additional seams so that they could fulfill their own obligations. The most experienced under-foreman, the man replaced his father as overseer of the mine. Though the owners sympathized they continued to require new delving. So the man of Whitewall did his job and kept output up even as the number of accident likewise increased.
Around this time his wife became pregnant with their third child. In the midst of moving to the overseer’s quarters that his father had previously occupied the man evaluated his life and began to grow dissatisfied. He foresaw his son following in his profession, as he had followed in his fathers; his daughter marrying the son of one of his coworkers, as his wife had done; and himself dying in the house he was born in, if he were lucky. It wasn’t good enough. His children deserved a better life than he had lived.
He looked into the Mirror of his mortality...From time to time a miner or ruin delver would find some treasure and bring it to the city. Even the least of these was worth enough to buy a life richer than the man led. So he began to spend less time with his family, even though they needed him more, and searched the caves and clefs near the mine he oversaw for the thing that would bring comfort to his wife and happiness to his children.
It was in one such cave, while sheltering from a sudden storm, that he thought he found what he was looking for. The room he found himself in was a large, vaulted hall and everything seemed to shine with gold or amber light. It was like none of the ruins his workers occasionally discovered and nothing resembled the objects he expected to find. He disregarded the uncertainty of unfamiliarity and continued deeper into the hall. At the far end was a stone pyre and on that a sword that could not be mistaken for mundane. He wrapped it in his cloak and departed for the city at once. The storm that forced him into the cave had subsided while he crossed the hall.
When he stepped into Whitewall the blade freed itself from his grip and the cloak it was wrapped in settled as though some unseen person wore it. The raksha whose sword grace he had taken into the city laughed as it began to slay whatever its gaze fell upon whether that thing was male or female, child or adult, human or beast. No blood ran through the streets, instead each stroke painted an epitaph on the walls describing the beauty of the victim’s eyes as they fell. In that fashion the fey continued down the street, singing as it went. The man never discovered how or if it was stopped.
No one came to visit him during the several months he was in prison afterwards. If they were not permitted to come or never tried to he chooses not to know.
When the time for the yearly sacrifice came he and everyone else guilty of high crimes were gathered and the guards began to read from the list given to them. Some of those they called were dead, hoping to avoid this fate, yet one by one twenty-three were chosen. His was the last name called. They shackled him, unresisting, to the rest of the grim-faced chosen. As they did so, a man was dragged screaming into the room. This man, whose name had been called already, had escaped the week before and just been recaptured. Mutely, the man of Whitewall watched as his bonds were removed and affixed to the struggling escapee.
Both guards and prisoners muttered about Twenty-Fifth Merciful as they returned to their duties and cells. As he too went back he caught the attention of his guard and asked what they were talking about. “They talk of the god who whispers in the judges’ ears as they pen the sacrificial list, who led the hunters as they tracked that man, and who has seen fit to save you just now though you offered him nothing. It seems he cares not that you failed to pray, for they will pray again come next year. They always do.”
The next night, glad in prison rags, he too was thrown beyond the gate though no unseelie host or restless dead waited. Some of the other exiles were met by friends or family who provided them with food or warm clothing, most were not. He walked for a while, he didn’t notice toward which direction, until his strength gave out in the cold.
... and saw a Malefactor there.The man of Whitewall watched the sky for a time, his frostbitten limbs lay still when he tried to move them. The only sound was the whisper of the stars as his breath froze and fell. Then the ringing became a wordless voice and began to speak to him.
“It is fitting that you die here, abandon and broken; the whole world is dying.”
There was silence while he drew another pained breath. He thought he had gone made, and found he didn’t care. “I tried, suffered, so they didn’t have to...” As he finished the tinkling began again.
“It is fitting that your own actions damn you; the whole world is damned.”
“They should have better...” The pain of cold began to retreat, replaced by a warmth he knew meant his limbs were dying.
“Your kind was never meant for this, never meant to rule or rise above your station.
So here you, as the world, die. It is time to try another way.”
“Too late now, too tired and too weak…” The warmth had faded too, now there was no feeling at all.
“Let go of your liberty. Lay down your rights. Surrender everything to the hands that made you.
Be reconciled to them and to the rightness you have never known.”
The man from Whitewall didn’t have enough strength to draw another breath. As he finished that last exhalation his black lips formed the shape of a single word.
It was enough.
...but only a Broken City remained.He sought Company in Misery...
It was night again when the man of Whitewall next awoke. Fragments of smoking ice surrounded him and the air was pleasantly cool. He looked down at himself without recognition. The charcoal grey of frostbite still stained his skin and his flesh was cold to the touch. After a few moments he gave up the examination. What he looked like didn’t matter and besides, it was fitting.
The first person he met was one of those prisoners who had received aid. Now she lay dying as he had been and no demon waited for her.
“Do you want to live?” he said as her eyes opened wide in recognition.
“Please…”
“Will you accept the pain that life brings?”
“Yes.” Her answer was the same as his had been. Her fate should be no different.
“For the life you have lost and the life you have been given, you owe me two services. You shall carry them out all the days of your life or a harsher and more binding doom will come upon you. First, seven times each day you will offer me prayer of thanksgiving. Fail in this and I command you go to Marama’s Fell and cry out that you wish your soul beaten into iron until the hungry dead come for you. Second, you will see to comfort of the widow of the miner who was exiled with you, so long as your aid is never known. Shirk this duty and I command you seek out the Winter Court and proclaim you come that they might make you sad forever. Do you understand me exile?”
“Yes, Twenty-Fifth Merciful. Forgive me, for I did not believe.”
“Your belief is not required, only your obedience.” Those were the last words he spoke to her as he walked away.
In darkness he found a Broken People.Not every stranger in the wastes was commanded to see to the comfort of a family in Whitewall. The North is too vast for such an order to be meaningful. Still, Haslanti scouts, lost Guildsmen, and Icewalker not-yet-men accepted his offer just as readily as anyone else. Nor was it only humans who fell into his debt. Eventually, the petty victories no longer satisfied him. Those who fell into his power were individuals, their lives and failings were small. He was made to break kingdoms. So be started to call in favors.
At a site south of Icehome, Guild thaumaturges began to summon demons in mass. Some were seized at once by their fellows to be rendered into calcanth while others began to clear the space. Using techniques forgotten when the Lintha, fell demonic artisans shaped their kin into buildings, roads, plazas, and other architectural features. When the trap was finished he called human debtors to him and dispatched them to report the discovery of the “ruin of the Age of Splendors”.
The powers of the area began to converge on the icy ruin. At first their survey teams maintained an uneasy peace. Then the living architecture began to murder them. They quickly cast blame on each other and soon the Agata streets shone red in the Gilmyne light. The involved governments sent angry messages back and forth, until head began to cool and talk of peace and reparations began. That was when the second wave of favors came due and previously moderate parties began to agitate. The killing stroke came when the sorcerer of the Haslanti responsible for Infallible Messages fell into Twenty-Fifth Merciful’s power. Where once it seemed war might be averted, hostilities began with surprising fervor.
Calling more and yet more favors due, Merciful caused the conflict to escalate further. Atrocity was answered with atrocity until no less than three of the irreplaceable greenfields were reduced to ash. Only then did the belligerents realize the scope of what they had done. When a full accounting of death and damage was taken the totals were staggering. The intervention of the Bull of the North and the Realm had left everyone involved weakened and exposed. Five nations and three greenfields had been involved and so what had started as an Exalted’s dissatisfaction became known as the War of Five Kings and Three Valleys.
Adorjan was much pleased by the silence that followed.
And said, "Let us heal together."Filled with shame for what he had done, Twenty-Fifth Merciful wandered away from the North. He avoided men, and beasts, and growing things, and the silver wastes of the Endless Desert most of all. Such wandering at last took him beyond the light of any sun, green or gold. In the endless, cheerless, night of the Underworld he at last found company as miserable as he. He spent a time among ghosts, walling in their regrets, until their memories of families and homes grew too painful. So his wandering continued.
Ever more ancient dead and ever more alien passions attracted him. In the utter black, at the very edge of the Labyrinth, he came to the Necropolis of the Slaves where the races once loved by Titans acted out dramas of days that would never return. He claimed hospitality, and they granted it, or did not care or notice enough to keep him away. Some tried to bring him into the dance of their passion plays, others carried on as if he were not there, and the barest few let slip secrets of Primordial magic made worthless in the dead land.
His Urge lay quiescent for a time, absent any mortals to ruin, and he knew peace for the first time in many years. He fancied himself a scholar-adventurer hunting secrets in lost tombs and strange places. It was a diversion that set his mind at ease, if only for a while. He knew it could never last, and savored it while he could. In the end, he played the role too well. The last secret he found was too great for him to keep playing.
It was in the depths of the Sea of Blood, where strange mockeries of evolution spawned things that had never lived. One by one he interrogated masks of coral, piecing together sutras of the world's making. Then he received a strange answer, "I never saw these things you say, only the dead water, the dead city, the living people, and the golden line between." It wasn't much to go on, but it proved enough. After nearly a year of treading on the dead dreams of Titans he crossed back onto true earth. He saw the dead waters, filled even more full of monsters than the rest of the Blood Sea. He saw the dead city, and the gleam of old gold in the light of old dancers. Then he saw the living people.
They were few, and their numbers were dwindling, but they were alive. Motivated by proper caution and long proven fear, they drove him away the first time he found them. Even so, he could not make himself leave. He resolved himself to help them, those people who needed help more than he ever had, whatever the cost to himself. If that cost will prove to great is still an open question.
The gifts of the Yozi are rightly feared, and the people of Clepsys were slow to trust the caches of food and medicine they began to find in their searching. Hungry eyes and empty bellies eventually proved greater motivators than fear. At first they called him Tempter, the one who offered the misery of hope. Then the lights started coming back on. After that the first breath of clean air. By the time the scavenger parties were returning with unbelievable bounty the people prayed that He Life in Death would not leave them alone again.
When he at last came among them they were not repulsed by his strange appearance or the color of his anima banner. Such concerns were long past. He did what services he could for them and they were happier than he had been in living memory. Even so, it was not enough for him. When he was sure they would survive for a while longer he said, "You deserve better than this life, and if it is in my power I will give you better. You were made to walk in light, so I will give you back the sun." They begged him to stay, some even tried to force him to, but he made had made a promise.
His plan was audacious and difficult. Had he been more powerful it might even have worked. One by one he raised manses in the West, all along the seafloor. Each one poured power down into the Underworld, into the dormant manses of Saigoth that once supported the continent. As their numbers increased the essence channels of the grid they formed began to shape a summoning sign of immense size and power. Yet it was not enough. Long before he wasted an age on fruitless labor he realized his own efforts were insufficient. He required outside assistance, of the sort only the greatest of gods could provide. Or the mightiest of demons.
He does not remember the events that followed, the memory of a Mortal's congress with a Titan was the first concession. Yet he knows he made a pact with the Pyrian Flame. Committees in Heaven argue over the terms while princes of Hell shudder at the thought of what will come of it. All that is generally known is this:
In the Far West, beyond the great archipelago, a monumental tower appeared. It was and is unimaginably tall, higher than any mortal structure in the world. A beacon of colorless fire burns at its summit, and an unimaginable river of essence flows down it into the ground. It is the called the Pharos, and it is stands at the heart of Clepsys.
After it formed, linked to the geomantic sigil Twenty-Fifth Merciful had raised, a fragment of the unimaginable power of She Who Lives in Her Name completed the Exalted's work. Living essence, no matter how corrupt, surged through the long silent engines the Solars built to keep their continent afloat. Slowly at first, than with great speed the continent rose from the Underworld, and the people of Clepsys saw the sun they had been promised, golden instead of green.
For he is still a Man.
Twenty-Fifth Merciful remembers the name his parents gave him, but he makes no use of it. Better that he died in Winter Exile than knowledge of what he become stain his family’s reputation further. It is for that same reason that those of his cult near the city live in such fear of allowing their assistance to be known.
Though he has ruined thousands of lives in service to the Yozi, the urge Adorjan placed on his soul has never grown less keen. The discomfort it brings him is visible in his eyes, everyone he looks upon seems to hide some foulness that must be exposed. Yet for all that other people are unlovely to him, he finds himself most abhorrent. For all that he has done for his new masters, very little has really changed. He knows that his own pettiness, the longing to ensure three or perhaps four mortals are taken care of, holds him back from his duty.
It may be petty, but he still wants to smile as Aiden begged to come to work with him or see Enfys dancing in the springtime or watch Elenore sing by the riverside.
When he thinks of them he cannot see the flaw that he has been commanded to exploit. He knows his wife and children, knows they are imperfect, and knows that none of them deserve what he does to those who’s wishes he grants. This realization has made him wonder how much of the ruin that he has unleashed occurred not because of the venality of his victims, but because he pushed men and women farther than they would ever have gone on their own.
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