Private Prologue: Epithalamium

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link

Candlelight had long since abandoned the corners of the room. What remained came from thick thick blue wax cylinders finally burned low, each weeping trails of softened wax down their sides. One had toppled entirely, spilling across animal skins, papers, and scattered machine parts before hardening, not fully set in the desert heat, just enough to leave a ruinous mess across the table.

No effort had been made to clean it, in fact the man hunched there seemed content among disorder. Before him lay a feather cut to a sharper edge, two mud-cast cups, one marked with the sun, the other the moon and a shallow bowl that rattled when he shook it before he poured five small animal bones out of it with a clatter to the table.

None of it made any true sense, or to him it did at least..

He clicked his tongue and reached idly for a rich orange-yellow fruit resting nearby, grown by one of the oasis tribes beyond the settlements. His stained, mismatched teeth pierced the skin. Juice burst free and ran over split, weathered lips. He scarcely noticed. His attention remained fixed on the papers before him.

Then he stopped. Not a wondrous pause for amusement; but a true body clenching stop. Juice ran from his chin and struck the cloth below, darkening fabric marked again with the symbol of the sun.

“No.” He muttered, his voice coarse and unused for many a day and night. “No, no, no.” He rose with painful effort, frail with tremendous age, leaning hard upon a carved staff as he crossed to a chest against the far wall. With near ceremonial strain he dragged the lid aside and pulled free another bundle of animal skins.
“It was wrong,” he whispered, half in shock, half in wonder. “It was always wrong...and now it is right.” His crooked teeth bared in sudden joy. “They are all here. All of them.”

He made his way towards his door, animal skin sheets with star charts and planetary maps across them in his arms. “I must tell the chieftains, they must know. They have to know!”
His voice rose into something wild.

“It is time.”

“Don’t go easy on the boy.” The voice was harsh and thick with the accent of those who breathed the holy sands of Thyrsus every day. It belonged to Kariis Vahel, husband to the chieftain of the Varahari Tribe; a brute of a man whose skin bore the dark mark of Thyrsian blood. “He’s no pup now.”

“Who said anything about going easy on him?” The woman’s voice was beautiful but with an air of threat. She was Echani, though plainly Varahari now. Blue-set tattoos marked her face and throat. Around her brow rested the great gold-ringed headdress worn by tribal chiefs at the seasonal gathering, amber stones woven through its bands to proclaim rank. “If he wants to play hero, he deserves to be beaten.”

The boy in question was no boy at all.

Tanith stood tall among his people, broad of shoulder, sun-burnished and lean with hard living. Thin white hair, cropped close to the scalp, made his pale blue eyes seem brighter still. Like the rest of the Varahari, he wore festival colours; yellow and green wraps, gold-threaded reds, polished ornaments that caught the light.

Every part of him belonged to the desert tribes.
Every season, when the first waters came down from the far northern mountains, the tribes gathered at Nervahrim Reach. Here they traded. Here they spoke of herd routes, storms, raiders, and old grudges. Here they dressed in riotous colour to honour the gods who kept them alive.

Even the Gorani had arrived on time this year; fire-benders from the volcanic south, seldom punctual and never welcome for long. It promised to be a fine gathering. For Tanith, it had already gone exactly as expected.

Kariis had called them into council shortly after arrival. Word had travelled quickly that Tanith and another young warrior had come to blows during the seven-day journey west. Such disputes were common enough among the tribe. Breaking the other man’s nose had been tolerated. Breaking his jaw had made it memorable.

That might have passed at home. Not here. At the gathering, law stood above pride. Here balance was paid in kind, an eye for an eye.

The chieftain herself: Troni, had insisted on judgement. Any excuse to strike the boy, she had said loudly, to the delight of the others. Tanith knew better. Two nights earlier, Troni had slipped beneath his travel sheets. She was chieftain. Such things were taken, not offered.

He had refused her. So Tanith took the punishment.

Three clean punches.

One to the eye. One to the mouth. The last she drove hard into his groin. He had folded into the dust while the tribe roared with laughter. They understood the game as well as he did.

This was how strength was measured. This was how the desert kept its people hard.

“Silly boy,” Kariis said now, hauling him back upright and giving him an approving once over. He slapped a heavy hand onto Tanith’s shoulder. “You took it well. She’s always had a mean left hook.”

His laughter boomed from deep in his chest.

“The communal feast begins soon. There’s a cave beyond the shanties. Fresh water gathers there. Wash yourself clean and bring enough back to re-wet our souls.”

“Of course, Kariis,” Tanith said through a jaw that still throbbed like a cracked stone. “I’ll return soon.”

The caves were sacred to all who knew them. Natural water was rare on Thyrsus. To hear the slow drip of it from stone was enough to draw prayer from even the faithless. Every tribal Echani made pilgrimage to such places at least once in their life.

Tanith lowered himself with a wince onto cool damp rock beside the pool as he bowed his head and gave prayer. “Thyr.” he murmured to the sun.

He dipped his fingers into the water and almost sighed at the shock of the cold. Then he cupped a handful and pressed it gently to the swelling around his eye. Another he poured across his bare collarbone after unclasping the throat fastening of his robe, the water running down his chest like stolen treasure.

For a while he simply breathed.

Then he opened his eyes.

And what he saw would change his fate forever…

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

Her back hurt. It always hurt now. And she refused to permit her daughter to resolve the matter. The self-inflicted punishment for the lifelong lie she had carried was her penance towards the husband she adored so. Though he did not know, nor understand there was any need.

Despite the pain, Zava pulled her obstinate blurrg with a lead, connected to the harness around its rotund form. She had worked all year to produce the tapestries which were now rolled into bundles and piled high upon the aging cargo sled. Last year had not been a good year for sales at the Reach meet. With each step Zava took, she prayed to Thyr that it would be better this year.

Her tapestries depicted ancient Echani and Thyrsian legends. Myths of ancient heroes, monsters and prophecies yet to be fulfilled. They had sold well when she was a child, but were increasingly seen more for their beauty than their cultural and religious value. For more than just the loss of income, did Zava mourn.

"Let me take the lead." It was the gruff, yet soft voice of her beloved husband, Tagh. He had been a good helpmeet these many years. A loyal worker, lover and father to her only child. When seeking a companion for life, Zava could have asked for nothing better than this man that only knew healing, and kindness.

"You have your own mess to pull," she said. Her pure white eyes looked towards him. He was less pure Echani than she, his eyes a dark grey but she still saw their beauty. With her lineage, she could have married further up the tribal hierachy, many still mocked her for settling for a dark eyed healer, who was seen as little more than a servant by many. But she had married for love, and for that which was hidden.

"Xiri pulls it. Here," Tagh moved to take the lead from Zava, who simply swatted his hand.

"Fine. Then I shall provide you with company," he said, after a moment of nursing his hand.

"Thyr bless me, you are too good for me," Zava said. It wasn't true, save for one aspect. At least from the point of view of others. Zava was tall for their tribe, let alone among the women of her tribe. Aside from her daughter, she was the tallest of the Nor. Her long, tightly braided white hair was maintained by the power of Thyrsus' sun, but also darkened by the persistent dust clouds of travel. She was beautiful, even at this age. Strong, angular jawline, and thin nose that seemed to guide the eyes to thin lips. Despite the growing number of wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, Zava was still one of the most beautiful women to attend the Reach meet.

They walked for some time. He clearly had something he wanted to say, but did not know how to broach the matter. Finally, through a sigh, Zava said, "Speak your mind, husband."

"My love...you know that I live daily with gratitude for your hand, and home," he said, cautiously. Zava knew already where this was going.

"I know you want better for her," she said, quietly. They had had this argument several times already. She wanted to keep Xiri within their tribe, unmarried if necessary, but safe. Tagh saw the betrothal offered to Othni, son of the great Chieftain Darya, as a way to provide a better life for Xiri.

"And security for our tribe. We have lost much these last few seasons," he murmured ruefully. Tagh carried great weight on his shoulders. Every life that had been lost in battles with increasingly bold off-world scavengers, and the drying of their tribal well, sat on the healer's heart, weighing his spirit and leading him further into despondency.

"My mind is unsettled on the matter. Let us see how the days ahead unfurl," she said, in that not blunt but final way she had. Tagh did not speak again, not until a hour later when the crossed the rise and looked upon the assembling tribes within the series of chasms named Nervahrim Reach.

Xiri pulled up alongside her parents a moment later. She was very much the image of her mother, only 30 hard years younger, barring the brilliant lavender eyes that seemed to see only good in people. Zava smiled softly, placing her shoulder upon the young woman's shoulder. "I know you worry, Xiri," she said, before leaning her forehead against her daughter's cheek, "but we trust Thyr. The Sun never fails us. It never has, and it never will."

The affection was ended, abruptly, but such was Zava's style. She offered affection, but withdrew quickly for fear of spoiling a young one that must needs survive the harshness of the desert. "Now...run to get some waters from the Caluum. The blurrg's will need to drink well tonight."

The sound of bare feet against sandstone was all that broke the silence of the cave as Xiri hurried down the worn natural rock stairs. It was a relief to be out of the sun, even as it set there was still much heat in it. And she so loved the Caluum. It was only readily accessible from the top of the ridge their tribe approached from, and as her family was the last to reach the chasm meetings, Xiri was confident that she would be the only person in the darkened room.

Her eyes struggled to adjust. But that was not an issue for very long. Small beads of light, like insects, began to swarm around her. They were not attracted to her, so much as spawning from her.

Her chest, neck and then back began to glow softly, illuminating the dark of the cave and showing her the path towards the water. As she stooped with her canteens, a singular ember drifted down her arm. She lifted the ember, which floated just above her palm, and then twisted her hand gracefully as the ember descended in a spiral towards her lap. More embers lifted, as did her hands.

Her own private miracle. And the freedom to indulge.

A stream of embers drifted upward, and she pulled them into cupped hands. She looked at them. "Why...hello there..." She said, unhindered by fear of keeping quiet. Her voice echoed, once...then twice...

Xiri smiled.

The echo drew her eyes away from the embers.

The smile evaporated. And she stood upright, dropping her canteens to the ground. Frozen, all she could do was stare at him, and wait to see how her life had just changed.

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link​

From across the water, strange light had begun to appear. At first it resembled the embers of a roaring fire, yet there came no crackle, no heat or smoke. They were gentle things instead, delicate sparks drifting across the still surface like children at play.
They caught Tanith’s eye like some spell cast upon him. His hand rose unconsciously, reaching to seize one as it floated across the lake and teased him upon a breeze that did not exist.

It was then that he saw her.

At first he thought her a reflection in the water, some trick of a mind still ringing from the blow to his skull. But as she came into focus, he knew no lie could comfort him. She was something drawn from dreams and made flesh. Her beauty stole the air from his throat. The embers circling her sent his soul sinking into a place of reverence he had never known had existed.

The entire galaxy stopped for just a moment.

He stumbled as he tried to rise. His hand slipped on the wet stone and plunged into the sacred pool with a loud splash that shattered the silence like a gunshot. He cursed himself and quickly righted into a seated pose of awkward dignity.

The noise had startled her. Her eyes caught his like a hunted creature turning upon the hunter. They were purple. An intense violet that struck through Tanith’s mind like a spear hurled by the gods themselves. His own blue gaze did not break. He feared if he looked away she would vanish as swiftly as she had appeared. So he held that stare as though it tethered him to the earth beneath him.

Words failed him. Then at last he spoke.

“Are you the goddess come to claim my sanity?” His voice was quiet, yet in the cave it carried like proclamation, rolling from walls that had listened to a thousand years of prayer. “Or maybe I drink poison, and now see visions to ease my passing?”

He reached toward one of the embers as it settled upon the water nearby. It fizzled into nothing before his fingers touched it. “Who are you?”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

Staggered steps took her away from the water's edge as she looked behind towards the entrance, and then back again at the mystery individual. The light receded. Each spark diminishing to a pin prick of light and then...nothing. Darkness descended on the cave.

Xiri tugged at the cloth wrapped around her left forearm. She knew it was there, but her mother's persistence had trained her to be cautious. He had not seen it. She was safer than if he had. Still, the lights were not something she could explain away easily.

"I am no goddess," she said, forcefully enough that she winced at the harshness of her tone.

"And your life resides within you still," she said, though it would be easier to say he was dying and let him be. Truthfulness, though, was the utmost virtue her father had instilled in her.

She turned to move, hastily, and knocked one of the canteens over. The clamour produced caused her to start. Xiri stumbled backwards, falling to the hard stone with a surprising degree of grace still preserved, though her thoughts lingered not upon her skill in falling.

"I am of no consequence," she said, again, in all truth. For she believed herself no thing of any great import, nor sought any claim or title, save that she should protect those that were her people.

Pushing back to her feet, Xiri turned and scrambled towards the stairs. With Thyr's blessing, she would make it outside and out of view long before he caught up to her.

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link​

His words caused the embers to halt. They rose from her in bright, proud arcs, then all at once snuffed into absolute nothing. No smoke remained. Only absence. That emptiness rushed into his chest and mind alike. He found himself wanting to see nothing else in the world but those lights again, even if it were to be his final wish.

Though even he had to admit, their passing stole nothing from her beauty.

This girl of fire across the water.

She struck hard at his claim of godhood, and his face broke into a grin. In the old faith, every god was a trickster in their own way. Each would stand before mortals and deny divinity with perfect seriousness. Her answer was exactly what he would expect of one.

“Said like a goddess,” he replied, calmer now, no longer dragged helplessly by awe. “I praise my good fortune to remain mortal, then.”

She at that moment moved. He noticed it before she did. The tightening of muscle. The shift of balance. The glance of the eyes.

Though the Desert Dwellers had been exiled from the Echani for centuries, some gifts could not be severed. To read the body. To know intent before motion.

So when she slipped, he was already moving.

He cared nothing for the sacred waters then. They were waters forbidden to touch, carry, or drink without the correct rites. The moment he plunged into them he knew he had likely broken fourteen laws and earned himself a ceremonial beheading.

He cared less. He had to reach her. If she vanished back into whatever heaven had sent her, what use was his head anyway?

The pool was shallow, rising only above his stomach, but it slowed him enough to curse it. He pushed through and hauled himself onto the far stone as sheets of sacred water poured from robes now clinging to his skin.

She had already made for the stairs and so he followed, leaving a tide of spilt water across rock in his wake.

She was swift, far swifter than he had expected, but he closed the distance. He made no motion to seize her. Nor attempted anything to frighten her. He only had to not lose sight of her in the dark.

“If you are of no consequence,” he called after her, “then stop and tell me your name.” She kept climbing.

“Otherwise I may as well return and drown myself before the gods and their old ways…” He smiled despite himself. “...for that would be kinder than never knowing who you are.”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

She had nearly reached the upper bend of the stair when something struck her thoughts with sudden clarity. Water. Xiri stopped even before the realization had crystilized.

Her hand tightened against the stone wall, breath caught somewhere between her ribs and throat. Slowly she turned her head, peering down the long descent of shadowed steps. He stood there still. And water ran from him.

It glimmered faintly along the stone where he had passed. Dark patches spreading where sacred droplets had fallen. His robes clung heavy against him, the cloth darkened and dripping.

Her eyes widened. "No..." The word escaped before she could stop it.

She descended three steps quickly, then five more, then the rest with gathering haste until she stood again upon the cave floor. One hand lifted instinctively, pointing past him toward the still pool behind. "You speak idle, flippant words," she said, breath unsteady with disbelief. Her finger trembled slightly. "And you wade the holy waters as though it were some light matter."

For a moment she could only stare at him, horror slowly dawning across her features. "Thyr preserve us..."

Her hesitation ended abruptly. Xiri closed the distance between them with surprising speed. Her hands reached immediately for the soaked cloth clinging to his shoulders and chest, tugging sharply at the heavy folds as though trying to coax the water from them.

"You are wet," she said, as if the truth itself might yet solve the problem. Her hands worked without hesitation, pulling the damp fabric away from his skin to allow the desert air to reach it. She twisted a section of cloth between her fingers, squeezing water to the stone with quick, efficient movements. "If you are seen like this they will know." Her lavender eyes lifted to his then, full of serious intent. "And if they know..." she said, lips stammering only briefly, as though considering whether gentleness served any purpose here. "...your life will be forfeit."

Her attention returned immediately to his clothing, tugging off anything that would fall away freely.

"Disrobe. Immediately. You must remain here," she continued, voice settling into the calm cadence of instruction she knew from her father's work. "Until the cloth dries. Until there is no sign of water left upon you."

Only then did she seem to remember the other danger. Her hands slowed. Xiri stepped back half a pace, studying his face carefully now. "If you promise," she said quietly, "to speak nothing of what you saw here." Concern washed over her features. "Nor of walking through the holy waters."

Her gaze did not waver. "I will give you my name."

"And then I will bid you Thyrspeed."

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link
​

The stone beneath his feet had grown treacherous with the water that still streamed from his robes and ran in cold ribbons down the length of his legs, turning each step upon the ancient stair into something uncertain. More than once he felt his footing threaten to desert him entirely, the slick rock eager to cast him back into the pool from which he had so boldly emerged, yet stubborn instinct and the pride of youth reclaimed him each time before the fall could be made real. So he pressed on after her, wet, breathless, undeterred, until at last with a sharpness that felt like it carried more command than sound; she turned upon the steps and faced him.

His breath came hard now, not from the chase alone but from the shock of the cold still raging through his blood. Such chill was foreign to a son of the desert, to one raised among sand, glare, and the long tyranny of heat. It had driven his body into some strange exaltation, his pulse loud within him, his skin alive in ways he neither trusted nor disliked. His hands came absently to rest upon his hips as she descended several steps toward him, and in doing so granted him what distance had thus far denied him.

He was allowed to witness her.

Her hair first, touched by the dim and sacred light of the cavern. Then her eyes, those impossible violet eyes that seemed less a colour than an act of intention. Then the whole of her, gathered together in one poised and self-contained being that made every woman he had known feel suddenly half-imagined. There was something in him that bent toward her without permission. Intoxication without wine. Hunger without cause. Reverence without doctrine.

Perhaps she was a witch. Many tribes claimed such women among their bloodlines, keepers of charms and old powers, though he had never believed half of what was boasted around their fires. In that moment he found himself willing to believe all of it.

She raised a hand and pointed past him toward the sacred waters below, her disbelief plain upon her features as she chastised him for his trespass. Her words were sharp with outrage, though beneath it he thought he heard something nearer astonishment. Tanith merely turned to follow the line of her gesture, looking back toward the pool with an almost infuriating calm, as if she had accused him of muddy boots rather than sacrilege.

“Do not trouble yourself,” he said at length, the corner of his mouth betraying him. “The gods forgive more than their priests admit. Thyr never ceases to watch.”

At the speaking of the Sun God’s name he lifted both hands, palms open toward the vaulted dark above, and offered the old sign of prayer with a carelessness that was either devotion or mockery. With Tanith it was often difficult to know which came first.

“I stole their light once,” he added, glancing back to her. “They did not strike me down then. I doubt they will begin over wet feet.”

He allowed silence to settle after that, content to watch the quick succession of thoughts move across her face as she took in the obvious truth of him: drenched through, water spilling from every fold of cloth, sacred droplets gathering at his heels. Yet when she had spoke the name of Thyr herself, something in him changed. His brows rose before he could stop them.

Few among the tribes gave the gods their names so openly now. The old forms had thinned with every passing generation, worn away by foreign customs, by commerce, by the easy cynicism of younger bloods who preferred steel and powder to prayer. To hear the Sun God named plainly upon her tongue was like hearing some half-forgotten song from childhood, one carried to him across years he had not realised were gone. Quietly, and without any of his earlier theatre, he offered a prayer within himself for whatever forgiveness might yet be available.

Then she touched him.

No warning preceded it, nor any request. She simply stepped forward and laid hold of the soaked cloth clinging to his side, fingers quick and practical as she pulled it free where it had fastened itself to skin. Then she twisted the fabric and sent a stream of water pattering down the steps. The nearness of her struck him more violently than the cold ever had.

“Very observant, I am indeed wet.” he murmured, though the wit of it arrived weakened.

She worked another fold loose, and he found that his thoughts had become strangely difficult to keep in order.

“Then know this,” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. “When you one day look upon my head displayed among those of the Blasphemers, know that I believed this worth the price.”

Their eyes met then; lavender and azure held together in a stillness so complete that the cave itself seemed reluctant to intrude upon it. Something moved inside him at once. Vast, uneasy, nameless. He knew only that he had been one man before that moment and would be another after it.

When at last her gaze dropped again to his clothes and she commanded that he disrobe, perhaps she expected embarrassment, resistance, or the fumbling modesty of softer lands. But Tanith was of the Sands, raised where heat stripped all pretence from flesh and survival made honesty of the body. He understood her purpose at once and obeyed without question.

He drew the soaked robes from his shoulders and let them fall to hang about his waist before peeling them free entirely. Beneath was the lean and athletic frame of a young Echani warrior shaped by distance, sun, and want. Scars marked him in several places, some ritual, cut with ceremony and memory, others earned in the simpler language of violence. Blue tattoos wound their measured paths along his arms, signs of tribe and station whose meanings varied from Tribe to Tribe, though he wore them with the uncomplicated pride of one who had bled for them.

“Will I be afforded some modesty,” he asked lightly, “or has that too been claimed by the gods?”

He gathered the discarded robes and spread them across the warmer stones to dry, and when she demanded then his oath: that he speak nothing of this place, that silence guard what he had seen; he answered with a solemn nod and once more made the sign of Thyr, though now without jest.

Only then did his eyes drop to his wrist.

The mark there, small and circular at the centre of the inner skin, was revealed before he could think to hide it. He covered it at once with his other hand, too late perhaps, the old blemish known among his people as the Aipetos.

He lowered himself to sit upon the stone as though nothing at all had happened, then motioned for her to join him.

“My word,” he said, touching a hand to his chest. “For your name.”

The smile he offered this time was quieter than those before it.

“I am Tanith of the Varahari.”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

The soaked cloth twisted easily in her hands, dark water streaming down the steps in narrow rivulets before vanishing into the thirsty stone. She did not look at him more than was necessary. Her hands were practiced things, precise and efficient, the hands of one accustomed to wounds, fever, and the fragile machinery of the body.

There was nothing here she had not seen before. And yet. Her fingers paused, just for a moment.

There upon the inner wrist the mark revealed itself where his hand had shifted aside. It was small, no larger than a coin, but impossible to mistake for scar or ink. A crescent drawn wide and deep, exaggerated until its curve nearly closed upon itself. Like the sun devoured by shadow.

Her eyes lingered no longer than a heartbeat. Then she finished wringing the cloth as though nothing at all had changed. The water pattered softly down the steps.

Quietly, almost absently, her own hand moved to her wrist. She tugged the narrow wrap tighter there, fingers checking the knot with careful insistence. The motion was small, completely unremarkable. Anyone watching might think it habit. It was not habit.

When she stepped back from him her face held the same calm it had before, though something in her gaze had drawn inward. “You speak too lightly of Thyr,” she said after a moment, her voice composed once more. “Even if our god's servants are few, we should care all the more.”

Her lavender eyes drifted once toward the dark water below before returning to him. His talk of Blasphemers was foolish. Loose words from a man who knew only impulse and the pursuit of passion. "If I look upon your head upon a spike, I will not be to blame…” She slapped a piece of wet cloth upon a rock. "You will stay, and dry. For both our sakes."

The work that had brought her here still waited. The canteens rested where she had left them beside the pool, thick leather darkened by damp stone and the cool breath of the cavern. She knelt beside them and filled each in turn, lowering them carefully beneath the surface of the holy water before sealing them tight.

One by one she gathered them. There were more than a few. When she rose the weight of them might have burdened a lesser frame, yet she lifted them with surprising ease, the strength of her shoulders and arms plain in the movement. The leather straps crossed her forearms as she gathered the load against herself. "I do fear the word of a someone so loose with the god-sun's name might not be of much value," she said, striding in strong practiced steps back towards the exit. "But I do not believe you such a fool that you would wish either of us an untimely death."

Her steps were quiet against the ancient stone. The cavern stilled around them both, the water below whispering softly in the dark. At the top of the stair she paused her ascent, not for long, and looked back down at the nearly naked, scar covered young man.

The violet of her eyes found the blue of his one last time in the dim cavern light. “You have my thanks for your silence, Tanith of the Varahari.”

“My name,” she said softly, as though offering something delicate. “Is Xiri.”

With that, she stepped out into the sun, and made haste for her parents market stall.

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link
​

“I do not speak lightly of Thyr.”

Tanith corrected her gently as she once more seemed intent on chastising the ease of his words. He held her gaze for a moment, then raised one hand between them and began to move his fingers through a series of intricate gestures, each bend precise, each turn of the wrist deliberate. It was the hand-language of the Desert Clans; an older, communal tongue seldom used now beyond the deeply faithful and the elder bloodlines who still remembered what silence could carry better than speech.

[Do not mistake my openness for a lack of care. Thyr watches all I do.]

He lifted his brows when he had finished, satisfied that the point had been made whether she welcomed it or not.

“You are right in one thing,” he continued. “It is no fault of yours that a fool such as I has seen that the sun itself seems to travel inside you.”

Her hand tightening about her arm did not escape him, though he chose not to look directly at it. Whatever lay hidden there was a discomfort she wore plainly enough, and Tanith had no wish to pry where he had not yet earned the right.

“I will stay.” He conceded to her and spread both hands to the cavern around them; the still pool, the stone, the dark vault overhead from which slow droplets fell from the hanging stalactites and struck the water below in soft intervals. To most it was only beauty shaped by time. To those of faith, it was the gods reminding mortals that they listened.

The girl had knelt then by the water’s edge and began to fill several canteens, speaking calmly now of how she did not think him foolish enough to die some pointless death before dawn. There was less heat in her voice than before, less suspicion maybe, though caution remained stitched through every movement she made.

Sat upon his rock Tanith said nothing.

He simply watched her work. The careful way she filled each skin. The way the sacred water rolled in silver threads down her sun-touched forearms. The concentration she gave even such a simple task. He watched it all with the attention of a starving man offered bread, as though he had never before seen a woman draw water in his life.

When she rose to leave, he still said nothing.

Not as she turned. Not as she placed distance between them. Not as the sound of her steps began to climb the ancient stair. He only watched in silence, his eye measuring every motion, committing each of them to memory with a discipline he had never before applied to anything so willingly.

Then, without looking back, she gave him her name and was gone.

A short breath of laughter escaped him, half disbelief and half surrender. “Xiri,” he said softly into the emptiness she had left behind. His eyes drifting first to the place where she had stood, then upward through the stone above, to where he knew the suns of Thyrsus still burned unseen and merciless.

“It was an honour, Xiri.” He smiled to himself. “Sun of Suns.”

“I need to know what tribe she is from. Just tell me.”

Tanith stalked beside Balori through the market with all the dignity of a man who had misplaced it somewhere earlier in the morning. Around them the settlement roared with life, there were streamers of dyed cloth snapping overhead, merchants shouting prices, children darting through crowds, braziers smoking sweet spice into the air. None of it held his interest.

“For the third time,” Balori said, rolling her heavy brown eyes without even glancing at him, “I do not care.”

“Balori, I will give you thirteen nights of my rations.”

That earned him her attention, if only briefly. She turned her head as she walked, her expression full of contempt sharpened by amusement. “Why do you wish to know so badly?” she asked. “Did you not satisfy the poor girl in the caves and now seek to apologise? Leave her be. She is likely trying to forget you.” She barked a laugh and turned aside to inspect a stall piled high with scavenged metal and cracked machine parts “What was it you said her name was?”

“Xiri.” Even speaking it made something tighten pleasantly in his chest. “Just Xiri.”

Balori froze.

Her arm remained half-extended toward a piece of scrap, fingers curled in the air. Slowly she turned her head back toward him, and the humour had entirely left her face. What remained there unsettled him more than anger would have.

“Xiri?” she repeated. The name sounded different in her mouth. Dangerous. “Echani girl. Well spoken. Tall for one of us?”

Tanith felt, for the first time that day, a chill deeper than the sacred waters. “Yes.”

“Drop it, you fool.” Balori seized his arm and yanked him close enough that the smell of spice and dust on her robes filled his nose. Her voice fell low and hard. “You never met her. You were never near her. You never heard that name.”

She released him only long enough to look about the market and judge who might be listening.

“Believe me when I say this; if you value the Varahari and all we are, you will never speak it again.” She spat into the dirt at his feet. “You idiot.”

Tanith stared at her.

“What? Why? Who is she?”

“All this?” Balori snapped, throwing an arm wide toward the banners, the music, the bright cloth, the gathered crowds. “You think the tribe spends itself on colour for nothing?” Her eyes cut back to him. “It is for her.”

She stepped closer. “She is to be married.” The words struck him harder than the blow that had first sent him into the cave. Balori saw it happen and seemed almost offended by the sight. “And the tribe she marries into,” she continued, each word measured now, “is one of the founding bloods.”

She jabbed a finger into his chest. “So do not look. Do not speak. Do not touch.”

Then, after a pause cruel enough to be deliberate she finished; “And do not dream, Tanith. Men like you are buried for less.”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

The excuses for her delay that Xiri had conjured slowly dissipated as she grew closer to her family’s normal spot in the market. A knot formed in her gut, a tension that seemed to bleed out from the milieu of Thyrsian traders around her. Everyone was on edge, most of all Zava and Tagh.

"Xiri...thank Thyr." Her father’s concern was not an uncommon sight, but there was an edge to his countenance that transferred quickly to Xiri’s own gait.

"Come, child," her mother said, appearing from a huddle of several traders to take Xiri by the arm. "Leave the water."

"Mother...what is it?" The water was placed down with prompt obedience, but the burden did not grow any lighter.

Zava moved quickly, pulling Xiri with what seemed almost impatience, but Xiri sensed that it was not she who was the cause of her mother’s urgency. "Mother..."

"I am sorry, my child. The decision has been taken from our hands," she said.

The young Echani looked back over her shoulder. For the first time in many years, she saw her father weep. Emotion welled, and her natural impulse was to move to comfort him, but her mother’s pull was unrelenting. And then...Xiri understood.

The decision.

"Othni awaits your hand."

For as much as their culture was built on the matriarch, Xiri was decidedly not of any great import. Her mother barely qualified for notice. It was only by Zava’s skill as a negotiator that Xiri had been given the opportunity to become espoused to the only child of one of the great tribes’ chieftains. It meant that Xiri was of sufficient beauty, sufficient physical prowess, but most of all...malleability.

It was that realisation - that Chief Darya believed Xiri mouldable - that stung the most. Each tug of the handmaidens upon her hair, her attire, and her skin reminded Xiri that she was a product. Darya wished for the new heir to her tribe to be presentable, which meant revealing clothes meant to display the young woman’s physical prowess.

White stones of Hava, cut to refract Thyr’s light, were strung together by strands of gold chain as bright as the sands of their precious wilderness itself. Draped from her shoulders and hips, they provided a visual guide for the eyes that would soon study her form. And the blade, curved and etched with sun-glyphs along its shined-to-perfection length, was an ancient weapon that had been stained with the blood of many a foe, many of whom were ancestors of the tribes represented at the chasm.

She was chattel. Arranged, perfumed, and presented in such a manner as to impress what would be opponents to the tribe’s station. And the chief had come to inspect her wares.

Darya was a beautiful, if harsh, woman, with a tall, angular form and naturally prominent hip and collar bones. It gave her the appearance of fragility, an illusion she had used to her advantage on many an occasion. Her narrow, white-iris eyes examined Xiri as a rancher might a potential stud purchase.

"Your mother speaks well of you. Many a whisper has come forth. For your sake, I do hope that neither mother nor rumour has lied to me," she said, her isosceles-shaped face turning from Xiri before the young woman could respond.

The chief pulled back the curtain and beckoned Xiri to approach.

The slight clinking of jewellery followed Xiri as she moved toward the marriage arena, and the spar that would unite her with a man she was only just now about to meet. All lingering thoughts of the man in the cave evaporated as Thyr's light filled her future.

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link
​

Tanith had never been a man prone to obsession. Life among the desert clans did not allow such indulgences; survival demanded clarity, not fixation. Yet even with Balori’s warnings laced with weight in her voice and the unspoken threat that clung to every word he found that the face of Xiri refused to loosen its hold upon him.

It was not love. It was something far more frustrating; like curiosity that burrowed beneath the skin. A sand-spider’s bite; constant, insistent and demanding to be scratched even as it worsened the wound.

He noticed that the world had dulled around it. The market, so vibrant hours before had now become lesser for her absence. Colours lost their sharpness, sounds their meaning, as though everything had been painted in imitation of something greater that had already passed him by. Even the light that broke through the canvas roofs above felt thinner, stripped of something essential he could neither name nor recover.

Xiri.

The thought of her did not sit quietly in his mind. It moved. It shifted. It carried weight and though he would not yet admit it aloud, there was something deeply unsettling in how readily he welcomed it.

“I must find her…there is something…” The words left him without reason, drawn up from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. His gaze lifted as though waking from a dream, searching for Balori; but she was gone. The Loreseeke swallowed by the endless motion of the market, her familiar braids lost among the shifting bodies of nomads who moved with purpose he no longer shared. “Balori?” His voice carried, firm and controlled yet received no answer.

“Balori…” There was a tightening in his chest now, not fear but something close enough to be noticed.

Then the world struck him or rather, he struck it. Stone and sand met his face with blunt certainty as his footing vanished beneath him, his body pitching forward into the dust.

“Ah! Quick, collect the papers!” The cry came from above him. A hunched figure loomed there, wild-eyed and frantic, clutching a sheet of bark-script as others scattered into the feet of passing traders.

“Did you just run into me, old man?” Tanith muttered, pushing himself up onto one knee as irritation flared. His hand closed around the nearest fallen sheet before it could be trampled. The material was rough and seemed to be stretched hide, marked with concentric circles drawn in obsessive perfection. Meaningless at first glance. “You should watch where you walk. I am not of the Ulaz, but had I been, you would have lost your head for less.”

“Silence and gather them!” the old man snapped, collapsing to the ground in frantic pursuit of another page. “Do you not see? They hold the path! The re-emergence, the reconnection…”

“...the ramblings of a madman?” Tanith muttered, though he gathered another sheet regardless. This one bore a great sun, crude yet dominant, its presence overwhelming the figures beneath it, figures locked in war, reduced to nothing beneath its gaze.

This one he found unsettlingly curious. He looked up from the Sun and to his shock found the old man’s face far too close to his own.

“Not madness,” the man whispered through cracked teeth. “Enlightenment.” The pages were snatched from Tanith’s grasp, yet the man did not retreat. His gaze had fixed upon Tanith’s wrist. Upon the mark. “He shall bear the sign…” The tone shifted. It went lower. It turned almost reverent. “…and consume all resistance.”

Tanith stilled. “What did you just say?”

The market fell away.

The noise. The movement. The press of bodies. All of it faded until there was only the space between them and the weight of the old man’s gaze. “He shall claim the power of the gods,” the man murmured, his grip tightening around Tanith’s wrist, “and with it bring the Sisters into unity.”

Tanith did not pull away. Even if he wanted to he could not, it was like he was transfixed to this very spot.

“He shall bear the mark.” A calloused finger pressed into its centre.

And the world burned.

Xiri.

Light.

The Sun.

A great disc crossing the sky followed by darkness swallowing fire

then breaking.

The Sun restored.

Xiri.

Not beneath it.

Not before it.

Within it.

Tanith.
Xiri.

Tanith.
Xiri.

Blood.

War.

Fire rising higher than the horizon.

The Sun watching. Always watching.

Xiri.

Voices rising.

Not laughter.

Chanting.

Rite.

The Sun.
The Sun.

All shall be consumed by the Sun.

Xiri.

​

Tanith tore breath into his lungs as though dragged back from drowning, his body recoiling violently as he wrenched free from the old man’s grip fully aware that fear was plain upon his face now.

“What did you do to me?” His voice came low, strained, edged with something far sharper than anger. His wrist burned, as though touched by the fire of Thyr himself. “What foul witchery…”

“I did nothing.” The old man blinked, momentarily uncertain, his gaze flicking toward the surrounding crowd that had begun to watch with idle curiosity. “You travelled,” he said slowly. “Elsewhere. What did you see?”

Tanith did not answer because he could not. What unsettled him most was not what he had seen but how little of him had resisted it.

“Come.” The old man took his arm again, more carefully now, pulling him through the thinning crowd toward a nearby tent. “This is not for open air.”

Tanith allowed it and went with the old man.

“How long have you borne the mark?” The old man gestured sharply, already scattering papers across the ground in search of something. Tanith more aware that the interior of the tent was thick with heat and the scent of aged parchment.

“Since birth,” Tanith said, though his voice had not yet steadied. “It is said I hid from…” He stopped as the man thrust a sheet before him that bore two symbols. One was the exact shape of the mark upon his wrist. The other was that of the blazing sun. “How?”

“Thyr, who watches all,” the old man whispered, his finger resting upon the sun before sliding toward the mark. “And Thul; the warrior who blinded his sibling for a single moment before being cast aside.”

Tanith listened, though the words seemed to drift around him rather than settle within.

“The Sisters were once bound beneath Thyr’s lineage,” the man continued, “but they drifted. Separated. Forgotten.” His gaze lifted. “Have you heard of the Son of Suns?”

Tanith’s hand rose in unconscious prayer. “The Great Uniter. Thyrsus reborn.” It was a story. A comfort given to children. “Nothing more then bedtime tales.”

“I believed that too.” Another sheet was slid forward, this one baring Star charts. Six distinct points marked upon it, each pointed at by the old man. “They align,” the man whispered. “Scattered once; but now they have returned. By Thyr’s guidance The Six sleep beneath the same sky once more.”

“This is madness,” Tanith snapped, forcing himself back into something solid. “Ink and delusion.” His hand dropped, brushing the symbol of the sun.

And again came the Fire.

XIRI

XIRI

XIRI IS THE SUN
​

His eyes snapped open and he found the old man smiling. “Is it?” A finger tapped the mark on Tanith’s wrist. “Or do you simply refuse to name what you already know?”

Tanith rose. “You are coming with me.” He declared with no hesitation “My clan will hear this. My Loreseeker will understand what you are trying to say.” He paused. For a moment, her name pressed forward again and he almost spoke of Xiri, but Balori’s warning cut it down before it could take form.

“For now,” he said instead. “Come.”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

The crowd erupted at the bride and grooms reveal. The feast of blades was a time honoured tradition. No blood would be drawn, but all Echani could read their movements and watch as the betrothed would come to understand one another through combat. Should things go well, the crowd would witness the synergy of two souls, a moment almost as intimate as the consummation itself. Thankfully, that was reserved for the moments following the feast of blades — and behind the closed flaps of the grooms tent.

Othni was a strong, young man, just leaving the years of his youth. Strong of jaw, lean of build and with a keen deportment. Though on the edges of his movement, Xiri sensed the same uncertainty that she felt at her slightly frayed edges.

He was dressed not too dissimilarly to herself. Attire quite revealing to those from the outside, but to those in the arena it was the normal for this manner of occasion. As of ancient times, it was customary to wear only that which was necessary, so as to assure the prospectives that their soon to be mate was not defective in any way. The way Othni shifted upon seeing Xiri indicated that he approved of her. She offered a subtle indication of the same in her gait.

"Xiri, daughter of Zava, bearer of mothersface...do I stand accepted in thy sight?" Othni's voice was confident, with only the edge of quiver. He raised his blade his head, the weapon gleamed in the sun. The crowd roared in approval.

Slowly, she raised her arms above her head, taking the hilt now in both hands and holding her ceremonial weapon aloft. "Othni, son of Darya, keeper of life and lineage...do I stand accepted in thy sight?"

The blade's came down, and both stepped to their left. Each weapon passed to their betrothed's left as the strafed to the right. Xiri's heart raced. They were immediately in sync. The blades, now pointing towards the ground, cut across and upward. As they stepped back, avoiding the cut of their espoused's attack, the blades collided with a mighty clang. And they both paused, right leg stretched backwards, blades locked.

She could see it in his eyes as well. A perfect union. A near impossibility from first-fight.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she acted impulsively, testing if it were true. She pulled back, and thrust the blade towards his side. He stepped aside, spun and hand over hers, guided the blade close to his taut abdominal muscles, but with no blood drawn.

They spun in to an embrace, breathing heavy, eyes locked. Their heart beat drowned out by the roar of a crowd impassioned by their emergent romance.

"By Thyr..." He whispered, "...what fortune graces us this day."

She offered a faltering smile in return. Fortune, and blessings indeed, to have been arranged a marriage with one who seemed her soul mate.

She pulled back, smile pulling her face into a radiant glow, subtle embers beginning to form along her collar bones — though still too small to be seen from afar in this bring light of Thyr.

He stepped forward again, blade cutting through the air on the diagonal. Xiri moved like the wind, wrapping about him and again taking in his gaze, though this time she saw a faltering that caused her heart to stir. His blade overshot, striking the ground and kicking up dust.

"Othni," she called to him, but her concern was drowned out by the deafening disproval of the crowd.

He turned around, sluggish. His eyes dimmed and bloodshot. Xiri looked to the podium, the covered box where her parents, Darya and various other tribal leaders sat watching. Darya had risen from her seat, eyes fixed on the couple.

Xiri's chest was to burst, such was the thumping of her heart within. She could only continue. Lifting her blade, she saw the sluggishness of Othni's swing a moment too late, and the last inch of her blade found his chest, just below the third rib.

Her would-be-husband gasped as the tip of the blade pierced his heart.

Xiri paused, tip of her blade in his chest.

The crowd grew deathly quiet.

Darya, mother of the dying Othni, screamed in a manner that would have turned a rabid rancor back to its hovel.

"BETRAYAL!"

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link
​

Tanith led the old man against the tide of the market, the pair of them moving like sand mice attempting to force passage through a dune storm of colour and noise. Every step gained seemed stolen rather than earned. Whenever they shifted left to avoid one gathering of bodies another pressed immediately into their path, traders and warriors alike flowing endlessly around them until Tanith slowly realised they were no longer making progress at all.

“Tanith?” Relief came sharply at the sound of the voice. Kariss emerged from the crowd before him, broad-shouldered and stern-eyed beneath the heavy wraps of the Varahari. His gaze swept first across Tanith in quick assessment before settling upon the old man beside him. Silence followed that signalled the man’s full evaluation taking place.

Kariss took in the details carefully. The sigil stitched into the hem of the old man’s cloak. The weathered skins clutched tightly in his hands. The tattoos upon his cheeks. Then his eyes returned to Tanith. “Why do you walk beside one of the Solpaer?”

Tanith blinked and looked properly at the old man for the first time.

The Solpaer.

The name alone carried enough weight to bend knees. They were living memory among the tribes, the wandering keepers of story and rite to whom every clan owed reverence whether spoken openly or not. Most never left their dwellings upon the outskirts of the great market settlement, preferring silence and dust to crowds and spectacle. Yet now that Tanith truly looked, he saw the signs plainly enough. The great sun-mark stitched into the cloak’s hem. The exile-house inscriptions tattooed into old and wrinkled flesh.

A Solpaer.

For one dangerous moment Tanith nearly dropped to his knees in prayer, instead in a moment of self control he opened his mouth to speak and was immediately silenced by the old man himself.

“He merely sought passage to his clan,” the Solpaer said calmly. “The boy wished me to speak with his Loreseeker.” Kariss seemed less impressed than suspicious. “I assume your people move toward the feast?” the old man continued.

“Aye, Sun-Father,” Kariss answered, offering the sign of Thyr across his chest. “The Feast of Blades draws us all eventually. It has been many years since the last.”

“I shall accompany you then,” the old man replied. “Though afterwards I would speak with your Matriarch…and your Loreseeker.” His hand struck Tanith’s arm. “I have become curious about this boy.”

Kariss snorted. “His history?” A dark look fell upon Tanith. “Oxgam chit and bad luck. That is all his history amounts to.” He laughed once and shoved Tanith around by the shoulder so they continued with the movement of the crowd. “Come. We will lose sight of the grounds if we linger.”

It was Xiri.

Tanith stood among the gathered masses at the edge of the ceremonial grounds and felt the world narrow entirely around her. Around him warriors shouted wagers, children climbed upon stone ledges for better view, drums thundered somewhere beyond the crowd; but all of it to him seemed impossibly distant.

Only she remained clear.

She moved opposite her promised partner with such impossible precision that to an outsider it might have resembled dance rather than combat. Every step anticipated. Every motion answered before it had fully begun. Yet there was something unsettling in that perfection, something beyond practice. She did not move like one reacting to another fighter.

She moved with inevitability.

The blades flashed between them in silver arcs, tracing patterns through dust and sunlight alike. Each turn of her body carried a grace so complete that Tanith felt his chest tighten painfully beneath it.

“I told you not to speak of her.” Balori’s voice cut into his thoughts as Xiri spun low beneath a strike and answered with a motion so fluid it barely seemed human. “She was promised long before you met her, Tanith. She can never be yours.”

Her hand settled heavily upon his shoulder.

“She should not belong to anyone,” Tanith murmured quietly, causing Balori to shoot him a sharp look. “No soul should stand so close to the gods.”

“Tanith,” Balori hissed beneath her breath, fingers tightening. “Shut your mouth.” She tried to pull him back from the crowd. “She is merely the daughter of Doctor. One tribe among many. Have you been drinking sand milk again?”

But Tanith barely heard her. His eyes remained fixed upon Xiri as she swept wide across the arena, her blade carving a perfect crescent through the dust beneath the blazing light above and to his horror he felt tears gathering in his eyes.

“I do not understand it, Balori,” he whispered. “She enters my thoughts like fire. Like Thyr lays her before me whenever I close my eyes.”

He stopped suddenly.

Balori stopped too. Around them conversation faltered. Warriors shifted uneasily. The air itself seemed to tighten.

Something was wrong.

Tanith saw it first in the rhythm, there it was a single movement out of place. One heartbeat where inevitability became intention.

Then Xiri’s blade entered Othni’s heart.

Pain erupted through Tanith so violently that he nearly collapsed. It felt as though the fire of Thyr had been poured into his veins, every nerve igniting at once beneath his skin. His knees threatened to buckle beneath him, yet his body refused even that mercy.

Time ceased and the world froze around him.

Balori’s hand remained upon his shoulder, unaware that his soul felt as though it were tearing itself apart.

XIRI IS THE SUN

PROTECT THE SUN​

The sound around him returned slowly. First it came with the rising murmur of the crowd followed then by the scream from the stands:

“BETRAYAL!”

 

[Desert Flower]

Tags: The Pale Nomad
Attire: Link​

The crowd's roar drowned out Chieftain Darya's curdled wail. Then, the world went dead silent, swallowed by the frantic thud of Xiri's heart. She stood over Othni. The last light faded from his eyes too fast, far faster than the blood loss allowed. Through the fog of her shock, a cold certainty pierced her...there was something wrong about the way he died.

Time slowed. She looked up at the chieftain's booth. Her father was gone. Her mother, Zava — the woman whose face she shared — was falling. A crimson line opened across Zava's throat. She tried to stem the torrent with her hands, but blood streaked down her arms as she collapsed at Darya's feet.

MOTHER!

The word did not form. It tore straight out of her soul as a primal, silent scream.

Her legs bolted toward the booth, but heavy hands clamped onto her shoulders and arms, dragging her backward. Xiri spun, her ritual blade flashing a blind arc through the air to destroy anything between her and the murderers.

The guards suddenly released her, shrieking. They stumbled backward, staring in horror at their own blackened flesh. A blistering heat erupted from everywhere Xiri had been touched. Hands disintegrated into falling soot, leaving cauterised stumps at the wrist. Others suffered worse where their bodies had pressed against her in the scuffle. One man crumpled, handless, as his left thigh crumbled into grey ash. Another choked, spluttering embers, before his eyes burned out and he dropped dead, head hollowed by fire.

Xiri left them to their horror. Driven by a blinding possession, she surged toward the booth, targeting the woman she would have called mother-in-law, the Chieftain Darya.

Darya's face contorted from shock to absolute terror. Xiri didn't register her own movements. The impossible sprint. The inhuman leap into the high booth. The effortless swatting away of royal guards and steel blades. All Xiri knew was the white-hot rage guiding her hands as she slammed Darya down, pinning her thumbs into the chieftain's eyes, and pressed.

Darya screamed. And then fell silent. Only drifting ash remained beneath the scorching, judgmental sun of Thyr.

Suddenly, Xiri felt herself cool. The blistering heat and her remaining stamina dropped away like a stone falling off a cliff. The haze in her mind cleared, cruelly gifting her back her senses just in time to see her mother's body.

Weak and shivering, Xiri crawled across the stone, the last light fading from her own vision. She wrapped her arms around Zava's cold frame, falling into unconsciousness before she could shed her first tear.

 

[The Pale Nomad]

Tags: Desert Flower
Attire: Link
​

Tanith stood one moment among the roaring masses with Balori’s hand upon his shoulder and the next the world had ceased to resemble anything mortal. The Feast of Blades dissolved into crazed madness before all their eyes, the ordered dance of ritual collapsing beneath fire, ash, and blood. A violent crescendo of action swept through the arena, carrying with it a warning every clan present understood instinctively. To Tanith there was only one simple fact that sat in his mind; Xiri stood at the centre of it all like the wrath of a forgotten god.

Men had burned around her. Not metaphorically. Not through trickery of oil or hidden alchemy. They had simply touched her and died screaming, their flesh blackening and collapsing into drifting soot beneath the merciless light of Thyr. The smell struck the crowd a heartbeat later and with it came true panic. Warriors who moments before had sat laughing together now stumbled backward in terror, dragging blades free in instinctive preparation against something none of them understood.

Then Darya died, and restraint died with her. Tanith watched as the Chieftain’s body collapsed in a trail of ash as Xiri stood over her like Thyr’s own rage incarnate. To Tanith the heat rolling from her distorted the very air, playing on the doubts already in his mind. Dust curled upward around her feet in strange spirals like signals from the very things he had sworn were not true.

Then all at once the arena exploded. It started like a murmur rolling in through the great southern sandstorms. A vibration that caught in the ground and made them all feel uneasy. A scream, not of pain or shock, but of aggression and hatred rolled from somewhere nearby like a warhorn, followed instantly by the sound of steel against flesh.

“Kill them!”

Somebody shoved Tanith hard enough that he nearly lost his footing as warriors surged past him toward the lower arena, tribal colours blurring together beneath drawn weapons. Old rivalries ignited in seconds. Accusations became killings. Killings became slaughter. Draya was a powerful matriarch within the clans, her death would spark a massacre as blood oaths were fulfilled. The Feast of Blades became war before the echoes of the declaration had even faded.

Tanith barely heard any of it. He missed Kariss yell defiantly as he drew his sharp blade. Troni’s screams as Balori fell beside her, bleeding from the slice to her neck fell upon deaf ears. The Groni warrior rising beside him unseen as instead he settled upon three warriors through the chaos rushing toward where Xiri had been with hooked spears lowered.

Protect her.

The thought did not feel like his own. It arrived fully formed inside him, ancient and absolute, striking through his blood with the force of prophecy. Every instinct inside him screamed toward her with such violence that for one terrible heartbeat he wondered if his body had ceased belonging to him entirely.

Then he moved.

The Groni that had risen to strike at Tanith was intercepted by the boy before thought could catch action, the echani slamming shoulder-first into the warrior hard enough to send both men crashing into the dust. The impact shattered breath from Tanith’s lungs, but he rolled through it instinctively, and pulling his gladius blade from it’s sheath he in one motion dragged his blade upward beneath the man’s jaw.

He felt steel punch through tongue, the clank of teeth breaking against the edge. He didn’t react as hot blood exploded across his face. The heat of it vanishing against the heat already rising inside him. The warrior spasmed once before Tanith ripped the blade sideways and surged back to his feet.

His eyes centered on Xiri once more, or at least where he knew she was through the chaos. There was no room left for hesitation now.

Another man came screaming at him through the chaos, blade raised high in both hands. Tanith stepped inside the swing and smashed the pommel of his weapon into the warrior’s mouth with enough force to fold the face inward. Bone cracked and teeth scattered. Before the body had even hit the ground Tanith had seized the falling blade and hurled it blindly into the crowd behind him. Someone screamed a death scream. He did not look to see who, he started to move forward through the arena which had become a living thing.

Dust choked the air. The rhythmic drums of the dance had stopped entirely, replaced instead by the rising drumbeat of Thyr’s heat. Everywhere he looked families were falling upon one another in blind fury beneath the burning suns overhead, like a dry grass fire the violence had erupted. Men hacked each other apart over imagined allegiances while women drew blade and killed with equal distinction. Here and there children ran and dodged clear of the bloodshed. Somewhere off to his left Kariss was shouting his name, though the sound reached him as though carried from underwater.

None of it mattered though. For Tanith every path through the slaughter led him back toward her. Toward Xiri. Towards that impossible heat radiating from her presence.

A warrior wearing the colours of Othni’s house charged straight for Tanith with murder plain upon his face. Tanith met him head on. Their blades collided hard enough to numb his arm to the shoulder. The second strike split Tanith’s cheek open. The third never landed.

Tanith caught the warrior’s wrist, drove his forehead into the man’s nose, then buried his Gladius repeatedly into the gap beneath the ribs, spilling blood across him and the floor until the body stopped resisting. It was primal, close warfare that tore once spirit and made them all into what they truly were

Animals.

He barely recognised himself within it anymore. He didn’t have to, the heat inside him no longer felt like blood. It felt molten. His body was not his to command. He forced his way onward through screaming bodies and crashing steel until finally he reached the centre of the ruined grounds. Here was epicenter of the violence, ancient grudges had found excuse and the desert clans were paying for it.

A spear came out of the masses, tearing across Tanith’s ribs. He barely felt it as his flesh ripped and his own blood joined the rest. The haft was gripped tightly and pulled towards him, his body rolling down it’s length until he was close enough to lash out and cave the warriors face in with the pommel of his blade. Tanith slipped beneath another strike and answered by tearing his blade upward through flesh and bone alike.

His heartbeat was Thyr’s own. It was hot and leading, making him oblivious to all that didn’t matter, not when a fist hit his face, nor when a knife sliced through arm muscle like butter. Both of the assaults upon him were met by furious retribution, blood spilled not in the name of survival but in the protection of the divine. He continued forward, his relentless advance towards her would never cease, no matter the cost in blood.

He dropped one of the Kilatusia Sand-snakes with a flurry of strikes to her shoulder, and emerged upon an opening in the fighting.

And there she was.

Xiri lay cradled against the body of her mother amidst soot, corpses, and scorched stone alike. Warriors circled at a distance around her, weapons raised yet none daring to close the final few steps. Fear held them there more effectively than any wall ever could.

Tanith understood it immediately. Every instinct inside him screamed not to approach her. Even the air itself felt wrong this close to her, vibrating with unbearable heat and something far older buried beneath it. The smell of burning stone lingered around her unconscious form as though even the earth struggled to endure her presence.

And yet he walked toward her anyway.

One step. Then another. Closer as he noticed dust touching her skin blackened and curled away like paper near flame.

Someone shouted for him to stop. Another screamed that she was cursed. Somewhere behind him a voice declared her divine. That distinction no longer mattered.

Tanith lowered himself slowly beside her, every muscle in his body trembling from exhaustion, violence, and something dangerously close to reverence. Blood rolled freely down him from his torso and face, some his own and most not. His blade still hung loose within his hand.

For a long moment he simply stared at her. At the girl from the cave. At the woman who had turned warriors to ash.

At Xiri.

Then, with the care one might offer something sacred enough to destroy them, Tanith reached forward and brushed the strands of hair from her face.

“You have me,” he whispered softly. His bloody hand settled against her cheek.

“My Sun of Suns.”