The bird-god fell from the sky like a meteor, trailing feathers. His body collapsed in on itself in the manner of Hollow Gods, leaving only feathers and shining bones. Chvie-Jen picked up the skull and drank the golden blood from it.
The feather, bizarrely black on one side and white on the other, twisted and turned in her hand, then flitted through the air like a dart. She turned to see where it went. A huge white bird was rising from the trees - the Night Phoenix Krii. He turned to fix her with one emerald eye, then began to fly off, lazily beating his filmy wings.
Chvie-Jen Four Winds Sing was not to be so easily escaped. She walked to where Krii had risen from the trees, found his nest, the feathers he had shed. She took one to cut into a pen.
She stood for a moment, enraptured, while Krii's memories flooded into her mind - a confusion of white and fire, flying and hunting and hot blood of many generations of lesser gods - Tzinzie the great dragonfly, the skinchanger Resyebet Smoke Tiger, Árichesja Raven-Swallows-the-Sun - and collapsed sobbing as memory faded, leaving nothing but impossible sorrow and the weight of too many years. Finally, she stood and took an arrow from her quiver and a feather from the ground.
She hunted Krii for a year, writing him letters with her stolen pen, learning bits of his Name. At night, they hunted and chased each other, through the changing landscapes of dream. Sometimes, they would meet and speak, but each time Krii would elude her with his mysterious power. Many times, she woke screaming, with the warm sharpness of his beak around her throat.
She rubbed the point of the arrow in her blood - now it shimmered like copper in the dying light - and tied the feather to its end. Then she shot it into the air and watched as it changed into a flock of tiny white birds, night phoenixes in every detail but size. One landed in her hand and turned its head, fixing her with one eye before it flew to join the flock.
One day, High Priestess Narik brought me up to the library tower to show me Journeys of the Heirarchs, a collection of tales of the great priests of the past. It was a huge book, perhaps the size of a small table and a handspan think. It stood in a corner on its own special stand.
She wiped the dust off of it with a cloth, then opened it carefully. The red vellum pages were inscribed with silver ink in a script I could not read, and here and there would be a piece of paper or parchment with a drawing on it, stuck between the pages. "Before he died, my Grandfather had begun an illustrated edition; I've put his sketches and paintings in here."
She turned to a page bearing a silver line drawing of a bird, and said, "I'll have to translate as I read this, but I believe that it will be of some value to you."
She began:
Mother Nimeshtim Touch-the-Fire, one of the first Mothers Superior of the great Abbey at Red Cliff, had one year taken leave from the place to go, as was the tradition, in search of certain relics of our Goddess Veamándhi's miracles. She had reached the mountains on the border of her goal, the demon kingdom of Kuei-tzu Mu, after a long and difficult journey. A few days into the mountains, it was particularly windy, and the ground especially treacherous. Nimeshtim stopped a moment to rest her aching bones and give the pack mule a chance to recover. As she walked back from the stream where she had been drinking, the wind shifted and sent a shower of stones rolling down the mountainside. She took shelter in the shade of an ancient pine, then went back to the mule. When she reached it, she found that its neck had been broken by a stone and it was dead.
Too weakened and exhuasted to pray to the Holy for help, she was forced to simply take from the mule what few supplies she could, and perform its last rites just where it had fallen. Then, she pressed on.
Supplies and other people were scarce in the treacherous mountain passes. Nimeshtim's food quickly ran out. "There isn't far to go," she kept telling herself, as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other.
Finally the mighty priestess could walk no more, and she fell unconscious into the hard, grainy snow.
When she woke up, the howling winds had fallen silent, and next to her sat a scarlet lark, holding a spray of berries in its bill. It dipped its head and dropped the branch, taking a step away. Too grateful to ask questions, she ate the fruit. Feeling strength returning to her bones, she began to look around. Soon she had found a little cave with a firepit and a generous pile of dry wood and brush - perhaps it was a hunters' shelter. She built a fire inside and warmed herself, then went outside to look for food. She spied a rabbit some distance away. Whispering a traditional prayer for prowess, she drew her bow, nocked an arrow, then paused. She shut her eyes and fired.
The rabbit died with an arrow in its eye.
She roasted it in her cave and offered a small piece to the lark, as thanks. It lifted the piece of meat in its bill, then began to cough violently. It died in Nimeshtim's hands. Fearing some disease, she cut the bird open to examine it, and found inside a faceted blue crystal. It was perhaps the size of a hawk's egg. Her vision had begun to fail, so Nimeshtim could not read the letters carved in the jewel. No one else has dared.
Narik shut the book. "But we know from this incident, and others, that the scarlet lark is one of Veamándhi's servants, and appears only at the Holy's bidding."
I nodded.
Torchbearer is a world of epic fantasy, written with bolder strokes and painted in brighter colours than the world you and I live in. It's a place of sorcerer-kings and demon princes, of earthy spirits and enigmatic fey. It is a world of heroes.
Torchbearer is an independent game inspired by mythological fantasy, Chinese folklore, Japanese animation, and the smoky glory of the Arabian Nights.
Email Me