Kijuuki's New Master

Feeling as though the world were strangely distant, Kiko reflected.

In the two months since the Sennin had left the Emerald Isle Kiko had learned more about life and the universe than in all the years preceding. Studying at the feet of the Dusk Sages was an incomparable feeling of exhilaration. They had the gift of literally putting the knowledge directly into her mind with a touch, and so she learned at an unprecedented rate. She supposed the only reason that they worked as they did in stages is to prevent her from going mad, or cracking in half with the strain of a rapidly expanding world view. Even so, each new discovery was such a revolution for her she began to suspect that it must require immense patience on their part to accept her ignorance.

She learned, for example, that Karia was speaking more than ever these days and what she whispered was somehow comforting to the Dusk Sages. Though she never heard the planet speak, she learned to tell instantly when a Dusk Sage was hearing her voice. They became serene, beatific even, and afterward they thrummed with happy energy. It made her wonder if her admiration of the Dusk Sages was similar to their feelings for Karia.

She looked beside her. The dictionary of Cheldrun that Kiyoshi had made for her lay open on the ground. She reached for it, but it was too far away. Still, it was a welcome reminder of all that had transpired. Everything she had seen.

It seemed too immense that one little Prill like her should come to see and know so much, and the more the Dusk Sages taught her the more she realized that it was a tiny fraction of the wonders of the All. It is a shame, she thought, that we all unravel. There is no way to see it all, know it all.

Kiko was relatively certain that she would never know who the man with oily hair and lace cuffs was, nor why he behaved as he did. He was a child of Steel, with eyes like Rei's, but he had arrived on the Emerald Isle without a boat or any other means of transport. The Dusk Sages observed him from a distance without saying anything. They revealed no emotion, but Kiko felt apprehension on their behalf. For a while she told herself that he would want to be a disciple like Kiko, Ramora, and Maruko, but if he had come to study, then he chose the wrong masters. A week after his arrival he was spotted in the company of resisters.

In the mornings Maruko had taken to singing, from memory, all the Prill lore that she could dredge up. Kiko tried to sing along, but Maruko had a better memory and Ramora had a better voice, she felt ashamed. The Dusk Sages genuinely delighted in the company of their creations, though all of their interactions were colored with melancholy. The creations on the island were sick, Kiko knew, and the health of the Prill was a sad reminder for them of the tragedy of their exile. Mostly it was better to sing and learn and observe than the alternative, even if the unraveling is true.

If.

Sadly, Kiko knew that the unraveling was not only true, but inevitable. She looked down at her chest, pierced by two daggers. Another in her thigh was embedded so deep it pinned her to the ground.

The man with the red eyes had come at sunrise to the Flame of Dawning where all the living Dusk Sages were gathered. He greeted them with flowery language (most of which Kiko understood) and argued at length for something so abhorrent that Kiko thought she must have misunderstood. He wanted the Dusk Sages to reclaim their creations, to use them for mana in order to control the Kyo Tee Shee and then to return in power to the continent of their children. He called them 'Initiators' and 'Gods' and said that it was their responsibility to cleanse Karia of the Cheldrun who he called 'Malice'.

The Dusk Sages listened, tolerantly, over a long period as he explained the story of the Cheldrun, and pleaded with them. The Dusk Sages simply shook their heads, with tear filled eyes, but said nothing. He behaved petulantly, like a child who is used to getting his way. He shouted and cursed. He whimpered and cried. He accused them of negligence, of hating their own children, and denying their own responsibility. Kiko could see that his words were wounding them and she tried to intervene, to calm him down.

That is when he exploded. A storm of knives rushed from his coat impaling her and anyone who came close. He rose into the sky, glowing with purple light, and began hurling wave after wave of sharpened blades and incinerating energy upon the gathered Dusk Sages. Kiko shouted for them to flee, to fight back, to do anything, but they just stood there, weeping.

Resisters crawled up the mountainside and began attacking the gathered Sages from the outside, as the man continued to pulse with malevolent power and to rend the ones he had called Gods just moments before. From his hand he unleashed a purple crane, which swelled to enormous size and swooped down on the dying Dusk Sages, greedily dipping its beak in the rainbow fluid which washed in waves over the field. Kijuuki, Mokuzai's Kyo Tee-Shee. As Kiko watched, the crane consumed every Sage there, becoming bloated with mana. The crane gave a piercing shriek which caused the Flame of Dawning to split in half and fall, before returning to its meal.

The resisters were just as voracious, and most horrifying of all, as they ran out of Dusk Sages to consume they fell on one another in their frenzied state. They wrenched masks off of one another's faces, and sucked mana out of one another's eye sockets. The red-eyed man did not cease his slaughter either, but turned his fury on the resisters as well. Rays of purple light from his hands incinerated his targets, and as Kijuuki fed he only grew more powerful, until his blasts were breaking apart trees, then boulders, then mountains, then sundering the island itself.

Kiko couldn't think of anything to do then, but to sing. She looked around, but Maruko and Ramora were lying in heaps, dead. So she let her trembling voice ring out with the Song of Sending, the funeral song of the Prill. It was perhaps the worst rendition of the song ever performed, but The-One-Who-Opens-Doors smiled and nodded at her as he died. The look on his face was one of pride.

From the corpses of the resisters new Kyo Tee-Shee sprang. They joined the feeding frenzy, as the ground trembled and Kiko, who was on the point of passing out but kept singing all the same, wondered if the island were lifting out of the ocean into the sky. She could not hear herself over the roar, but she pressed on approaching the climax. The red-eyed man was completely obscured in a field of purple light now. She no longer cared who he was, it was beyond her.

When her breath was expended, she fell back and looked at that dictionary laying on the ground beside her. Its pages were spattered with rainbow colored blood. The wind took it and blew it out of sight. She imagined the wind was blowing it like a message to the All. We are unraveling as you decreed. Is it what you you hoped?

There Is No Peace

The man with the oily black hair and fondness for lace had been very persuasive.

Lotus thought of herself as a top-notch security officer and her position in the chain of command for the Omexon branch of Goshi Mining Corporation confirmed such an appraisal, but she also could not deny the fact that she had just defied several important directives by cooperating with that alarmingly persuasive man. His request had been ludicrous, now that she thought about it, but at the time it had seemed as normal as breathing. He'd marched in the front doors of a high security facility without clearances and yet been permitted every step of the way to go further without being harmed. He had strutted (yes strut was the word) directly to her station at the disLocator monitors and he'd asked, in a very polite fashion, to be escorted by a squad of Hei-Shi to coordinates that... well let's face it, the coordinates were ridiculous.

But she hadn't resisted him anymore than the guards posted between the entrance and her desk had done. She nodded, she even (shudder) giggled girlishly, and she did exactly as he requested.

As the squad of Hei-Shi disappeared taking the persuasive man with them in a swirl of smoke, she looked down at her monitor. Yep. They'd gone thousands of kilometers to the West. They were somewhere in the middle of an uncharted ocean. Weird.

***

Kijuuki was as happy as a kitten in a string factory. This island was full of the Mana-Beings and many of them would do nothing but flee to defend themselves. She could not remember ever being so full of shining glory, before. Of course, she could not remember very much - part of the curse of being a Kyo-Tee-Shee, yesterday is nearly as indecipherable as tomorrow. Nor was she really full. True she had a glut of the beautiful light bursting through her every pore, but she never seemed to tire of the consuming. The consuming, in fact, became more of an obsession with each delicious morsel.

The One Who Unravels Mysteries had been wrong. He had created Kijuuki and her siblings and bound them in mysterious ways only he could unravel to the Kata-bearers, the God's of Ben Hamor, the Scions of Karia, the Cosmic Incarnation of the Answer to the Question of the All. Yes, this last title was sufficiently obnoxious to be an accurate representation of these beings. She and her siblings had been bound to them, believing that they could ride them to a cataract of Mana that would come along the timestream, but her own mount had been destroyed prematurely. It turned out that waiting for the cataract was a waste of time, because these Mana-beings were right here, now - and they were deliciously passive.

Not all of the Mana-beings were passive, however. Sometimes, Kijuuki encountered one of the beings she now referred to in her mental monologue as the "Dark Ones". The Dark Ones were Mana-beings, delectable in appearance, but overwhelmingly powerful. She avoided them assiduously, because they controlled her as surely as gravity determines the orbit of a planet, if she got too close. It was good, she reflected, that most of the Mana-beings did not resist, for they would be hard to eat if they all became Dark Ones.

She thought this while her beak was buried half way in the chest of a Mana-being sucking out delicious rainbow glory like a milkshake through a straw. The Mana-being raised its head, looking her in the eyes, and its expression made her hesitate.

"Kijuuki?" it said. "You are free?"

She refrained from pointing out the obviousness of this remark.

"Then Mokuzai is dead and all of Karia must mourn. The Answer moves closer to revelation. The Question is asked. Mokuzai is dead. There is no peace."

As he said this last thing, his mask caved in and she sucked up every delirious drop of Mana, until he was nothing at all.

She lay still for a moment while the All spun around her. She was intoxicated. She grinned idiotically. She heard someone coming, but she didn't care enough to check who it was.

***

Nero arrived on the Emerald Isle in a whirl of smoke, near the apex. Immediately behind him, a massive column of White Rock in the shape of a flame towered up to the sky. A magnificent omen that he was once again on the right path.

Oh, Spark. You doddering fool. Your mind was a cracked and rotten egg by the time I got to it, but it still contained more information than even you realized.

The Hei-Shi accompanying him looked around blankly for a moment, but Nero reasserted his control over them as easily as clenching his fist. They were soon forging ahead in every direction, through the jungle, teleporting to cover more ground, and reporting back at regular intervals. He would know the layout of the island in a few minutes. Some of his Hei-Shi did not report back, which let Nero know that the island was not a meek paradise, but it had a sting.

Then, one of his cobalt blue minions reappeared with a shocked expression on his face... His words were inarticulate, but his mental images were crystalline. He had seen something beautiful being consumed. The Hei-Shi had no way to know what it was, but he had instinctually recoiled at the sight.

"Take me," Nero commanded.

Nero arrived in time to see an enormous purple crane drowsily pecking at the shriveled remains of a... Inase Spark had called them Initiators: animate, non-living tools of the universe. A sudden cold rage came over him. He fell upon the crane in a flurry of balletic violence. Hovering knives sprung out of his coat and pinned the crane through the wings to the ground. His own fists and knees followed a split second after. As he struck he cursed it...

"You...vile...parasite! You have transgressed! This is a God you have destroyed..."

Kijuuki was sure she was hallucinating. Too much Mana consumed too quickly. This man was one of the Children of Steel. He did not belong on this island... except his eyes were so familiar. Those eyes compelled her to speak.

"Not Gods... Mana-beings... this one said," she wasn't precisely sure why she felt the need to repeat it, "this one said that there is no peace."

Nero's eyes narrowed, occluding the white, turning them to pools of blood. He gripped the bird's head pulling it intimately close to his mouth.

"No," he whispered, "not for you. For you there will never be peace again."

With that, he tore the crane apart, piece by piece, and ate it. It felt magnificent.

The All

Spinning beyond time. Ever changing yet eternally consistent, the All is that which is. It initiates ineffably, untraceably and implacably the Unraveling.


The All unravels galaxies.
Galaxies unravel stars.
Stars unravel planets.
Planets unravel life-givers, the Dusk Sages.

The Dusk Sages are the last tools of the All. The final stage before the Question. It is they who unravel life.

The Unraveling is inevitable, more certain than gravity, but it continues not for itself, but for the possibility of the conditions of the Question. The Question is all that lives. Life itself is what the All is asking and all of the tools of the All, galaxies, stars, planets and sages, exist but to create the conditions of life.

Questions require answers.

As the Unraveling progresses, life spreads, and advances. But eventually the tools themselves unravel completely. The crisis. The cataclysm. The All has addressed its question to the void and the drama plays out. An answer is given.

Does a question cease being asked once it is answered? Is there only one answer? The choices of the living are opaque. The intention of the All is unknowable. Curiosity and anticipation are all that we have.

Karia is a tool of the All. Not living herself she worships life. She bends her ear to their songs and she watches avidly. A desire to know how it will unfold her only pressing reality. She acts as a tool - according to the demands of the one who wields her. Choice is not a gift she possesses, but her actions nevertheless have consequences. The ones she has marked and bound to herself will bear those consequences and likewise she will know weal or woe in accordance with their behavior. It is the first time in countless eras that her future has been uncertain. She likes it.

An answer will be given. Praise the All, an answer will be given, at last.

Reflections

The smell of the wind is my greatest comfort these days. The crew is tense, my companions even more so. You'd think victory over such evil as the Oni would lift our spirits some. On the deck I stand, letting the wind fill my senses. While singing the songs is a therapy of sorts, there is much to be said for simply listening to Karia, the greatest vocalist of all.

My mind drifts with Karia's song, and I cannot help but feel awful for Una. I would reach out to her if I could but find the words. What does one say to someone who has lost her people? What solace could I offer her that would seem more than a mere pittance?

Then Kiyoshi, one of my charges. A smile crosses my face at the irony of thinking of him as someone who needed the protection of an old choir boy. A man of purpose and honor, but the disagreement over the pink-haired girl.... I would have thought him above threatening us, his companions, but then again, High-Dive was there. Perhaps it was a calculated risk on his part, to restrain High-Dive at the risk of estranging the rest of us. "He's a good boy, I'm sure he had his reasons."

Karia answers in her way. A symphony that only draws the inquisitor's gaze inward.

Moses... by far the strongest of us, but the one most dragged down by his burdens. I'm glad he and Zippora have taken a liking to each other. Nothing can lessen a burden like a companion. She's not a bad singer, either. "The boy's got taste, I'll give him that." I chuckle.

Karia gives a brief snort, spraying a whiff of the sea in my face. Apparently she got the joke.

Then there's Rei. A girl called Zero. I'm still not sure what to think about her. Sometimes she seems so vicious... heartless even. Then other times she seems... no, she IS vulnerable. I can't help but pity her. Far as I can tell, her mind is in shambles. Like a child forced to watch a massacre. Numbed even. The father in me wants to help her, but I doubt she's willing to just open up her thoughts to some old fox, however cunning. Maybe if she simply knew I would be willing to listen...

High-Dive... chaos incarnate. If myself and my companions are all so heavily involved in the coming fate of Karia, I cannot help but dread whatever role High-Dive will be playing. She seems hell-bent on destroying everything any sentient being would hold dear, save for her precious nuts. Perhaps she is meant as a balance to the rest of us, something to keep our heads about us. Whatever her role, I'll have to see it to the end. "I never thought a Zipsum would be the greatest test of my patience," I tell the wind.

Karia's gulls laugh in response.

The-One-Who-Opens-Doors said that The-One-Who-Unravels-Mysteries had gone mad and started this mess. The mask I now carried belonged to mad Dusk sage; left behind to guide us in the "right" direction. Hmph. What is the "right" way anyway? Peace. My goal is right. I know this deep in my soul. As for the directions the powers at be try to pull me... I cannot help but wonder. It is apparent my companions and I are pawns in some great game. I want to help guide them, to keep them on the right track, to steer them away from this looming... catastrophe. How can I know which Sage to trust? I want to believe the words of One-Who-Opens-Doors, but the words of the mad Sage bore into my mind. How can I trust one source over the other? The former seems more stable, but I cannot help but see myself in the place of The-One-Who-Unravels-Mysteries, judged by the Council of Elders who deemed my quest madness.

The Sealed Chamber...

Ben Hamur...

The mad guardian...

The BOOK!

My eyes snap open just in time to catch a spray of salt squarely. I scarcely even notice the searing burn. The book is the only sign related to the mad Sage I have yet to fully explore. I whirl around and run to my chambers, hoping for any shred of information that could point me in the "right" direction.

Seems my mind is full of hope these days.

Featherface

"Mokuzai..."

A whisper of wind rustles the leaves in the surrounding wood, a hint of the stormy weather outside, but within this realm it is calm and warm. Mokuzai looks up and sees clouds rushing overhead like time-lapse photography. In front of him a tea kettle nestled in the coals of a dying fire begins to whistle. A face covered in feathers appears in the steam wafting through the air with a mocking expression and a breathy voice.

"Mokuzai..."

The old lore-singer grunts and waves the steam away with his hand before picking the kettle up and pouring himself a cup of tea. "Can't I drink my tea in peace," he says.

The steam reforms into the laughing face, "I'm afraid not, old man. You made your choice back in the Chantry. No peace for you."

Mokuzai pays no attention as the voice goes on, "You've seen the madness that is The-One-Who-Unravels-Mysteries. You've heard his ridiculous prophecies and his slanderous accusations. Do you intend to pay them heed old man?"

Eyes made of steam narrow as they examine the Prill before them. Mokuzai sips his tea, looking at a leaf blowing in the wind. The sky begins to darken and the face speaks again with a prickly tone.

"If you've any sense you'll quit this foolish game. The mana in you needs to be returned. Feed yourself to your Kyo-Tee-Shee, and have it done. There's your answer to the riddle of peace!"

The wind gives a great sigh and the light returns to normal, while the face of steam puffs out one cheek and then the other, bored.

"Seriously, you're going to be in here for a long time with me while your friends take you safely to Omexon. This will be dull if you don't at least participate in the conversation. Surely you have questions. Who was The-One-Who-Unravels-Mysteries, Featherface? Why did he set up this whole prophecy, Featherface? How did Elder Winter get this mask? Where did this staff come from? What's the cataclysm, Featherface? Why does the Wandering Star, wander? C'mon..."

The mountaintop is tranquil while Mokuzai sips noisily at his tea with a little smile turning up the corners of his mouth. The floating mask, the one called Featherface, or in the old-tongue, The-One-Who-Opens-Doors, waits impatiently...

The Dusk Sages

In a frenzied Zipsum dance...

Through the savage eloquence of Jevumm poetry...

With a mournful Gogajin ballad...

With tract after philosophical Anakarix tract...

Through the harmonized voices of a Prill choir...

Even in the resignation of a Vorax suicide...

The Dusk Sages are remembered.

Once, like Gods, they strode in and out of the lives of the Karians bringing with them, phenomenal powers, and ineffable wisdom. They controlled the weather, the seasons, the cycles of life and death. Under their gentle tutelage the Karians grew from humble beginnings to masters of lore and guardians of nature. They taught the Prill to sing. They taught the Anakarix to think. They taught the Jevumm to hunt. More than just teachers, they were companions. They flew with the Vorax, ran with the Zipsum and brawled with the Gogajin.

The Dusk Sages roamed everywhere and remained nowhere. It was impossible to discern their numbers, unthinkable to question their motives. They ruled without defending their authority. They remained aloof without anyone charging them of irresponsibility. The did not build or construct as the Karians and Cheldrun do, but their magic permanently altered the land. The positions of the mountains, the course of the rivers, the depth of the forests, these are the monuments of the Dusk Sages.

When the Cheldrun arrived, the Karians looked to the Dusk Sages for advice only to discover that the Dusk Sages were withdrawing. Like a child who, having witnessed the death of their mother, turns to the father for comfort - the Karians were devastated by the Dusk Sages' retreat. For months, the Dusk Sages were silent. Not speaking or responding to the presence of the Karians at all they processed to the west coast and walked into the sea. In streams they simply trickled out to the ocean and were gone.

Behind them they left only a few clues, besides the land itself, that they had ever been to this continent. The lore, which they left in bits and pieces to each of the races of Karia, contained clues to the phenomenal power the Dusk Sages seemed to command. The Prill continue to find new clues embedded in the melodies they compose. The Anakarix, likewise unlock potential hints from the patterns of the stars. The Vorax, once great secret-keepers, are dying without revealing what the Dusk Sages told to them.

The only tangible piece of the era of the Dusk Sages are the masks they used to wear. Every sage, was known by her distinctive and elaborate mask. No one ever saw the face of a Dusk Sage, nor did anyone ever see a mask that was not being worn. But when the retreat of the Dusk Sages was over, the Karians found many masks littering the beaches, cast aside. The hollow eyes of each mask probe the soul of the observer. Once, the holes seem to say, the eyes of Wisdom herself looked through me.