The Unaligned Academic Lexicon defines sublimation as "chemically, changing the state of an object between phases without passing through intermediate phases; metaphysically, the sudden alteration of an object into a state whose conditions for its existence have not occurred." In RhyDin it may describe a phenomenon involving spikes in cosmic radiation, so-called "space-time rifts," and the sudden existence of individuals who should not have existed. Most were removed from or integrated into RhyDin's affected universe and timeline, while others still echo from one universe to the next, avoiding the void in between as if it had never existed...
May 28th, 2016 C.E. (alternate) - 6:40 a.m.
(continuing from the events of Sublimation: The Sorceress)
Falling did not frighten Noira. The feeling was liberating, free from the confines of mortal locomotion if only for a moment, with the wind whistling sharply in her pointed ears and the world blurring by so fast that she could believe she was flying, if she allowed herself to.
It was landing that terrified her.
When she saw the fortified tower of Twinmoon she knew appear beneath her, the nail-studded palisades that lined the base flashing into focus, she reacted reflexively: she opened a hand to a wooden watchtower on the perimeter and willed it to be heavier, reflecting supermassive alien worlds of swirling gases in her eyes. The guard at the top -- a bandit with the Warlord Noira's celestial brand visible on his breastplate -- screamed as the sudden increase in pressure snapped his bones, and she drifted clear of the palisades towards the gravity well before releasing her hold. She tumbled ten feet into rough stones and a barrel of javelins, scattering them across Twinmoon's fortified perimeter and under the scrambling feet of her minions.
Her arms were scraped bloody, her shoulder felt badly bruised, her senses were swimming from a blow to the head, but she was alive. More than that, she was powerful -- she laughed as she stared at the brightening sky and sensed the position of tens of hundreds of stars rendered invisible by golden sunlight, their threads of cosmic power amplified by the twin entities she had bound to her soul, whose power she now commanded.
A face wearing a broad axe, a scraggly beard and a worried frown stepped into her light. "Sorceress," and she heard him thump his studded armor in salute.
"Kvira," she said, and hid the pain she felt in her arm when he pulled her to her feet. She looked over his shoulder at the contorted corpse slowly descending from the watchtower along with half a dozen splintered timbers, still suffering the lingering effects of her gravity enchantment. The dead man must have been a new recruit: she counted less than two hundred in her war band, and she did not recognize his face.
Then she turned to the rocky knoll where her warriors were buried, where the man who had died to soften her landing would join them, and saw more than a dozen patches of freshly turned earth. A dozen men and women with swords and spears and staffs drew in closer, but Noira's icy glare narrowed on her lieutenant: "How long was I gone?"
"Not four days, sorceress. Where -- ?"
"What happened."
Kvira looked uneasy, but unease turned to fear when raw arcana crackled audibly in Noira's hands. "That new outpost. When they heard you were gone, they sent the militia out on a raid -- but I know their faces. They were City Watch." One of the many benefits of recruiting disgraced guards was intelligence like this, but Noira could hardly appreciate her own foresight through the heavy haze of rage.
"We've suffered that accursed fort too long. Kvira, find our raiders. I'll clear them a path tonight."
"But the walls -- "
Noira's lips twisted into a deep scowl; she reached a hand out to the watchtower and closed it into a fist, and the stone foundation cracked, the support timbers snapped in half, and the tower and the mangled body atop it collapsed into rubble. Then she turned a sinister grin back on her lieutenant.
"The walls will crumble."
* * *
Earlier that day, Fort Sunderlain was a low pentagonal fort, its brick walls, long guns and scryers watching three of RhyDin's busiest overland trade routes; it was manned by forty guards and volunteers, with enough material support from the RhyDin Unified Watch that they often issued orders to the fort's defenders, such as the raid against Twinmoon while the tower's infamous sorceress was unaccounted for.
Now only three of the five walls stood intact, two blasted apart where they joined by all the arcane power Noira could summon at once, red bricks scattered across the fort's interior and into the grassy hills beyond. Ten of her raiders and twelve of the defenders were killed in the fighting that followed, and fifteen of the survivors decided to swear an oath of loyalty to her war band after the fort surrendered.
The rest were thrown into a well, and Noira allowed her raiders to work out their aggression by throwing javelins at them. She smiled with grim satisfaction at the sound of their screams, and looked past a flaming breach in Fort Sunderlain's walls at the distant lights of RhyDin. "They will rue the day they crossed me," she said when she heard the familiar cadence of Kvira's plated boots approaching.
"Sorceress," he said, thumping his armor with his fist. "They'll send others, stronger fighters. Tob -- "
"He won't come," she shook her head, glaring back at her lieutenant, though the lines in her brow betrayed her worry.
"Then others like him. Adventurers. Do-gooders," he spat.
Some tenuous connection in Noira's soul was tweaked by his words -- not merely her own memories as an adventurer, and the occasional foray into fighting for "good" instead of for profit; but an actual sense of her former self a thousand days ago, in a universe now split apart from her own, by the fact that this other self would no longer make the same dark decisions that she had. She shut her eyes and saw the comfortingly familiar walls of a guest room at Quellarin, felt this other self worrying over plans to reopen a portal to her accursed homeland...
"Sorceress?" Kvari intoned, stepping close to her side; Noira shot him a warning look.
"They wouldn't dare." She folded her arms and stared harder at the city in the distance. Powers equal to or greater than her own resided there in a not insignificant number; sometimes, though rarely, some of them were roused to action. Would Sunderlain stir the metaphorical hornets' nest? "They won't care, anyway," she reassured herself, hugging herself against a sympathetic chill felt by another Noira, a thousand days in her past and an entire universe away.
((The version of RhyDin depicted in this post takes place in the future, stemming from an alternate sequence of events starting in late 2013/early 2014.))
May 28th, 2016 C.E. (alternate) - 6:40 a.m.
(continuing from the events of Sublimation: The Sorceress)
Falling did not frighten Noira. The feeling was liberating, free from the confines of mortal locomotion if only for a moment, with the wind whistling sharply in her pointed ears and the world blurring by so fast that she could believe she was flying, if she allowed herself to.
It was landing that terrified her.
When she saw the fortified tower of Twinmoon she knew appear beneath her, the nail-studded palisades that lined the base flashing into focus, she reacted reflexively: she opened a hand to a wooden watchtower on the perimeter and willed it to be heavier, reflecting supermassive alien worlds of swirling gases in her eyes. The guard at the top -- a bandit with the Warlord Noira's celestial brand visible on his breastplate -- screamed as the sudden increase in pressure snapped his bones, and she drifted clear of the palisades towards the gravity well before releasing her hold. She tumbled ten feet into rough stones and a barrel of javelins, scattering them across Twinmoon's fortified perimeter and under the scrambling feet of her minions.
Her arms were scraped bloody, her shoulder felt badly bruised, her senses were swimming from a blow to the head, but she was alive. More than that, she was powerful -- she laughed as she stared at the brightening sky and sensed the position of tens of hundreds of stars rendered invisible by golden sunlight, their threads of cosmic power amplified by the twin entities she had bound to her soul, whose power she now commanded.
A face wearing a broad axe, a scraggly beard and a worried frown stepped into her light. "Sorceress," and she heard him thump his studded armor in salute.
"Kvira," she said, and hid the pain she felt in her arm when he pulled her to her feet. She looked over his shoulder at the contorted corpse slowly descending from the watchtower along with half a dozen splintered timbers, still suffering the lingering effects of her gravity enchantment. The dead man must have been a new recruit: she counted less than two hundred in her war band, and she did not recognize his face.
Then she turned to the rocky knoll where her warriors were buried, where the man who had died to soften her landing would join them, and saw more than a dozen patches of freshly turned earth. A dozen men and women with swords and spears and staffs drew in closer, but Noira's icy glare narrowed on her lieutenant: "How long was I gone?"
"Not four days, sorceress. Where -- ?"
"What happened."
Kvira looked uneasy, but unease turned to fear when raw arcana crackled audibly in Noira's hands. "That new outpost. When they heard you were gone, they sent the militia out on a raid -- but I know their faces. They were City Watch." One of the many benefits of recruiting disgraced guards was intelligence like this, but Noira could hardly appreciate her own foresight through the heavy haze of rage.
"We've suffered that accursed fort too long. Kvira, find our raiders. I'll clear them a path tonight."
"But the walls -- "
Noira's lips twisted into a deep scowl; she reached a hand out to the watchtower and closed it into a fist, and the stone foundation cracked, the support timbers snapped in half, and the tower and the mangled body atop it collapsed into rubble. Then she turned a sinister grin back on her lieutenant.
"The walls will crumble."
* * *
Earlier that day, Fort Sunderlain was a low pentagonal fort, its brick walls, long guns and scryers watching three of RhyDin's busiest overland trade routes; it was manned by forty guards and volunteers, with enough material support from the RhyDin Unified Watch that they often issued orders to the fort's defenders, such as the raid against Twinmoon while the tower's infamous sorceress was unaccounted for.
Now only three of the five walls stood intact, two blasted apart where they joined by all the arcane power Noira could summon at once, red bricks scattered across the fort's interior and into the grassy hills beyond. Ten of her raiders and twelve of the defenders were killed in the fighting that followed, and fifteen of the survivors decided to swear an oath of loyalty to her war band after the fort surrendered.
The rest were thrown into a well, and Noira allowed her raiders to work out their aggression by throwing javelins at them. She smiled with grim satisfaction at the sound of their screams, and looked past a flaming breach in Fort Sunderlain's walls at the distant lights of RhyDin. "They will rue the day they crossed me," she said when she heard the familiar cadence of Kvira's plated boots approaching.
"Sorceress," he said, thumping his armor with his fist. "They'll send others, stronger fighters. Tob -- "
"He won't come," she shook her head, glaring back at her lieutenant, though the lines in her brow betrayed her worry.
"Then others like him. Adventurers. Do-gooders," he spat.
Some tenuous connection in Noira's soul was tweaked by his words -- not merely her own memories as an adventurer, and the occasional foray into fighting for "good" instead of for profit; but an actual sense of her former self a thousand days ago, in a universe now split apart from her own, by the fact that this other self would no longer make the same dark decisions that she had. She shut her eyes and saw the comfortingly familiar walls of a guest room at Quellarin, felt this other self worrying over plans to reopen a portal to her accursed homeland...
"Sorceress?" Kvari intoned, stepping close to her side; Noira shot him a warning look.
"They wouldn't dare." She folded her arms and stared harder at the city in the distance. Powers equal to or greater than her own resided there in a not insignificant number; sometimes, though rarely, some of them were roused to action. Would Sunderlain stir the metaphorical hornets' nest? "They won't care, anyway," she reassured herself, hugging herself against a sympathetic chill felt by another Noira, a thousand days in her past and an entire universe away.
((The version of RhyDin depicted in this post takes place in the future, stemming from an alternate sequence of events starting in late 2013/early 2014.))