ACT I, CHAPTER II
The Beginning
A speck of blue stood amongst the expanse of a white-pebbled beach that stretched to infinity, the gently-rounded stones watched from above by a cloudless sky of silver-blue, lit by a sun that was not there. A fathomless ocean beyond approach, and beneath it that speck of blue which had neither seen light nor felt warmth in timeless ages felt consumed. Seafoam eyes gazed uncomprehendingly upward, hands and legs shaking on terrain that was not slime-caked bricks. Pushing herself to her feet, Annora tried vainly to rip her vision from the infinity above her.
Her vision was swallowed by the endlessness above her. She dimly registered falling backwards, her wrists digging harshly into the pebbled stones beneath her as her attempt to remain standing abruptly failed her. She could not wrench her gaze from the all-encompassing expanse of blue, blue, so much blue! Nothing made sense anymore!
From capsized to adrift, she felt like she might float away. Jetsam that would sink into its depths, never to return. An escape from her toils to a prison more infinite than could ever be known!
A pang of nausea roiled in her stomach, and the half-blooded woman screwed her eyes shut, swallowing dryly as her breath came short and shallow. At some point, her hands had reached up from the ground to dig into her hair, a harsh tug against her scalp grounding her.
“Where… am I?” She whimpered, and some small part of her was merely relieved that the words did not echo back at her, and were instead swallowed up by the vastness of the space about her. Was this some fresh nightmare, a new stage to her trial? She could not see the horizon before it blurred like a mirage, a hazy line of white-on-blue that threatened to drag her vision back to the cloudless, endless expanse above.
A moment passed, before her whispered question was answered. The soft murmur that answered was strange-yet-familiar, not the imagined voice of her friends and family but neither was it wholly unknown to her. “You have arrived at a destination that has long been waiting for you.”
A gasp tore itself from her lips, and Annora scrambled to her feet, bone-deep reflexes drawing her longsword with a snap-hiss as Vallum ignited in the same motion. Spinning about, eyes frantic, Annora brandished her flame-tongue at the source of the voice, and beheld the five strangers who once visited her in the lifetime before she arrived at the Temple of Oblivital Waters.
Her hand shook, the surreality of the world pressing at the edges of her mind. Pastel smears of what might have been silhouettes danced across her vision, approximating something like a person. Blue, gray, red, green, and gold; Annora could not will herself to ignore the connotations now. Her mind rebelled at the notion, and her stomach flipped again.
As she took in more shallow, panting breaths, the absurd thought struck her that the air here tasted of the same leather as her vambrace, the relic she owed her suffering and salvation to.
“What is the meaning of this?” Her voice, tremulous, carried to the five across from her. They spoke as individuals, though their voice echoed with a multitude that suggested a chorus lay somewhere astride them, softly singing.
“You have suffered greatly,” spoke Red, its voice commanding and strong. “Yet you did not give to despair that which you could not rightly reclaim. Stand tall, Votum, and know you have overcome this trial.”
Annora swallowed dryly, her voice shaking apart with the faintest of pleas that perched in her words, “is this real?”
It couldn’t be, surely any moment now she would blink and the sound of dripping water upon stone would reach her ears. This light would flee from her eyes, and she would once more strain against the dark of the temple, she dared not feed that ember of hope in her breast!
Blue stepped forward, a hand reached hesitatingly towards her. Wild-eyed, Annora brandished Vallum at it, something between a snarl and a sob wrenched from her gritted teeth. Blue’s shoulders slumped and the hand retreated. Its voice was sonorous, like flowing water. “It is as real as you wish it to be, for you have at long last taken hold of a destiny you once fled from, and then raged against, and then despaired without.”
Annora’s shallow breaths, a hair’s breadth away from hyperventilating, abruptly seized with the sound of a hysterical laugh. Her hand trembled, white-knuckled around the grip of Vallum which wept and spat flames onto the white stones underfoot. Another pang of nausea threatened to rise in her gorge, and she forced it down in the same breath she spat fresh words. “I have heard enough.”
Gray stepped forward, and Vallum flashed forward like bared fangs, scorching its namesake into the stones just in front of the shade’s feet. She felt strange, a buzzing beneath her skin that itched to be set loose. Her voice was strangely level, with her next words, “Do not speak to me in riddles, shade. I have spent a lifetime solving one, I will not have my answers in such a manner.”
The third shade tilted its head to one side, before its raspy voice carried across to her, heavy and foreboding as smoke. “A veil self-imposed in your youth is no more. It ends at the beginning, Votum. Your mind is unclouded, the horizon is yours to behold now.”
“Why,” Annora replied, voice laden with dark promise, “do you call me that? No, I do not care for why. Tell me the meaning of your appearances. Are you supposed to be the Vis? The gods themselves before me?”
Fresh pain and anger mingled in her eyes, and to her own horror the woman could feel them grow hot with fresh tears. Blinking them away, she found herself staring at the fourth shade, Green. Its hands raised placatingly, its voice rattled the endless beach with a soft breeze, voice whistling like wind through tree branches. “You may see divinity in our nature, or you may not. Yours is the gift of choice, Votum.”
Annora hissed a reply at the name, “Stop calling me that! You spoke to me of oaths, of promises I made and kept and broke! Was this your idea of punishment? Your cruel trial? Is this some new hell I must endure to be free of your so-called penance? Answer me!”
Red stepped forward, its voice strong and clear and loud like the ringing of a hammer against an anvil. “This place is not your prison of water and stone, nor is it the wide road you call home. It is between them, your limbo, your purgatory. Between your heaven and hell, the threshold you have reached by warding yourself against the despair that dwelt in your heart.”
Annora boggled, slack-jawed and reeling. Her anger sputtered but a moment in her incredulity, before the words fed its flame like dry kindling. Words spilled from her in a rush, “Then it was a cruel trial? All this suffering, my imprisonment… I don’t even know how long I was trapped! All this to render me worthy of a fate I didn’t ask for?”
Furious tears spilled anew down her face as her voice grew watery, and she turned a hysterically furious gaze to the last of the five figures. “You must surely claim kinship with Castus, then! The almighty and immaculate, how piteous! To use such suffering as your crucible and forge, what mercy can you claim in this? Speak!”
The golden shade dimmed, its brilliance laid low, yet its voice boomed with a thousand choirs, the pebbled beach rocked with its power. “I CLAIM NO MERCY IN THIS TRIAL, IT IS AS YOU SAY. IT IS A CRUELTY DONE TO ONE UNWORTHY OF IT; A STEP UPON A PATH FOR THE ONE CALLED VOTUM. YOU HAVE BEEN MADE TO SUFFER, AND DESPAIR, AND OVERCOME. WHY THEN DO YOU FEEL PITY INSTEAD OF HATE?”
“You are not worthy of my hate! Look at all you have taken from me!” Annora choked on her own fury, willing herself to continue speaking against the rage that threatened to drive her sword forward. Whatever else this cruel trial had done to her, she remembered well the promise sworn upon her own sword, and the weight with which she chose to wield it.
Her voice rang with the pain and passion that mingled in her heart, but she could not stop that damnable spark of hope from partaking of that tinder as well. “Was my pain not enough? My anger? I pity you, o Immaculate, for your fate is to be alone and apart. Is that the means of your trial? To subject me to such a thing? To know what it is to be alone, to be without companionship or camaraderie? To become something that must be stood against by all those you might’ve called friends, or peers?
“You have my pity, whatever you may call yourself, to claim affinity with the Immaculate,” Annora explained, knowing the words would be cruel but for the fate she had endured at this being’s hands. “You have my pain, and my anger, and my pity. Do not imagine yourself worthy of more from me, for all else you have taken.”
The intangible form of Gold considered the words, and then replied; Annora bit down the urge to slap her hands over her ears, such was the boom of its cries. “IT IS AS YOU SAY. ALL THESE I HAVE, ALL THESE I HAVE TAKEN OF YOU. SO IT SHALL BE THAT YOUR PAIN IS NOW MY PAIN, AND YOUR ANGER IS NOW MY ANGER… AND YOUR PITY IS NOW MY PITY. WHAT IS GIVEN, I SHALL TAKE, AND PRAY THE BURDEN IS LIGHTENED. THAT IS MY MERCY, THAT IS MY CRUCIBLE, THAT IS MY FORGE.”
She shook her head, but lowered her sword to raise an accusing finger with her free hand. Her words felt less sure, somehow, but still they came to her, as her finger roved across the gathered band of shades. “To what end, then? Whatever fate you speak of, whatever fate was chosen for me, tell me why! What fate needs such cruelty to achieve? What path would you have me walk, in pain and alone? Who is Votum?”
Annora could only stare, impassioned and pleading, as Gold was flanked by its others, their voices joining the chorus that sang and screamed and soothed. “YOU ARE VOTUM. THE OATHS YOU HAVE SWORN AND FORSAKEN SHALL DEFINE YOU. THE LINES YOU MAKE AND CROSS SHALL GUIDE YOU. THE PATH AHEAD IS FIERCE, AND TREACHEROUS, BUT EVER SHALL WE BE AT HAND.”
“It can’t have been worth it,” Annora spoke, shaking her head and trying to will the anger to remain. That damnable hope threatened to rise in her still, a childhood dream sat tantalizingly within her grasp. Was she truly meant for more? Was this higher calling truly hers? She forced it away, desperate to remain furious. “How can it have been worth all this… I just wanted to be useful to my friends!”
Keydis would have been furious, still. She wouldn’t have even had this conversation! She’d be halfway through thrashing these shades and demanding to be returned home! So why was Annora still speaking, still hoping, still praying? Why did that wretched, naive hope - to be more than she was - remain? Why did she now, even after an untold time of suffering, latch onto a fate that once and for all screamed to the world that she mattered?
“THIS IS THE FIRST LESSON, VOTUM.” The shades intoned.
Closing her eyes, the named augur willed her tears back. She just wanted to go home, to see her friends again. She loathed the idea of remaining silent, of allowing the shades to think their cruelty had been justified. Alas, she could feel something akin to accomplishment nestle in her, some part of her that felt triumphant.
It is as the shades had said: she had overcome the despair already. It is as she had said: they did not deserve her hate. In absence of both, what fuel remained for anger was quickly spent. A long moment passed, with just her warring thoughts, knowing this was the end of her purgatory.
Eloquii would say something, here, surely. “I imagine there will be five… will they all be as painful?”
Her question went unanswered, and as she opened her eyes, Annora saw only the golden beaches of Concha Litus, and the weeping form of her father as he sprinted down the beachhead. Swept up in his arms, she barely managed to choke out two words,
“I’m home..!”
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