A New Day

[SinVraal]

The orphanage and the rest of the complex finished, the outer walls still under a slow but steady construction, the benefactor Vraal had issued an invitation to all faithful followers of the Violet Dawn. They had been encouraged to bring their families and close friends to experience the wonders of true religion, of absolute and undeniable truth, along with a new hope for the beleaguered back water of Myrken Wood. A handful of survivors from Foggy Bottom were sure to attend as well, what small number felt right enough in their minds to travel after their arduous and horrifying encounter.

Vraal watched with a controlled smile as the people began settling in to the serviceable amphitheater. The seating was coarse and crude, the accommodations cramped and poorly ventilated. Yet such would only add to the feelings of euphoria and crushing faith that were soon to abound was sunlight in the summer, as rain in the spring. A rain to nourish a possibly new era for both Myrken Wood and himself.

He saw their concerns heaped upon bowed shoulders, peasants' clothing still stained with dust from the road, their farms and their general labor. Hard and coarse, it bred a stone-heart but a strong back. The smell of shattered dreams clung to them like old smoke from a great brush fire that had consumed the vast majority of hope from their hearts.

His smile became uncontrolled beneath the low ceiling that teemed with the seething, murmuring mass of cattle. An easy stride, pregnant with meaning and desire, led him towards the broad stage area, and flanked him with black curtains both embossed with the great circle of the violet dawn. The great, pulsing hammer of a thousand conversations dwindled to a whisper, a strangled hiss, as the ponderous weight of their eyes, their attention, indeed their very lives turned upon Vraal and his raised, glove-bound hands.

It was time to begin.

[SinVraal]

The people gathered and began to turn their attention inward. Each bore struggles and concerns, sorrows and sufferings that a cruel and harsh world had inflicted upon them. And hadn't they deserved better, Vraal had whispered into their bleeding ears? Hadn't they been forgotten, by the King, by their governor, by the gods themselves? Who smiled upon them when the Baie worshipers murdered their fellow men? Who brought rain when the summer scorched their throats and crops and some men watered fields with only their tears?

No one.

Life had gone on, endless coils of misery in a god-forsaken backwater that clung tenaciously to its populace with hateful tendrils. If Helstone had been a tyrant then Bromn was an absentee land lord. If Janeiro was a bunch of mercenary thugs the constables were bound up in laws and regulations. Some among them had tried, to be sure, but given the nature of the land none of them truly succeeded. It was therefore necessary to protect one's self and make one's own miracles. Today they would start small.

Their voices began as a gentle buzzing, a nest of stirred wasps dimly aware that the hive was endangered. Slowly, with the passing of moments and minutes, the voices began to swell and rumble. Soon enough several congregates were shouting and screaming, lips bared in furious abandon while others reached for heaven not in worship but in determination. Their open hands were tight, as if to seize, as if to invade and occupy, and drag it down to the muddy, earthy mire.

Through it all Vraal shouted his encouragement and direction, leaving a leather-sheathed hand upon someone's shoulder, grazing a side with featherlight fingertips or an ear with slender, cool lips. He called upon them to envision their perfection and, together, to bring it forward. All other things had failed them and now, left with will and drive alone, Vraal called upon them to give their will form and drive. It was a plea for worship but only of the self, of themselves, and through their worship to give body to their will for a new world, a better world, a perfect world.

The prayers, both outward and inward, tickled through his blood and set an ache coursing through the entwined length of the black brand upon his brow. His own palms dampened with sweat as he made his way with trembling steps and rapid breathing towards the stage. It was only through a carefully controlled last few strides that he ascended the stage with some measure of grace as the ecstasy began to course through him - his heart a waiting trap for free-floating, wild prayers.

If the gods had failed them, Vraal thought, then let them become gods.

Or at least let them think that they had.

[Khalika]

Rebecca

In the midst of the prayer and inspired revelery, a tiny figure mouse and quiet wrapped in a shawl, sits amoungst them.. so tired...So hungry, for food...For peace of mind.. For a night without fear. She heard them gather and came to see and listen....

the large group scared her at first, but then she felt a kinship, a warnth, toes strain on their tips to see through shoulders and bodies at who moves forth...A familar face, if just in rumor and passing....would he speak?

She waits....wanting to hear of hope....

"Could I be the god of my fate?...." She asks with wide eye inspiration.....


The Violet Dawn will show the way.........

[Ascendant]

Every pair of lips pursed and spoke, their words weaving together into a wondrous web of need, desire and ambition. Every heartbeat stirred with the same, self-deific rhythm and poured as a stream of living water over each of his senses. It swallowed and consumed, overwhelming in an undertow of inevitability and possibility, punctuated by the simple will to power. It would happen because they willed it. It would happen because he wanted it. It would happen.

And it did.

Vraal forgotten amongst the pleas and cries, voices straining as a tangible palpitation stirred the assembly. Sweat and breath commingled with the pregnant stench of desire, each trickling salty droplet painting an exuberant path down strained faces, and every exhalation a parting with whatever divine power each carried in his soul and now formed with desperate prayers. Prayers that he drunk like bloody wine.

A shimmer that cast no shadow glinted center stage, a sphere of pure illumination that immediately darkened as participants cut themselves with fingernails, bit their tongues, some masticating their own flesh to bring blood and form to the god of themselves. Whatever capability they had for shaping reality, this primitive and group magic attempted to bring forward, an answer to all that troubled and perplexed. An answer to life itself.

The light offered no heat as a single stain spread outward from the center, a bruised light, red and purple, that quickly rolled through its entirety and colored it with a bright violet luminescence that cast otherworldly illumination upon faces that shone in breathtaking response. Some forgot their prayers and merely roared in anticipation, drawing a deep shuddering from whatever it was that they had birthed, or summoned, or bound in willful chains.

The bruised shadow elongated then, the dark light retaining its original size, that of a man's palm, the rippling waves of its light solidifying into a constant, steady star upon a creature's milky brow. A creature formed of light and their own divinity, accessible now that they had learned to fear nothing, neither law nor fiend, neither blasphemy nor even themselves. A creature the shape of a man, a tall man, of powerful but delicate angles that bespoke a physicality that was wholly divine, wholly alien and entirely perfect in smooth flesh and taut musculature. Bare save for a simple black cloth for the loins, the wings that unfurled in a cloud of white, unspoiled feathers and spread to their full and impressive breadth.

Upon his brow a violet sunburst rested, gleaming as the new directional celestial body, a star they would bring to the heavens themselves. As if raised by a steady hand he drifted from the floor yet his wings remained still, arms loosely at his sides, long hair streaming out behind him in ebony length streaked with crimson. A fluttering of the eyes as he truly awoke, gleaming with an iridescent flame and promising a change.

A change for the faithful of the Violet Dawn.