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You blink awake in the same familiar place that has haunted your dreams for weeks, since your family came to the Divine Grove to meet up with the rest of the Nomads for your quinquennial reunion. Your surroundings, despite having been your minds home for many nights now, never seem to get less foreign-- though you owe that, perhaps, to the ever-shifting appearance. The thought comes to your mind...perhaps this is a part of The Leviathan's domain? You scan your memories as you take in your surroundings, trying to recall what stories you had heard of The Leviathan's Domain.
The ground beneath your bare feet is soft and thick with moss, releasing a soft, rich scent when you dig your toes in. You recall that Leviathan is supposed to be a god of the Sea, and that those who speak with him in his territory tell stories of floating in a void, or standing on a solid plane, not unlike glass, invisible to their eyes, more of the void stretching out beneath them. Trees pierce the thick fog that surrounds you, each one with trunks that would require three grown men to link hands to reach around, bark painted with brightly colored patterns that make the back of your mind tickle with barely-there recognition. This, too, is wrong for the Leviathan, who is reported to have a haphazard collection of old ruins and crystallized memories floating through the senseless, endless nothing he calls his home.
A woman's voice startles you from your thoughts. Her words wrap around your mind like a forgotten childhood lullaby, bringing with them a sense of warmth and safety-- but you do not understand them, not fully. Their shape sounds almost like something you recognize, the pattern feels familiar, you can almost, almost force a meaning from them. You focus your mind, hoping to bring the dream into sharper clarity, hoping to understand what the Grave Oaks are trying to tell you.
It is then that a young woman steps from behind a tree, the fog curls and billows around her legs, swept along by the rich fur mantle that adorns her shoulders. Your eyes follow the shape of her face and up her cheekbone to the elegantly pointed ear that pokes from the wild black curls that frame her face. A Vertain, you realize, a sense of awe stealing over you. Many nomad families can trace their heritage back to the ancient Vertain nation, but they fell centuries ago. In the following dark ages, the Vertain species dispersed throughout populations of humans across the other nations. While many families throughout the world could probably claim to have some Vertain heritage, the nomadic families of Lusait had the highest concentration-- not that it meant anything to anyone, really. Only historians and your families' storytellers.
If anything, the pointed ears that marked some of the Nomads as having drops of Vertain blood were a black mark when entering cities. Followers of Leviathan, so says The Church of the Bloody and Burning Crown. If a nomad family wasn't, it was only a matter of time.
The young Vertain woman waited patiently while you stared at her, mouth agape, taking in the sight of her. Eventually though, it seemed that her patience began to wear thin. She crossed her arms over her chest, the chainmail she wore clinking softly in the silence. She shifts her weight into one hip, expression growing distinctly unimpressed. "Do not make me regret choosing you, child." Her words are still unfamiliar to your ears, but the meaning bounces around inside your head.
Belatedly, it registers with you that this is clearly not The Leviathan-- though this woman has skin the color of snow, hair of ink, and eyes of the ocean like he is reported to have...well, Leviathan has never been said to appear to people as anything but a handsome young man, also Vertain.
You fumble for your words for a moment, unsure how to respond to her when you do not know the language she speaks. The words that fall from your lips are foreign to you, echoing off the trees in her ancient language as if you had spoken it all your life. "Who are you?"
This question seems to annoy the woman. "How quickly they forget--" she says, and the ends of her ears twitch in a way that is not unlike a dog's turning to listen to something. You decide to keep this observation to yourself, scanning the tree line for whatever she is listening to-- but you see nothing. Only endless more trunks disappearing into the white fog. She turns her attention back to you, her expression less annoyed now though her fingers continue to drum against her arm. She clears her throat and lifts her chin, throwing her shoulders back. Before your gaze the strange young woman in the woods transforms into something else altogether, regal and proud.
"My name is Saaris Mathae a Naa'm. In a time before, I was a queen, and then I was a god." Her voice, though no louder, rings out.
"Mother of Wolves," you breathe, the words escaping you a moment before you drop to your knees. Mother of Wolves, Queen of the Gods, First of the Black Throne. Her titles number more than this, and those are only the ones that have survived over the centuries, passed down in stories and discovered from temple ruins. Your forehead presses to the moss covered ground, world spinning. This is no dream, you realize, no conjuration of the sleeping mind. Here you stand, in a reflection of the Divine Grove before the Ancestral Mother of the Nomads.
Saaris laughs. "Among other things," she agrees, pulling you to your feet once more. "Focus now, child. It takes more power than you will ever know to force myself into a shape once more, and I do not have the strength to do it for long." She clasps your hands in her own, looking up into your face. Her hands are warm despite the gloves between you and her, and the chill of the air. "I would not entrust this task to you if I could prevent doing so, little one. This is not your fight, but I believe very truly that the world you live in...should not be."
"What do you mean?" You ask apprehensively. Saaris was the god of protection, surely she would not want you to-- what? Bring a second Fall?
"My people, our people live every day in fear. I bid my descendant to cauterize the flow of magic into the world, and in the process I brought about a world far worse." She lowered her head, dark curls obscuring her eyes for a moment. "Even a god, with all my wisdom, can be wrong." She shook her head and returned her gaze back to you. "Please, little one. Help me save him-- save us. Help me bring the life and joy and magic back to our world."
"I have-- I have no idea what you're asking of me," you reply, a slightly hysterical laugh bubbling in your chest. "Save who? Magic? You want me to feed the world to the Abyss?" An edge of anger enters your voice. "Wolf Mother or not, I will not doom the world to chaos." You move to yank your hands away, but her grip is mithril around your wrists.
Her eyes find yours, large and blue and beseeching. "I did not earn my title as the god of protection and war for nothing, child," her voice is cool despite the look in her eyes. "The Leviathan is-- was, in this time-- a prince of the Black Throne. A descendant of my bloodline--" well that explains the resemblance, you think. "He became the Leviathan in the days before the fall to save this world from being torn apart by magic running rampant through the world, ripping it at the very seams. I asked him to make that sacrifice, but he would have done it gladly even if I had not." Her voice is softer now, taking on the mesmerizing cadence of a storyteller lost in his own thoughts.
"But this action was born of my own inaction, my own fear to intervene." She grows steely, her spine straightening and jaw setting. "The fear of the others poisoned me, and in turn we gave up far more than a single life. Everything that made this world beautiful has been lost. Dragons used to roost in the north! Wolves, the size of horses-- leshen in the forests, oh those weren't friendly but gods where they fun to fight! Trolls in the mountains, the smell of magic in the air, sweeter than anything you've ever known." Her eyes glow as memory rushes back, and for a moment you feel like you can almost see the world she grew up in. Your heart aches for it. "Help me," she pleads again, soft. "Let me make it right."
The world she paints behind your eyes is miraculous, and every fiber of your self cries out for it in some way that you are not equipped to understand. "Even if I said yes, what could I do? That was a thousand years ago, and you speak of a world dominated by magic and warriors-- I'm nobody, nothing. Who would listen to me? How would I do anything?"
Saaris grins. It lights her face up, and for a moment you think that perhaps this is why she was given the title Wolf Queen-- her smile is all sharp edges, victorious. She bounces back a step, motioning with one hand as if gathering something from the air around her, and presenting it with a flourish. In her delicately boned hand glows a small orb, pulsing slowly as if with a heartbeat all of it's own. Motes of green and brown, blue and gold float across its face, and a sweet, earthy scent fills the air. The short hair on the back of your neck stands up, a soft shudder running through your body. "I told you," Saaris said, "once you've smelled it, your soul will cry out for the scent of magic on the air forevermore."
She gestures toward you with the orb. "Take it. It's everything that's left of me, it will provide you all the knowledge and power you need."
"Wont that--" you hesitate to say it.
"Kill me?" She asks. "I'm already dead, you're speaking to little more than a shade of a memory of a ghost." Another grin crosses her features, as victorious and proud as the last. "If this is what it takes to fix my mistakes born of cowardice, so be it."
Another moment of thought crosses your mind, wondering if you're up to the task. Asking yourself if you're sure that rewriting history is something you want to do-- but you have seen innocent people burned for nothing more than owning a scrap of blue and gold silk. If she's right, and there is another option, a gentler option-- would it be wrong of you to turn away from it for fear of changing the way things are?
You reach out for the softy pulsing orb the god holds out to you, and fall back through time.
Your back hits packed dirt with enough force to knock the breath from you and send the sky to reeling cartwheels overhead. As you heave for breath, the rest of your senses come back bit by bit. The roaring sound that you first mistook for the rush of blood in your ears is definitely coming from somewhere to your right, accompanied by the shouting of men and women. The glimpse of mountains in your peripheral are bathed with the first tinges of bloody dawn, and the air that rasps in and out of your chest has that same indescribable difference as the breeze that came from Saaris's power.
An enormous canine face looms into yours, golden eyes boring into you. You don't yet have enough breath in your lungs, nor the presence of mind, to scream-- only to sit there, hoping vainly that this fucking huge wolf does not decide you look like a tasty snack.
Another head looms into your vision and for a moment, you almost mistake them for Saaris-- but no. This man is clearly not, though he could be her twin. "I believe you've found a survivor, boy," he remarks. The wolf's ears twitch, and he huffs before turning away. "Strange looking one, though." He adds, tilting his head curiously and sweeping his eyes along your shape.
Leviathan, your mind supplies after a moment.
Prince E'iasha Mathae a Naa'm, whispers a feminine voice in the back of your mind. He is the crux at which history will turn, please-- save him.
The Prince smiles, reaching one dark gloved hand out toward you. "Come on, stranger. You look like you've seen a ghost, let's get you some food and drink and you can tell me what happened."
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