“You are no ancestor of mine, but if you are willing to aid the both of us then please, take us from this wasteland and quite literal quagmire of a world for something even marginally better.”It was the last thing either of the two could remember before being enveloped by a portal of coruscating lights and a flurry of spiritual energy designed to convey their mortal frame to places unknown. The elder had hoped to be whisked away to a world where at least the atmosphere was breathable to the average man and where the skies themselves were not susceptible to devolving into a raging firestorm at any moment. While the efforts of Azura and the Ancestor was able to draw the two away from Mire the brothers were left to languish in a place beyond space and beyond time itself. While to them it may have seemed as though several days had passed their transition between the hellish world of Mire and the serenity of Sahure was almost instantaneous. In the perceived time betwixt worlds the brothers did their best to sort out what had happened to them and merely wonder at what lay ahead.
So who was it?
-Who was who?
The ghost that brought us to the blind chick and helped us get off that rock. Said she was some kind of ancestor, but she’s wrong for my family and certainly wasn’t my mother.
-Our mother.
My mother. Did you recognize the spirit at all? I know you can’t see things so well as I, but maybe you might remember some bits of your family better than I.
-Well, dear brother
, if you do not recall I had even less contact with my family than you did your own. I can barely remember mother and my father was always away. Beyond that I have no idea.
Then you’re useless to me, as always.
-If memory serves, without me we would have been left lying unconscious on Mire in the middle of a sandstorm with a looming conflagration ready to sear the flesh from our bones. I do believe that would have been something we would not have survived had we been unconscious.
Yes, you kept our body awake and wore it out doing absolutely nothing
when you could have been gathering intell or even introducing yourself to any one of the handful of individuals not engrossed in a fight to the death.
-At least I knew better than to laugh myself into unconsciousness.
Can we get back to the topic at hand, please?
-You just want to change the subject.
Says the man who decided to try a guilt trip about how prissy little Shar`Addan never got to know his parents because his father was a rapist and his mother died in giving birth to the spawn of Satan.
-I’ve grown accustomed to you insulting me, but you will leave my father out of this.
He’s the whole goddamn reason any of this happened! If not for him I’d be home right now and I’d be able to talk to my mother instead of a tombstone!
-Calm yourself, brother, you will only tax you energy and then blame me for it later.For a long while silence filled the mind and souls of the brothers, the rage and spite they had built for one another festering. Each knew they could not be the first to speak else they admit some small defeat at the hands and wits of the other and this was simply unacceptable. They were not merely waging a silent war for their own pride but for the honor of their respective bloodlines. Kargin was unwilling to even so much as acknowledge a rapist as anything but a prisoner in hell and by extension held no love for his spawn even if the younger brother had been born from the same mother. In the same vein as Kargin’s hatred Shar could only feel distaste when thinking of his brother’s family; his views of the line were tainted by his brother’s arrogance and perhaps spite alone.
-We’re lost, Kargin, without a family and without a home. Maybe they can help us find it.… “Shut up.”
His first words bubbled from his lips within one of the many dream pools on Sahure but only one of few not affected or damaged by the invading forces of the Mystic Dominion. Oh yeah, those were great words for a first impression.
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The experience was still crisp in his mind even though weeks, perhaps even months, had passed since he had opened his eyes on Sahure. For a long moment the body had lain dormant without a mind or soul to fill it up and breathe true life into the dull mass of flesh. Some attendants nearby had thought at first that a dead man had been sent through but this idea was absurd as the body was conveyed by the mind and the dreams, hence the name of the pools. At best they were relieved and at worst shocked to find the body rise up from the waters with words spilling from its lips as though he were in the middle of a conversation. The rippling of color across his body was not uncommon even as it worked his hair into thin crimson spikes and dried it almost instantly. At the time his attitude had been somewhere between the expected alarm of a first time user of the pools and downright anger for apparently having been stuck between worlds.
Kargin smirked as he remembers that day and what had seemed to be nearly a week of nothingness spanning before it. No one seemed to have an explanation for seemed to have been an isolated anomaly wherein he lost time. He had neglected to mention the fact that the trip had been taken by two minds and very nearly two souls based solely on the fact he thought it irrelevant.
Heh, perhaps not entirely irrelevant. Focus, brother. We’re leaving this place by those same pools. I’d hate to have to spend even more time alone with you.“Unless you have something constructive to add, I suggest you keep your comments to yourself.” His bizarre comment earned him some equally peculiar looks in return as he shuffled his way through to the nearest shrine wherein the pools might be located. At the very least he had found an answer to one of the many questions that had plagued him; the woman that had visited Kargin and Shar upon Mire was the younger sibling’s grandmother. She was quite obviously part of his father’s side under the bloodline and perhaps even House that might be proclaimed House Addan. This simple fact was one that both Kargin and Shar could agree on, neither House Addan or House Richardson exactly sounded regal or at all worthy of mention.
In the time it had taken the brothers to gain a rudimentary understanding of the Echelon Imperium they had been introduced to a second ancestor that seemed to replace the woman they had met on Mire. It was apparently not only with her consent but her urging that her presence with the two young men be taken by another. This new spirit that had been introduced to them gave very little insight about itself but seemed to balance the elder’s temper and instill confidence in the younger, if only to take a more active roll in their symbiosis. Unlike many other ancestors her essence was not steeped in the experiences of ages long past but still held close ties to the material world. In the past she had been with the two but the air of hostility surrounding them combined with their focus on worldly matters had dulled their senses to her existence.
The elder Brother released a soft sigh that escaped his lips at the moment he cast a single glance towards the skies of Sahure. Despite all its grandeur despite having been marred by the forces of the Mystics and beyond the planet was rapidly becoming stale to him. He had tried to busy himself with any reconstruction that he might lend a hand in but monotony quickly began to consume his desire. He was leaving, headed off to parts unknown to complete his induction into the ranks of the Echelon Imperium and hopefully find something more constructive to occupy his time.
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As opposed to the first time that the two traversed the inky blackness of space their second trip was lacking a delightful stopover at the corner of nowhere and no-when. Once again the drab body of grayed but otherwise flawless flesh with a mess of dirty ashen hair took shape within the pools. It remained still for a long moment before sickly gray eyes opened and stared up through the water with the gleam of intelligence sadly lacking. Minor surges of pale blue light crackled along the man’s joints at each motion made to bring him to a sitting position with head turned down ever so slightly. The first notion of true sentience came as a deep inhale and a spread of the cracking azure energy through the man’s flesh and up through his hair. From a sickly gray his skin gained color though it remained acceptably pale by human standards while his hair once again bristled out into five inch spikes of scarlet.
Taking a moment to get his bearings Kargin rose from the pools to stand with water cascading from his form even as he began to quickly dry. For a brief moment he had the look of a porcupine or hedgehog that had been doused in a significant quantity of water and then set upon a retirement home to wreak havoc. He slowly stepped from the pool in which he had been drawn back into the waking world and drew in a single breath as if to test the air. It was a moot point as he’d already been breathing it but he had to be sure he wasn’t at risk of laughing himself unconscious or something else suitably insane, such as spontaneous combustion. He’d really hate that until the moment between life and death where he’d get to realize his b*****d of a half brother would be screwed out of a body… unless they were like conjoined twins in the afterlife or something. That would
really suck. He hung his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he asked aloud, “Does anyone know where I might find the Empress? I was informed she had recently come to this… moon, was it?” He’d receive his answer quickly and quietly as the attendants helped him from the pools and to see him on his way. By the gods, no, wait, scratch that. By the Ancestors –that would take some considerable getting used to- did the pools give him a headache.
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