There are times when I'm driving, or relaxing at home, that I get what I have lovingly termed a Vision. It's when you're sitting there, listening to music, zoned out, and suddenly a scene comes to your mind. A battle playing out. A loved one dying. A world being destroyed, ripped apart at its base. It's these moments that you perk your ears and sit up straight (or straighter, as the situation requires). It's when you realize "I need to make this." I had one of those today, and while I'm not a cinematographer, or even a phenomenal artist, I can write. It was the beginning of Crystal "Sightblinder" Rayne's story, finally coming to me. So I needed to write it.
Sightblinder's Saga
-Book One-
Crystal Tears
The rain came down hard that day. Harder than either of the two could remember. Their armies, far below them, still fought and struggled. Struggled for a cause they knew not; or at the least, a false cause that they believed in. The truth of the matter was that it had been a long and violent struggle, a war that raged across not just the planet, but time itself. They were both of them, in this place and on this day, extremely old. They were young, too, but the two standing in the torrential downpour also knew history that wouldn't happen. They knew ages that hadn't passed. Still, they knew each other better.
Darillian, long sword held in his left hand, shifted his grip on the hilt. A dragon's horns jutted from the helmet upon his head, one snapped off, the other bent backward. Scrapes and dings covered his armor. Armor that would never shine again. Crystal, his daughter - his nemesis - stood across from him. Draconic wings sprouted from her shoulderblades, an opening in the armor allowing them through. Thunder crashed, illuminating the scene. Blood red scales glimmered from under the cracks and joints of the armor covering his daughter. His hand twitched involuntarily. "You have sold your soul to a demon, my dear. And for what?" He shouted, throwing his gloved right hand out over the battlefield so far below them. "For this?"
"In violent times, decisions are forced upon you that you don't always accept." Crystal shot back, moving slowly to the right. Darillian answered the move, going left. The two generals of world spanning armies circled each other slowly, testing for any weakness. A limp. A stumble. Any kind of tell. "You're the one who did this to me, father. You, and you alone."
"I was trying to save this world, you ingrate!"
"Save it? Save it how, by sending it crashing back to the core?! You'd have killed thousands. Millions! I can't allow that. No matter how righteous you thought you were being." Crystal lunged with her sword, parried easily by Dar with his own blade. A quick stroke knocked her weapon aside, followed by a jab. Crystal turned, but the blade severed one of the armor's bonds and screeched as the blade slid along her hip. Her leg mail slid down, revealing more of the blood red scales, marred now with the mark of a blade. She looked down at it, then back up at Dar as she backed away. "Your mind is dangerously unhinged, dad." She pulled the other strap on the opposite side, letting her mail clunk to the ground. She removed her helmet, tossing her shining red hair, instantly soaked with the rain. Her breast plate was the last to go. She stood naked before him. Red scales that shone of the demon's fire covered her hips, all down her back. Her forearms were protected by them, her legs. Talons clicked together as she pulled her blade from the ground she had stabbed it in to. Her wings stretched, free of the restrictive plate mail.
Darillian recoiled a step at the slanted eyes in his daughters face, the sharpened teeth from such a delicate pair of lips. "You are a monster in more than your soul."
"Not any worse than you are." A trail of red began to follow Crystal around the plateau, coming from her talon tips as they danced, tracing a sigil Darillian couldn't see. With the rune finished, glowing brightly against her palm, she threw it forward. A fireball arched from her hand the size of a small boulder.
Darillian traced swiftly in the air a counter-rune, glowing green in the air before him. When the fireball struck it, flames burst to the left and right, but none came close to him. A backwash of cool air blew between the eye slits of his helmet. But Crystal knew his counters, knew his mind as well as she knew her own. They were family. She charged forward, a dragon's tail churning the mud behind her, and leaped through the flames with her sword held high.
In a downward slash she fell, striking with cold metal at her father. She landed with a squelch of mud where Darillian had been standing, her sword tip buried in the muck sucking at her feet. Her slitted eyes shot left and right. A noise behind her caused her tail to lash out, striking at an unseen object. As the smoke from the fireball cleared, she saw four Darillian's standing around her in a circle. Each was a spitting image of the last, and each just as real as the next. So he'd called upon Sul'Vahn, the god of trickery, had he? Crystals lips curled in a growl, smoke sifting out of her nostrils and curling around her horns.
Farluk, god of judgement, sprang a list of spells into her mind. Lifting her hand, the ground all around them instantly raised into four walls. With a flap of her wings and a mighty downward thrust of air, she rocketed into the sky. The pillars of earth slammed toward each other, crushing the images between them. She scanned the field from above, keeping herself aloft, but the rain was making it difficult to see. There, a brown glow against the impenetrable darkness. Quickly, she traced her own runic emblem in the air ever as a bolt of earth shot skyward. It was no bigger than an arrow - she had overcompensated. The rune of deflection worked with strange physics. Its size needed to be directly proportionate to the item that was being deflected, or it would overreach and bounce the object too hard and too wildly to effectively move it away from oneself.
The small projectile made no noise but a whizzing through the air as it bounced astray and pierced her left wing, shredding a hole. Her balance off, she fell from the sky, plummeting back to the plateau. Earth shook around her, water splashing upward into the heavens. Her scales absorbed most of the impact. Bruised from the fall, she rolled sideways as a sword tip plunged into the ground near her head. Her tail lashed, tripping Darillian.
Vines called forth from Vertan, goddess of life, shot from the ground and grabbed her wrists as she raised her sword, pinning her in place. Dar shoved himself backward, regaining his footing. He'd removed his helmet, his short cropped hair covered in mud. A dark look of vengeance burned behind his eyes. "It ends now, Crystal." She hooked a claw, tracing a very small rune that he wouldn't be able to see on the underside of one of the vines. "You've lost."
"Not quite." She hissed. The rune, learned so long ago - or was it so long from now? - ignited. A very simple fire rune, meant for lightning the man's cigarettes. But it was enough to burn the vines. At the same moment, clerical magic ran through her mind. Detrus, god of death. Black mist roiled around her, turning her invisible. It continued to fill the arena, choking Darillian, halting his breath. He knew he had very little time left. The demon - what he thought of as a demon - that had taken his daughter was nowhere to be seen. He heard a flapping noise, traced a small rune of light and ducked as claws raked the air over his head.
"I will save them!" He screamed into the darkness, wasting his precious breath.
"You consign them to death, father. Yours is an apocalyptic future."
"But one that will bring the world back from the bring of despair, nonetheless." He heard a rock scrape from a talon, and lunged. His sword bit successfully into soft underbelly. The black smoke dissipated, vanished almost instantly before his eyes. "And that is a future." He twisted the sword, pushed harder, brought his face closer to his daughters wide violet eyes. "That you will have to accept." He threw her down to the ground.
Blood welled around the blade jutting from her chest even as Darillian stood, turned, and walked away from her. His steps were faltering, but he was alive, while his daughter died painfully behind him.
As her blood seeped into the ground, her talons gripping the sword and trying to draw it out, she stared up into the rain laden sky. She coughed, and blood trickled from her mouth, down her neck, to join the rest of her blood. The mud around her began to take a dark red color, more of her life than of earth now. Her mind went back over her life.
Back to the beginning. Where did it all start? How did she get here? How did she end up with a sword, her father's own, jutting from her chest? With mangled wings, protective scales, the use of both runic and clerical magic?
How? That is a story that begins hundreds of years from this moment.
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Post Merge: April 05, 2016, 02:42:55 PM
Please feel free to tell me what you think. I'm curious to see if anyone is interested in Crystal's story, and the floating world of Aitarra. I tried to demonstrate how runic and clerical magic work - runic with symbols traced in the air, each with their own weaknesses and strengths. You have to be a master of them, but you're nigh unstoppable if you know how to manipulate the symbols properly. Clerical works by one of the gods gifting you a list of spells to achieve a goal. For instance - you're faced with "I need to get through this group of mercenaries." Death would give you a list to kill them all. Nature would gift the vines you saw in the story. Judgement would bind them, stopping them where they stand. Based on your affiliation and how you personally would respond, you pick which is the best route.
Something you'd want to read, or not? Without giving away plot spoilers. :3