The Sun's Incandescence

[Swgrclan 2682]

"Give me a sign!"

called a furious voice within the depths of Athera's tundras. "I seek your light, but even amongst these cliffs, I cannot find them! Why?!"  They were the words of a lost man -- young, but lost, for his cause led him astray so early in it's age. "Speak to me, grand shine! Blazing torch within the sky!" calls the wandering squire once more; though still without answer. By the name of Raide of Ashford, family of Savoy and once the squire of the Emperor Tuvya, he wandered these ice-ensnared lands for weeks in a holy pilgrimage; a pilgrimage to God, and a pilgrimage to His divine son whom is praised for his purity. So desperate was Raide to hear the words of Tahariae that he was willing to climb the very peaks of this thanhium-ridden landscape to behold it; yet the young knight-to-be had his limits, and his mortal strength was outmatched by the merciless mountain heights. His hope wavered, but not his faith; and thus, Raide trekked onward.

But before he could cry out in the name of the patron he sought once more, the earth betrayed him -- his armor was too heavy and his helmet, ever-upon his yet-unknown features, obscured his vision. Before him the path was laden with falsities; a floor of ice that, upon being scoured, cracked under Raide's weight and collapsed. Plummeting, pained by the sheer chill that lingered beneath the ground and dazed by the unexpectedness of the situation, the squire would meet a cruel end at the bottom of this frozen pit. Yet, as he collided with the ground and as his breath was stolen, his faith did not waver; and his will shined in the dark of the cavern as he sought to stand, only for the following mass of ice and snow above befell upon him in suffocating quantities; a fate that likely spelt the young, noble-blooded warrior's end.

Gripped by the cold of the tundra and frozen by it's hold, Raide was buried under feet of ice and snow. The entire icy floor that had deceived him collapsed with his fall, and thus gave way to the rest of the small cliffside he trekked. With the earth undone in his wake and the ice atop him, there lied only himself crushed by this heavy frost and the sun beyond; the sun that, as his last thoughts seem to blur in a fatigued panic with no breath to fuel them, shined through the ice, and offered the squire a moments' comfort before his dooms' coming.

And thus months passed after Raide's fall with his fate unknown; hard years forged by the flame of the Fallen One, and the conflicts of the Four Races...

~;~

The ice was gripping, and it froze his being in time; but it did not kill him - Raide of Ashford, the Emperor's Squire, and the Helmeted! So his soul was set alite by years of the sun's shine upon his ice-encased being; stuck in a limbo by miraculous means. Even lasting years within his frigid tomb, Raide had awoken lucid and mad with the desire to escape. With the ice weakened by the rays of the sun, the squire thrashed and beat at his prison without mortal breath, and he shattered his shackles of ice and dug at his walls of snow. 

His fist was the first to shatter the barrier above; his gauntlet was the first to be bathed by the sun's unrelenting shine as Raide dug his way to the top. And as he took his first breath in years, he felt a surge of mortal life within himself; as the Sun smile upon him, his piety was reborn. He was guided to this tundra not by his own will, as the squire thought in his astonished mind, by the will of Taharie's; by the will of God above him. Peering up toward the shining globe in the sky, Raide opened his arms as if in embrace, weeping tears of joy as he knelt before his lord. His cry could be heard across the region, carried by the wind:

"PRAISE THE SUN, I HAVE RETURNED!"


 

[Rig 17581]

Aeveron of the Aephes tribe is bewildered at the human, "Zat am.. hoph," he murmurs. 

[FORƎST 1312]

Allister breaks into a series of sobs.

 

"If only I could be so grossly incandescent!"

[Huh 91]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.