The Final Prophecy [PK]

[Burnsider 4566]

The Final Prophecy

Of Lady Ursula, Sigismundaroșie of Fate and Faith

 

[!]Ursula Vasović on her death bed

 

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

 

Lady Ursula lay in her bed, moaning from the unknown that still ailed her. She had been bedridden for over a year, never seeming to have fully recovered from the blow she received by the Adrian delegate in the disastrous Duma overseen by her nephew where the Adrian nobility showed themselves as liars and oathbreakers. Her husband stayed at her bedside, hidden in the palace at Sava from eyes seeking to find him after his banishment. Months ago, he had confided to the Despot that there was nothing he could find wrong with her. “It is as if her mind is trapped by some being,” he told the Vasoyevi man who sat, troubled on his throne, “held hostage by the supernatural.”

 

There were times she seemed almost lucid, turning to her husband, a hand on his cheek, a tear in her eye, but no sound came forth from her lips, even as she seemed to whisper something to him desperately. Ursula’s protégé, Limetta, Sigismundaroșie of Death and Transition, tried in vain to understand the words emanating from her lips, but could not.

 

But, each day, the lucidness came less and less frequent, and the Matriarch of Vasiyeva drank and ate less and less. Slowly she wasted away, her hair going gray, her skin stretched over bones until Vulpe could do nothing but alert Andrik that the inevitable was soon to pass, that Ursula would soon shuffle off the mortal coil and join her first husband in the Seven Skies.

 

The day came when Ursula took no water and the court gathered around her bed, awaiting her end. Tears shed, and memories spoken of and then, it happened. The Sigismundaroșie let out a soft breath and a new one did not come. The court waited for its Alchemist to pronounce the end, but, perhaps from sorrow, perhaps from his knowledge of the beyond, the pronouncement did not come.

 

With a start, the Sigismundaroșie's eyes burst open and she took a massive breath, the largest she had taken in months and began to speak.

 

[!] An artist’s rendition of the Final Prophecy of Lady Ursula

 

Behold, for I see an Aengul of the LORD coming down from the skies, her hair glowing like the sun and her wing tinged by coal and her feet a dark cloud, pouring forth over the great city of the Vasoyevi. At her flank stand four men, two on each side, and they stare at me beyond time, chanting glory and honor to HE WHO SITS UPON THE THRONE, their FATHER.

 

And one of the men steps forward and he bears the mark of the comet, and he speaks to me and his voice is as the sound of trumpets and drums, and though I wish to look away, I cannot.

 

The man speaketh thus:

 

Cast thine eyes upon the city of those who give devotion to me, that mosaic of color upon the emerald valley, between the mountains of iron and the mountains of air. Lo did I bring these people together to witness their strength and their fidelity and they were a bright star against the coming darkness, for the light of instruction is yet again being obscured in the world.

 

And the world too has seen this strength of faith and, fearful of it, turn their machinations and hatred upon it. For the lesser faithful fear that which they cannot fathom, a faith tempered through loss and conversion. And the world would take this city and use it for their own purpose. Such will not be allowed to come to pass.

 

For the people of wagon and caravan must leave the mosaic city and scatter, becoming a diaspora once again, until the time is right for these faithful to gather once again. A great calamity is coming to the valley of mine end, and it shall be reduced to rubble. Escape for your lives! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away. And come not together again in one place until the time of which I am preparing for you.

 

And the Sigismundaroșie closed her eyes and relaxed into the bed and breathed and spoke no more. Ursula Soreana Vasović, Matriarch of Vasiyeva, Izaslanik to the Despot, Sigismundaroșie of Fate and Faith passed away on the 4th of Malin’s Welcome, SA 44. She was 65 years old.

 

In her youth, she was a member of the Drăghicescu family who ran away from home to marry a young and inspiring member of the Vasoyevi, Dragomir Vasović. Her young, married life saw the Vasoyevi coming together like never before, brought as one people from the lands of Arcas into the lands of Almaris. She was trained by Agatha Vasović in the ways of the Sigismundaroșie, granted purview over Fate and Faith on her twentieth birthday.

 

[!] Ursula, in her youth, shortly after joining the Vasoyevi

 

Widowed shortly after arriving in Almaris, Ursula worked to raise her nephew, Andrik, known as the Prophesied One, for he was to settle the Vasoyevi in a land chosen for them. In that time, Ursula was a promiscuous woman, bedding peasant and one-day-Cardinals alike. Together, Andrik and Ursula traveled Almaris for the right place, finding at last the Valley of Sigismund’s End where first came Kamp Dragomir and finally the city of Sava, the center of the Grand Duchy of Vasiyeva.

 

As Matriarch of Vasiyeva, Ursula fostered relations with their dwarven protectors, fighting in several battles against the famed Ferrymen, along with fostering relations with the Church and the Commonwealth of Sutica, where Ursula became fast friends with the Queen, Joanna I. In workings with the Church, Ursula penned the religious ways of the Vasoyevi and had published and accepted by High Pontiff Tylos I the Rite of Revered Mothers, known as Veziak.

 

Ursula made wide known the words of the Aengul Gavriil, bestowed to the Vasoyevi, of the dangers and evils of the Azdrazi, and spoke of her faith in those words to the Ecumenical Council, the only non-clergy able to attend the august gathering. Her power in the Grand Duchy and strength of faith led her to be at odds with her Bishop, the Exarch of Pocitanata Maika, who swore that the Curia of the Church would see her head on a pike and that the church viewed her as no more than a political pawn for marriage.

 

[!] Lady Ursula, as depicted around the time of the founding of Sava

 

Her final years saw her marry Vulpe Coțofană, Marquis of Izvoroshu and Court Alchemist to the Grand Duke of Vasiyeva. The marriage seemed to be mainly one of respect and admiration, though, in private, Ursula confessed to several that she believed she could grow to love the man who wed her. It was believed that, in the year before her bed-ridden state, she was pregnant, although no child has ever been brought forth.

[MotherLay 942]

Dusica Kutznetsov stood in her home, frozen to her spot. The missive regarding Ursula's death was completely unexpected, and had quickly poked at the hidden heart of Dusica's. Her greatest friend, the one who helped her recover from her many trials... was gone. She had not expected this fate so early.

 

"It's Ursula... She's passed..." she trails, informing her husband, whom had looked quite confused at her expression.

 

She did not cry for her friend. She could not will herself to. She had cried too many tears before. That night, the poverty-stricken family pulled out their best foods, dining in honor of Ursula, the rock that held the Vasoyevi together.

 

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

The Marquis of Izvoroshu laid the Sigismundaroșie to rest.

The light of Sava; she who he truly believed might be the salvation of his own people, the wayward Hazmez diaspora of Freeport, had been snuffed. He had been an alchemist: a man of facts and figures, of the objective and physical... and she a soothsayer, the lady of fate and faith. A spiritualist he could never truly comprehend. 

A part of him wished to have done more. To have secured her place amongst the living for further years to come. The wiser portions of the old Voeivode's mind however knew that she had earned her place amongst the seven, and no application of black science or wicked bargaining would warrant denying her that fate. And so it was that the Matriach of Vasiyeva died, and as her vision had foretold, her country would soon follow. 

"The preparations are underway." He would proclaim to his brethren in the southern march. "Ursula is dead, and doom comes for Sava. In her honour, we shall spare the palace she once called home from this calamity. The rest, I fear, we must leave to decay. The great Vasoyevi migration is underway and it is time, my fellow sons and daughters of Illia, for us to sail elsewhere once more. To make our home on no fixed soil, but across all lands and seas, as these nomadic folk have taught us." And at once the alchemist headed for his study, toiling away at his next great machination. 

 

[doreebear 605]

Ysidorá Jelisavetá looked down at the dying woman, tears welling up in her bloodshot eyes and trickling down her cheeks. Despite the fact that she made no statement. The woman stood and reflected on memories from when she was a child.

 

"Take these berries my child, for when you sleep tonight, you will dream of the man you will love  forever and always."  Spoke Ursula, then passing Ysidorá the berries. 

 

Later that night, the young vasoyevi girl had a dream in which she saw a towering man with Onyx locks standing before her.

 

Ysidorá began to reflect once more on how the dying Sigismundaroșie's prophecies had come true in some way. Ursula's voice boomed, proclaiming her prediction of what would happen to Vasoyeva, startling her. Her eyes widened in terror and panic. Ursula would never lie about something so heinous. Ysidorá muttered once more as the Sigismundaroșie took her final breath. "God Help us."

 

[Sanziene 71]

In silence Limetta von Orange stared at the now lifeless Ursula, her booming words like a pummel to the woman's chest, knocking her off her feet. There she layed for a while, as chaos came and went around the room, then she left, before any death rites could be carried out. She dared not join or see her again. Even at the funeral, Limetta watched from afar, as if on guard.

 

She hung a black square of silk oh her door, in mourning. Then she packed, emptying the dim house hidden away by the river, nestled within the walls of Sava, leaving it barren.

 

Quiet murmurs at Izvorosu, and prayers over a lit candle for the woman who was a friend, a mentor, but more than such, someone who she looked up to and respected greatly, for they were so much alike, or at least were promised to be. Her spindly right crossed the candle and then she whispered in the confines of her room. "I hope from the bottom of my heart that you've found all your loved ones, I know you wanted nothing more. The city will miss you, I will. I hope, in Godan's name above, that we may we never meet again. Rest, Ursula. You've earned it all." Placing the candle on her bedside table, she crossed it again with the side of her hand.

 

After such she idled around the keep, walking up and down the river, not daring to cross Sava's walls again, only watching over the city from the nearby hills.

 

[bumblefina 2766]

Liliac Cotsofana sat in a tower not too far south of the city that she had so often looked out to. That city of color and joy, where the people who had inhabited it had been good and hopeful, where others had some to take and take as they always do. Now she felt a deep sorrow, for the woman who she had never truly gotten to know, but who she had admired since she was just a child. She felt sorrow for her and the city she had helped build, and the community she had fostered, and for all the things that had been taken from Lady Ursula. 

[winterblood 11181]

Moliana lit a candle in honor of Ursula's memory within the confines of her subterranean chambers in the depths of the Augustine Palace.  She had grown up in the halls of Izvoroshu and is a Cotsofana in everything but blood, for her desire to roam the roads of the known world is the Vasiyevan that has taken shape within the Carrion woman ever since her youth.

 

No matter where the roads took Moliana, and no matter which doors she opened and stepped through... Her heart still yearned to return to the days of her childhood, to be back home in the red castle on the river; to see the distant lights of Sava once the sun dipped beneath the western mountains.  Day by day, that memory grew more distant; day by day, Moliana knew she would have to stop looking into the past.  Lady Ursula had the divine gift of seeing what may come of the future, Moliana's mind often began to wonder what other fates of this world the Matriarch had come to know before her passing.

[Valannor 6405]

Woe betide the Sigismundarosie, she who held sight beyond eyes,

 

A woman who wove legends yore, until her hollow demise.

 

Beholden to a Hound, to follow the Goat and a Lord beyond,

 

She will live forever, until even the Shores have come and gone. 

 

Blessed be Ursula, The Elucidated Prophet. May she find peace in the skies, where I have not. 

[Quantumatics 549]

"You, my aunt of eyes unbridled, of heart unphased and soul immortal, shall remain a beacon in the hearts of the Vasoyevi and all others blessed to have met you in their lifetime. Your wisdom was and shall forever be unparalleled, and now I wish only for rest unto your soul, for all the virtues you have imparted, and for all the ills you have endured. The Elucidated Prophet, the Shephard of the Vasoyevi- the mother I was never granted. Thank you for remaining true, for being a paragon of faith's true manifestation. And goodbye, until the day I see you soon again," Spoke the Despot Andrik Vasovic, heart shattered by the loss of his aunt. He kneeled within her bedchamber, arms clutching the woolen cloth that enveloped the Soothsayer's lifeless cadaver, the once enlightened glow of her yellow-green eyes having faded into grey.