I intended to write Edge/ Legend...but really ended up writing a story called Schmetterling. About 15K of it is non-Schmetterling stuff like other stories, rants, and stuff for grad school applications, but it's still 50,000 words!
Below is one of these non-Schmetterling pieces, the River Windrose scene for Desdemon Enelaizon. it gets into some tarot stuff, but hopefully understandable. Please enjoy!
WC: 1,553
A lightning bolt shot up through the clear night sky. At the point where the electricity joined sky and earth, there was the black and white shape of a man. Then the monotone image seemed to settle into a three-dimensional shape, and color washed into to the man. The scene returned to one of tranquility—or as close to tranquility as it ever was.
Around the man and the pool of water he stood in was a river of fire. Friendly orange-yellow flames climbed, lava-like, up a slope; then in the distance, they suddenly split, creating a great pillar of fire that stretched unfathomably up and down.
The man gazed at the great pillar with a bitter smile. The pillar of fire was his gateway to his home: the Blackmist that existed everywhere yet was the “nothing” that suspended the nonphysical world. Symbolically speaking, the pillar was his ladder up or down to the realms mortals called “Heaven” and “Hell”. But along with the comfort and familiarity that a home ought to bring, the great pillar of fire also filled this man with a sense of homesickness and longing.
He reached his hand out and suddenly he was floating directly before the pillar. Hot air swept this body’s black curls around his face. Being so close ought to have scorched any living thing to a crisp. But this was all a gentle breeze to him. The flames that barreled at immeasurable speeds up and down in the pillar felt to his hand sitting in it like the cleansing water of a gentle stream or relaxing bath to a mortal. This world, the purely spiritual, was where he belonged.
He pulled his arm away and his senses returned to the body that was standing in the pool of water.
“You chose this,” a voice boomed in the landscape. “You confined yourself to a physical body, to a mortal soul, bound by the weaves of Destiny.”
The voice materialized as a twin of himself: only this twin had ashen skin the grey color of stone where his was a light bronze; the twin had dark orange irises, the color of fire and burning sun, where his were a deep ocean blue; the twin had wispy black hair that occasionally sent off sparks of light and fire, whereas his hair was still black, but normal curls that covered his head. Even the voice of this twin was more ethereal and splendid, although his normal voice was already baritone that mortals likened more towards music than speech.
He called this twin self the Sixteenth, after the sixteenth aspect of the Major Arcana; it was the Tower. And the Sixteenth called him, bound to a mortal body and soul, Desdemon Enelaizon.
Desdemon faced the Sixteenth calmly. “Yes. We did choose this.”
The Sixteenth showed no regret or irritation. It was not in conflict with the mortal Desdemon. The Sixteenth served the great and common Will of the Arcana, and this body named Desdemon served as its vessel. But the Sixteenth had some points of Desdemon’s life that it did not agree with.
Desdemon too showed the Sixteenth neither annoyance nor resentment. He turned away from the pillar of fire. Although flames crackled throughout the river of fire, Desdemon himself stood in a shallow pool of water that barely covered his bare feet. Water and flame maintained a boundary there in the area around him. Here the tongues of the fire seemed curled into gentle waves, and there the water turned to steam and flickered like a candle wick. Around this inexplicable boundary raged fire.
But further out, beyond the shape of the thin river, was pitch dark. The river and the pool Desdemon stood in were suspended in nothing but darkness, impenetrable to the senses but comforting at the same time. It too, reminded Desdemon of his original home—the Sixteenth’s home.
“The mortal part of your soul houses here,” the Sixteeth said, his deep voice paradoxically sounding over the entire of the landscape yet not too loud for a normal, private, conversation. “Mortals gather strength to their souls and fortify their anima in their private place. For us though, this is the gate homeward.” The Sixteenth turned gravely to Desdemon. “For you, mortal soul, this is where I, the eternal soul, will wait. You will need me in the course of your mortal life. And I will be here every time.”
The Sixteenth turned away and walked into the flames. Behind them were the ruins a small building that had housed an altar to the Aspect of the Tower. Desdemon followed the Sixteenth towards it too, but when he walked, the pool of water followed him. He stepped in the small temple and the pool of water grew to encompass a space the size of a modest gazebo.
The one-room, open-air building was nothing but a heap of stone with a broken domed ceiling and crumbling pillars, and the altar itself was nothing but a fractured pedestal, but they still offered Desdemon, and the Sixteenth, solace and strength: Inside the space of the temple, the crackle of the River and the roar of the pillar seemed to fade to white noise; resting on the broken altar was a chain as dark as the blackness beyond the River. Currently, the chain curled into a neat pocket-sized coil, but in its weaponized form extended twelve feet long and conducted a whip of destruction.
Desdemon left the chain as it was and rested on a large chunk of rubble. In the spaces of air between the temple’s broken pillar played mirages of mortal lives and thoughts. He saw the city he had buried under earth and ash just that day, and the cries of despairing mortals as they beheld the desolation of their homes. It would not be for many years, Desdemon knew, that they would see the purification that the quake had brought.
He banished these images with a casual sweep of his long fingers. He did not retreat within himself to review the business of the Tower and the Sixteenth.
Now he saw familiar faces: souls the Sixteenth had cleansed before and favored. Some of these had the Tower’s Gift of Purification: an ability that could take any physical form apart and recreate it in a more desired configuration. As the form was purified, it appeared black and white, as Desdemon’s body had when he first entered his River Windrose.
Desdemon let his gaze linger on a girl that had been named after his own chosen moniker. She was covered in soot and despair, tears running from her eyes as she escaped her home. Trying times awaited her still. But it was all a process. Gaining the Sixteenth’s favor was a destructive ordeal, but it left the strongest branches of a person’s soul uncovered and free to flourish.
The images faded again, and this time a gentle tune hummed through the air. Then in the largest space and that only, a vision started playing again. It focused on a young girl, running carefree through a field and chasing the birds that flew overhead.
The Sixteenth appeared in his peripheral vision, also examining the new scene. “You heard about the Tenth’s prophecy for your mortal self then. About this…other soul, who has been inextricably tied to our mortal soul.”
“Silence spoke to me of a soulmate,” Desdemon confirmed, naming specifically the Aspect of Destiny in the Tenth, the Wheel of Fortune.
They watched the girl chase the birds and turn, smiling and laughing and out of breath. Desdemon swept his fingers to the side again and the scene and melody faded, leaving nothing but water and the river of fire beyond it.
“The Tenth also told you of the Knot in your threads.”
“Cadence spoke of a complication in our destinies,” Desdemon acknowledged, this time naming the Aspect of Fate in the Wheel of Fortune.
“Blame the idiotic and fickle Tenth if your mortal soul must cast blame to anything.”
“I do not blame Tone,” translated Desdemon, naming the third and final Aspect of Luck in the Wheel of Fortune.
The Sixteenth brought a still of the girl back into view. The image wavered, like a candle flame approaching its death, and for a brief moment, Desdemon made out the image of another boy, with golden hair and dark blue-violet eyes. He drew a long, thin breath, knowing instinctively that this was the “complication”. The screen returned briefly to image of the innocent girl, and then vanished altogether.
The Sixteenth paid Desdemon’s reaction no heed. Its voice was just as grand yet cold when it addressed him: “The Tenth will speak to you here in time and of more detail.”
Desdemon stood and stepped out of the temple as though trying to run from the Sixteenth’s next words; the entire river of fire turned into a searing white in anticipation. His form turned black and white and a crackle of electricity jumped from the water as he tried to pull himself out of the River Windrose, but the Sixteeth’s words haunted him:
“Always know, mortal me, that eternal me shall be ever here, at your fingertips. When your mortal heart shatters inconsolably, you will need me, and I will destroy her.”
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