40.5 Free From Fate

General Summary

Day 691

We all sleep in the cave where we are safe from the soul-tearing grass. Ausha is very anxious around it and resolves to only manifest for a few hours a day in the safety of the cavern, while Magdalena flits about healing some of the disrupted magic in the area. The result is that Starfield and I spend much of the day alone together.   I tell her about my work on this side of the Barrier and how my vision is different from the Covenant that stood before. After all, 10 nations is so finite. Who is to say that there are only 10 races worthy of joining a covenant? She laughs at this and says that if my goal is of a golden age, even a 100 years of peace is a worthy target. But still, I see further than that. Maybe only a century of the golden shining future I want, but then a fall that is shallow and easy to recover from. Maybe a thousand years next, and a still shallower fall. I think by now I know better than to rail against the natural rhythms of civilization, but so long as the trend is upwards and the pain is shallower, my job will be done.   With the boys heading back our way (with some mountain lions and food), I warn Starfield that we travel with a demon who I trust. Given No Moon’s demise, I worry that she will be unable to calm herself around a demon but she tells me that so long as he is not hunting, she can accept it. She is not one to judge based only on race.   The more we speak, the more I feel that the story I’ve learned about No Moon and his war against the Zephyr was exaggerated or at least misunderstood by Void and even Onyx.   Starfield tells me of the many years she spend wandering after No Moon died. She sealed away her dragon form and memories so that she could explore unimpeded, something that I think is remarkably similar to what Ausha and I have both done. In her time wandering, she made friends with people she otherwise might not have been able to: Zephyr, fae, even Carthians! But she lost so much of herself that it let her be captured by Oolee, the fox-witch.  

For those of us who will live endlessly, it can be a good tool to experience the world anew.

  There is some deep sadness in her, of course.  

He was kind and curious, and powerful of course. I didn’t realize how much he meant until he was gone…I guess it’s often like that. I wish we hadn’t fought so much; I wish I hadn’t run away. Lately I’ve wondered if maybe I shouldn’t be here at all - if I should follow both of my parents into death.

  I can’t bear to hold any secrets from her, even though I wish we could free her before I had to divulge them. I tell her of Trillium Nightshade and Wraith (she remarks that she and Wraith often bumped into one another - Wraith observing catastrophes, Starfield trying to head them off). For much of her time wandering, she played guardian and protector to anyone she encountered who needed it. She tried to stop things her father would have stopped, always left before people could become dependent on her. She tells me that she thought her role was to get people on the right track so that they could thrive. It is like speaking to myself.   For her, the night is soft. The sun brings harsh, hot and stark illumination, but the endless stars light the world gently, gazing softly and lovingly at everything below. To her, the name ‘Starfield’ means to have great vision, seeing the world gently, knowing that while some places are truly dark, wicked, and concealed, much of the world is complicated and as varied as the stars in the sky. She chooses to see the best in the world, and to both nurture it and guide it just as many navigate by the stars. More than anything, a single dim and instant star illuminates little, but there is greatness and beauty to be found when even the humblest of stars gather.   I tell her of Eclipse, trapped within my niece. I had already wondered if maybe we could save Eclipse but my heart aches when she wonders the same thing aloud. I tell her honestly that such a thing might be possible, but that I don’t know how to do it.   Trillium’s story, of course, is tangled up with Wildfire (“Blackflame’s brat?”), Shadows Dancing, Void (“Void is real?”), and the Empire. The Empress, Starfield tells me, has the rights of a clan elder in any clan that shares the bloodlines of Darkness and Earth. The story Onyx told me of his hatching is apparently a common one for children of those bloodlines - stout earth-like eggs too difficult for the soft dark dragons to crack. She estimates that at least a dozen dragons have been freed from their shells with Kaide’s help.   And finally the last piece of the story I need to tell her - I confess that I hold No Moon’s legacy, given to me by Void. When she asks to see it, I only hesitate for a moment. It still isn’t really mine, and if I were afraid of anyone ripping it away, it would be because they can’t be trusted to hold it. I trust Starfield, and if this legacy belongs to anyone, it’s her.   She curls around the vial of origin blood and weeps over it while I hold her close. Eventually she returns it to me and asks that when I take it on, I tell her if he thought of her at the end. It’s such a simple request, it didn’t have to be made. And more than that, I can’t imagine that he didn’t.   For a long while I listen to her speak about No Moon and bask in the recollections of someone who really knew him. Void, Onyx, Rainbow, Magdalena - all have told me fragments of this story and it’s only with Starfield’s sad smiles and lit-up eyes that I can see where each person stood in the span of his life and who he was. I feel ike I can finally see his truth and not just the story that others took away from his existence.   No Moon, she tells me, had a special sort of fate very similar to mine and probably to Void’s as well. Many people with mighty legacies wind up tangled in fate such that their choices are constrained by their position. Just as Rainbow told me I would steer my own fate forever, No Moon was unbridled by destiny. He defied tragedy and shook the world.  

Your talk of ten nations being too few reminds me of him. He would like you. He would find you worthy to carry on his work.

  She tells me, also, of the war against the Zephyr. Void had framed this as an ongoing fight to secure the mountain range as a home for the Kindred, but she teaches me the real origins of it.   Far to the South are a race called the Hun, with a talent for sharing their magic and absorbing magic from the land. My blood runs cold as she describes their behaviour - coming into the mountains only to seek out volcanoes.   Ages ago, the Zephyr created demons as a way to oppose the Hun without risking themselves, but the demons still weren’t strong enough and the Zephyr sought to strengthen them by combining them with dragons. They stole eggs. The dragons who hatched knew nothing of their clans or parenthood, raised entirely out of the shell by demons. This lost generation eventually did have children with demons, and then they weren’t needed anymore and the Zephyr tried to kill them all. No Moon saved some of those lost true dragons, but none of their children.   The children formed the Demon-Dragon Clan and remained allied with the demons and Zephyr for many years until the Zephyr abandoned the mountains, around the same time that No Moon died.   It was the theft of the eggs that started the war that I had previously understood as his personal vendetta against the Zephyr. He wanted to drive out the Zephyr so they could never do something like this again. Inevitably No Moon would have welcomed the Demon-Dragons as kin had he not died before the demons turned against them. Even without being associated with demons, other true dragons refused to help the Demon-Dragon Clan and were actively attacked by many. It was only Starfield who managed to hide them in the tunnels beneath the mountains, draped in her own sky-covering magic for as long as she could.   It is a thorough story. I can’t help but think that between Qing Chen, Trillium Nightshade, and our many dragon allies…perhaps we have a chance at forging peace there where there was none before. Starfield laughs happily at this too - the tactic of kidnapping several faction leaders and simply forcing them to work it out is another thing I have in common with her father.