Aspira, Skypiercer
Kishar, Weaver of Ages; Vulya, The Wayfarer
"O guide of fate, crowned in thorns,
may your spilt ichor trace our paths through time."
Aspira is the High Wolflord of time and the winds. Variously named Kishar, Nawilu or Aizi'an, She. As the watcher who has traced out all paths with Her own ichor, She journeys as the wind does - without origin, hindrance or constraint. Though fate is capricious, and the world slips into chaos, the Skypiercer who placed breath in our bodies has also granted us both a "past" and a "future".
She alone has grasped the genesis and denouement. She alone may guide us toward tomorrow.
Wisdom In Eternity: Kairos
"There is only one path I may walk to restore the sanctity of life. I shall make this calamity holy. I shall make death beautiful."
Opinion over Aspira's role in the world is somewhat divided. Most agree that She fashioned the firmament, separating the earth and heavens, and that She guides souls down their ordained paths. But whether she is fate's author or simply its witness, who can say for certain? And whether time has any more of a "beginning" than the wind, who knows but Her Herself?
Aspira's divine demesne encompasses wind, the sky, time, fate, memory and passage. She is the breeze that heralds spring, the warm wind bearing summer rains, and the biting gale of winter. She is by our side in the first cries of an infant, and departs with us as we breathe our last.
The sky mages who walk in Her steps are perhaps the most varied of all, just as the wind's mood changes from day to day. Some can predict storms before the clouds have even gathered; others preserve the stories of ages past. Only a blessed few may peer across the streams of time - but in whatever paths She guides them on, the end is the same.
Permanence and Prophecy
"...since all things are in motion, She who may follow behind and drive them before Her must have perfect knowledge, and infinite wisdom. And so we change Her name to Aizi'an, because She is wise and brushes against all things."
Vulya is the weaver of life and death, at once benevolent and terrible. Nowhere is beyond Her influence.
Her thorn-wreathed priests attend funerals to beseech Her to guide the deceased beyond the sky. Mothers take their young out beneath the open sky to watch the wandering clouds - a sure sign that the Skypiercer is weaving them a future full of possibilities.
Wanderers and travellers, too, search for Her blessings before they set forth. A butterfly in winter, a moth in daylight, a scent carried on the wind, the whispering of branches in the breeze... all of these carry Her touch, signalling safety upon the road. Some would delay their travels for weeks to catch one such sign.
Some honour Her instead through recording all things in their gigantic, cloud-swathed halls. They say that Kishar waits at the end of time, upon which She will reforge the world from the memories of its inhabitants.
The Skypiercer's incarnations warped time itself around Her. Witnesses from ages past spoke of trees growing backwards into saplings, of ruins reforming into grand castles, and of hurricanes that ground them back into dust. They swore that the wind whispered to them of prophecy and fate.
Some said they saw their own deaths, clear as daylight.
Aspect of the Wolflord: Aeternitas
"Earthly objects tend towards motion in straight lines, but higher concepts are fated to be cyclic. The dance of day and night, the movement of the heavens - even the passage of time itself."
Scholars know the Skypiercer's divine domain as the Haqilum, or the Wheel of Eternity.
Others simply call it the Long Road.
To the precious few who have seen it - all renowned members of the Verdigris Tower - it appeared to be a narrow path beneath a blackened sky, bound on both sides by impassable walls of briars. Divine ichor drips endlessly from these thorns... though how it came to be there, no one can say.
Understanding the secrets of this domain would mean uncovering the secrets of time and fate themselves. Some say that the Long Road loops back on itself like the endless cycles of history. Others believe that it and the "future" it represents only look like a single path to limited mortal eyes.
Perhaps there is an end to the Wheel of Eternity - the destination of all winds, the terminus of all fates. Perhaps Aizi'an, having already walked the Road at the world's genesis, waits there for its final denouement.
These are the paths that Aspira guides all things upon: fated decay, and destined new growth.
Who in all the earth has understanding? Who can see the path's end while upon it?
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