Every myth, every legend, every folktale has an origin somewhere within the seeds of midnight bonfires, dreams and experiences passed on as lessons to the next generation.
But over time, these origins get tangled up with revisions and additions that generation after generation adds. Much like the threads of fate that tie all of us together, that connect all of us, no matter where and when we are.
This tale concerns the power of those threads of fate, and what chasing fate, rather than letting it unfold, can then undo of the very life we thought to make.
Kithrin and Kithar Rath were born at the end of spring. At dawn, the wind was singing and blossoms were falling upon the pond outside the bedroom where the newborn twins were held by their mother upon a narrow bed, while their father sat on a chair, and the midwife looked on with a smile as she spoke of an old-wives tale.
“When blossoms fall upon the pond, two souls will meet and bring balance back into the world. Their destinies will echo and entwine. The birth of your twins, Mira, is a beautiful omen. It is the hope we need in these troubling times. Twins are a rare blessing and these two are even more so. I know this.”
“Thank you, Riva, but we are simple potterers. They will know art, its beauty and its voice to bring joy and peace and love. But that is all, and that is all I would ever want for them. Great destinies and legacies, are a burden.” To this last thought, Mira then turned her attention to her husband who reached out his hand to take hers.
“We are a family Mira. Thank you Riva,” he said with a nod. Riva huffed with fond exasperation and bustled around the room, tidying from the long birth.
What Kithrin and Kithar Rath learned as they grew was the beauty and voice of art, and where it could be found in their garden, the pond full of frogs and three fat orange fish. They learned the art of clay; the care, love, joy and peace it brought.
Until it all disappeared as quickly as spring turns to summer, summer turns to fall, and fall turns winter. Nine years from the day they were born, the troubles that Riva alluded to entered their village in the form of Aragonian soldiers who were crossing the Continent, invading other Kingdoms, as they sought to take more land for themselves and their King.
In the chaos, Kithrin and Kithar were orphaned and the joy and peace of a simple life tumbled forward into a series of events that culminated in a great work, nineteen years later during the dawn of the last day of spring.
There existed a Code among the Druadin, for a reason. That reason had blown away on the winds at the Edge of the World, when Kithrin and Kithar Rath broke all of them, and the world. Mostly.
There weren’t stampeding animals and the ocean hadn’t risen (yet), but the twins had managed to create a nexus of energy so strong, that they succeeded in cracking a hole in the skin of the world. The hole swirled in the air, in front of them, at the edge of the cliff, at the Edge of the World, which really was only the western-most tip of the Continent.
“We’ve done it!” Kithar shouted, for the air, being pulled into the hole, had become a strong wind. His sister laughed and hugged him, he hugged her back.
They had succeeded where no Druadin and their rigid rules had ever before. They could do anything. They could be anyone and go anywhere. Their destiny was to walk the stars.
The wind picked up. It pulled at the twins’ clothes with stronger fingers. The wind howled and shrieked. A bush snapped and was yanked into the hole. The twins felt a twinge of fear and clutched each-others hands, stumbling away from the door they had opened from this world to another. But they were not quick enough.
They shouted in surprise as the wind tore their hands apart and Kithrin was pulled toward the hole in the air.
“Kith!” Kithar shouted, “Kith!” He pulled back at the air, dragging it with all his mental might, imagining it twirling around his hand like a spool of twine, but his efforts were to no avail. Kithrin, who had also tapped into the Voice, and was pushing away from the hole, gave a shriek and a second later, like the bush, she disappeared into the black maw in the sky.
The wind screamed and roared and then, as suddenly as it had started, it collapsed in on itself with a hiss.
The dawning sun made the ocean below the cliff glitter, but Kithar, kneeling in the grass and dirt, took no pleasure in the pastoral beauty as he stared blankly at where his twin had been.
Where everything they had been working toward had been, since the day they had lost everything else.
****
Kithrin and Kithar Rath were two of many children orphaned at the end of a long war. They were also two of the most lucky; for a Druadin, by the name of Sir Doma, came across them in their ruined village.
He came with aid for those who survived and left with the orphaned twins, who he’d pinpointed as having natural attunement to the Voice of the world, the energy which ran through all things and that which the Druadin worked with, in order to protect the people of the Continent.
“Mom, dad…” Kithar scrabbled at the stones of their house, trying to get to their parents who had pushed the twins out of the house when the whir of firebombs had followed the storm of the attacking Aragonians.
Kithrin sat on her knees beside him, motionless and silent, staring at what had once been their home. The Aragonians had come, attacked and left like a windstorm; leaving behind destroyed buildings, sobs, screams and the smell of fire.
It licked at the edges of their garden, dancing around the pond, having leapt from their crushed house of stone and tile in the minutes since the twins’ whole world had changed.
Someone was yelling for help in the distance. She and Kithar needed help. Everyone needed help. Unable to hold back the wave of fear and distress, Kithrin stood up and screamed to the sky. As she screamed, the rubble of their house shifted and shook. Then a pile of tile that had once covered the walls in patterns from nature shattered with a piercing explosion.
Kithar stood up, stumbling backward with a shriek, bumping into Kithrin who did the same. They fell in a tumble of limbs as tile shot through the air.
Someone shouted something nearby but Kithrin was more focused on Kithar. “Kith?” She asked, not able to say anything more but her twin understood. He nodded, his face was streaked with dirt and tears. They hugged, holding on to the one anchor they still had.
After a moment Kithar whispered, “Kith, what was that?” Kithrin shivered against her twin, still holding him in a tight embrace.
“That, children, was quite the display,” said a man who neither twin recognized. He introduced himself as Sir Doma, a Druadin who had been tracking the Aragonian armies, hoping to either halt the attacks or save the aftermath.
Kithrin wrinkled her nose at the man. He’d failed to save their village, so she gave him no more attention, but her twin leapt up and asked, “can you save mom and dad! They’re trapped.”
“Have they answered your calls?” Sir Doma said. Kithar visibly wilted and the Druadin knelt down to their level.
“Are you hungry? Cold? Come with me,” he said. The twins followed and as they ate, he told them their parents were dead and about what Kithrin had accidently done to the rubble of their home.
Everyone and everything could tap into the Voice, but many never chose to train this ability and very few were so naturally talented when as utterly untrained and uneducated as the twins. Sir Doma told them he was amazed at the raw power he’d seen Kithrin use and what he could feel from what he called their signatures.
He spoke of a temple where they could learn to use the power and become Druadin.
Everyone knew about the Druadin, they were the travelling guardians of the Continent, protecting its people. They held no allegiance to one Kingdom or another, not even the Empress. Help was offered to any who needed it, or asked for it. They fought, they defended, they healed, they taught. They did whatever was needed. And now, because of the civil war between the Kingdoms, the Druadin were more stretched than ever. They needed help.
“Come with me, to the temple. I am asking both of you for your help. We need help now. We need your power, we need your strength. You can save so many like yourselves from experiencing this same fate,” he said to the twins at long last.
Kithrin and Kithar looked at each other and a whole debate passed silently between the children. So long as they had each other, that would be enough, but they had a chance to be strong, to stop the soldiers who had killed their mom and dad. Kithrin felt the power in her now, and Kithar noticed it too. They felt something else, a thread tying them together, tying them to things beyond a life of clay and gardens. Something that was far greater than the simple lives they had led.
“We’ll come,” said Kithrin.
The first night they lay on their cots, surrounded by all the other sleeping initiates. Kithrin rolled over to face Kithar and whispered, “I’m clean and warm. It’s like home, almost.”
Kithar didn’t answer though Kithrin could feel his glare, even though the room was too dark to see it with her eyes.
“Kith, I know they aren’t mom and dad, no one ever will be. But it could be exciting. We can be heroes, just like in the puppet shows.”
“Spire’s shows were for babies Kith,” Kithar grumbled finally. Kithrin snorted softly. Silence fell between the twins. The only sound was the wind blowing through the branches of the giant, millennia old, savant trees around which the temple was built.
“Do you think we could turn back time and save mom and dad?” Kithrin whispered to her brother. “Kithar?” She whispered a little louder, sure he couldn’t have fallen to sleep already. A moment later Kithar hissed back, “I’m trying to sleep, but probably. Druadin can do all sorts of things in the stories.”
“I’m glad you agree with me Kith,” Kithrin whispered.
“I’ll always agree with you Kith,” Kithar said and then he pulled his blanket over his head.
“Kith! That means you have to do what I do too,” Kithrin whispered and she reached out a hand. As she reached out her hand, she felt Kithar’s hand grasp hers at the same time.
“Fine, yes, always. If you won’t sleep, I won’t sleep. Are you wanting to explore?”
“You know it,” Kithrin said, “and you do too. Stop pretending to try and sleep.”
Kithar giggled into his pillow and then let go of Kithrin’s hand, sitting up. “Alright, let’s go see what awesome things these Druadin have lying around.”
On their first night at the Druadin temple, the Rath twins began to build a reputation for curiousity that had no time or space constraints.
They wandered through the twisting corridors that went around and around the giant and ancient trees of the Great Griffon Forest which stretched across the western coast of the Continent. The temple was built not far from the ocean and the city of Castalia which rested on top of huge, jutting cliffs and held the Continent’s biggest port for airships. As the twins snuck around the grounds, they could see gold lights moving in the sky near the city, indicating a ship was coming in for a landing.
They watched in awe for a moment, before Kithrin pointed toward the largest, hollowed tree, “let’s go in there!”
Giggling and giddy with curiousity, the twins turned away from the bright lights of Castalia and ran into the hollowed tree that was at least a massive ten stades in width.
“Whoa!” They said in unison and grinned as their voices echoed in the grand space. The tree was not just hollowed near the bottom, it went all the way up and up its trunk. At equal increments were crystal lamps that took the shape of tree fungi and lit the space in shades of white and gold.
The ground space contained a podium upon which sat a gold statue of a phoenix, the symbol of the Empire of Twelve Kingdoms and behind it was a tapestry in black and white. A stylised version of the phoenix and above it was another tapestry with the symbol of a stylized tree of two prongs, a trunk and three dots circled around it.
“The Druadin coat of arms,” Kithrin said with wonder as Kithar stepped toward the podium.
“Something is inside this,” Kithar said, waving at Kithrin to come closer. He bent down and pressed a hand against the lower half. Suddenly the ground shook beneath their feet. Surprised, they stumbled back and watched in awe as a square-shaped piece of the simple dirt floor shifted, revealing a dark hole and a staircase leading into it.
“Whoa, let’s go in!” Kithar said, starting to walk down the stairs, one hand touching the wall of the tunnel.
“Not so fast! We don’t have any light!” Kithrin said.
Kithar turned around, stuck his hand out and a moment later, a ball of gold light floating just above his palm.
“How’d you do that!” Kithrin demanded.
“I wanted light. So I thought about it really hard,” Kithar shrugged. “You were thinking about all the horrible things the soldiers did and how mad you were at them and you exploded the tiles.”
Kithrin nodded in understanding and stuck her hand out. A moment later, she too had light. “Awesome!”
Buoyed by the excitement of their newfound abilities and confidence in each other, the twins stepped into the dark only for a familiar voice to stop them in their tracks.
“Children, you are meant to be in your beds,” Sir Doma said from above. The twins flinched and together they closed their fists and their lights went out. Then slowly, they crept up the stairs and looked sheepishly at the Druadin knight.
“Do not wander the grounds. You may be in a Druadin temple now, but that does not mean even we are safe from the chaos upon the Continent. Back to your beds, and do not come here unless you are accompanied by a knight or a tutor.”
“This place is not for curiousity. Curiousity leads to chaos and no amount of knowledge, or power can replace experience,” his eyes bore into the twins and Kithrin wondered if he knew they’d managed to create light without any teaching.
With respectful bows, the twins left Sir Doma’s presence and quietly hurried back to their beds.
The next day held many introductions, leaving no time for the twins to talk about what had happened the night before. In between the introductions were lessons. The Druadin did not believe in writing knowledge down, so all lessons were conducted in circles, on grass, dirt, logs, down by a little beach or upon mats. The Master Tutors would speak and ask the initiates to recite certain pieces of information to trigger the memorization of herbal remedies, histories of the Continent, myths, religions, cultural practices and laws.
“What about learning manipulations?” Kithrin asked the initiate who had been tasked with taking the twins around to their classes until they were used to the grounds and the schedule. The initiate snorted and shrugged, walking ahead of the twins.
The twins did not have to wait long, the next class was meditation; the first step to learning how to work with the Voice and manipulate the energy of all things. The twins struggled, both fidgeting and being reprimanded multiple times by the tutor until someone laughed and the whole class went still and silent.
“Again,” said the tutor in a voice as hard as stone and still as a pond. The initiates settled. This time, Kithrin reached out her hand to Kithar who reached back as they closed their eyes and began the breathing patterns.
Almost immediately the twins found themselves looking at a strange place full of thousands of coloured threads, and many more in colours they did not recognize. And yet, they knew they were still meditating in the grass with their eyes closed.
“Whoa,” Kithrin said, “this is awesome. I wonder where we are?” She reached out a hand, noticing she was no longer holding Kithar’s, at least in this space, although she had a distant sense that her physical body still was.
“Look!” Kithar said, he’d walked ahead of his twin, pushing aside the threads to reveal a shimmering path of rainbow colours. “Let’s see where it goes!”
Together the twins explored the strange place, eager to see what they could learn. There was nothing for some time, although time seemed both present and not in this place. The only marker of real change being the moving threads and the rainbow path. Until they were stopped by a great black hole that roared from its place, levitating above the path, sucking in the threads from all around. It pulled at the twins, causing them to stumble.
They turned wide-eyes at each other for a moment before grabbing each other’s hands and running back the way they had come. They ran and ran until suddenly the space full of threads and the rainbow path disappeared with a heavy thump.
The twins opened their eyes together, to see the face of the tutor frowning at them and the initiates all as wide-eyed as the twins had been in front of the black hole.
“Rule number one, Rath twins, never world-walk. The space between worlds is not for us. It is a place of chaos and going into it leads to madness and brings madness upon us here in the earthly plane. Do not attempt that again. Kithrin, come sit beside me and Kithar, sit on my other side,” the tutor said, effectively splitting the twins up and preventing them from holding hands during their practice.
As the weeks went by the twins fell into the temple routines, following what their fellow initiates did, although none of the others willingly worked with or spoke to the twins. They learned why one day, when the initiates were given free time and the twins were exploring the gardens of the temple. They overheard Sir Doma and Grandmaster Valiant speaking in an alcove hidden by thick vines wrapping around a trellis.
“Those twins you found are a fascinating pair,” the Grandmaster was saying.
Doma nodded and then said, “beyond what I thought. They are prodigies. It makes me wonder, might they be the ones who will unite all sides and end the Continent’s conflict?”
The Grandmaster chuckled, “you place too much stock in stories and rumours Eren. Such natural skill is rare, it is understandable that initiates would create such tales.”
“Then what do you call that creature that came through the breach? That was supposed to be a story.”
“Those were never stories, Eren. Those are nightmares and we do not put our attention upon them, anymore than one should put upon a nightmare. To do so gives them more power. Something chaos never needs more of.”
“They tore through a village! Now it’s not just human soldiers, it’s these creatures from the Between!” Sir Doma sounded far more angry and frustrated than the twins thought the always calm Druadin knight could. He was a steady presence at the temple whenever he was not off on some assignment given by the Council. Also the only one who talked to the twins about things other than their studies.
“Eren, we have a duty to protect the Continent and right now, humanity is doing more to itself than any breach creatures.”
“Then what about the breaches? We cannot leave those open!”
“No, and that’s why I’m putting you in charge of closing them. You are not needed here. The twins are fine. You do not need to keep coming back between duties. In fact, they could do with learning to interact with their fellow initiates more.”
“They’re close, and twins. I don’t expect they’ve ever had friends other than each other.”
“Go, Eren. If you care so much about this trouble. Deal with it,” the Grandmaster’s tone was final.
Kithrin grabbed onto Kithar’s arm and they darted away just as they heard the Grandmaster approach where they had been hiding. They did not look back, running as fast as they could toward a rocky outcrop beyond the forest and the temple that looked out over the sea.
There, they stopped and sat down at the edge, feet dangling and they talked about what they heard and wondered. In the months following the twins spent their free time learning everything the Druadin knew about the space between worlds.
They also began to visit it, doing what they had accidently done during that first meditation class. But their growing knowledge and arrogance came to a head when one day the weather which had been warm and sunny turned suddenly into a violent wind-storm with waves that began rising higher and higher.
Kithrin and Kithar were at the outcropping when it happened.
“Kith!” They said in unison, looking to each other as they watched waves rolling in, each growing larger and larger, and reaching higher and higher.
In the distance there was one which reached above all the others, a mountain of water nearly touching the storm clouds in the sky.
The twins looked to each other and then ran down toward the beach, standing on opposite sides. They heard shouts nearby, but neither paid attention as they focused on the approaching, giant wave.
Closing their eyes, they tuned in to the energy of the earth and the water. They could feel the earth rumbling and roaring like a great big feline that had its tail pulled suddenly. The water was rolling forward like an unfurling rug. They focused upon the wave first, pulling at opposite ends of it, imagining they were shaking it out and flattening it away from the land.
The twins gave a unified sigh of relief and then turned their attention to the earth, calming it with energetic words and petting. It growled at them, hissing at their insistent petting but at last, it settled too.
Opening their eyes, the twins almost fell against each other, feeling the after effects of manipulating such massive bodies of natural matter and energy. They sank to the sand and leaned against each other with a sigh.
“That was fun,” Kithar said.
“Awesome,” Kithrin corrected her twin.
Then they became aware of shouting and the sound of people running down toward the beach.
“The twins saved us! They stopped the wave!” A young boy shouted followed by the much closer sound of feet, slow and heavy.
The Grandmaster appeared in front of the twins and crossed his arms.
“Are we in trouble?” Kithar asked, voice shaky but tinged with arrogance.
“We did just save everyone,” Kithrin added, not afraid to be proud.
“No, you are not in trouble. But you both are to report to Nurse Trevalen immediately and then, when she deems you fit enough, immediately report to the emergency Council meeting.”
“Yes, Grandmaster,” the twins said in unison.
That evening, as the twins walked to the Council rooms, they heard raised voices. It had been five hours since the incident and it seemed the on-going Council session was reaching a breaking point. Curious, they walked quieter, sneaking up to the door, wondering why the Council would be in such an uproar over the successful protection of the temple.
“They were sent away, centuries ago. Why now?” One of the Council members demanded.
“All things come in cycles Master Eredus,” the Grandmaster said, “the Druadin have kept the balance for many centuries, but it seems our efforts are beginning to not be enough.”
“Especially not with those twins. They are out of control! Where did they even learn to do that?!” Master Eredus continued to rant.
“They are very curious,” that was one of the Master Tutors. His calm voice cut through the tension.
“And curiousity is what sent Panoria into a spiral. Curiousity is dangerous for a Druadin, let alone those twins,” Master Eredus responded, referencing one of the old stories of an original Druadin from the first days of the Order who had studied the paths between worlds and gone mad for it.
“We are not yet discussing the twins. We are here to discuss the matter of the creature that caused this disaster. We all know this was no natural storm.”
“And yet, didn’t you laugh that knight, Eren Doma, away some months ago? I heard he was scouring the Continent for breaches.”
“I sent him on that mission. I did not laugh him off, but we cannot act with haste. That is chaos. We are not. We work with nature, slow and studiously, with care and confidence. Not half-truths and fearful nightmares,” the Grandmaster was firm as he spoke and the Council was silent.
Then the Grandmaster spoke once more, “Kithrin and Kithar Rath, please enter.”
Startled, the twins nearly fell over, stumbling into each other as they attempted to stay calm, collected and not give away anymore than the Grandmaster might expect about how long they’d been eavesdropping.
The twins were reprimanded and sent away with extra studies and practice work for what the Council saw as a “reckless move, regardless of the outcome,” as the Grandmaster had put it. The words remained on loop for the twins for many weeks after, but so too had the rush of power and control as they had made not only the earth itself, but the vast ocean, move to their bidding.
“I still miss our garden,” Kithar said one day, a year after the storm incident, as the temple occupants had begun to call it. The twins were spending a last free moment on their rocky outcrop outside of the temple before they were scheduled to leave the place they had called their home for the last twelve years.
Between the storm incident and their natural skill, along with their voracious appetite for knowledge; the Grandmaster had pulled the twins aside a week prior, declaring he wished to move them into apprenticeship with Sir Doma. They were to travel the Continent, helping him with the breaches and any other troubles faced by the communities they came across.
Kithrin was sitting with her back against his, looking out over the ocean, while Kithar was facing inward to the temple. “Me too,” she said, “but that’s why we’re going back. We can have it all again. Mom, dad, our garden, Ril and Rel. If everything is part of the Voice, why don’t we hear them?” Kithrin wondered out-loud about not hearing their pet fen-wolves.
Although they hadn’t heard their mom or dad either and they were definitely dead. She shuddered as she remembered seeing their bodies crushed under the stones of the taberna they had all been celebrating after their parents had gotten a letter from a powerful noble who not only wished to be their patron but who would pay for their relocation to the Imperial capital.
“I miss them,” Kithar said. Kithrin nodded and felt her resolve to build even stronger, to find a way to turn back time. Although Kithar wasn’t facing her, she could feel his agreement and then he spoke.
“We’ll find a way. Remember how mom and dad didn’t want us to keep Ril and Rel?”
The twins had found the fen-wolves as pups, half drowned at the edge of the creek that ran behind the sole taberna in the village. Fen-wolves were dangerous and numerous in the woods beyond the village, but the twins had felt a pull one day when they’d been at the market with their parents, selling the pottery the family was known for in the local area and the pull had led them to the wolf pups.
They knew now that the pull had been the Voice of the world, encouraging them to connect with the pups. The twins had done more than that, they’d picked the pups up who had miraculously survived their trip in the creek.
“The Voice wanted them to survive, wanted them to be found by us. Just as Sir Doma found us,” Kithar said, after moments of silence in which both twins had thought about their wolf-pups. They had run away when the Aragonian soldiers had stormed their village twelve years ago.
The Kingdoms were in chaos. The border fights had grown stronger since the death of the Empress twelve years earlier and there had been no new Empress chosen, for no girl-child had yet to be born upon the sacred timing of an eclipse, landing at midnight on the spring solstice.
“Wherever they are now doesn’t matter. We’re going back and fixing everything.”
“How are we going to fix everything though?” Kithrin said, always the pragmatic one. “Remember when we dreamed about the Druadin travelling through time? Should we really try? No, Kith, I’m not agreeing with the Master Tutors, though it does break a lot of the Code,” She stopped talking to glare at her brother before continuing.
“Once we get back, we’re going back to when we were younger, maybe before…so doesn’t that create a paradox…That could mess with our time now…” It wasn’t a question, so much as Kithrin thinking out-loud.
“I do see why we keep getting shot down when we ask about it because a paradox does go against natural order. An order I rather like. What if something happened to you, or me, in the new timeline? I don’t ever want to be without you on my side Kith. As Druadin we’re supposed to protect order, and judge those who go against it. Like the soldiers who destroyed our home.”
Kithrin felt Kithar shrug against her back. “Let’s just open a door and we can figure out paradoxes and whether or not the Order would kick us out before we get our knighthood later. Besides, we’re going back not as ourselves then, but as our older, future selves. Technically we’re different people. We’re Druadin now. We can do anything.”
Kithrin snorted, “don’t let Master Eredus hear that.”
“Master Eredus is grouchy,” Kithar retaliated.
It was Kithrin’s turn to shrug, not disagreeing, and silence fell between the twins.
“Come on, what do you think about this verse?” Kithar said, before he recited a series of lines he had learned that morning after pestering one of the temple teachers with questions that were veiled as academic curiousity, not the practical use and practice that the twins were really using the knowledge for.
Kithrin repeated the verse herself and said, “the bit about people going back and forth across the doorsill is a giant metaphor.”
“Obviously,” Kithar said.
“But for what?” Both twins said at the same time. They chuckled and then Kithrin added, “the bit about dawn and the door being round and open, seem a little more literal.”
“So we need to be somewhere at dawn, and create a round door?” Kithar said.
“Across the doorsill…what if that refers to a line. Like a space between, or a place where two different spaces touch,” Kithrin spoke her thoughts out-loud.
“Like the village and the forest?”
“Yes, but on a larger scale, like the size of the ocean, or the Continent. Something that mirrors the law of synchronicity–”
“The Edge of the World!” Kithar exclaimed, sitting up straight and turning to face Kithrin who grinned at him in response.
“Exactly!”
The Edge of the World was not so much literally the edge of the world, as it was an old name for the western coast-line of the Continent. Beyond it was the Aegis Ocean and perhaps, though no one had ever seen it, the mythical island of Eanalissimo. (But that is a whole other story).
“That’s it. We need to be at the Edge of the World, at dawn and somehow open a door. We can do this!” Kithar said, standing up and looking to the sky.
“It won’t be a literal door…” Kithrin hedged from her still-seated position. Kithar sighed, walked back and forth along the stone out-cropping for a moment and then spoke.
“What about that line in the beginning about the ‘spinning stones and the fire that doesn’t destroy?”
“We need to activate all the elements, including the astral,” Kithrin surmised. Kithar stretched out a hand and Kithrin took it, standing to face her brother. They could do this. They could turn back time!
“I cannot wait for tomorrow,” Kithar said, “it’s going to be awesome to travel, and save people. We’re going to be famous.”
Kithrin laughed, “I don’t know if I want to be famous Kith, but it is going to be awesome.”
“The Grandmaster is going to be so annoyed. He seemed to think early life experience will calm us down.”
“Never! I could face a thousand storms and I’d never be tired. I’ve got you,” Kithrin bumped her shoulder against Kithar’s.
“Always, Kith,” he said with a grin and they clasped hands, imagining all the chances they would get to practice their skills and especially all the practice with doors between worlds, the one thing Sir Doma had been focused on for almost as long as they’d known him.
****
Seven years later, Kithrin and Kithar Rath were at last, full Druadin knights, but they hadn’t gotten any further on their personal, secret mission. They had gotten stronger and had become famous across the Continent as the twins who showed those who went against the Empire what the Wrath looked like.
“A stupid pun,” Kithrin had said when the twins had first heard it, although she laughed as Kithar had jumped up with excitement.
That day had been a high point for the twins and their powerful reputation that, as they had laughed about that day on the outcropping, had gone against what the Grandmaster hoped.
They were not more humbled, not at all. Although the twins could agree that travelling the Continent involved a lot more mud and camping than they ever wanted; the power of their name alone could get them rooms anywhere for free.
As the end of their seven year apprenticeship ended, the Rath twins wanted to race off to the Edge of the World, but had yet to find an excuse to do so without coming clean about their plans.
The excuse arrived one month after the twins were named full knights. At last, they were free to do whatever they wished, so long as it followed the Code. So, the twins went before the High Council and explained how they wished to travel the Continent and help people who were still being affected by the wars between the Kingdoms that had still not let up, even though the Kingdoms had an Empress.
There was still too much blood between the Kings, their nobles and all their vassals. The Council ate up the sob story, although the Grandmaster stared at the twins a second longer than natural, causing Kithrin and Kithar to tamp down on their mental walls, not wishing for a whiff of their real plans to get out.
“It shouldn’t matter though! We learned everything about what we’re going to do from all the Druadin lore anyway,” Kithar grumped next to Kithrin as they walked away from what they had called home for nineteen years.
“It’s the Druadin Order, Kith,” Kithrin said, putting emphasis on the word “order.” They haven’t changed in millennia and won’t change because to do so would cause chaos, and I can’t fault them that much.”
“The rest of the Continent is in chaos and the Order isn’t powerful enough to stand up against all the Kings. Now, if we could get in the good graces of the Empress, the Order could actually impose order, rather than sending us out in teams or solo to help random villages or support a petty lord or two.”
“The Empress is a ridiculous position built on superstition and too much pomp,” Kithar snorted. “Our way is going to be better.”
“Exactly, so why are you grumbling? Oh right, you wouldn’t be my brother if you didn’t wear a grumpy face,” Kithrin grinned and knocked her shoulder against Kithar’s side. He rolled his eyes and knocked her back.
A fortnight later Kithrin and Kithar stood upon the edge of the cliff at the Edge of the World and with a look between the two, they raised their hands and pulled at the winds, the earth, the water, the fires in the belly of the world and the astral from the high skies.
As they pulled the elements together, they began to braid them. They moved in opposition to each other, and around and around in a circle. They began to run, making the elements into a blur of colours and then, together they threw the bundle of energy into the air, at the edge of the cliff and everything exploded.
The air cracked open, revealing a dark hole and that’s when all their plans, all their dreams, became insignificant.
Within the dark hole, they could see a thousand and one paths. Paths that they could have taken in this lifetime. Paths that alternate selves had taken. Paths that branched from alternate paths and so much more. They were frozen and that was all it took for the potential of chaos to happen and for the twins, who had always been together, to be torn apart.
Author’s Note: Although this story can stand alone, stay tuned this Sunday for When Blossom’s Fall Upon the Pond, a sequel to this tale.
Excerpt from WBTUTP
“Kithar should have been more focused on his escape, but as he paused, observing the Imperial gardens, his eye caught on those of a woman standing on the opposite side of the pond. She looked like a star. A star pointing toward home.”
[…] Read Part One: When Two Worlds Touch […]