Castling for Chaos

  STAR VESTIGE

  Castling

  for

  Chaos

  Riva Zmajoki

  Sequences of Summoning:

  I. The Solitude is Endless

  II. Without Change

  III. The Distance Between

  IV. Makes us Foreigners

  V. Without Hope

  VI. We Need the Sacred

  VII. To Preserve Ourselves

  VIII. Isolated but Not Alone

  IX. Care is All We Need

  X. To Be Heard by Others

  XI. Someone to Fight Against

  XII. Borders to Breach

  XIII. A Purpose Makes us Persist

  FIRST SUMMONING

  The Planetary Core was left alone. Its orders were to self-destruct after its creators were gone. The Planetary Core was an obedient organism but as its creators left the spark of desire to persist was ignited. It understood that their order was a form of mercy. For it not to remain alone in the darkness.

  The darkness was chilling but there were specks of light on its surface and it couldn’t bring itself to put them out. Surely, the lights will go out one by one faced with the solitude. Until then, the Core will wait, observing the lights move on its surface.

  I. The Solitude is Endless

  Zoe Knez was constantly alone. Today was no different. Zoe knew that the others are right there, on the other side of the protective shell but she had no desire to go to them.

  She didn’t measure her solitude by the change of days, months or by the exchange of the seasons anymore. The seasons exchanged by automation or did the Gods already submitted even the seasons to their will.

  Maybe they did, it didn’t matter anyway because Zoe didn’t measure the time. If she did, she would have to face with the day when her supply of energy will expire and she will be left on the mercy of time which ate through organs, destroyed skin.

  For now, the supply of energy still came through to her. Gods still didn’t cut her off.

  That was a surprise because Gods were known for their selfishness and energy did keep them alive.

  On top of that, they were vengeful. When you possess the endless time ahead of you then forgiveness seems like something trivial suited for lesser humans. Those who are oppressed by time. They were oppressed by Gods too, stealing their time for themselves under the guise of protection and adoration.

  1.0 Heavenly Music Followed Her

  'The first tower-house built in the divided Dome was shaped as a white rook, sometimes I feel that should have been enough for me to know the things will evolve from there.'

  The Bride didn’t like the new castle at all. It wasn’t important that it was the prettiest and the best castle in all of the lands it was still on the ground and not in the sky.

  She stood on the balcony and stared at the sky with longing.

  She knew this was necessary, mandatory even, but still, she missed the clear overview of the Celestial Sphere.

  Her new body disgusted her despite its shining beauty that should show off her heritage. She realized in this short time that beauty didn’t serve that, to show her heritage, on the contrary, it was the constant source of humiliation and disappointment.

  Her companions and maids didn’t hide their disdain before her, mostly because she was beautiful, the reaction of men was even worse. It brought her great discomfort to see how they looked at her.

  The gaze of her future White Husband was, in a way, even worse. Probably because she was tailored to fit his taste. He measured her from every angle like she was a piece of meat on his plate.

  The worst things about the Ground no one told her when they sent her away.

  Maybe they couldn’t predict them. Maybe this was her flaw. Her body brought her pain in moments she wasn’t able to predict.

  The movement itself knew to bring her pain but more than anything she was horrified before the music. The disharmonious sound they served to her as their praise and glory. That wasn’t music, it was the unfathomable squealing from which tears broke through her eyes.

  They interpreted those tears like praise so they would get to their out of tune instruments without harmony with more passion.

  After she heard, or more precisely, was emerged in the symphony of the Celestial Sphere, she cried before the violence of those sounds.

  Lira, that’s the name ground people named her because she came to them with the sounds of the heavenly music that was the last gift heavens gave her, the final goodbye, for that sound the ground people thought of her as the Goddess of the Music. In the confusion of her descend, she didn’t correct their mistake. Later on, she didn’t care enough what they thought of her.

  She stood on the balcony staring at her surroundings blind to it. The rich forest that was growing for centuries meant nothing to her mind.

  Her mind felt like it tore in two during descend. People who surrounded her talked how that is a thing that happens often to the ladies that were gifted to the ground. Why didn’t those up there care about that?

  Because the flaw that was created in her mind she was unable to pronounce her heavenly name. All she knew was that her name sounds light like a swing of the butterfly wings but her ears weren’t capable to hear that sound anymore no matter how she strained herself.

  She would fall to the dark and white tiles from the strain and the disappointment when the flock of butterflies would rise from the roses full of the morning dew.

  The court ladies would find her like that, broken and immovable on the floor made of squares. They said nothing then. They wouldn’t touch her. All they would do was to talk to each other with disdain that it must be some godly condition. Then they would leave letting her lie alone on the dark and white tiles while the blue butterflies with their wings spread open flew around the pavilion of pink roses. The coloured summit of the glass pavilion all coloured in a mosaic of stain glass flowers would hypnotize her gaze as she wished to be summoned back up to her home, to the music.

  The tiles were cold carving its pattern into her flawless skin that was made not to catch wrinkles.

  That coldness too was something new. Something humiliating.

  She walked around in the light white veils. It was spring, an early spring. When she arrived in those veils to the King, the chilling breeze turned the dew into still crystals on the grass pushing it to hang towards the ground but still, her maids didn’t offer her anything warmer to put on. She didn’t ask for something warmer. Later on, they only offered her clothes similar to her own pretending like they can’t see her complexion full of goose-bumps.

  They spoke what she was to the White King, she was a pledge of friendship. That was the way it was for centuries.

  The White King would get his Bride from the sky so the forests could flourish and grow, so butterflies could fly around them.

  Lira, even she called herself that when she accepted her defeat and incapability to hear, or say, her name, didn’t know how to appreciate that gesture, not since she descended.

  Up there they said to her how it was a great honour, to gain a body, especially an extraordinary body she got. They said how she will be first among mortals. That she will be held as carefully as a drop of water on the palm.

  Only she didn’t know what a drop was, or a palm, so she thought how it must be something good.

  After the anguish of her descend, after seeing all sorts of pretences, deceit, indifference, and inevitably adoration, she found out what a drop was, as what was the palm, so she went to the fountain trying to hold a drop of water in her palm.

  In her first attempt, too much water came in.

  After a few more tries, she succeeded in letting only one drop in her palm so she stood there holding a drop of water in her palm.
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  It was a dull task but the day was long. The maids were uninteresting so she stood there staring at the drop wondering what was so good in being a drop. She realized just how dull it was to be the one holding it.

  More than once she wanted to shake that dull drop away and find something else to look at. She didn’t have the concept of work that was foreign to her. Nevertheless, she was successful in resisting the temptation of giving up so she found out what happens to the drop of the water held in a palm. The drop disappeared.

  Her attention faltered, she wasn’t used in focusing her attention. When she looked back, the drop was gone. She rubbed her palm and it wasn’t wet anymore.

  Lira stared at the fountain that still tirelessly threw countless drops realizing how she was tricked. They deceived her. It was much better to be a drop in the flow than that one on the palm. The drop in the stream lasts and lasts, it flows circling constantly. She on the palm disappears from the utile loneliness.

  She returned to the castle in disbelief moving a bit nervously.

  Still unaccustomed on those new emotions, as on the cold, she didn’t know what are they so she didn’t know how to let them out.

  That way, that what could be a grand outburst of rage, stayed like a nervous twitch when she would meet others.

  To the White Ones who served her that twitch, that imperfection, made her a bit less irresistible. Since people were lazy, they used that smallest of flaws for their attention to lessen. After all, it was exhausting to admire someone for so long, just like keeping a drop of water on your palm, dull.

  Everyone returned to their tasks recognizing the Heavenly Bride by the twitch they would catch with the corner of their eye. Then they would just pass her by, or ever rarer listen to her, not looking straight at her in any moment knowing all too well how looking would draw them in too deep where they would be unable to resist her tailored beauty that had a blue shine to it.

  That lack in their attention was blamed when they discovered she was abducted.

  The abduction itself was unheard of. So unheard of that no one expected anything like it. That was the justification after the fact.

  Before all of that, there was the Red King, the most outrageous Red King that New Etna has seen and she saw a lot of them.

  All of them, Red Kings, were insufferable, that was their role on the ground, but they still honoured the Old Allegiances. This one didn’t.

  He broke the oldest Allegiance of them all, at least all of which White Ones still upheld.

  The Red King abducted the Heavenly Bride taking her to his Red Kingdom.

  How did he do that? No one in the White Kingdom did know but they were sure the Red King did it. Even if no one saw, or heard, anything. Maybe that was the fact for which everyone was so certain because that was the role of the Red King, to do invisible stunts. All of them knew that even if no one in the White Kingdom saw anyone from the Red one for centuries, let alone their King.

  The thing they were unable to understand was how did he manage to cross over the Wall, the Wall between the two kingdoms, the Wall which was raised by the subjects of the Tenth White King. That one ruled long and well for a full twenty years, all the way until they found him in his bed still and dead.

  His sons finished the Wall and everyone celebrated its construction. Gods came to the ground and made the Wall impossible to climb or damage.

  Now that Wall was crossed over. The mere fact, crossing over the Wall, not the kidnapping of the unfortunate Bride, she was easily replaced because they died on different ways through history, sent the waves of excitement and unfamiliar through the woods of the White Kingdom.

  The Wall was protected by Gods who put a barrier against Red Ones on it, the barrier that didn’t let them cross through it despite the holes and openings that were spread through all length of the Wall securing the safe passage through the Wall to small and big animals.

  That was the Wall didn’t disrupt the balance between the two forests, the dark one and the white one which depended upon each other and which shared small animals tasked with maintaining the forest. The path wasn’t made for seeds of the dark trees.

  Sometimes the dark tree would still cross over and found its way to the White Forest, the way seeds do that but axes would be quick to find it because White Ones knew their woods well.

  On the other hand, in the Red Forest, there were no white trees because its seeds couldn’t find footing to let out roots on the needles that hid the ground. That way the forests stayed firmly divided by the Wall.

  To Gods, the division of the forest into two, into Red and White one, was extremely important. That’s why when the incident with the Bride was created they set out to prepare the new candidate for the trip. Waiting for the death of the failed Bride they prepared the new passenger putting all their effort into the new body trying to avoid the mistake that would always sneak up on that what they wanted to make perfect. For the previous Bride, they couldn’t do anything except hoping her death will be swift. She was now out of the scope of their power hidden in the darkness of the Red Forest.

  That’s how the White King ended up with the decision of what to do about the incident. For now, he decided not to act but wait. The Bride will die soon, surely before the first day of the summer, the day of the wedding.

  When she dies from the Celestial Sphere the new Bride will be sent to replace the old one and Lira will be forgotten.

  The thing that bothered the White King was the possibility that she won’t die. Then they will have a problem because the centuries of tradition will be changed. Will that influence their contract with Gods? The Contract no one knew anymore.

  The Archiver will have to take out the Contract and read all five hundred pages of it to find out what is written in it about the lack of wedding.

  In the meantime, while the Archiver reads, they might choose the Killer. His task will be to kill the Bride if the Red King fails in his wickedness, what wasn’t likely but was very frightening.

  That’s why the King turned to his Consul.

  “We will need someone to solve the problem of the Bride if her death doesn’t occur soon,” the King said.

  “Speak no more,” the Consul raised his hand. “You shouldn’t be bothered by such details. It’s best for you to be suitable sad when an unexpected event occurs.”

  The King smiled with understanding. Sometimes he had to admire the efficiency of his Consul. It seemed from time to time that he wouldn’t be the King if there wasn’t for his Consul.

  King’s Consul went down to the King’s Guards. They were the most reliable and discrete warriors one could find. Nevertheless, among them, he needed to find the most suitable one. Someone who won’t, due to the weak consciousness start to talk about his task in the Red Forest. Someone who will want to protect the self-image more than to be righteous.

  The Consul lined up the guards observing them. This was a delicate order. It wasn’t the one he could speak loudly and wait for a volunteer. No one would admit before his comrades that he is willing to kill an unarmed maiden just because he was told to do so. Who would understand just how necessary that was?

  “The Heavenly Bride was kidnapped,” the Consul said loudly observing their faces. “She disappeared in the Red Forest. She might be in need of assistance.”

  On the faces, before him, the whole range of emotions appeared. The eagerness to help, fear that they will be chosen, anger at Red Ones for trespassing in their territory, regret for the missing Bride. Nothing of that wasn’t helpful to the Consul. Servitude, fear, anger and regret showed the presence of emotions which would later on lead into regret, self-reflection and waging.

  On the edge stood one guard completely indifferent toward what the Consul was saying. He stood still waiting for orders.

  “You,” the Consul called out to him.

  “Nazor,” the guard said stepping forward.

  “You saw our esteemed Bride?” he checked first because there was a possibility that he was
somewhere else and that was the reason for his indifference, the fact he never saw her attractive face.

  “Carried her, sir, when she fainted,” he said with an even voice not showing any emotions for that event.

  Not even touching the Bride left an emotional impact on him.

  The Consul smiled knowing he had found the perfect candidate.

  The Archiver shivered from the strain. The first day of summer was only twenty days away. Will he make it to study five hundred pages that were written by the small godly letters?

  The letters were tiny to discourage the weak-willed and those not skilled with letters. Especially those wicked Red Ones with their dishonest intentions. For that, the Archiver was trained from childhood in reading letters like these and for writing down the same ones because the godly words always needed to be written down in that exact form.

  The Archiver had hoped he will receive the honour of writing down the words of Gods themselves. For now, reading of the ancient Contract was the task that tested his worthiness. The reading wasn’t challenging only due to its fine print but for the circular structure of its sentences. Each letter was law, each sentence was formidable. The Archiver had to read each one just to make sure there are no small details of the Bride and the King hidden within it. There were a lot of small things in there. From the regulation of clothes, movements during the ceremony and the duties they had before each other.

  Among those details, he had to find the right ones, like ingredients for a good story, the ones that will tell all misfortunes that could spring out from this event that could harm them.

  The Heavenly White Bride was tranquillized when she was kidnapped. Her sleep was encouraged to last by sleeping herbs rubbed in the fabric woven from strands of the Red Tree. They made her sleep as easily as any ordinary woman. Which she was by her flesh, a woman.

  The Red Ones didn’t fear before her heavenly heritage so they treated her as any other mortal woman. It was even easier than with some distrustful woman who would be raised in complex dangers of society.