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And so, the sands of time stirred to the whisper of the wind. An eddy in the vastness of the cosmos, manifesting in ways too mundane for most senses to perceive. It was a knowledge guarded with esotericism, underestimated by the fools and forgone by the hasty.

The woman was neither of these although many would beg to differ. Many names she had been called, some more unsavoury than others. For few were more vulnerable to a thief’s dagger and gossiper’s tongue than a woman alone and unwed. Yet both of these she was, and she remained content as one who dared called this desolate land her home.

This was the life chosen for her and which she willingly shouldered – such was the way of the Astrologers.

Her name, Esmeralda. The Esteemed One.

Stargate Valley was her abode, in the fringe of Agelta Drylands overlooked by the larger world beyond the sand. But today, it seemed, she would not be so forgotten after all when her arcane senses tingled during one of her daily meditations and awakened her from her peaceful trance.

Khufra…?

But just as swiftly as it was thought, Esmeralda pushed the suggestion aside. The presences at the edge of her mind were older than the tyrant. Primeval, almost, as though originating from the Beginning Age. Neither malice nor Abyssal taints plagued these newcomers, so who could they be? Her curiousity invoked, Esmeralda rose from her sitting and headed towards the temple’s entrance although ever she kept her guard up.

“We should find shelter,” a rumbling, resonant voice could be heard speaking outside the nearer Esmeralda was to their presences, as deep as the roots of the Tree of Life.

This voice was not -- human.

Another voice answered him, so softly that Esmeralda could not listen to what was being said, yet this contains power quite unlike what she expected.

“…-storm be able to reach us?”

“I’d rather not take the chance,” the deep voice returned, worry all too evident in every syllable.

Esmeralda decided to take her chance for she sensed also the cause of their concern. A fierce sandstorm was brewing on the horizon, a prickling in the periphery of senses that went beyond the traditional five. From the shadows overcast by the stone slabs, she took a step into the waning sunlight and revealed herself to the newcomers.

“Greetings, travellers,” she said, a smile ready and unfaltering on her lips as their eyes found each other.

To her surprise, one of them was clearly a Tree Nymph, a nature spirit borne from days gone by and of which becoming an increasingly rare sight nowadays; that one such as he would appear in arid environment like Agelta Drylands was even more of an enigma. Green foliage covered his back; sturdy barks were his skin; and vines of undoubtedly immense strength served as more limbs than the readily perceived hands and feet.

“Ah, greetings, Lady –…?”

“Please, call me Esmeralda,” she said to the other guest: An elf-maiden of indeterminate origin. At the first glance, her complexion and hair resembled those of a Light Elf most commonly found in Moniyan territories yet there was an otherworldly aura about her; a detachedness from mortality and an unfathomable intimacy to the land – No, to the world, even.

“I’m Lunox and this is my companion, Belerick.” The elf indicated the Tree Nymph and curtsied in the manner of Azryan Moon Elves. “Please, we seek shelter from the sandstorm for the night. If it’s not too much –”

“Say no more. Let us go inside while the devil is still safely far away,” Esmeralda said and indicated the entrance from whence she came from.

The Tree Nymph and the mysterious elf followed after her without any question. Was it confidence or gullibility which afforded them such easy trust in a stranger? Or perhaps they too were in possession of some kind of sense like Esmeralda, sensitive to the Darkness and Chaos borne from the former?

In that very moment, Esmeralda’s arcane preconception whispered with the voices of the stars still yet hidden by daylight – and they spoke gravely for ones so unassuming. Years of training afforded her the mind to remain calm as she prodded further into this insight but the stars were silent from warnings. Their whispers were those of a lamentation for a light plucked out of its heavenly seat and set into a place it did not ask for…

…The stars were never quite so enigmatic as this, Esmeralda pondered. There were more to her guests than meets the eye.

Soon, they were within the safety within the walls of the red sand castle. Esmeralda settled them down in one of the sanctums available in the outermost temple. As the elven lady sat down on a cot and the Tree Nymph sitting with his back against the wall, once again Esmeralda’s heart was awash with the pre-conscience that all astrologers were taught to heed, and to do so judiciously.

“…Lunox, is it?”

“Yes, Miss Esmeralda?”

There was definitely something otherness about her. Esmeralda closed her eyes and –

To stand on the knife’s edge –

To see with eyes unclouded –

To take arms into the inferno others were fleeing from –

Esmeralda came to herself just in time for Lunox to attempt catching her from collapsing, a trail of lavender light in her wake as one would leave behind froths when sailing through water. As reflexive as her own flesh-and-blood limbs, the scarf of her Frostmoon and Stardust nudged her back into stability to stand before the elf-maiden. She looked into the heterochromia eyes of gold and mauve and whispered:

“You have a terrible gift and a great burden.”

“…Miss?”

In the background, it did not escape Esmeralda’s notice that the Tree Nymph, Belerick was preparing himself to act, though to what end he remained uncertain.

“The stars are singing for you, my dear. Their voices are many and their moods strange…”

Lunox exchanged a tentative glance with her companion and returned her gaze to the astrologer. A childlike curiousity was mixed within with a steely determination, heart-wrenching to bear witness to.

“It’s no mere coincidence that brings your wanderings to Stargate Valley. I know not why this is, but would you like to gaze into the Fates unfolding?”

“I don’t understand…”

“It is a gift of ours, the Astrologers, to look into the Eyes of Cosmos and see the glimpses of the working strings.”

A gift, yet concealed behind the glamour of its prestige was a curse which had brought demise upon her tribe at the hand of the Tivacan Tyrant. He had come with unyielding demands of someone with the ambition of a god, and so like a demon he fell.

But this time, it would be different.

Her current guests were as far removed from the Tyrant as they could be. Soothed by this reason, Esmeralda continued, “Honoured guests, would you look into my crystal ball?”

“Why me? And why are you offering this?”

“Tradition, to put it simply. When the stars whisper, we will listen.” Lunox still looked apprehensive so Esmeralda decided that perhaps a little motivation was in order. Focusing on her personal crystal ball located in her Divination Chamber, she appealed to the connections between them and summoned it forth in a dazzling display of glimmering dust and focused wind.

It came to rest gently in her palm, smooth surface reflecting her face and that of the elf’s conflicted expression.

“I appreciate this, miss, but we don’t have any money to pay for your service.”

Esmeralda could not help but let out a gentle chuckle. “Fear not, my dear. This is not a transaction but a present. All I need is your consent.”

Despite the immense potentials hidden within her, Lunox was now wearing the expression of a young girl – too young perhaps for the power that Esmeralda was now sensing from her. She was silent in her contemplation for a good while before eventually, slowly, nervously, she nodded.

Esmeralda did not realize that she was also holding her breath in anticipation. “Unfortunately, I can delve into one soul’s Fate at a time, so we will only be able to see yours,” she said, glancing towards Belerick to see what reaction he might have for this revelation.

The Tree Nymph ambled forward but gave no protest. In fact, his demeanour was one of curiousity that rivalled his elven companion.

“Come; join your hands with mine,” Esmeralda said as she put her other hand on top of the crystal ball. After a moment’s hesitation, Lunox stepped forward and offered her hand to the ball, her fingertips brushing against Esmeralda’s with a butterfly-fleeting touch.

Thusly Esmeralda began her recital, “Elf of Stars and Night, give me a revelation. The ominous seven stars, what do they portend?”

The Astrologer did not expect the twin orbs nestled into the crooks of her mismatched wings to begin coruscate in rhythm like heartbeats. A sun-like radiance radiated from the one in her bird-like wing and swathes of deep violet aura came forth from its darker twin held in the curve of the bat-like one. These seemingly opposing colours came together in a dazzling union and surrounded the three of them in blinding veils. All of Esmeralda’s humanly instincts were calling for retreat but her Astrologer’s training was whispering the folly of doing so.

So she held on.

The elf, seeing her composure, held her place as well.

The Tree Nymph remained behind her, a silent watcher.

The veils of aura flickered around them and receded as suddenly as they came into being, bringing away the surrounding of the temple’s indoor to one of a shadowy forest.

Azrya Woodlands.

There was no mistaking the sense of ancient past permeating every aspect of the environment that was all around them. From the tall, heavy-canopied trees, to the fertile soil carpeted in the greens of vegetation, to the stones and shades under the roots… this forest had witnessed the turnings of the world and held the long-gone memories of the transience like a scribe of the Land of Dawn.

Lunox looked around her, eyes sparkling with a mix of emotions too numerous to name. “Why are we here?”

So – she knew where this was, Esmeralda concluded. “A Fate of yours is tied to this place. What we are seeing now is only a vision.”

Just when she finished speaking, Lunox let out a gasp which drew their attention towards the source of it: A clearing ringed by glowing stones as well as a figure of an elven girl kneeling at the centre of it.

“Wait, is that… me?”

“Do not release the crystal ball!” Esmeralda warned and promptly she was heeded. However, Lunox could not be faulted for her momentary trance when the girl, for all the differences presented, was indeed Lunox…

…or Lunox as she would be, had her life followed a different course.

She was dressed in blue and crowned with garlands of blue and white blossoms. Blue were her eyes also, like the crystalline waters of the oasis. Instead of the bat-and-bird wings on her back now, this version of Lunox possessed the translucent, glimmering wings of a butterfly, one azure and the other the pastel colour of a pomegranate. There were no twin orbs which decorated them; instead, two little fairies – each corresponding to the colours of her wings – were circling her in a merry, spiralling dance that caused a small smile to appear on the other Lunox’s face.

This Lunox did not appear to realize the presences of the newcomers nearby, and why would she? Esmeralda knew that this was only a vision made possible by the webs of astral magic to channel their visions rather than presences.

“I know, I know,” the butterfly-Lunox was saying, seemingly in reply to a voice that was lost to the rest of them, “we’re late already. We should return before Father and Mother become too worried.”

Esmeralda did not need to see to perceive the elf’s tension from the mere fingertips that were touching to hers.

“‘Father and Mother’? They’re… alive? Here?” The Lunox in front of Esmeralda whispered, her eyes wide and their inner lights flickering, “I… I can no longer remember them clearly but… I’m not alone in this Fate? They don’t have to di–”

“You both sound just like them too!” The butterfly-Lunox giggled and sprang to her feet but her leap was lengthened with the fluttering of her wings into a graceful flight. Even though she passed only within a few steps of her alternate self, she did not perceive the desperate beseeches spilling from the lips of Esmeralda’s Lunox.

“Wait, I must see them – I want to remember – Take me with you –”

“Lunox! It’s dangerous –”

However, before Esmeralda could see if Lunox would oblige her or follow after the flight of her other self, the orbs on her wings shone once again with their blinding displays of gold and violet. Lunox was straining, perhaps to pull herself from the crystal ball but was thwarted by a force foreign to Esmeralda’s arcane proclivity. It surged like storms and restrained like the chains of a curse, but even then Esmeralda was struck with another arcane insight that it was still only a fraction of its truly unbridled grandeur.

But these forces were not unknown to her for Minos Labyrinth was once rife with it. It was long before Esmeralda’s time but the memories of her ancestral lines confirmed what she had been tentatively suspecting.

This innocuous elf girl, Lunox, was a Keeper of a Twilight Orb.

The vortex of twilight colours engulfed them once again despite Lunox’s desperate pleas to remain. How Esmeralda wished there and then to possess the power to grant her this small wish, but alas! She was only a messenger, as helpless to the whims of the Twilight Orb as dandelions in the breeze while they were all whisked away from Azrya Woodlands –

When the auras of the Twilight Orb consented to release them, Esmeralda, Lunox and Belerick found themselves unwittingly in a forest of a different kind. A wilderness abandoned rather than untouched for among the prevalent nature, peeked the hints of once glorious civilizations in the form of stone ruins, defiled statues and grand stairways to rival the most luxurious palace a human would construct.

Esmeralda could not tell where they were but one thing was evident: This was no Azrya Woodlands.

Belerick’s voice rumbled suddenly, “These… are the remnants of Ancient Ones…”

Lunox, still hunched over the crystal ball and mourning at a wish so mercilessly denied, found within herself the strength to take in her surroundings at Belerick’s prompt. Esmeralda tried to recall what she knew about these Ancient Ones, yet only blankness she could draw from the depths of her ancestral knowledge. She heard of them, mostly as a legacy of the Holy Light prevalent in Moniyan Empire but never had she come into such close proximity to one of their fabled wonders. If this was how their ruined leftovers were, the Astrologer could only dream of its glory when this was a place living and breathing with its enigmatic natives.

She was still caught in the spectacle when light cascaded upon them as though a miniature sun had come into being above them.

But it was not a sun which was responsible for this, but this Fate’s version of Lunox.

Silence reigned over the watchers as other-Lunox descended in their midst with grace that was more angelic than elven. She did not alight fully on the cobblestoned floor but hover an inch above it on gossamer wings that shone with the cerulean and golden light of a different Twilight Orb. Kind yet sorrowful eyes gazed upon the valley below them; there was no longer the innocence or the childish delight as it had been in the eyes of the butterfly-Lunox.

As before, they were not perceived to this Fate’s native Lunox although Esmeralda could see how longingly the one who had come with her wished that this could be different. However, even her curiousity was tempered with caution when the other Lunox crossed her hands over her breasts and downed her golden-crowned head in the traditional prayer of the Moon Elves.

“I am sorry… so sorry…” she whispered without an audience save for the ineffectual watchers from a different reality. “Maybe I was too late. Maybe I could have done more.”

Then and only then realized that it was not just the valley she was surveying but the figure running through the jungle. Humanoid, yes, but he trailed behind a vile aura that made even the watchers recoil. Nothing alive or mortal could have produced this deep evilness, the Astrologer pondered secretly, and even the Tyrant’s search for power had corrupted his mind and soul before he could attain anything near what this… human… was emitting.

Unless –

“I do not wish for blood upon my hands…”

The traveller-Lunox watched her other self avidly at this as horror came over her features.

“…but if there’s no hope of saving him from the evil god, then I will do what is necessary.”

Lunox opened her mouth as her alternate self summoned forth the aura of Chaos and Order into her hands –

– and the Twilight Orb of gold and violet in her wings answered also after their own manners.

This time, it was no longer unexpected but the transitions remained an unnerving experience even to Esmeralda. The forgotten world of the Ancient Ones dissolved before their very eyes and perhaps for the better, for the Lunox of that reality had ascended into the sky wreathed in an unforgiving light worthy of the very Celestials –

The aurora of gold and violet surrounded them once again, as blinding and disorienting as it had been the first instance. Lunox held her breath this time and Esmeralda, taking pity upon her predicament, shifted her grasp on the crystal ball so as to allow her to hold Lunox’s hand in her own.

Lunox was trembling despite her eyes betraying little of her unease.

“We are nearing the end,” Esmeralda whispered, “hold on, my dear.”

“I… I will try.”

Without any warning, Lunox collapsed to her knees as the colours of her Twilight Orb was bled away and infused with the deep golds and scarlets from beyond time and space. Esmeralda fell with her a second later for her senses were suddenly overwhelmed with an arcane storm; not even Belerick could protect them against the onslaught on all fronts such as these –

“The daughter of eternity will lead you upward.”

None of them realized the other-Lunox among them until they were spoken to in a voice that was both too silent and too loud.

They turned around as one and beheld a version of Lunox that was unlike her previous incarnations. Auras the colours of blood and sun encircled her descent from above, both a judge and jury.

As cunning or compassionate as needed be.

There were no eyes which could be perceived from this Lunox, hidden as they were under the monk’s cowl and black silk that served as a blindfold. Nevertheless, there was no doubt in any of them that she was regarding them all equally – aware of the watchers, unlike the previous Lunoxes they had visited. These alone would have disconcerted them even before she unleashed her wings and revealed themselves as bearing the halves of Twilight Orb too uncannily similar to the eyes of some monstrous creatures and glaring down upon the hapless travellers.

“The Future is where I am standing, Keeper, and I come here for a reason,” the other Lunox said, a whisper of steel underneath silk. “Your very existence is the reflection of this world.”

All of Esmeralda’s training came to naught in the face of this soul, burning so brightly that it took every ounce of her willpower not to let herself be drowned in the surges of her overwhelming Chaos and Order. Belerick fared no better despite being an ancient spirit of the land and endured the barrage with all the might his vines were capable of.

Of them all, the only who could meet her unseen gaze was Lunox herself.

The other Lunox glided towards her kneeling self and took her face in the hands poised as though in supplication. The red, red lips found her counterpart’s forehead to kiss with an almost-reverence that made her shudder as though from sudden iciness.

“Against the dying of light, remember: Guard everything the Ancient Ones have created.”

Before Lunox could voice out the innumerable questions in her mind, she was shoved backwards by the seemingly fragile hands, dragging the rest of them into the curtains of dawn’s light and crimson blood –

And they were unceremoniously returned beyond time and space and into the interiors of the Stargate Valley temple where they had started. Esmeralda was the first to come to herself and discovered that they had all succumbed under the pressure of their travels; the crystal ball instrumental to it all was now rolling away into the dark corner of the sanctum without anyone’s firm grip to keep it in place. Deep groans echoed through the space as Belerick struggled to recover his balance while Lunox…

She was kneeling, her head down and expression concealed behind the cascade of flaxen-and-black hair. The orbs in her wings remained blindingly, painfully radiant for several seconds before waning into a steady glow that cast her features in the sharp contrasts of light and darkness.

Her body was still aching but Esmeralda forced herself to ignore her fleshly discomforts and rushed forward. Her arms took her in and suddenly, all the memories of Lunox’s alternate selves became shards in her thoughts when Esmeralda felt the fragile shivers of the body too small to shoulder the burdens of the world.

“I’ve always known it…” came the whisper from inside the circles Esmeralda’s arms, a voice who could have belonged to any of the girls happily walking down the streets of Eruditio or dancing in the gardens of Azrya or playing in the courtyards of Moniyan mansions…

But she was neither of them and she was here instead to lament into Esmeralda’s embrace. “…and if that is my Destiny, I will fulfil it.”

Alas, an astrologer was no more than a messenger to those who would look to the stars.