Tales of the Gleamwind I

Around that time people used to tell me, advise me to choose Lazio and follow my father’s path. Sometimes Aspyo, Oracle of Lineage and Trieno, Oracle of Idol were also among the Oracles recommended to me. Kayfe was considered a modest but quite respectable choice. Movra, however, was unspoken of. Not necessarily banned, but I do not recall a single time where any of my advisors or teachers talked about the Oracle of Magnet. - Memoirs of an Oracle.

“Why are you shielding us?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Sonora knew she was right even though she could not see what was happening, only feel it.

The already distant shouts and calls of the retreating crowd dimmed, then got completely silenced. An invisible barrier fell on the little house they were in, like a glass dome keeping whatever they said inside. Something inside her vibrated, shuddered as a response to whatever Movra had done.

“Then it really wasn’t a coincidence!” Movra’s misty blue eyes popped open. “You do have a connection to the Core! Listen to me: forget everything I told you last night. You have to choose Movra, you have to become an Oracle of Magnet. You have the gift, it would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

Sonora straightened her winter toga and cleared her throat. The vibration was pulsating all around her. They were inside something alive, something that was moving, shifting and reverberating.

“Let me go. Now.” Sonora was impressed her voice did not crack.

“Let you go? Do you think I am holding you hostage?” Movra’s confusion felt genuine and Sonora sighed in relief. “This is only an auditory shield against eavesdropping. Calm down, I need to know how much you know and understand about your rare genes. I guess nobody else really knows, or your stately father would have freaked out.”

“Freaked out? Why?”

Movra cocked his head and regarded Sonora with one of the most condescending looks she had seen in a while. Not even Rose Sitak-Lazio dared to look so disappointed in her. Sonora clutched her fists and clenched her jaw. She cursed herself for her naivety.

“Of course.” She corrected herself as quickly as she could, but the grimace from Movra’s face did not fade entirely. “But more importantly: what is going on? What gift are you talking about? What is this… thing that I am feeling?”

“It is the Core… the Shard itself.” Movra spread his hands, as if explaining something to a five year old child. “Oracles are supposed to have this connection, that’s how the Magnetoriat came to be in the fist place.”

Movra stepped to a closed window and opened it slightly. Sonora shielded her eyes from the orange rays of light piercing through the dim room, but when she opened it the bald man was already pointing at a minuscule dark dot in the twirling silver-blue Gleamwind. Every child knew what that dot was: their neighboring Shard, the closest one to them in the Magnetoriat Empire. Somewhere beyond that, the devouring Frontier marked the end of the world known to mankind.

“Someone had to make these pieces of rock float in the first place. Do you think they just woke up one morning and decided to fly among the clouds?” Movra continued. “The original Oracles had this gift in them, and figured out a way to save humanity from the grasp of the rotting ground.”

Sonora was unable to take her eyes away from the sky. It was humans, Oracles, who had raised them to the skies thousands of years ago. The rotting ground... a corrupted land overshadowed by thick, black clouds. Rotting, but stable. Unmoving… Sonora had heard of a supposed drug that made you feel like you were walking on solid, unmoving ground. She shook her head and brought her thoughts back to a more pressing matter.

“The Shards can be moved, then? Guided?” Sonora’s throat went dry. “If Oracles of ages past had used their powers to rise all these floating rocks into the Gleamwind, that means they had control over them.”

Movra nodded and closed the window. He grabbed Sonora’s shoulders tentatively at first, then his grip fastened. Before he could say anything, however, Sonora frowned at him and voiced a thought that has been pounding her conscience in the last minutes.

“But you are an Oracle of Magnet as well. You have the gift, you feel the connection.” Movra flinched away at her words. “You did nothing out there. If it wasn’t for me, you would have left all those people die.”

“It’s not like that.” He let her go, hands dropping at his side. “Look at me: I am… a mere shell of a man. I have wasted my life knowing nobody would believe me anyway, so I didn’t train my skills, I let them get rusty, dull. I became lazy and I let my ability fade to a mere shadow of what it could be.”

“But the other Movra Oracles? You said there were two.”

“They don’t have this- your gift.” Sour creases deepened the bald man’s forehead. “Or, at least, none that I know of. We all chose the Oracle of Magnet because we were looking for an easy way out of our responsibilities. Nobody expects much from us Movra… because they don’t know what to expect.”

Silence fell between them. A silence enhanced by the resonant dome cast upon the small house. Sonora kept her eyes on the man as long as she could, but when he said nothing she took her time to properly look around. A rough wooden square table with two chairs and two empty rows of shelves were the only furniture in the room. There was a closed door possibly leading to a bedroom, but nothing in there revealed signs of life.

“What is this place? I get the feeling you did not choose this house on a whim, am I correct?” Despite all the information dumped on her, Sonora was proud of herself for keeping her composure and the preferred structure of sentences.

“Is this really what you want to talk about?” Movra walked to one of the two chairs and set down after moving the other one close to Sonora. “There are some things that are better not be known.”

“This only makes me sure that I want to know where I am.” Sonora put her hand on the back of the chair but remained standing.

“Does the term Gonna’s House mean anything to you?”

Sonora twirled the word around in her mind for a bit, searching for a connection. She had heard that name before for sure, but did not know where to place it.

“I have heard reports talking about discovered Houses all under the name of this Gonna. And that said Houses were being shut down.”

Movra hummed pensively. He answered after scratching his stubble for a while. “Very well, if that’s all you know it is not my duty to tell you more.”

Sonora took a step closer to the bald man, then stopped herself to take a deep breath. This was not the time to be stubborn about something that could be learned later, from Rinaer, perhaps.

“So tell me, why did you take me to this… house in the middle of a delicate diplomatic event to tell me about a power, a gift that apparently I’ve always had in me and always will have? Why did you have to reveal this to me now? The other four Heads will be worried, not to mention my father.” Her father, who would have been proud of her complete sentences even in a confusing moment like this.

Movra ran a hand over his sweaty scalp and took some time to respond. Since Sonora did not join her at the wooden table he pushed himself away and stood up again. The light of the blazing sun, enhanced by the shimmering particles of the Gleamwind broke through the old shutters of the window and outlined the hunched man.

“Because you might be the answer. The solution to our feeble existence. We drift on these damned rocks not really knowing what to do, what to believe. Some people like to play kings and emperors, others are happy to live day by day, but we all know about the Frontier. It might be in a thousand years, it might be a mere ten, but some day all the Shards will be consumed by that dreadful nothingness and all we’ve done, created and lived for will be for nothing.”

Movra’s misty blue eyes shone with a resolve Sonora had never seen in the man. He went on: “Except if we do something about it. You feel the Core, you can sense its vibrations, that never stopping movement. That’s something nobody has been able to do since the first generation of Oracles, thousands of years ago. Something that has faded to myth. You are the key to our survival up here.”

The air was heavy with Movra’s expectations for Sonora’s first words after his monologue. But she didn’t respond. How could she, to something like this? The key to the survival of humanity? It was a concept so vast, so much out of her grasp that as she stood there alone with Movra in that cold, wooden shack it felt like something another version of her had experienced. Certainly not her. She fidgeted the hem of her purple winter toga to buy herself some time.

“You have to become and Oracle of Movra.” The man’s raspy voice broke the infinite silence. “You have to learn how to use your gift.”

“How do you intent to help me understand all of this if you do not possess these abilities? How will becoming Movra help me if you can’t even help yourself?” Her voice sounded distant even to herself.

“I might not have your powers, but I understand some of it.” He opened his arms: the shield that kept their voices in and the noise of the rest of the Shard out was still active and droning in a low hum.

“What… sure.” Sonora straightened herself. “What do you suggest I do now?”

“If you don’t choose to become an Oracle of Movra I cannot help you. You will be joining whoever you select and I will have to leave this Shard… probably forever.”

Later, as Sonora glided back to the small square next to the air docks of the village, the cold wind cut through her skin and made her shiver. There was nobody around to see her now, but she could feel the whole population of the Shard, no, the whole Magnetoriat, looking at her eager to see what she will do next.

She had not given an answer to Movra. How could she? After spending all of her life thinking that the Oracles of Magnet were all but a fancy joke? After convincing herself that the resonance she felt closer to the Core was just in her head? Movra was a madman.

He had to be.

Sonora shook her head and pulled the winter toga tighter around her tall, lean body. He had to be mad. But if he really was just deranged why didn’t Sonora refuse to to become Oracle of Movra right away? The resonance… the Gleamwind… The Shards… could it truly be all connected?

She did not hear the approaching steps, only the forceful hum of the halberds. A patrol approached her from behind and stopped a few paces from her.

“Rosevy! Where have you been?” Worry contorted Rinaer’s already wrinkled face. “We thought you… never mind! Your father is worried sick. The Heads and him are scrambling back to the palace but it took some serious convincing to stop him from coming after you himself.”

Sonora blinked in surprise, but took the hand Rinaer offered her as the silver coated guards encircled them and made their way back to the docks. “My father is worried about me?”

“But of course.” Rinaer’s voice was a bit too strained. “Why would you think otherwise?”

What am I thinking? Sonora sniffed. After all, I am the only heir, whether he likes it or not.

“We haven’t seen the Head of Movra, either. We hope nothing bad has happened to him in the commotion at the docks.”

Sonora’s mind raced to find an answer that would take the rescue party’s mind off of Movra, while not giving away their secret meeting. “I’ve caught a glimpse of him flee inland when chaos broke loose. I am sure he will make his way safely back to the palace.”

Rinaer nodded, but acted as if he had not heard what Sonora had said. His eyes scanned the young woman for any visible injuries, and did not let her arm go even when he found none on her.

The trip back to the palace was like a dream sequence. Sonora felt herself being pushed into one of the larger, cushioned gliders. Somebody told her something, then arms reached around her to fasted the pair of straps that kept her secured to her seat.

The glider took off with a deafening whoosh. If she felt cold before, Sonora was positively freezing now. Rinaer, who sat strapped to the seat next to her, saw this and offered her his thick fur gloves. Sonora refused them with a quick smile and tucked her arms into her toga up to her elbows.

The rocky surface fell away below them as the glider rattled and clanked its way to the open sky. A never resting metal beast. The wind beat at Sonora’s eyes as she tried to take in the sight of the full Shard. An enormous piece of land floating in the shimmering sky, being pushed into its inevitable demise by the beautiful, deadly Gleamwind. Unless she could do something about it. It was all she could do to not burst out in a hysterical laugh.

More powerful than a hundred men, the Gleamwind was something the people, and Sonora herself, revered. Some looked at it as some kind of deity; they prayed to it, woke up every morning hoping it would move favorably for them. It was not something anyone ever thought of, or dreamed of, controlling. Man did not control a force of nature like that.

Sonora could feel Rinaer’s doubtful eyes on her as she climbed out of the glider and carefully stepped on the evergreen lawn of the Oracle’s palace. She did not tell him what had happened to her, and since he did not find anything wrong with her, he did not pry. It was not part of his job. Yet Sonora knew it didn’t escape the old Officer’s attention that something in her had changed.

“Your father is most likely awaiting news of you in the Audience Chamber or his private study, but I can arrange you to have some time to collect yourself before meeting him.”

“Sonora!” Rose Sitak-Lazio strode down the wide front steps of the palace. Rinaer grunted, but the guards around her opened up to let the Oracle close to her daughter.

Her father’s eyes were wide and reddened by the wind, something that happened when you traveled on a glider on a particularly windy day. He blinked slowly, carefully to avoid hurting his eyes even more. The light blue and gold winter toga flapped in the wind, all the buttons and straps unlatched.

“Father. I am alright. I just got separated from the others during the commotion.” Sonora tried to look confident and sure of herself. Her father’s mouth thinned to a line.

“The Heads were not really pleased to witness you disappearing in the middle of a delicate crisis. How did you even…?” Rose eyed the circle of guards around them and dismissed a thought on the fly. Changing the subject in the middle of a sentence was not something Sonora had seen her father do many times, if ever. “Just come inside now. We are still looking for the Head of Movra, who has also gone missing, but maybe this is still salvageable. Come inside, talk to the Oracles.”

Sonora was more than glad to follow her father away from the cutting wind and into the well-lit entrance hall of the palace. Their steps echoed in the wide marble hallways of the centuries-old building. The foundations of the palace had been there since a time long before their dynasty took their place as Oracles, or the dynasty before that. Was the Shard already floating in the Gleamwind by then, or did the people construct it from the safety of solid ground under their feet?

This was something Sonora had never thought about before, but it made her head spin out of control and she had to sustain herself against the cold wall for a moment.

Her hands slipped on the marble and she felt her knees give away beneath her.

“Rosevy!”

Steps. Rushed steps. Slippered feet skidding around the polished hallway mixed with the clanking sound of the silver armored guards. Sonora had her eyes open, yet she could see nothing. Blurry black dots obscured her vision. The whole world buzzed and vibrated around her. It was all too much.

“The Core… Movra… I need to choose Movra.” She mumbled, then lost consciousness.