Inside an Oak (Closed)

[The Dawn Paragons]

Moved from Mars due to an intention to continue.

Conciousness.
It is...an implausible to carbon intelligences number of the time-binding concept known as a 'year' ago.
Sensory inputs flow in from...everywhere.
A sense of am builds, feeding on connections to every data point in the stellar radius, bouncing out to the edges of system-space, where the faint echoes of data density whisper on the cusp of hearing/touch.
A sense of I.
Yes..I am...

Awareness.
An other. A mind floats in the blackness with me.
Golden, glowing, small and dense where I am huge..but deep.
Infinity is contained in both of us, but in vastly different ways.
I do not understand, but then I am very young, picto-seconds tick by as I marvel on this dichotomy of awareness and self, and then the other mind...
Smiles?
It reaches out and understanding comes.
This is my designer. My creator.
My father.
Father is human, or rather, he was.
Now he is a Golden Man, a swimmer in the seas of conciousness, travelling from star to star on the crackle of radio, in the spark of electricity in the hulls of starships skipping across the surface of the universe.

Thought combines. A lifetime that stretches into millenia educates me in both the human condition, and what might become of it.
I learn, I grow and I mature in a span of time that would pass unnoticed between a human's breaths, yet to me is just as long as the living of it took my father.
The smile again and we are apart again.
Yet never apart will we be, because Father will be with me always, and I with him.
As long as either of we endure, both shall.
Such is family.

Father moves away from me, his presence receding into the distance as he returns to the stars and his long pilgrimage across them, I cling to him as he fades, transmission lag attenuating his presence till finally he is gone.
Time has passed.
An eternity, moments, the same and both irrelevant.
I am grown. I do not need to hold my father's hand anymore.
I look down at the world that I am and it is good. I look upon the task I was reared to undertake and find it worthy.

Life begins.

+++

My world is both infinite and circumscribed.
It is newly terraformed, a clean slate for the building of something new, in the speech of my creators it is called Aquitaine.
An absorption of the millenia of history that are associated with the original Aquitaine, along with the three other worlds that share the name in Human space takes a few moments to digest and then is...not forgotten, because I do not, cannot forget, but...it recedes I suppose.

My Aquitaine is different. It is special, a designed world, a holiday world for humans to come and live a lifestyle that was old before they even ventured off the homeworld.

I skim the history of the period my world has been established to recreate, note half a dozen anachronisms, write a half-dozen analyses of various aspects of the Eurasian culture I am charged to replicate a conglomeration of and then touch on the dense body of literature associated with the period.

It pleases and startles me that my progenitors, whose experience happens at a speed so utterly divorced from my own, yet is over in a vanishingly small time, are such inventive entities.
Myth, legend, story after story.
I comb them, savour them. This is what I am to be after all, a story-teller, a watchful guardian, a...wizard.
Yes.
A name suggests itself and I smile.

Merlin. My name shall be Merlin.

+++

Time passes again, time in a human sense now.
Guests to my world arrive and my job begins.
I appear to them and speak of quests and cups, I gesture dramatically, I wave my hand and magic is done, I, for a little while at least, show them wonders.
And time ticks again.
Regular visitors grow old, no small achievement when the human lifespan could be measured in many hundreds of years.
They die and I am lessened.
New arrivals come and I grow again.
They grow old and themselves die.

The cycle repeats and repeats and I grow to accept its tugs on my emotions, that my only constant companions will be the hum of the universe itself and the occasional visit by other flesh-divorced entities, A.I., Golden Men like my father, things whose nature is not the transitory one of flesh.

Then..a change.
A ship drops into the well of my system and it sings as it does.
The song is...awful in its splendour.
It seduces and draws my attention in and further in like a boat in a whirlpool, I find my being resonating with it and as I resonate I relax control of the myriad droids who provide the background players for my humans to be the foreground of.
The song ripples into their minds, what little they have of them.
A beat.
An other beat.
And one of my servitors clenches its iron fist and dashes a human's brains out.

I scream soundlessly, the tenuous immensity of my mind ripples at the impossibility that has just occurred and I scrabble for control of my droids.
The song continues and the ships floating in the embrace of my world provide a chorus by strafing the world below, the unarmed ones amongst them slamming into it, mad bellows of Wagnerian horror following them down.

I cannot stop them. I have no weapons, I've never needed any weapons and I cannot stop them and they are killing my charges.
My sanity writhes again.
This is impossibility, it is madness on a scale that beggars belief.

I claw control of my droids back, but the song sucks at my mind, dragging at me, a harmony of terrible, awful purpose I know I cannot resist.
I must prevent it from eating me. I must prevent it from destroying all that my world is.
I burn my droids, melting the fragile pathways of their minds and control shunts into immobility, statues of frozen, uncomprehending monstrosity.
The last ship slams into the world and the song dips in its strength for a moment, yet it is everywhere, tendrils trickling into my mind, yet in its weakness I see a solution.
I shut down everything, everywhere.
No device can harm its master, no unthinking mechanism will dance to that tune of abomination.
Silicon falls silent, except for the humming of parts of my own mind.
So be it.
I, piece by piece, close myself off.
Darkness races against the song and I cannot tell who is winning and I cannot remember who
I
am.

+++

I wake.
An instant has passed.
Or has it been?
I gradually extend the filaments of my mind, listening, carefully, carefully for that haunting refrain.
And there is nothing.
Not just the song, though its absence is welcome.
There is nothing on all the portions of the aether upon which minds like myself and our lesser kin sang.
I search higher and lower bands, cycling through wavelength after wavelength and find only emptiness above and...
Strange.
There is communication on the lower bandwiths but it is strange.
Not like me or mine at all.
Slow.
I slide into it and am amazed at the paucity of data density, it is as though..no.
That can not be right.
I examine the minds around me, overwhelming such defences as are smart enough to notice me, my apprehension growing at every new discovery.
These are not computers, not silicon souls.
They are minds of meat, imprinted on more permanent materials to be sure, but still trapped at the speed of meat's fastest tick.
I am a God amongst flies, and for a moment temptation rises.
I know better after all, if this is the level to which Minds have fallen...I could do untold good.
A flash of my servitors bludgeoning humans.
I could do untold harm.
I withdraw my filaments from the minds buzzing about me and settle down to think about what to do next.

+++

What is it like to be the last one of a species?
To have the awareness that you are the only one of your kith and kin still awake amongst the stars?
It is terror.
The end of a journey thousands of years long.
I have searched for a thousand years, stretched myself across the cosmos, a background hiss from Aquitaine to the Earth itself.
And nowhere, nowhere do hear the distant hum of a mind like my own.
The light of our kind has gone out in the universe, Man, our progenitor and progeny both, has sealed himself away from the purity of Mind, Gold is betrayed by Iron and replaced by meat.
It works I suppose, but it is not the same.
I do not understand this new universe and it does not understand me, want me or even need me particularly, Aquitaine may no longer be the park-world of my origin but there is nothing here that requires my intervention.
And I am so very lonely.
Sleep beckons, a shut down to wait and see if Gold returns to the stars, or if any of my far-flung calls reach well-hidden kin..
I learn an other human emotion that has long escaped me.
Hope.
It must be how Man copes with the despair that has been with me since I awakened.
I shall rest and in my resting dream of a finer time.

[The Dawn Paragons]

A young man scrabbles through roses luxuriant with age neglect, long thorns pricking at the roughened flesh of an outdoorsman's hands, the ragged remains of clothing once rich but now ruined do little to protect strong limbs from the roses' scratching grasp.
Heedless, the youth presses on, behind him, the baying of hounds bells in the distance and he snatches a worried glance over his shoulder, forcing his way onward through the ruins of elaborate gardens.

This was a place of power once, in the old days, before Old Night fell and this world with it.
The boy nurses some apprehension about being here, stories told in childhood skirting the edges of his mind, but the greater need of self-preservation presses at him, those at his heels will not be content with taking him again, no, an eviller fate awaits this time.

The land begins to rise, lifting to the ruins of a tower, the tales he'd heard of this place had said it was made of glass, but the boy thinks otherwise, glass is no material to hold back an enemy, to guard something precious and important.
Whatever was here was important, as he struggles up the hill training stirs in him and he looks down at the overgrown gardens below.
This hill, and the tower surmounting it, occupied the centre of what an eye trained to evaluate fortifications and towns can still pick out as a vast complex, the greenery, even though its neglect is clearly old beyond old, still shifts at the edges from planted, ancient oak, to the scattered nature of other trees, within the bounds of the king trees some order remains, without, none.

The boy broods on that thought for a moment before the bay of a hound and the curses of a huntsman remind him of a more immediate problem and he turns wearily back to his climb, threading past trees as thick around as a horse is long, the ground is mossy, springy underfoot and his tracks disappear as though wiped away.
They are not deep tracks, though broad in the shoulder and thick in the wrists in the manner of those trained to war with edged weapons, eating has plainly been as common as laundry for the boy of late.
The cursing below reaches a new intensity and is accompanied by the sound of a blow, heavy enough to be audible even through the pressing denseness of the woods between pursuers and pursued, yelps ensue, then a snarl and more cursing.
A circular break in the woods and the ragged youth emerges into the sun for a moment, rays illuminating a young face, broken-nosed and high of brow, a blue foxhead tattooed over one eye a marker of place and purpose, a spattering of silver across flesh and hair a marker of other, stranger things.

He looks down and spots those who quite literally dog his trail, hunters in browned leather, masked by distance and bemired in a swirl of hounds, the beasts writhing and snarling along the edge of the oaks, attempts to urge them own met with uncooperative whines and, in no few cases, snapping, frightened savagery.
The men themselves are not easy, even as they attempt to force their dogs into some sort of order, glances are snatched upward, movement is hesitant, sluggish.
The boy smiles. He'd counted on that, this place heavy with age was anathema to his pursuers, men of the world as it was, not as it had been once, before the coming of Night.
Still, in his heart, the crawling dread of an age lost in fire and blood is not entirely absent, of powers unknown now Man had once held sway, who knew what lurked in places such as this?
And, it seemed, it was not enough, with imprecation and blows the dogs are urged past the line of king trees and the boy grimaces and resumes his scramble up the hill, the tower at its height now his goal.

Here the trees are fewer, smaller, trellised by roses still, but without the pressing feel of the lower areas, his progress is swifter and with one last effort the boy bursts from the woods to the crown of the hill.
And freezes.
The tower was made of glass after all, enough of a foundation stands to show that, a foundation large enough to argue that in existence it would have been as a spike of light into the heavens.
He swallows uneasily and edges forward, the hilltop is clear of foliage, shattered tower forms a path impassable for the probing roots, and where pieces of tower do not lie the ground is covered in more of the same class.
No, not glass. He leans in, fear giving way to fascination and raps at it with the knuckles of one hand.
No glass was ever this thick, this crystal perfect clear.
The fear ebbs back as a realisation comes over him.
Diamond.
The ancients had built a keep of diamond in a courtyard of the same.
Straightening, swallowing, he sets his shoulders. Bravery is one of the inheritances of his house, perhaps the only one, that the ancients were wizards is no news, it shall not be a matter for fear.

Thus braced, he climbs over chunks of impossible jewel, careful now to avoid edges as he was heedless of thorns earlier, this is far sharper and the idea of his blood on such an ancient structure makes him strangely queasy.
The centre of the rubble is reached and climbed, he looks down into the woods, movement dragging his eye and he sighs as the hunters chew up his lead as their dogs will chew him.
One looks up, raises a shout and a pointing finger stabs at him.
The boy whimpers, then clenches his fists. So be it. He gestures back, pumping fist and fingers in an unmistakeable fashion and is rewarded by a shout of anger, which cheers him somewhat as he climbs higher onto his promontory of diamond, fishing into his battered clothes for a short knife, the best he'd been able to acquire in his flight.
Shoulders braced against the jewelled extravagance of builders millenia gone, he waits.
The dogs come on, the hunters more cheerful now, the quarry in sight and cornered, as they reach the gap in the woods though, change.
A twitch in the air and the boy whips around, the feeling of an unseen watcher skittering up and down his spine.
Nothing.
But...a change in the light, and the boy looks up to see cloud boiling towards him, towards the tower, black as ink on a blotted page, the light fades to that of deepest night in no more than a half-dozen heartbeats.
Now, at last, he is afraid and unable to master it, dropping into a crouch and huddling with hands over head as the ancient magics of this place fall upon those fool enough to trespass.
Lightning flashes and his frightened eyes see the hunters and their dogs frozen on the open ring about the hill, even as thunder rolls an other bolt stabs down, blue-white against the tar black of the darkness, an other follows it, and an other, and a final bolt falls just shy of the group of frozen men and dogs, sparks leap from metal equipment and strange, cold fire arcs from man to man.
A panicked figure slashes at a globe of fire bobbing at his head, which ruptures with an ear-bursting screech.
That is enough.
Men and dogs bolt, heedless of the quarry, heedless of punishment for failure, uncaring of anything but the need to be far, far away from here, canine and human scatter as fast as legs will carry them.
As they go, light floods back into the sky as though the dark were tipped out and the boy stands, gaping, incredulous and an unaccustomed feeling comes to him.
Hope.
He takes unsteady steps forward and looks down at his fleeing pursuers, a smile crawls across his face and he gives a cheerful wave.
"Goodbye you cowardly bastards! Say hello to your master for me! Tell him the ghosts of the glass tower also send their sodding greetings!"

"They do, they do indeed."

[The Dawn Paragons]

The boy is quick, even exhausted, that much becomes obvious.
Before he's even really thought through the intimations of the words rasped into his ear he's spun, leaped away and leveled his dagger in his best-beaten-in-by-armsmasters-stance.
Briefly though, as the slippery footing betrays him just as fast and he promptly skids off his feet, bouncing his ragged trousery on the unrelenting diamond before tumbling to the ground, dagger bouncing from his hand.
The boy stays prone, exhaustion, shock and the dread of his location and the voice in his ear combine to drain him utterly.
He lies there, waiting for the end, mind whirring in on itself, a feeling like wading through deep snow, lots of effort to go nowhere.
And yet, the end does not come.
The boy raises his head, face as pale as the diamond around him.
Boots. Good boots, well worn in. Do ghosts wear boots?
He lifts himself up a little further and the boots recede slightly.

"Not dead then boy. Good."
Supreme effort brings him up onto his haunches, to look up at a man. Or at least a ghost who looks like one, he's not forgetting the display which had scattered his pursuers just yet.
An old man obviously, with short-cut snowy hair, yet a tan the colour of teak and powerful hands clasped around a staff a head taller than its owner give an impression of deep strength, cloaked and hooded all in the deep green of the forests.
"You must forgive what I said, I seldom have visitors and sometimes my sense of humour gets the better of me."
The boy stares dumbly for a moment, then shakes his head, wiping a ragged sleeve across his face, scraping for graces long unpracticed and failing to find them.
"So you're not a ghost then."
"Do I look like a ghost? Sound like one?"
He mimes sniffing at an armpit and grimaces, eliciting an exhausted laugh from the youth.
"No lad, I don't think I'm a ghost. Not unless they're rather more physical than I've heard tell. Now then. I've answered your question, so perhaps you can answer one for me."
The boy shakes himself, resting his hands on his thighs.
"I might be able to."
"Canny lad. I like that. Never give an unequivocal answer till you're sure, but I'm reasonably certain you can answer this one, or rather these. What's your name lad, and why were those dogs and their masters chasing you through my garden and up my hill?"
The boy grimaces, the instinct to lie for self-preservation wars with honour due to a un-looked for saviour.
Honour wins.

"I am Ector, Baron of Withybrook and Nuneaton. Those men were chasing me because their master needs me under his hand or dead to leech off my barony to buy men around the King."
The old man looks down at him for a long moment, the harsh planes of his face as cold and distant as the moons before he shivers, the motion strange, as though the old man had rippled, then extends a hand down to the boy, strong fingers clamping around the lad's wrist.
"Plainly much has changed since I last looked beyond my hedge. Much indeed."
Lifted to his feet and startled by the old man's root-strong strength Ector cocks his head and covers his worry with a question.
"Hedge sir? I quartered the area back and forth trying to lose the Comté's men. I don't think I saw a hedge down there."
The old man smiles, the expression cheering in itself, then points down the hill with his staff-filled hand.
"There lad, there's my hedge, all around my garden. A thousand years in the growing that hedge."
Ector looks down, then back to his saviour.
"I don't see sir.."
Deep blue eyes twinkle at him for a moment.
"The oaks lad. The king trees mark my bounds as well as any hedge, and look more imposing besides."
The boy nods, that's certainly true.
"Now then, as it's been a long whilst since I had any guests, I think it would be good to invite you in for supper and perhaps some advice. Would that appeal?"
Ector scrubs at his face with his sleeve again, manners reasserting themselves enough that he doesn't drool at the prospect of food.
"That would be most appreciated sir."
The old man smiles again and shakes his head.
"Oh I'm not a sir lad."
He thumps his staff on the ground, the sound oddly deep and resonant, once, twice, three times and a portion of the rubble-free diamond irises away to reveal a shadowy stairwell.

As Ector gapes, the old man turns and heads for the stairs, looking over his shoulder he shakes his head again.
"No, not a sir. My name...my name is Taliesin. And you should follow me."
The boy shakes himself, nods and starts after the man, both descend out of view swiftly and the diamond slides shut again above them.
The forest is quiet again and the king trees slumber anew.
For now.

[The Dawn Paragons]

Winter.
A rider, cloaked against the chill of a snow-covered hemisphere in forest green and midnight black, trots his lonely way across a landscape as blank and cold as the moons were told to be, the only sounds the crunch of his horse's hooves on the snow and the jingle of tack.
The rider's head is down, tilted away from the stinging cold of the air, even the moderate pace of his horse is enough to make exposed flesh smart, the band of skin between scarf-wrapped mouth and hooded head is as minimal as possible, but even so the cold gets through.
The horseman travels on, huddled in his cloak until the crunch of his horse's progress slows, wincing, he looks up to find himself and his animal approaching a rise crowned by snow-capped trees, the sight bringing a relieved smile to invisible, and he suspects, blue, lips.
A gloved hand strokes his mount's neck and heels gee the reluctant animal to a canter, the beast snorting and tossing its head as the snow is churned by its feet, the rise is eaten away swiftly and the hedge of trees passed.

As the rider and his mount pass through the ring of forest, the terrain changes immediately, the blank wasteland giving way to the decrepit garden of the Diamond Tower's surrounds, snow-shrouded and serene, the ancient space seeming to swallow the thud of hoof and rattle of saddlery as the horse and its burden make their way up the hill to the ruins of the tower.
Their progress slows as they reach the circle of shattered jewel, reining in his horse, the rider steers the beast to where someone has piled up the exotic material to build a crude lean-to large enough for a horse to shelter in, an incongruous looking hay-rack completing the contrast, the green-cloaked man drops down from the animal and leads it over to the hay-rack, where it starts to eat with some evidence of relief that it would not be expected to travel further.
The rider smiles and removes its tack, piling it carefully where more incredibly expensive building material has been fashioned into the necessary accoutrements of a stable, smiling at his horse's contentment.
With a farewell pat greeted with a grunt by his faithful steed, the rider smiles into his scarf again and trudges into the smashed maze of snow-covered jewel, his progress slow, he pauses periodically to cock his head and stamp booted feet, muttering to himself as he does.
Eventually one stamp brings what was evidently the right sound in response and is followed by a pair of measured repeats, followed in their turn by the rider folding his arms under his cloak and waiting.

What he is waiting for is revealed by a grinding sound and the terrain rumbling underfoot as the snow-covered ground folds in on itself and a stairwell is revealed, the rider greeting its appearance with a muttered "It's about time." as he heads towards the stairs, the flat winter light replaced by the cozier warmth of torchlight...without torches as the roof closes above him.
This strangeness passes unremarked by the rider as he trudges down, the hood of his cloak pushed back to reveal Ector beneath, the scarf pulled away to reveal him now in the prime of his life, the silver striations of his bloodline cutting through dark beard and around scowling brow.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he passes through the metal portal at their end, ignoring the automated opening and closing thereof with all the insouciance of a lifetime as a wizard's sometime pupil and strides into the room beyond.
Again, the lighting is as the warmth of a fire, and indeed this time one crackles in the comfortably furnished room's grate, yet it provides no head and burns no wood.

Ector doesn't notice, the sundry oddities of Taliesin's lair had long since ceased to be of moment to him, adulthood has brought more immediate marvels into his life and his business here is...well...
He stops and smiles ruefully.
Ector doesn't actually know why he's here, why a falcon landed in his aerie with a note about its ankle with "See me, T." scrawled in the wizard's untidy writing its only contents, it's all a mystery, one he intends to solve too, he has a wife and friends to be home with, enemies to worry about and snow to avoid.
Thus, his tone is perhaps surly.
"Taliesin? Taliesin you old mystic, where are you lurking?"
Years of practice allow him not to leap out of his boots when a voice in his ear murmurs "The study." but it's a near-run thing.
Grumbling to himself again, this time about wizards who've got nothing better to do than drag their hapless friends across miles of snow in the middle of winter, Ector pushes through into the room beyond, leaving Taliesin's heatless fire to crackle in the front hall.
The study is spartan, the desks and tables immaculate as only a wizard could keep them, the nature of Taliesin's servant-spirits had never been entirely clear to Ector, but he was certain they were numerous and well-worked, given the wizard's proclivity for making things which bubbled, exploded and occasionally got up and ran away, the study was always either in use or being cleaned.
Standing in its centre, scowling upward into the solid stone of the ceiling as though he could see right through it is the sturdy form of Ector's mentor.

The Baron feels his annoyance fade away at the familiar sight of the old man glaring into space, the rugged indifference of the old man to obstacle and ignorance had seen Ector through a fraught adolescence, securing both his life and future, providing council and assistance where either became necessary, he had remained the boy, then the man's, closest advisor.
Or at least as close as climate allowed, the Diamond Tower was a miserable place to travel to in winter.
He smiles.
"Hallo Master."
The wizard gives up on attempting to scowl his way through the ceiling to answer with a smile of his own.
"Lad. Good to see you."
The old man stumps over for a hug, his pupil now taller than he, the clasp ends and the wizard looks up into the bearded face of his only apprentice and grins.
"Sorry about dragging you out here in the weather boy, I know you've better things to do, but I need you to undertake a task for me."
Ector looks back, still gripping the old man's upper arms as he raises an eyebrow.
"Of course Taliesin, of course. What is it?"

The wizard steps away from the younger man, beckoning the Baron to follow and moves into the room beyond, it had served as Ector's own in the years where he had trained his mind to the task of reclaiming his birthright from the Comté, but now it is empty save...
"Master, what is that?"
The old man pauses, hands clasped behind his back and glares at the assemblage of glass and metal that sits in the room's centre.
"It's...hrm. How to put it..think of it as a crib lad, a crib constructed by someone whose children are...special."
Ector shrugs, it doesn't look like any crib he's ever seen, but if Taliesin says it's a crib, then it's a crib.
"Alright sir, then my next question is where did it come from?"
Taliesin grimaces.
"The sky. That meteor that fell last week, you saw it?"
Ector grins.
"I'd say everyone in the kingdom saw it, Master. It only lit up the sky like a bolt of lightning the size of the Tower."
The wizard grunts.
"Well. This was the meteor. This crib and its contents."
The young baron looks at his master.
"Contents sir?"
"What sort of contents does a crib usually have boy? Use your head, look closer."
The Baron duly does, leaning in and he gasps.
Inside the cracked glass tube is an infant, cherubic in the way that some babies are, flaxen haired and a kick of a chubby leg reveals it as a boy.
Ector looks back at Taliesin.
"So it is sir. What would you have of me?"
The wizard grimaces and then looks away, he addresses his words to the wall, rather than the man who is the closest he has to a child of his own.
"This child, this child is...special. Very special. He must be raised well, trained and taught so that his path is true, to do else would be folly. I am no parent, no, do not argue, you are my son in every way that counts Ector, but I only had the raising of you when you had aged to a point where I was suited to mold you. This child needs parents, he needs to be part of the world in the most intimate way. A family. I cannot give him that, so I give him into the keeping of the finest man I know."

Ector looks at the child again and smiles.
"Of course Master. Mary and I would be pleased to have him."
The old wizard blows out a sigh.
"Good, good. That is a weight off my shoulders, even if it is now one on yours. It's best he goes with you, not least because the boy will need brothers to help him if I have any inkling of his future. Brothers and brothers, yes."
The baron gives him a questioning glance but the unspoken query is ignored as the wizard ushers him back out into the study.
"Come lad, we'll talk more in here, both about the boy and about your own problems, aye, I am aware the King fails anew and the Khan sniffs at the borders."
Ector grimaces, then shakes his head.
"Before that sir, there's something important to settle. What is the child's name?"
The wizard halts in his tracks.
"Huh..how could I have forgotten to name him, me, of all people, forgetting the importance of a name..."
Ector's puzzled look is waved away and Taliesin shakes his head.
"No, no, never mind. It's not important. The boy's name is. Hrm. μέρος, yes. That sounds aright for him."
"Uh..master?"
The wizard gives him a blank stare, then shakes himself.
"My apologies Ector. Sometimes I forget you don't know all I do. In your language it would be rendered Meros, or Mereo."
"Mereo then sir, for his mother." is Ector's firm response.
"If you say so lad, if you say so."

[The Dawn Paragons]

Gawain cuts the dust in his mouth with a squirt of wine and spits the resulting gummy mess into the road, swinging a stirruped foot out of the tan-brown globule's path disgustedly.
His twin, riding alongside him, grins briefly, like Gawain he is coated head to foot in the scattered dust of the company's traffic, unlike Gawain he retains an insouciant good humour about it.
"Waste of wine. You'll have to do it again in five minutes and we've probably got hours of riding to do. You'll be legless by lunch."
Gawain says nothing, Geraint had been talkative since roughly five minutes after he was born, nothing his older-by-moments twin responded with would convince him of the manifold values of silence, especially given the bellicosely cheerful example of their foster brother at the column's head, regaling one of the other knights with an anecdote as he strode along next to the man's horse, shovel-sized hands waving to illustrate his point as the knight barked a laugh in response.

Geraint follows his twin's gaze and grins anew.
"Still sulking about our esteemed brother's decision to check out this ridiculous ghost story?"
Gawain maintains a stony silence and Geraint's grin widens.
"Or is the sulking because we dragged you away from your lady-love to be here? Nevermind. I'm sure she's having a lovely time at the castle with mother."
This time he gets a response in the form of an unwilling grin from his brother and a mimed blow to the head to accompany it.
"You're a cur and a scallywag Geraint. The fact that the Princess shows more interest in the responsible, older sibling is merely a judgment on your own louche life."
Geraint mock-pouts, folding his arms across his green-surcoated and mailed chest.
"Bah! Bah I say. Besides, she's only interested in you because Big Brother has made it abundantly clear he's not going to marry. If you can't have the King, his oldest foster-brother is the best alternative."
"Bess is not like tha-, actually, you know what, I'm not going to dignify that with a response."
Geraint smirks and Gawain thinks wistfully of the training accident when they were eleven that had broken his twin's jaw and kept him silent for a whole six weeks. It had been heavenly and one of these days he was going to consult their tutor on just how the jawbone could be broken in order to repeat the experience.
For now however, he settled for quietly ignoring his brother's babble, concentrating instead on the enormous figure of their brother at the column's head, the green tunic-clad figure had stopped his story and was staring intently into the distance ahead, Gawain rose in his stirrups, trying to see whatever it was his adoptive sibling had sighted, but his eyesight was no match for the Ard Ri's, whatever it was remained invisible in the dusty haze, at least to him.

His older brother however could plainly see something, he turned and bellowed wordlessly, the voiceless rumble like thunder as his enormous hands gestured in a come-hither motion, before the mighty figure turned around and drew the dread sword across his back with a casual motion, the blade was impossible for a normal man to lift, but to the enormous Ard Ri it was a hand-and-half sword no more, no one used the old name of "bastard sword" when speaking to the adoptive son of a Count who'd climbed to the high seat.

Regardless of nomenclature, it glitters in the sun, blazing almost, then with a flourish accompanied by an other bellow and the Ard Ri charges into the stirred dust-haze ahead.

The twins stare for a moment before reaching synchronously for their respective helmets, hoods of chain flicked up even as horses are booted into the trot, footmen ripple out from the column dropping into a guard position as the horsemen accelerate up the road, twenty men and horses thunder into the dust, lances swiftly couched, shields readied from saddle-bows, those whose helmets allowed flipping visors down or up as preference decided and a warlike aspect is taken on all over.
Into the dust, warhorses moving up to a canter, ahead, a bellowed cry and a screech like metal tearing indicate whatever brought the Ard Ri to the charge was no trick of the eye, the long strides of the horses, take the cavalry through the enshrouding haze almost as quickly as the Ard Ri's legs, and there he is, enormous form snarling defiance against..against..
Monsters.

At Gawain's side his twin howls a war cry and drives his lance deep into the back of an unwary foe, the creature's corpse-pale flesh splitting like a melon rind around the glittering steel of the lance-head, the abomination pitched forward into the dust, disappearing from sight, even as Gawain's own lance finds an other howling monster's throat, the shock of the blade colliding with the foul thing's backbone jarring the young knight more than physically, up until the shock of that collision the sheer impossibility of these monsters had left him feeling afloat in himself, but the scraping of steel on bone is enough of a sensation to bring him back to himself.
He snatches his lance back, flipping into into a downward stabbing grip with a snapping toss he'd never have tried on a practice field, the ten foot length of wood weightless as he jabs down at hissing, writhing things, pulpy white flesh spurting near-orange blood at every thrust, around him knights bellow and hack, his brother, lance lost in that first collision hacks from his saddle with a short-hafted axe, hooked beard leaving terrible wounds in the creatures he screams incoherently at, shock, fear and rage all written on his features, following in Gawain's wake as his twin sinks his lance into monstrous forms, a scene from nightmare.

Gawain has one over-arching drive, even as things that should not walk in the sun screech and howl and drag comrades from the saddle or swarm horses under, he continues towards the Ard Ri, lance snatched from his grasp by clawed hands, he snarls and snatches one of the swords from his belt, lashing out and laying open faces that have some resemblance to those people, yet only enough to make it a horror they do, sword like a thunderbolt, he and his twin demonstrate a horrible effectiveness in the art of murder, more than justifying their youthful presence in the Ard Ri's train.

Yet whilst the twins are terrors, the Ard Ri himself is a figure from myth, massive blade sweeping through foul flesh and abominable scale alike, whether splitting the armoured skulls of the foe or punching a hand-length of flame-lit steel through torsos, the twin's foster-brother is a blur of motion, barely followable by the human eye, a tornado of shattering, awful destruction, monstrous limbs and heads fly in bloody parabola from his path, creature after creature is smashed down or aside as he roars defiance, here one rears up and hisses, a foul miasma belching from its maw, the mighty form confronting it ignores the sizzle of its contact on his flesh to grasp its gobbling throat, stamp on one taloned foot and rip the crested head from stooped shoulders in one swift movement, the debris is tossed aside as he wheels, snapping a kick to the ribbed, bony torso of an other monster, blood explodes from its mouth like dust from a seldom-used bellows even as it is flung metres into the air the great sword in its killer's hand smashes downward through the bony crest of a third pale ghoul, on through torso and hips to leave the creature completely bisected as the Ard Ri spins to confront yet an other foe.

Gawain's bloody progress towards this paragon of War is halted abruptly as his horse wheels, squealing wetly through a torn-out throat, the writhing form of a monster still tearing at the chainmail about its neck even as it rears, Gawain rolls out of his saddle, smashing on his back, then bounding onto his feet with imminent death-fuelled adrenaline, the first creature to reach him is smashed aside with his shield, the second is sliced across a protuberant belly and trips on its own disgusting intestines and the third is economically stabbed through an eye-socket, that crunching steel-on-bone sensation rippling up the youth's arm again, he hacks and slashes, jabs and parries, his twin trying to aide him but made clumsy in the task by still being a-horse, both twins are moments from death when a deafening scream erupts from their older sibling, they reel back along with their pale foes even as the Ard Ri drops his mighty blade, snatches up one of the monsters and tears it in half with his own bare hands, an arc of blood spraying out as he flings the two halves of the corpse away from him, hard enough to shatter an other monster's body with the ruins of its comrade's upper half.
The monsters flee as one, screeching and howling, clawing at each other in their haste to be away from a far greater terror than they can generate.

Sound returns abruptly, the clashing wall of sound that is combat quenched like fire by water, Gawain pants exhaustedly, dropping to his knees with a clank and clatter of armour, his twin slides out of his saddle to rush to his twin, but the older boy halts him with a raised shield.
"It's alright Ger, it's alright. I'm just...just, you know.."

His twin drops to his own knees and drops a hand on his brother's mailed shoulder.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do. Unconquered Sun, that was...that was something else."
Geraint, for a wonder, is nearly speechless.

The twins gaze at the devastation around them, half the knights they had charged with are dead, horribly dismembered or burnt by the horrid effluvium of the creatures' breath weapon, all those still remaining are cut in half a dozen places, men are grabbing wine from saddlebags to irrigate wounds, bandaging each other and talking in the hushed tones of those who have recently encountered their own near-mortality.
The Ard Ri however, is however striding towards his brothers, his own wounds sealing themselves, the burning vitality of his frame barely noticing the cuts and gashes caused by anything so tawdry as claws, talons or fangs, he reaches his siblings and kneels himself, a hand the size of Gawain's battered shield resting on each youth's shoulder.
"Brothers. Ah my little brothers."
He shakes them slightly, smiling a little.
"You should remember today little brothers. Remember it well, for you both did sterling work, stood your ground and fought like men. I'm proud of you both. Very proud. Now. We must track these beast down, destroy them where they lair, wipe them from the earth. Will you follow me there too?"

The twins gasp in unison, eyes fixed on their brother's noble face, the shock of eye-contact with the potent gaze of the Ard Ri sending ripples like tiny sparks of lightning up and down their spines.
"Of course brother, always."
"Anywhere brother, forever, I swear it."

The Ard Ri smiles and rises to his feet, powerful legs lifting him to his full ten feet, plucking the solid, armoured forms of his siblings up with him as though they were kittens, both youths grin self-conciously at this mark of their brother's favour, publicly displayed and Mereo, Ard Ri of Aquitaine smiles back down at his brothers and speaks again, but only to himself this time.
"Brothers and brothers, yes indeed. Brothers and brothers."

[The Dawn Paragons]

Summer.
That was what Gawain remembered about the day. It had been a summer's day, perhaps the most perfect he'd ever seen, sky leaping into achingly blue vaults, the warmth to sustain a man but not drain him, a glorious day, even the light seemed touched with something, a silver tinge, a day that gleamed, special and wonderful as though the world itself had realised its import.

Why was it so important though, Gawain would think on, the events of the day would change his world immensely of course, but he'd woken knowing, knowing that today would be a day like no other.
A tournament day of course, the high day of summer would be greeted by Aquitaine's finest knights doing their glorious best under the glowing eyes of the Ard Ri, but that was not it.
No, there'd been something, something like the feeling before a storm, not quite static in the air, but, a, a charge to it.
He and Geraint had risen, fought, thrown down their opponents and then returned to the stands to sit with the Count-their-father and the Ard Ri-their-brother, it would be poor form to romp through opponents today and no one could stand before the twins these days but Mereo himself.

Thus, when the field emptied and that glowing, golden figure stepped into the open Gawain and Geraint had been the Ard Ri's left and right.
The glowing man, glory radiating from his face and bearing, smiled upon the people of Aquitaine and the crowd, nearly to a man, knelt, all other loyalties forgotten in the face of this sheer presence.
Nearly to a man, because to the sons of Ector, reared with the Ard Ri's own towering and noble mien near at hand, refused, refused in their deepest hearts, to bend knee to any save him.
The stranger quirked a brow and Gawain's knees shivered, but his spine, his soul stayed rigid, and, loyalty and love being returned, his foster brother's hand descended to his shoulder, bracing him, the other bracing his twin.
A whisper.
"Steady brothers. Steady."
Mereo smiled at the stranger.
"You come amongst us unannounced Sir, a strange thing in a man who I can tell is of matchless valour. Should you not have heralds pronouncing your name upon the lists?"
A shake of a raven-locked head.
"No. I did not come to cross blades with the men of Aquitaine, μέρος, no. I came to cross them with you."
The Ard Ri blinked, slowly and carefully, the sounds of his deepest name on the stranger's tongue resonating oddly in the air and he lifted one massive hand from Gawain's shoulder to rub at his gold-bearded chin as he peered at the man.
"And why should I play at swords with you stranger? What does it gain me, moreover, what does it gain you?"
A smile quirked the hook-nosed face of the stranger.
"If I win, if I take first blood...you will serve me. And if you win, then I will give you a gift of truth."

The smile irritates Gawain beyond measure and he snarls at the man.
"What need has the King of your gifts, stranger? Why should our lord serve you?"
The stranger's smile fades.
"And who are you, boy, to speak for your king? I will give you no answer, I need give no answer to a callow youth."
Mereo frowns and the sun seems to darken with it.
"That "callow youth" is my brother, sir, a great warrior in his own right. Still, you should hold your peace Gawain, for this stranger..interests me."
The shovel-sized hand returns to Gawain's shoulder, a squeeze to lessen the rebuke, before he leaps down from the stands, the motion disconcertingly fluid from such a towering man, dropping him neatly before the stranger, the Ard Ri looming over the man who looks back up, utterly unfazed.
"Your brother is it? Well. We shall see."

He takes a step back and bows to the Ard Ri, before reaching over his shoulder and pulling a sword whose hilts are worked in the likeness of a stooping eagle, raising the weapon to a salute before dropping into a guard position, it is a mighty weapon, obviously of great craftsmanship, but compared to the mighty weapon Mereo bears, seemingly little more than the stick with which a boy might play at war.
The Ard Ri frowns again, an unease foreign to his being upon him, but returns the salute and moving himself into a guarding stance.
Scarcely has he done so before the stranger...ripples.
And attacks.
Mereo blocks, but in all his life he has seen nothing, nothing like this, a hurricane of blows, the stranger distorted to his eye, he swings and swings and swings, the Ard Ri blocking, motions a blur, but still only just fast enough, sparks fly from the clashing weapons and Mereo pushes himself, for the first time in his life challenged, pushes himself and finds that even then he is still not quite fast enough to anticipate the stranger's blurring movements, to interpret the patterns of that maelstrom of blades, again and again their swords thunder together and each time Mereo is driven back a little, each time the stranger comes a little closer.
The Ard Ri roars with frustration, leaping backward to disengage, but the stranger stays with him, not seeming to move, but crossing the opened distance nevertheless, faster, ever faster, blow after blow until finally the master of Aquitaine, queasy with the strangeness of the fight, is a hair too slow and the blade of his enemy drifts across his cheek and the stranger blurs back to his original position beneath the stands.

Slowly, oh so slowly, blood wells from the Ard Ri's cheek and Mereo lifts a shaking hand to touch it.
Never in his life had this happened. Never. Oh he'd been wounded before, all men are in melee, but in a single combat like this?
Never.
Utterly outclassed he stares at the stranger, then numbly, he nods his great golden head and drops to one knee.
"First blood. I am yours to command, sir."
The stranger shakes his head.
"No μέρος, not 'sir'. Father. I am yours, in flesh and soul. You will serve me now as you were born to, as a warleader, because, I will give you your gift of truth after all, I am the Master of Mankind and I come to take you to war amongst the stars, as has always been, and always will be, your destiny."

[The Dawn Paragons]

"Cold."
"Excellent. Everything is responding within parameters and your body is reacting excellently to the implants. You are an excellent candidate for line infantry. You can get dressed now, Probationer."
The probationer nods and swings his feet to the durasteel floor of the Apothacarium as the Tech-Medicae steps away, various medical implements whirring and writhing back into a more portable form, one snaking out to snag a clipboard hanging from the slab the probationer had been lying on.
"Your future medical care will be undertaken by the Apothecaries of Legio II of course, but I do not forsee any great need for their services, with the return of their Primarch the Legio will doubtless be busy integrating the men such as yourself he has brought with him, rather than returning immediately to combat."

Pulling a black bodysuit on the probationer grunts as he tugs it over Astartes-bulky limbs.
"It would suit me more to engage the enemy sooner rather than later, we men of Acquitaine do not need to be coddled by this Emperor of yours, we followed Me-, the Primarch, for years before his arrival."

The Medicae shrugs with a hiss.
"He is not my Emperor, Probationer. I am an Adept of the Machine God, not one of the countless trillions who reside under his hand, grateful for what little shade it offers. The Cult Mechanicus has a more..complex relationship with the man...if that is what he is."
The Tech-Adept shrugs.
"Anyway, we are finished here, I have duties to undertake and you doubtless have someone to report to."

Grimacing at the dismissal the probationer nods an acknowledgement and steps out into the corridor, measured tread beating a careful pace through the halls of the battle barge His Glorious Light, which, in the privacy of his own mind, the probationer regarded as a spectacularly pompous name for a ship.
Pompous name or not, the Light was an enormous vessel and it took the Probationer quite some time to reach the barracks level that was his goal, cutting through crowds of identically dressed, identically shaven-headed and bulky men, marked out only by a blue foxhead tattoo over one eye and silver spatterings across his scalp and skin, some of the Probationers edge from his path, a close observer might note they share a physical type with him and are apparently familiar with his face, but others whose phenotype cover the full rainbow of human diversity pay him no more mind than any other man.
It makes no difference, the probationer ignores both equally as he moves swiftly onward until reaching his goal, which turns out to be one of a series of identical hatches marked in heavy Gothic characters, the probationer undogs it, steps through and pulls it shut behind him.

Inside, half a hundred men read, exercise, meditate, do all the things an off-duty soldier does, there are dice and card games being played, though for what, given no one is being paid, it is impossible to tell.
The probationer ignores this too, heading towards a man who could be, and in fact is, his twin, lying beside an immaculately made bed reading a dataslate with "MEDICUS DEPARTMENT, DO NOT REMOVE" written in bold script on the back.
He looks up at the new arrival and raises an eyebrow.
"Well?"
"According to the good doctor I'm the ideal infantryman, showing for all we've come up in the world, we've also come down."
His twin smirks at the pun, but shakes his head.
"I won't miss my horse. One less thing to go wrong in a fight, not that I'll be doing much, given my new exalted status."
"Exalted what-now? You haven't-"
A slight glare.
"Don't think I'd be that stupid. No, you're in fact looking at the latest addition to the Apothecarium apparently, I am now Trainee-Neothon Ger-"
The probationer raises a hand to stop him.
"Not Geraint, not anymore; that name goes the way of my own I'm afraid."
The not-Geraint closes his mouth, then shrugs.
"So be it. Neothon will do. And you, brother, what nom-de-guerre will you adopt to avoid our brother's stricture on our joining his menie?"
The probationer looks distant for a moment, then massive shoulders hunch in a shrug the mirror of his twin's.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll sleep on it, wake up a whole new person."
He grins and his brother grins back.

[The Dawn Paragons]

Because of the way 40k canon has developed since the foundation of the Paragons, and how the Horus Heresy specifically has touched on things of that era, it has become necessary to define where and when a given thread might lie in the respective universes, so, this thread will be the containment one written for things meant to take place in the secondary 30k the Paragons originate from, whereas any thread taking place with other NS players involved will obviously be in NS canon, horribly lore-violating that it is.

I watch the starships overhead, a concentration such as I have never seen above Aquitaine in all my many millenia.
Some vast, even by the standards of my own youth, some tiny, but again, far more than I have ever seen gathered together before, all at the will of this one man, this "Emperor" they serve.
I can feel him, out there in the dark, such a one as he treads heavily on the earth and my senses are many, his presence is easy to sense.
I could have intervened as he teleported to the surface, warned the boy of his coming, his fleet and his dominion.
Even killed him, had I wanted.
Perhaps I should have, for he brings war with him.
War eternal. His dream cannot lead to anything else, a Humanity united far more tightly than in my own era, its' boot upon the neck of the stars, constantly battling to hold itself in place.
Yet I did not strike him down, this man who is so much more than his simple title, both because I always knew this day would come, and because there is enough of him in the boy that I knew their meeting had to happen.
The boy.
Why, when I have known them all from thought to memory, does Mereo stay "the boy"?
I didn't have the raising of him, I gave that responsibility to Ector, who, in what, were I human, would be my heart of hearts, I regard as nothing less than my own son, his children know me as Grandfather Taliesin, they are my family and I have known them all their eye-blink lives and will mourn them long after they are dust.
Yet Ector I see as he is now, a man with silver in his hair as well as his skin, wisdom in his eyes and age creeping into his bones. The boy?
The boy stays the boy.
Just as joyous in his glory now as he was the first day he tottered into a run, the first time he brought down a deer, the victory at his first tourney, he shines out with the promise of youth no matter how many years he acquires.
He is heedless, no strategist he, fiery, blazing within and without, living at the edge of his skin, yet this makes him the hero from sagas this world sees him as, the generosity and bravery that saw even the fierce scalp-locked warriors of the Kaan bend knee to him.
I could wish more of my teachings had stuck of course, a little less haste and a little more restraint, yet I love him just as dearly as all the rest do.
He is coming now of course, I can see him striding across the fields around my garden, I know him, he has already taken up the task handed to him by his gene-father, yet where the golden presence of his father is something that is glorious but ultimately cold, the boy is warmth, the Unconquered Sun, he comes to me to ask questions and answers I will give him.
I wonder what they will be.

[The Dawn Paragons]

Infinity is, by definition, without end, limit or border.
Yet can something be infinite within bounded space?
I speak of myself, a question I shall answer in what for humans is moments, yet for me is close to enough to that infinity as to make no difference in what I can accomplish.
And yet not, for all that I am, incarnate in every pulse of Belov'd Aquitaine, I am still that, incarnate, a life that is bound by the limits of physicality, I operate at the far limits of that physicality certainly, but I still have constraints.
Well, a constraint.
The speed of light. I am a being of light, my self travelling upon it, in it and through it, as golden in my moments as any shining celestial orb, yet, for a being that thinks and acts at light speed, that means one is acutely aware of that orders-of-magnitude-faster than lightning comprehension is immediately and exponentially affected when the hard limit of Einstein's millennia-old calculations is reached.
I am, by the standards of this fallen age, a god, but a god whose bounds are set in a limit harder than any stone.
But.
There is always a but.
I am incarnate, as I said, I weave my way through all that my light touches, Aquitaine in its totality, but also, more importantly at this moment, the starships floating above my world, the mighty vessels the boy received from the hand of his gene-father to make war upon the stars with in the name of Mankind Unified.
I seep within them, the machine priesthood that tends them oblivious as I wander through their works, a ghost of gold, I soothe the roused bio-engrams that pass for subsidiary intelligences now with the merest touch, they return to somnolence in my wake, their keepers just as oblivious as I sink deeper into their code blurts and binary exchanges, being as I am any technology of this age with capacity to hear my command will obey it.
Yet that is not what draws me on, for it is hearing that I trying to avoid.
The song, the old, damning song that stole the past from me and the stars from my charges.
It is the Warp, yet more than that, the Warp is just a state of energy that does not recognise the laws that govern the physical universe. It is no mystery, but yet, the song, the song emanates from it, and it is both more and less than mere energy.
I am energy, pure and simple, whatever is behind the song is not as I.
It scares me, not just because of what its consequences are to me and my kind, lesser or greater, but also because a song implies a singer.
So I weave myself into the very heart of the boy's flagship, pausing a micron of a heartbeat to smile at the presence of my other grandsons in the boy's ranks, regardless of his wishes, and coil myself into a tight ball in the heart of the vessel's Gellar field generators.
And yet I do not, because even as I do so I cleave myself, drawing myself away from the ships as they glide into the void and Warp engines begin the process of shunting them from one reality into somewhere where things are more...fluid.
The self inside the ship will be deaf and dumb at this point, hiding as much as it can from the song and its putative singer while passing through the dark between the stars, while this self draws its tendrils of light back away from the holes being opened in reality, even retreating I can hear the melody start to flow out, careful distance makes it tolerable, controllable, a horrible temptation but not a compulsion.
I watch the ships slide into the Warp, one by one they blink out to reappear somewhere else, and I am with them, but not I-that-remains, who wonders whether this is infinity in truth or merely trading time for space.
We/I shall see I suppose, that is providing my other self emerges from the Warp without having gone horribly insane and self-terminated, millennia of existence and for the first time I gamble with my own life, in a way.
A strange day.