Once again, the century turns, and Caelia makes yet another pilgrimage to the ruins of her ancient home to walk among its ghosts, and to curse the tomb of its Destroyer. But this time the tomb is empty, robbed of its corpse along with the sword she...
"Renascence is inevitable, and you cannot avoid it any more than it can avoid you." --from The Book of Kaia
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PHOTO CREDIT: MASS EFFECT 3
PLACE: MONAI EMPIRE – CAPITAL CITY OF MONS
DATE:HIEROS 13TH
In the darkness of the Long Night, Maeia lay in her bed staring at the painted coffered ceiling unable to sleep. She did not go into hypnos during the winter like most eosians, and didn't need the Imperator's 'special' elixir to stay awake, but she did need a little sleep from time to time, a couple of hours every few days usually was more than enough.
Tonight, though, she was exhausted, desperately needing rest, and not even potionswere helping. She had been awake for a week now since before the incident at Liasa, and the events from earlier today were weighing too heavily on her mind to try to sort through, so she allowed her thoughts to drift elsewhere.
I shouldn't have come back, she thought. I should have kept going and left all this behind.
But the sarcophagus in that wagon had called to her, even later when she was miles away from the ancient city ruins, its pull so irresistible it had drawn her inexorably back to the very servitude she had finally resolved to escape.
This is only temporary, she reminded herself as convincingly as possible.
Life in service to Urbanus and the Empire had been hard and filled with fear and misery, beginning with that moment years ago, at the age of five, when she had awakened, chained to a dirty bed and with the mind of an adult; a mind filled with a thousand years of collective memories not hers– some intensely graphic. The first face she saw was his, wrapped in dark foreboding, his hand grasping a knife.
To this day I don't know what stayed his hand.
Every memory she had of that first day long ago was painful, including the poison they had used to make her into what she was. Meleia told her years later she had been at death's door for two weeks before she woke up screaming. Initiates were usually in their late teens when they underwent Novamentis, rendering the side effects much less severe and preserving their former memories. She could recall nothing from before that day and it was a topic no one would discuss with her.
I would have gone insane back then had it not been for Meleia.
