Dubhaine Family/Cathal/Roleplays/1011/February

February 26th -- Tournament in Alowca

Night lay heavily across Alowca, the velvet firmament with its distant twinkling fires - according to ancient legends the shades of worlds long dead or perhaps even of those to come when the Gods finally tired of mankind's ceaseless conflict.

Cathal smiled at the thought.

Those who have stepped beyond the curtain know full well that conflict is the very essence of the Gods' plan for mankind, the ineffable cycle of gift and geasa intended to test men's mettle and focus them not on the heat of battle but on the inner struggle of self-mastery. He'd only half understood that when Lady Denariel had revealed the Faith Militant to him, all those years ago on the long and weary retreat from Windaria. The signs and portents had begun long before that, the sybaritic young knight cleansed by holy fire as he lay in the pits of Oritolon, and they haunted his footsteps to this day.

Alowca was much changed since last he'd been within her gleaming limestone walls, the Armoury district a maze of alien alleyways. The Templar Commandarie had once stood here, that miraculous tabernacle of seamless stone and blackened timber raised in but a day and a night by the will of those it venerated. To the north of there had stood the Palace of the Pontifex, a temple complex as old as the city and it was in that direction that Cathal now turned.

As Duke he'd been more often found preaching in the marketplace or ministering to the poor in the slums which hemmed the magnificent harbour. The small miracles and kindnesses which sustained his people during the dark final years of the city's independence had rarely if ever been remarked by her nobility, and having heard tell of the terrible reckoning which revolt and civil war had brought in recent years he wondered how many of those good people had survived.

"It is not easy being a chosen people: the path is hard and its destination obscure," Cathal turned to face a young woman dressed all in yellow raiment, and as the fabric moved amidst that glorious yellow fine threads of red seemed to flow like rivulets of blood.

"You do not need to tell me that My Lady, for has my path not contained many strange twists since first you called me to service?"

Strange twists indeed. Cathal had been lifted from the wreck of this City he loved more than life itself and cast adrift, the last prophet of an outlawed faith. Who could have foretold that his path would lead to the Dark Citadel and the ancient wisdom of the Bakker woods?

"Were the path of a prophet an easier one, Lord Khagister could have picked many another to bear His revelation. But it is not. It is a path of brambles and thickets, of quicksands and burning coals."

"I have never asked you to lift this burden from my shoulders," he drew himself up straight, and as he did so that spirit within which had passed beyond the curtain flared bright as the waxing moon and the fragile mortal shell it now inhabited seemed consumed with fire.