still, she could pick up her pace on the level ground, and so reach her companions that much sooner. finarra drew out the long-bladed sword that had once belonged to her father, hust henarald. it was a silent weapon, predating the awakening, water-etched and a known breaker. serpentine patterns flowed up the length of the blade, coiling at the hilt. off to her left the vitr sea was an ethereal glow and she could see its play on the polished iron of the sword.

finarra swung inland, threading past the rotted boulders until she reached the verge of the plain. she eyed the wall of black grasses off to her right. there were darker gaps in it, marking some of the hidden paths forged by the beasts dwelling in glimmer fate. many were small, used by deer-like animals the wardens saw but rarely, and even then as little more than a flash of scaled hide, a blur of a serrated back and a high, slithering tail. other gaps could easily accommodate a horse, and these belonged to the tusked heghest, a kind of reptilian boar, massive and ill-tempered; but the passage of these beasts through the high grasses eschewed stealth and she would hear any approach from some distance. nor could a heghest outrun a mounted warden: the animals were quick to tire, or perhaps lose interest. their only enemy was the wolves, evinced by the occasional carcass found on the plain, in trampled clearings drenched in blood and torn pieces of hide.

she recalled once hearing such a battle in the distance, the keening, ear-hurting cries of the wolves and the heavy, enraged bellowing of the heghest brought to bay. such memories were unwelcome and she kept her eyes upon that uneven wall of grasses as she padded along.

overhead, the swirling pattern of the stars slowly appeared, like a spray of vitr. legends spoke of a time before such stars; when the vault of night was absolute and not even the sun dared open its lone eye. stone and earth were, in that time, nothing more than solid manifestations of darkness, the elemental force transformed into something that could be grasped, held cupped in the palm, sifting down through the fingers. if earth and stone held life back then, they were little more than promises of potential.

those promises had but awaited the kiss of chaos, as a spark of enlivening, and as a force in opposition. entwined with the imposition of order that was implicit in darkness, chaos began the war that was life. the sun opened its eye and so slashed in two all existence, dividing the worldly realm into light and dark - and they too warred with one another, reflecting the struggle of life itself.

in such wars was carved the face of time. birth is born and death ends. so wrote the ancients, in the ashes of the first days.

she could not comprehend the existence they described. if there was neither a time before nor a time after, then was not the moment of creation eternal and yet for ever instantaneous? was it not still in its birth and at the same time forever dying?

it was said that in the first darkness there was no light, and in the heart of light there was no darkness. but without one the other could not be known to exist - they needed each other in the very utterance of defining their states, for such states existed only in comparison - no, all of this snarled mortal thoughts, left a mind trapped inside concepts hidden in shadows. instinctively, she shied from extremes of any sort, in attitude and in nature both. she had tasted the bitter poisons of the vitr; and she had known the frightening emptiness of unrelieved darkness; she had flinched from the heart of fire and blinding light. for finarra, it seemed that life could only cling to a place much like this thin verge, between two deadly forces, and so exist in uncertainty - in these cool, indifferent shadows.

light now warred in the sky's deepest night - the stars were proof of that.

she remembered kneeling, in the time of her avowal to serve as a warden, and cringing in that sorcerous absence, the deathly cold of the sphere of power surrounding mother dark. and by that chilling touch, there upon her brow, she had been invited into a kind of seductive comfort, a whisper of surrender - the fears had only come later, in that shivering, breathless aftermath. after all, mother dark had, before embracing darkness, been a mortal tiste woman - little different from finarra herself.

yet now they call her goddess. now, we are to kneel before her, and know her face as dark's own, her presence as the elemental force itself. what has become of us that we should so descend into superstition? treasonous thoughts - she knew that. the philosopher's game of separating governance from faith was a lie. beliefs ran the gamut, from worshipping vast spirits in the sky down to professing love for a man. from listening to the voice of a god's will to accepting an officer's right to command. the only distinction was one of scale.