The Tower Where It Happens

[Kala Leukos]

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7th of Glade, Year 125 Age of Steel

and from the dark, into the light,
I saw a stone burst into life.
and in the corner of your eye,
I saw a dream that never died.

speak to me,
speak to me with love in your words.
make for me,
make for me a soft universe.

Kala preceded him through the portal Indric opened for them, then immediately stepped to the side, turning to observe his reaction.

The circular chamber of the main hall was easily large enough to contain at least ten full-grown Avialae, wing tip to wing tip. At the edges of the chamber there were staircases that wound around the walls leading to the upper floors. The ceiling, the walls, and the floors of the entry chamber appeared to be made of a solid black stone polished to mirror-like shine.

A blazing star, burning at the center of the chamber, was surrounded by other spheres that floated slowly around it in orbit. Rocks, stones, all manner of objects floated around the star. Inlaid into the polished black stone of the floor were arcane sigils, an elaborate work of scrivening.

Knowing the central artefact would claim his attention, she didn't bother explaining the place

But the artefact, "This is the Orrery. Nazam created it to traverse the stars, and it was, from what I understand, the power underlying the network of Rift Gates. I do not think we are ready to reestablish those as yet, but I will let you inspect it... later."

He noticed along with her apologetic smile that he could not sense anything from the ancient artefact. Here, she was in her power. Here, she controlled everything.

"And, in recognition for your patience, I will also allow you to examine the Solcanam Calastrae safely. Later."

Though her little hand was tucked into the crook of his strong arm, she led him up the stairs coiling up the walls. In her tour of the second floor, she showed him the laboratory outfitted to create dreamwalking artefacts, as well as space for four more full laboratories.

"I thought, perhaps, you might set up a runeforge here. We created your tools once, but now you are a much greater artisan than you were before. You could create an even more wondrous runeforge and here I can control more of the given circumstances, allowing more minute control of the processes for you. Since you are *my* Maker." She gave his bicep a fond squeeze. "And, with your permission, I would like to invite Master Sivan to set up an alchemical laboratory for me. I would allow him to use it for similar fine control, but also because I will need it to master the alchemical arts myself. They will be necessary to unlock Garel's processes."

Torin was pre-verbal at all this, but she could Sense the clockwork in his mind working and she was content to ease him into this new reality, and then perhaps make tea.

The third floor contained a library. "And here I will fill out my draconic lexicon..."

And on the fourth floor, the residential area. It didn't look moved in yet, but she didn't give him a room-by-room tour. Instead, she physically sat him down at a table her boys had put in until she decided on how she would decorate her Tower. She kissed the top of his head, then moved into the kitchen to prepare tea for him. He could see her from where he sat. He could also look up and see the observatory that made up the fifth floor, and back down to the lower floors where the Orrery moved with the grace of things to huge and distant for his eyes to see.

Perhaps he was startled by the careful 'tick' of bone porcelain upon the table. The steam that rose was a familiar scent, some tea that Sivan had prepared in Jacun's shop, a sensory anchor to keep his mind from floating away into the firmament.

Kala knew him well, and also knew just how mind-bending all of this was.

She rested a hand upon his shoulder and loosened her white-knuckled grip upon her divinity enough for her nimbus some rein if not free rein. She became both translucent and more real than real. She glowed faintly like a faraway star rather than a nearby sun. Her aura enveloped his and her Calm rained down upon him like a cool rain. His own emotions were not suppressed, but he was able to recognize them more easily and step outside them, observe rather than be overwhelmed by them.

The Goddess poured his tea, then hers, and then she sat. Seeing her now, less human while also more perfectly human, he remained Calm. His thoughts fell into a natural order more easily.

Drink your tea, she bade him. And then ask your questions. When you are ready, I will pull back the veil from the Orrery for you.

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[Torin Kilvin]

The Smith has been given some warning as to how to prepare himself, though he would have followed blindly. Nothing had been told of where they were going but that there would be things that might overwhelm him had been imparted. It was becoming an occurrence he knew to expect when sharing private time with Kala. It didn't happen every time, nor even often, but it did happen. Miracles happened, but she was a goddess, expecting them not to happen would have been foolishness.

He set his mind into a place that was open, set his thoughts into quietness and smiled when she slipped her arm into his. Indric was a friend, of sorts, they could be quiet together and comfortable, and that was nice, so he nodded to the Avialae man as he was led through the portal into...

A place that wasn't. Well, it was, but it wasn't in the same way that all the places Torin had ever been were. Except once. The memories threatened him but the pervasive sense of Kala in everything kept them at bay, or maybe that was intentional on her part. Either way, he found his feet, so to speak, and observed the overtly archmagical items before him. His smile was grateful when she said that he could look later. While his uncanny ability with his rune of Semblance allowed him the ability to see and sense things that only Kala also seemed able, his mind was not expanded as hers was. It could only take so much at a time without shutting down, and the place itself was enough to put him near that edge. Shielding him was a kindness.

The realization of what the place must be came to him slowly, like waking, it drew slowly into his consciousness.

"Oh..." Was all he said, awe in it, as the realization because thought. He looked down at her, but only for a moment, for there was much she wanted him to see. The uses of the Makers space struck him immediately, as a craftsman, it was difficult not to see the potential of things that were of use to one's craft. His mind began laying out how things might be set to best aid in the flow of aether before he could stop them, winding together with Scrivening and the potential of the nature of the place. They had made his first tool together, here, they could make tools of such caliber that they wouldn't even work in the mortal realm. It felt like a culmination.

But there was something standing in the way of these ideas, something tugging them down away from their heights back towards the ground. This part had been tugging at him more and more often of late. It had always been there, in his head, but not until he had been noticed as something more than a normal village boy, an average craftsperson, that it had started to tug at him. Ever since he had been recognized for his skill by the elves of Sol'Valen, the tugging had felt more like a tearing that he had shied from.

Torin was unaware that he was thinking about these things as the part of his mind he was aware of was taking in the tour of divinity given space. When he was bid sit, he sat, eyes wandering up to the fascinating observatory with its walls covered in Scrivened sstar chartsthat seems to be a part of the stone itself. The little jump he gave when Kala returned with familiar refreshment was more from something so mundane existing there than from the sound that brought his attention to it.

Sipping from the thin cup, seeing its delicate beauty held in his large, rough hand somehow pushed the myriad of questions concerning magic and divinity and the nature of reality into the back, switching them for the thoughts that had occupied that space before. So, when he opened his mouth, filled with a taste he associated with the people who loved him, what came out was,

"Was it hard to believe, at first? Being a goddess, being so different from how you knew your life would be. So much...more?" His voice was calm, not emotionless but not distressed, his face as earnest as it could be.

[Kala Leukos]

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Kala gazed at him.

Here, everything called for her to release her mortality and be what she was becoming. The pale blue of her eyes was the pale blue of hot-burning stars now. Platinum hair shone like more distant starlight. Her diminutive frame housed starfire. Her gravity drew people in.

Indric's shape flew up and up, past them to the floor above where he was examining the observatory equipment. Kala half expected him to be staking out a bedroom for him and Ceran, but the boys were polite. She had good boys.

As she turned her eyes down into her cup, she could see the dance of planets around a nearby star. She had to blink it away and focus on the heat from her cup transferring into her slender hands, grounding her in the reality she had been born into. But she took the question at face value and answered as best she could.

I didn't seek this. I sought a Gate. It seemed to be a divine quest. I found Atoria, Garel the Necromancer. Mother Naori too was waiting among the throngs of Avialae who live apart from this world. I had thought someday I might do some service and could ask a boon, for wings. I was given those and then all of this on top of it. At first, I sheltered my mind from the full reality of it. The enormity of it. Lest it break me. I considered it a gift of power to help me reunite the Avialae as She bade me do. But I am turning into something else. Sometimes I feel like a little girl. Sometimes I can't remember how I ought to feel... There are touchstones, of course. I have Kaus.

She held up her tea, laughed quietly. There almost seemed to be distant windchimes in the sound.

I drink tea. I balance Kalzasi's ledgers. I attend parties.

She looked at him, giving the dual impression of friendly affection and something unknowable.

"You understand better than most," she said, finding her old voice. "I have only ever seen Semblers of your strength in Silfanore or Solunarium. And I do not know that they have what you have. You see more of the underlying pattern than most do. When I see it more clearly, I'm less myself and more... my Self." She didn't know if the distinction was totally clear; she was afraid to weave her aura into his to share things more directly since this latest spike in power.

"I'm starting to believe it, I think." She finally answered his question more directly. "I am still Kala. But I am also more than Kala. Unity, Stars, Sovereignty. I grow to embody these concepts, this corners of creation. It is similar to your story, I think, albeit different in scale. You still see yourself as an orphaned apprentice, unworthy of all you have earned. But you are accounted a Master Maker by one of the most prestigious workshops in Silfanore. You are the Lord of Stardew Valley. You are loved dearly and intensely by not one man, but two.

"Is it still so difficult to believe that you have become more than you dared dream?"

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin listened, mostly keeping his eyes down, gazing into the warm golden tea cup cupped between his hands. Looking up once in a while revealed a serious, pained expression. Someday, Kala would be too bright to look at. In some ways, she had always been. She was the only thing that really made sense, sometimes. However far he rose, she rose far above, so they remained the same distance from each other as they had been the day she walked into his second teacher's shop and seen him as an apprentice boy.

In other ways they had been similar, both still in their education, the same age, unsure what their lives would bring, but with firm ideas in that direction. The similarities were what allowed them to become friends, to remain friends, despite the unlikeliness of it.

"I thought..." He sighed, setting the cup down gently on the table. "I thought I'd go home."

This was all for a long moment, but the Lady was good enough, wise enough, to wait while he churned. Finally, he met her eyes,

"I think, I was so set on it, only able to come to the city at all because I knew I'd go back. I worked so hard to be okay with what I would be." Lower lip bitten briefly, every moment of a childhood spent working to press himself into the shape of what must be, what was, showing in his look, sitting on his shoulders.

"My father," A breath, not shaking, but hurting, "He was so sure that I was... I don't know. Not worthless, you don't bother with something with no worth. What do you call something so bad you need to break it?"

He wasn't expecting an answer, forced to look away, blue eyes shining with grief too old to even properly remember.

"I didn't fit, where my mother put me. I tried, so hard. I made myself fit. But then, when I finally felt like I could be, my master sent me away. I fought him."

This was another grief, well remembered, pain at what felt like rejection, guilt over arguing, a break that could never be repaired.

"The only thing that kept me going was knowing that I'd go home. Then he died and there was no home. But the part of me that put so much work into accepting who I was supposed to be, it's still there. It's stupid, I know that, but it feels like I'm betraying something. Every thing that's happened since I knew I wouldn't go home, everything that doesn't fit into the box I made myself fit into, feels like I'm doing something wrong."

There were three versions of the man that sat before the goddess. There in that place, she could have seen them all by force, but there was no need, his aura was spread wide open to her.
The child who had been taught by both parents in different ways that it was deficient in some fundamental way it could never understand.
The apprentice boy who did not fit but was determined to make himself the right shapes to do so.
The man who had been given so much more than he could have asked for that his life burned in his hands, bright enough to hurt.

He could not hold onto all three of them together, they could not exist as one, so they fought. The first two could coexist, and they were both far older than the third.
He wanted to let go of the first, but how could he know that those who had given him life hadn't been right about him?
He wanted to let go of the second, but it felt like a betrayal of his first love, his first loyalty, the first kindness he'd believed in.
He wanted to hold onto the third, but the further he leaned into it, the more the first two tore at him.

The questions he wanted to ask were too big, stones in his heart that he had grown up around. Now too intrinsically a part of him to remove without destroying the organ they crushed. What if they were right? What if I'm broken? How can I live knowing the last words I spoke to the only person who loved me were in anger? What if the person the ones who love me see is a lie? What if everything I build is tainted by my touch?

How could he be chosen by the Goddess of Unity when he was fundamentally divided?

[Kala Leukos]

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There were several points at which she thought she might interject, might answer some facet of the whole that he brought up. Instead, she waited, listened, held space for him to unspool his tightly wound thoughts and feelings and lay them out, lay them bare, and share with her.

Whether words would suffice when time hadn't healed his wounds, she didn't know. She had a native empathy, but was hardly trained as a mind healer. At Torin's age, she couldn't even claim the wisdom of age and experience. In many ways, he was more experienced than she was; certainly, he had lived through many a thing she had not.

What she did was a very human thing: she reached across the table to put her little hand over his massive paw. The tea cup had warmed her skin.

What she did next was a more divine thing: She let Her aura infuse his, let Her aura embrace his. She lent him some of the space in Her mind so he might see the life he laid bare with more clarity, with less recrimination and knee-jerk trauma response.

In that one divine moment, he could see his father plain; hurt people hurt people, and whatever his hurts, whatever hurts he had inflicted, Torin didn't have to hold onto them.

He could see his mother; a mother's love stretched to the breaking point, she had sent him away, sacrificed her relationship with him, in order to give him a chance at a better life than he had been born into.

He could see his first master; a teacher finds the once-in-a-career student who exceeds him, his pride, his duty in sending him where his talents could be fully realized with greater skill.

He could see his first lover, the fox-faced charlatan; a man he could give everything to, who accepted all of him and declared that it was good.

He could see his second lover, the elf prince out of a storybook; a man he could share his work with on a level so fundamental it defied words.

Timon, Huntress, his housekeeper, Finn the bard, even Arry the antagonist who had lashed out at him because he was afraid.

This too is holy. His struggle with himself was a microcosm of the world struggling with itself. He was a drop in the ocean. He was a bright star whose light meant so much for those who fed upon it, but was less than a glimmer in the grand scheme of things. Everything was relative. His hurts were holy; his scars were holy; the innocence he had lost was holy; what innocence remained was holy; experience, love, hate, fear, the generative power of his creativity—all was holy.

And Kala, still so familiar even as she became something almost entirely alien to his experience, she was the strongest thread in his life, the least likely to snap. She had the potential to be eternal and infinite and she had chosen him to be her friend, and she had chosen to accept what he offered that was worship. The young woman would continue to be his friend. The goddess could fill voids left by mother and others.

He was held. He was seen. He was good.

When she sat back, her aura lingered around him like a warm blanket on a cold night. She looked both exhausted and slightly exultant. Perhaps it was archmagic or a miracle. Perhaps it was just empathy and love.

"You are a good man, Torin," she said, "and I love you. If I have learned anything thus far, it is that certainty is the enemy of Unity. I cannot offer you certainty, but you are not alone and you do not have to struggle alone, not even with yourself."

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[Torin Kilvin]

The big blue eyes focused on the goddess so intently they didn't even blink. Maybe, surrounded by her aura, they didn't even need to. The way he needed her words, ready to pull them into himself regardless of if they were benediction or condemnation, with the faith of a child overwhelmed anything else. Information flowed between them through their overlapping Semblance, and he absorbed all that he was given. It hurt, as she reached her tiny hands into his chest and pulled out the largest pieces of the shattered stones that had tried to suffocate him all his life. He let her have them, a blood sacrifice.

As his eyes filled with long unshed tears, Torin swallowed back a sob so he could speak.

"Tell me that he isn't inside me, waiting to hurt them?" Elsewhere, the question might have been confusing, but he opened himself to Kala as wide as his choice and magic together could so she could see his oldest fear lurking behind the pain. That he would snap and become as abusive to his loved ones as his father had been to him and his mother.

His Goddess knew him, She would see the truth, and She would not lie.

He watched her examine him, and loved her more for it than anything else. When the answer came, he believed, he let it in, nodding once before slipping to his knees before her. Dropping his head into her lap, grasping at her ankles with his strong hands, he broke.

It was quiet, tears silent while he shook. It was worship as pure as it was grief. This too was holy.

There was more that needed to come out, but the change happening would not be one of a moment or a day. When the first flood was diminished, more quickly than one might have imagined, he raised his face to hers in a mirror of how he had knelt a year before to offer her his gift that had been worship.

[Kala Leukos]

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While a mortal woman might have found this awkward, this made her feel more real, more herself, both Kala the mortal and Kala the divine. There were parts of him that were no longer serving him, and those that he was able to release into her care, she took, and then she released into the aether. They were the both of them lighter for what he was able to give up at her feet.

When he did look up, she was less the elfin young woman and more of the more she was becoming. Maiden, yes, but Mother too. Not yet Crone, though there was a wisdom in her eyes that was less to do with temporal experience and more to do with the spatial, and the Other. Slowly, she lowered herself to her knees, took his face in her hands, thumbed away tears, kissed away a few more, and looked at him.

She looked at him.

"Torin Kilvin, you are not your father. We are all of us capable of violence, lashing out even at those who love us, who we love."

Behind her, watching reverently from the observatory floor, was Indric. He nodded slowly as if his small agreement might help, if Torin could look past her at all in that moment.

"You are a good man, and your rage would ignite at injustice. Your anger would seek to rectify this. You have never struck Timon in anger. You let Aurin hurt you, and have never struck back. You have trained so that you can use violence as a tool to protect the people you care about." She brushed back his hair.

"You are imperfect, but you fear becoming a man you only knew for a few years of your life. You have learned lessons from him, the first and foremost being: you do not wish to become him. You will not become him. It is time to begin letting go of that fear."

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[Torin Kilvin]

The smith on his knees sniffled but didn't look away, allowing himself to receive the benediction of his goddess, as well as the wisdom of his friend. The things she said were true and he knew them, but sometimes it takes someone we trust saying things we already know for them to become real.

He could be good while being flawed.

He could be angry without losing himself.

He would not become the phantom of his father.

Torin was just himself, and he could just what that meant.

It felt a little stupid to have to confirm such simple things but he could feel who he was moving around inside his head. Not changing, not really, just settling in the proper places without having to make room for pieces that hadn't ever really fit.

"They were right. To choose you. We need you." The 'they' in this declaration was vague, who really chose a goddess? The 'we' was an amorphous group of people; Starfall and Stardew and Torin, but also others who were looking for a specific type of connection that had been missing from the world, maybe forever.

"I will worship you here." It wasn't always comfortable, for either of them, to engage in the act of worship and receiving worship, but in that place, he thought it could be. It didn't feel like he was giving something up when he had been able to, it felt like something they gave each other. In the tower, his work could be worship, would be worship. Maybe everything he did could be, eventually, or had always been, but there hadn't been anyone to give it to.

It was complicated.

He laid his face onto her little hand when she brushed back his hair and took the first full breath of a life not made of the exhaustion of living, filled with the sharp things in his own heart and mind. They weren't all gone, but even having less was a lot. Sometimes you don't realize how tired you are because you've been tried so long it feels normal.

When he was able, he stood, sat again, and drank all his tea in one go. The flavor flooded his sense with dozens of memories, Sivan, Aurin, Timon, Kala herself. Laughing in his kitchen, kissing in the morning, swimming in the lake, hurting and arguments and working and on and on. His eyes welled up again but he laughed and looked up at his Lady.

"What should we make?" He gestured around at both the tower and the space that would be several workshops.

[Kala Leukos]

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"Thank you," she said softly. Kala was living proof that Naori Herself could pluck one out of Atoria and light the fire imperishable in their soul and still wonder if they were of the appropriate mettle for godhead. But if a young woman from the mountains was fit to become a goddess, then there was something to mortal wisdom; and so, she had to believe Torin and his faith.

There was a shiver, too, at his declaration that this would be his place of worship. Eshar would laugh at her, but she found it rather arousing.

As Torin slowly shifted from suppliant to sitting at her table, she too shifted. She found it difficult to be Kala Leukos here, difficult not to be more here. Sometimes she wondered if she ought to rename herself. Of course, she was proud of the name her parents had given her, but was she still that squalling newborn? No.

She sipped her tea, tepid now, but there was the savor of fulfilling her purpose. In part, she existed now to shepherd the mortals from whence she came. She smiled at his tearful laughter.

"You will have to complete my raiment at some point," she reminded him. "The gloves are excellent. I have brought the rarest of my dragonshards here. There is one I don't remember if I showed you." A silent thought resonated through her bond with Indric, who swooped down from the observatory to the floor with the dreamwalker's workshop. After a minute or two of conversation between goddess and smith, he appeared and handed something to Kala.

Indric's hand rested on Torin's shoulder and the look he gave him said without saying, 'I understand.' The tall Avialae felt redeemed by Kala, first when she and Kaus helped him during his first attempt at a Warren March, then with their support until he completed his second attempt, and ever on from there, supporting him and Ceran. When he thought he couldn't appreciate her even more, she took him to Atoria and became a goddess.

Kala opened the box and turned it toward Torin. Within, upon a purple cushion, an aetherstone. Moderate in size, it was pale for its species, so pale the yellow and red of the flower within were discernible next to the black feather.

"Strange to find a dragonshard with anything trapped inside, like an insect in amber, no?"

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[Torin Kilvin]

Torin sensed that the goddess had something specific in mind to show him, so the conversation remained light until Indric arrived with a box and a hand of offered comfort. The Avialea's hand was warm and strong. He turned a grateful expression up towards the guardsman, not laying his hand atop the one on his shoulder, but almost doing it. Everything felt more connected in that place of Unity.

When he was presented the dragonshard thoughts of connection faded into the back of his mind as he turned the front of it to analyzation. He examined it with his rune for a few moments before reaching in to carefully lift it and continue the examination with his eyes. The size alone was unusual, the objects inside near to impossible. Dragonshards grew like any other mineral, and it was possible for them to grow around other objects but the time involved was immense. A feather would have broken down long before it was contained, let alone a flower. Immediately, his mind began to work at the problem. Could he do such a thing? If so, how?

He broke dragonshards down to use their aether in his work all the time, was it possible to break one down and reform it still as a 'shard? The idea had never occurred to him, as he had never been tasked with enchanting a dragonshard itself.

"This could be done with Runeforging." He said at last, sounding confident but confused, "But I don't know why anyone would spend that much effort to make something that, while powerful, isn't really different from how it started. Unless," Learning closer, he peered deeper, trying to see if the objects within were themselves magical.

"Unless the feather and flower are magical on their own. They could be, it would be extremely difficult to tell with them embedded in such a powerful aetheric object already. If they are of lesser magical power than the 'shard itself... It would be a very clever way to hide magical objects one didn't want tampered with. Even with Semblance, one would have to know they were looking for additional signatures and it would take time to untangle them, if they were even there."

Setting the gem back into the box, he pondered the possibilities it represented. Even if someone had simply wanted to put a flower and a feather into a dragonshard with no special properties, Torin was now open to the possibilities his mind had come up with. "I can spend time studying it, if you are interested in knowing more."

She also could, he imagined, but her work was more plentiful than even his own.

"For your raiment," He flushed, still amazed to be working on such a thing, even if it had been his own idea, "I thought you would like to be a part of the design of the rest of it. Or even the pieces already done. I can... adjust, things now, even after completion."

He had learned in Sol'Valen that this was an ability very rare, even among masters.

"Your cloak wasn't intended as a part of your raiment, but it is already a powerful object, and made to respond to you specifically. I could add the properties of protection to it that are on the gauntlets, any anything else you would like, really." Powerful enchantments took time, but Torin was confident that, given that time, he could manufacture nearly anything that could be imagined. Imagining the things was the challenge now, that and figuring out how to work them. He longed for such challenges and his interest was palpable.