Fragment: House Rules II

[handsofwinter]

Before the storm...


Winter is not their name for themselves. It’s an alien translation of a name so old its truth is lost, shaped new by humans and gifted back to their enemy: a word tied to the ways of planet-bound creatures. To Eliksni born of the Whirlwind, the term means nothing. They were all of them hatched and raised in the void far from their near-forgotten homeworld. But Pelsor gleans knowledge the way she once sucked the last gasps of ether from her ration tubes. From glossator data and stolen stories she has learned the meaning. Winter is a starving time. A time of bitterness and ice, a time for hoarding scraps and running from the night.

If so, her people have been Winter for a very long time.

When assassins of the Silent Fang first sought her protection, they undertook a task to prove their worth. To show the Baroness why she should take in the remnants of a shattered scattered House. A raid into the great Vex fortress of Venus, to retrieve precious machinery: trapped Servitors carrying powerful knowledge. They brought back no servitors. Of those who infiltrated the time-warped citadel, only one Wolf escaped. Fortunately for his surviving kin, he hadn’t come back empty-handed.

It’s dangerous to trust a Wolf, even one who’s sworn fealty to her. Their House was sick even before they were broken the first time, before Skolas rose up again with his delusions of prophecy and was broken again. A feral house, ruled by viciousness. Winter is harsh, but they yet hold to the machine-law.

Withered though the spirit of it is.

Pelsor sits in her private court, surrounded by her guard. She can feel their shifting limbs around her as the Wolf enters. Her nobles mistrust him, even more than each other, more than the other Wolves who pay her fealty. They are jealous; they are loyal. Mostly, she thinks, they are afraid of him. Afraid of the thing he brought out of the citadel. He wears it always: the strange helm with a sliver of glittering white where the eye-ports should be. He walks proud into the midst of her guard, unafraid of their burning stares. There are rumors of what he can do, now. Pelsor believes them. She does not believe he is invincible.

He halts where he should and she stands, swift and towering above him. Pelsor reads the tiny flinch in his posture and bares teeth beneath her mask. Good. He yet fears her. The Wolf drops to his knees, his stolen eye glittering up at her. She wonders what he sees.

“My Baroness,” he rasps. “I answer your command.”

“Leksoriis Once-Wolf. You have a new name, yes?” A flick of claws, where her lower right hand rests on her sword. A Vandal springs from nowhere, blades slashing into the place where Leksoriis was. He’s rolled aside, cape falling around his shoulders as he sits poised on four limbs, head cocked at Pelsor. She is looking down, measuring him.

“You do not draw your blade,” she says. The attacker is waiting on her smallest word.

“Nama. It is not needed. The second strikes only if you command.”

It doesn’t sound like a guess. All of Pelsor’s eyes narrow in thought. An unlikely guess, to even foresee another striking him in her court. A Baroness gives punishment by her own hand. She makes another gesture, left-handed; the Vandal and his unseen accomplice withdraw to the shadows.

“It is true, then. You have taken the oracle-sight of the machines.” She has too little left to reject that ether-trickle of hope. If he lies, he will suffer for it. She gestures for him to rise. “I will hear what you offer, Leksoriis Far-sighted. Speak.”

“It is the truth,” he says, standing before her, the palms of his upper hands turned up. “I see paths before they are taken. Gates before they open. I have seen the gates to a new way for House Winter. When I fought the machine oracles of the citadel, the human ghouls were there also. There was one, a dih-dan. I have seen it other times since, on this world. To my sight its path is strange. Its steps walk scatter-wise with the world. And sometimes it comes with others who have no path in this time.”

“Then what? The undead Lights obey no natural law. What if they warp time as well?” She speaks dismissively, to hide the souring ether in her throat. Why not? Why should the enemy not grow even more powerful as the Eliksni weakened and weakened?

“Baroness, I think the dih-dan knows a path outside this time. This place. This way-of-things. I think it travels, takes others with it. I ask to find the way for you. Perhaps on the other side are secrets of power and survival. Perhaps a trail the House of Winter can hunt.”

A new path. The possibilities unfold like an ireliis pattern. New weapons. New hunting grounds. New secrets to plumb, where the humans do not expect. A place beyond the blighted dying worlds of this system, the Houses tearing each other apart and the Hive poison and the Vex machinations closing around them. Pelsor holds herself rigid, not to stagger back into her seat as the idea takes hold. This is madness, a scheme fit for Skolas, a desperate grasp for what may be a poisoned hope. But there is nothing here for them, only a slow strangulation. The ether runs dry; their honor decays; their hatchlings die stunted and gasping. What are they become, her people? What must they become? No-one remains who can tell her. They are all looking at her, now. The Wolf is no more concern. They wait on the word of the only kell they have.

Where does Winter go, when the season turns against it? What does the Kell of Starvation command?

“You will go,” she says to Leksoriis. “Find what lies beyond. Open a way, and Winter will follow.”