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starwardbestrewn2025-04-07 09:32 pm
oncedriven) wrote in starwardbestrewn2025-04-07 09:32 pm
teatime story (with strings)
Let me tell you a story, cousin.
A few thousand years ago - when the dust of the Archon War had not yet settled, and you were yet to take a step out of the Primordial Sea - a snake fell through someone's ceiling.
That snake was Orobashi, the serpent-shaped dragon who should have been lord of storms, and the ceiling was the 'sky' over a realm called Enkanomiya, where humans exiled by Celestia lived under an artificial sun. Where gods were denied, they had made their own, rituals of darkness and sacrifice that were winnowing their people as much as anything lurking in the darkness might have. They called the serpent a god, too, and he did not object.
If anything, he might have been more deserving of the title than those made by Celestia, because met with suffering people, he did not turn his face away.
Electro is not an element meant to be kept below the ground. Geo's Lord of Vishaps is bound there, and suffers from only the binding, not the earth, but lightning disperses on contact with the ground. Orobashi learned many forbidden things from the people of Enkanomiya, but this he already knew: he could not live for long in that dark place. Not by the standards of dragons.
And so he struck a bargain with the distant heavens, with the one thing he had to offer: the birth of the next dragon in the infinite succession, the next serpent who should inherit the Authority of Electro. The Archon would hold that power uncontested, as no other god does.
In exchange, the people of Enkanomiya would be allowed to rejoin the surface, provided they left behind knowledge of their 'sins,' the knowledge Celestia wished to keep hidden.
The heavens accepted. Orobashi, the Bargaining Ouroboros, was struck down by the Raiden Shogun, and the people he claimed as his own were allowed out into the sunlight, leaving the secrets of their homeland behind. As time passed, the truth of this story was forgotten; even the high priestesses of Watatsumi Island have forgotten the knowledge they once kept.
But not the terms of the deal, nor the fact that the serpent had saved them.
"So long as the God of Eternity reigns in Inazuma, no more shall be born of my line..."
This too is a secret, kept from the heavens and the earth by the mist of the clouds: There are two beings called 'the Raiden Shogun.' Easy, then, for her reign to last eternal.
... But for a few hours, in the Cataclysm that shook the world only a short century ago, that was not the case. A blink, in the eyes of gods and heavens, where Raiden Makoto lay dead and her sister wept over her.
A few hours - a hundred thousand lifetimes, for a lightning bolt. And serpents do not blink.
Perhaps she was a vishap in human shape, climbed up from beneath. But I think that she was a human, a priestess of Watatsumi in truth, one who understood - debt is a never-ending chain, until someone refuses to collect on it. Until it is forgiven.
Once, a serpent paid with his life, that the children of humans would have the chance to live lives under the sunlight. On that day, when the earth writhed and Khaenri'ah burned, when gods died and the elements surged -
She walked into the lightning and paid that debt, with her body and her life, the only things she had to offer to a newborn child of the storm.
The eyes of the heavens, focused on Khaenri'ah, blinked.
And from where the unbridled power of Electro met the unbridled determination of a human wish, I was born.
You understand why I immediately got the hell out of Inazuma and haven't been back.
A few thousand years ago - when the dust of the Archon War had not yet settled, and you were yet to take a step out of the Primordial Sea - a snake fell through someone's ceiling.
That snake was Orobashi, the serpent-shaped dragon who should have been lord of storms, and the ceiling was the 'sky' over a realm called Enkanomiya, where humans exiled by Celestia lived under an artificial sun. Where gods were denied, they had made their own, rituals of darkness and sacrifice that were winnowing their people as much as anything lurking in the darkness might have. They called the serpent a god, too, and he did not object.
If anything, he might have been more deserving of the title than those made by Celestia, because met with suffering people, he did not turn his face away.
Electro is not an element meant to be kept below the ground. Geo's Lord of Vishaps is bound there, and suffers from only the binding, not the earth, but lightning disperses on contact with the ground. Orobashi learned many forbidden things from the people of Enkanomiya, but this he already knew: he could not live for long in that dark place. Not by the standards of dragons.
And so he struck a bargain with the distant heavens, with the one thing he had to offer: the birth of the next dragon in the infinite succession, the next serpent who should inherit the Authority of Electro. The Archon would hold that power uncontested, as no other god does.
In exchange, the people of Enkanomiya would be allowed to rejoin the surface, provided they left behind knowledge of their 'sins,' the knowledge Celestia wished to keep hidden.
The heavens accepted. Orobashi, the Bargaining Ouroboros, was struck down by the Raiden Shogun, and the people he claimed as his own were allowed out into the sunlight, leaving the secrets of their homeland behind. As time passed, the truth of this story was forgotten; even the high priestesses of Watatsumi Island have forgotten the knowledge they once kept.
But not the terms of the deal, nor the fact that the serpent had saved them.
"So long as the God of Eternity reigns in Inazuma, no more shall be born of my line..."
This too is a secret, kept from the heavens and the earth by the mist of the clouds: There are two beings called 'the Raiden Shogun.' Easy, then, for her reign to last eternal.
... But for a few hours, in the Cataclysm that shook the world only a short century ago, that was not the case. A blink, in the eyes of gods and heavens, where Raiden Makoto lay dead and her sister wept over her.
A few hours - a hundred thousand lifetimes, for a lightning bolt. And serpents do not blink.
Perhaps she was a vishap in human shape, climbed up from beneath. But I think that she was a human, a priestess of Watatsumi in truth, one who understood - debt is a never-ending chain, until someone refuses to collect on it. Until it is forgiven.
Once, a serpent paid with his life, that the children of humans would have the chance to live lives under the sunlight. On that day, when the earth writhed and Khaenri'ah burned, when gods died and the elements surged -
She walked into the lightning and paid that debt, with her body and her life, the only things she had to offer to a newborn child of the storm.
The eyes of the heavens, focused on Khaenri'ah, blinked.
And from where the unbridled power of Electro met the unbridled determination of a human wish, I was born.
You understand why I immediately got the hell out of Inazuma and haven't been back.