Interactive Quest we create our own stories

All night long a voice calls out to Orestes in his dreams. It sounds like sand and sears across his skin like sunburn. It will not relent, not until the Day King rises from his new bed. How long has he been since you ascended, king? Mere hours? Mere days?

Solterra does not let him be king long before she summons him. The heart of Solterra is not in the walls her denizens make to house their sovereign. It is not in the city where trade thrives and lives go on unchecked. The heart of Solterra is in sand and stone, oasis and amphitheatre. It rages in the burning sun and it whispers into the ears of its new king.

It summons him out into the desert, where the night is darkest over the sands. The skies are filled with a thousand stars and the sun is far, far from the sky. The voice drags Orestes out into the cold, cold air where the desert drops below freezing, where his breath is like smoke. It guides him into the farthest reaches of the desert where nothing lives but rolling dunes. “Orestes,” that voice whispers again, like sand running through an hourglass. But no longer is the sound in the Day King’s head. It is across the whole desert, it is the desert. The sands shift beneath his feet, it gathers, building sculpting until a great lion stands before him. It is a statue, roaring and great yet absent of life.

A teryr screams shrill and terrified fleeing as a shadow across the midnight sky. The sun is not yet due to rise but a dawn is breaking in the South. It rises where no sun should, the sky turns blue with death, then red with dying and then bright gold with life. The desert awakens as the sun rises. From the sun a piece tears away, it falls toward the earth fast and terrible. It grows larger, larger, hotter, brighter as it sinks. The sands sigh to welcome it. Heat blows like a hurricane from its wings and the griffin lands greater, brighter, more terrible than she had ever been before.

“Orestes,” she says with the voice of the sand, with the voice of the sun. “You have ascended, but it easy for any mortal to ascend a throne.” The griffin clacks her beak, the words spat with disdain upon the sand. “We are not content with any mortal here. You have all proven yourselves weak and greedy.” Isis steps forward, her skull tilting as she lowers it to regard the king, “You may now carry the magic of the sun, you may have walked through the fire of Judgement to sit upon the throne, but Solterra does not trust you.” Sand turns to glass where her blazing feet sink into the dunes. Her wings are outspread and the sky above is blue with the light of her sun-skin. “We have one last test for you, mortal.” She shifts a wing and where once she exposed a cup now she exposes the lion of the trials. It is as bright as she, it sits as regally as it once had before the blazing throne room. It watches them both with eyes as steady as the sun.

“You will have a mediator, a helper and it will be of Solterra and Solis.” Isis turns to the lion of Justice as it rises, fierce and wild and waiting. It is the sun raging, another piece of the sun split from the celestial body itself. “Kill it, if you can,” and here she smiles cruel and mocking, “and place the light of its Justice into the statue that the desert has made for you. Only then will we be content that you have concerned yourself with things of the earth and things of the divine.”

With that, Isis launches up into the air and is gone. The light of Day follows her until all falls back to darkness. The Lion of Justice watches him and its lips peel back across its teeth. The desert voice laughs, “All sovereigns must do unjust things.”

And the sand lion waits for the breath of life to animate it.