T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
There was a sun that had not set. It sat in Solis’ grandeur in the midst of the sky and did not move.
And so the Disciples had come: to watch and to wait. They brought with them the only traces of night within Novus. The dark of their Midnight shadows swell within the Order’s ranks. Night has come wondering, and reaches up from the shadow of her Disciples to test the sun with the dark of her fingers. The tendrils of shadow press and push and yet the sun does not heed her touch.
(The shadows, this Midnight, is no sentient being, but the darkness to which each Disciple of the Night Order is married. To Caligo they are bound, to her magic they are vowed. So the shadow magic they give her is feminine. It makes the new recruits laugh and blush, but by their second year they no longer react but call their magic a she, in honour of Her who blesses them: their Goddess of the Night.)
It is only five of the Night Order who have come to the Island this day and they stand as sentinels in the midnight shroud of their magic. About them the sun blazes and presses his golden light down, down upon the warriors’ dark, but not even Solis’ light can banish their dark. For every arrow of light he pierces their darkness with, the Disciples swallow it down like an elixir and let black lilies of darkness bloom in its place.
Within the heart of their dark shroud only their crescent moon sigils glow. To those who look closely at the Order’s cloud of midnight they might see the outline of warriors about each triad of glowing, crescent moons. Muscled shoulders emerge where each pair of lower moons are emblazoned upon them and faces form where the apex moons are lit upon their brows. Weapons form and fade in their swallowing dark as shadows coalesce into daggers and bows with arrows, broadswords and spears and then disperse.
They are an ominous blot of ink upon the bright page of lit daylight. They stand as only five and yet their darkness gathers as if it conceils army in its depths. At the center of the men, Tenebrae stands with his skull tipped up towards the sun. His eyes glow brightly shadowing his lips that are the stark line of a dark horizon. His winter-hued body is nothing but black as he wears this darkness as a cloth, a gift from the other Disciples. “At least it will not be 100 Years of Day.” He says and it tastes of something akin to sorrow. Slowly, smoothly, as predatory as a panther, his skull turns to gaze upon his brothers that flank him. “Though I should enjoy a 100 years war.” The Disciple confesses with a smile that is wicked in its beauty. It is a grin kept only for the dark secrets of the night. His low laughter is the sating lull of sleep.
Slowly Tenebrae steps out from the shroud of their darkness. Midnight pours from his skin as he emerges into the light. Here, lit by the stark of daylight, he is as bright as the haze of a night lit by winter’s snow. Midnight reaches for him, but he steps away from her reach, further and further still. He moves toward a small doe, frozen in time, caught in an eternal run from a wolf whose statue-body is motionless, part emerged from the brush. Around the deer’s slim frame, Tenebrae moves, gazing at the terrified lines of her body, illuminating them in the stark-white glow of his eyes. What sorrow it is to be immortalized in fear, caught in eternal flight, he thinks with a warrior’s pride.
Yet he dwells no more upon the doe, for a sound stirs in the trees that the doe had been reaching for. Danger comes creeping for her – except, a sound here, where Tempus has stopped everything, can only mean one thing: a horse. Hardly a predator to her, yet the Night Order Disciple turns toward the sound. Midnight billows her shadows round him, roused like a monster, ready as a serpent coiled to strike. Tenebrae sends her darkness pressing out into the trees, it reaches, searches, gropes for whoever lurks there. Beyond the trees Tenebrae watches, his angled skull tilted. Though the truth could be that he is the most dangerous warrior here, in this moment, the warrior monk still stands quietly, alert, dangerous, ready.
“Who is there?” His low voice slips like ink into the trees. His question is a low drawl, curious and yet craving something... He trains and trains and trains and there is no part of him that is not honed and readied for battle. He would not turn from a fight now but meet it with a delighted smile upon his lips. Through the brush his white eyes gleam, they glow brighter, brighter as the sun never sways, as he drinks its light, more and more and more as he steals its light and lets Her shadows bloom in its place. They shroud him and reach hungrily out through the daylight and the too-still trees. The darkness begs to gather into a weapon, but he calms its desire, keeping it ready, ready so he might level Night at whomever steps out from their woodland cover.
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