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Destiny. Fate. Providence. Chance. Divine Mandate. Luck.
All different names, and to some wildly different concepts. Some swear by one and disparage the others. Some live off what they would call the benefit of one or more. Some ignore each, or even denounce each as folly. Can one truly say that there is no fate? That destiny is a farce? Can one claim that the gods hold no sway over the lives of men and women and be truly correct?
Is our fate our own? Or is all that we do predetermined by the gods or fate or some other force, leaving us to simply... Play out our parts until destiny dictates that we should end?
~~~~Cosi~~~~
For a half-merfolk, half-faerie, drawn between two wildly different but not opposing natures born of magics worked ages before her own birth, such questions were perhaps easy to answer. As a druid and a sentinel of the Order of the White Coral on pilgrimage, and as a half sidhe carrying a portion of that race's connection to the natural world, she had been brought up to understand the natural workings of nature, and understood on a primal scale the system on which their world ran. It was an unforgiving one, uncaring for the will of those within it, but it was fair.... Usually. Dark forces often meddled, gods and demons and angels and monsters from beyond the veil of their own reality, but nature was a force beyond even their control, and though she might bend under the weight of the forces arrayed against her, she would never break to them.
Her time on the surface world had not been easy, but it wasn't difficult for the water-born woman to understand why. She had lived with her fins for all her life, flitting gracefully through the waters of her birthplace, but now that she was on land she was restricted to two dimensions. It was hot and dry up here as well, and though her supernatural parentage and her racial ability to control her shape ensured that she wouldn't be killed by the heat of the Anudorian desert, that didn't make it a pleasant experience for her. She'd come to the surface only a few days ago, traveling on the sacred pilgrimage directed by her order, and after arriving at a small coastal village she was able to get directions to a larger settlement of the landbound folk. She'd decided to seek out one of the lost temples of her people, an ancient structure from a time when her ancient kin had walked the world, before Adamantia had been sunk beneath the waves. Within it lay secrets long lost to her people and treasures that had (hopefully) lain dormant and untouched for centuries. All she had to do was find it.
That said, it was already proving harder than she might have thought. The merfolk had come to the surface in a time of strife, after the surface world had been devastatingly invaded by alien beings from the sky. The civilization bordering her own had been all but destroyed, and one of the few sanctuaries that they retained against the monsters menacing them was a city sitting on the coast, the dangerous waters around it preventing her from returning to the sea and swimming there. It was at the base of mountains that loomed before her, larger than even the grand palace in Adamantia and dwarfing the settlement that lay so near to their base. Srikloeth-Tonn this place was called, the last bastion of the ailing Su-Ku-Ta race, and given the plight of her own people against the Leviathans and the Formori without the presence of their ancient god-king Elric, it was perhaps a sentiment that Cosi could appreciate.
It was nothing compared to the city of Adamantia, but it was the last bastion of knowledge left to the people of the desert that hadn't been lost to the sands or the invaders, and thus the last place that might hold the location of the Temple of Red Waves. Having little more than the clothes on her back and her magics, Cosi entered the city in the guise of an elf, her pointed ears standing in for the fins that normally hung on the sides of her head, and the humanoid legs that she still wasn't quite used to standing in place of her tail. The city guard had allowed her to pass with only a bit of suspicion, wondering why one of her kind was this far West but not bothering to stop her. Once inside, however, it was up to the merfolk's initiative to find where she might look for her much needed lore. The people living in the city, (or perhaps they were travelers like here?) paid her little heed beyond the occasional confused glance, and though she found herself in the market square, there were no signs of a library or temple where she might start her search....
~~~~Elowen~~~~
For Elowen, a nymph and a druid, the answer to what guided the world was equally simple. Raised among her kind, she was at the very least aware of the powers surrounding them, and knew the effects that they wrought. She knew of angels and demons, faeries and yetis more ancient than the sands upon which she'd been born. Shew knew of the Outsiders, those from beyond the veil of her own reality that sought to come in and consume all that was, and all that had been, and all that would be. She knew of the gods and of their battles, and of the one who had emerged from the battle that had rocked the heavens over own home so many centuries ago victorious. She knew of the aliens, and of their endless relentless march against all that lived upon her home, seeking to homogenize the peoples of her world into their own endless grey mass. She knew, too, of the power of her own element, that of nature, and how it coexisted with all of the forces that battled around it, and of its unspoiled and irresistible might. All things of her world obeyed their nature in one way or another, and though countless beings from beyond their own world sought to change it, the fundamental powers that she both wielded and served were unchanged.
She and Snow, without supplies and with the Dok-Cat injured and ill from being in an environment to which it was not suited, had made their way down from the mountains only to find their old home gone, transformed into a bastion against the abominations that had come from the sky. Though she was on the same side as those that now inhabited the oasis, Elowen knew that it was not a home now, and so had set about wandering the desert. Their journey had taken them West, to the sea, where they found the last great city of the Su-Ku-Ta; Srikloeth-Tonn. It held not their ancient tombs, nor the palaces of their long dead kings, nor even their great factories, but it did sit upon the coast, allowing bustling trade to bring it wealth that she knew it spent to fund the efforts to reclaim their home from the grey menace. She knew, too, that those efforts were failing.
That said, it was a bastion of civilization, and while she didn't precisely need civilization, Snow had wounds that her magic could not heal, and while she might have called upon her kin, the simpler option was to go to the settled peoples and seek their aid for the ailing Dok-Cat. The legendary cats of the desert sands were well known to the Su-Ku-Ta, who had given them their name and tamed them to serve as mounts in battle. Legends had been born of warriors riding the great beasts, but such times had come long before her birth, and their she knew that the once prosperous species, the apex predators of the desert, were on their way to extinction. It was a time of change in the world, and while the passing of things was understandably to be mourned, death was as much a part of the natural order as birth, and Elowen knew this on a level even deeper than instinct; the propagation of natural order was an aspect of her very being, ingrained into her very soul. She had learned that in her time up in the mountains,
She'd been allowed into Srikloeth-Tonn with some trepidation on the part of the city guard, some suggesting loudly that Snow ought to be put on a leash. Others had more quietly suggested that they might like to see her put on a leash instead, but those elements had made no effort to make good on such threatening gestures. Proceeding into the depths of the port city that sat at the base of the mountains she'd once been lost in, Elowen and Snow got a lot of odd looks from the townspeople, though such was not unusual. Dok-Cats, though important to their cultural heritage, were rarely glimpsed by settled folk such as these, or even by the nomadic humans that wandered the desert. After only a short time, Elowen and her faithful companion arrived at the city's market square, where medicines that could heal the great beast standing beside her might be found...
~~~~Torin~~~~
For the Su-Ku-Ta princeling, bred from generations past to be the prime example of his kind, the answer was the easiest of all. The role of men and chance in deciding the outcome of events were but a trivial concern compared to the will of the Star God and the course fate had decided. The stars of his birth decided his fate, and thus the path he'd taken, which had led him here. Freed of the constraints offered by the monks that had seen him sired and raised him to continue his lineage, Torin had followed his own path, joining a resistance group that fought against the very invaders that who's assault upon his people had seen him freed of his former constraints.
It had been a hectic week for Torin, to say the least. The war had been taxing on his kind, and the group he'd been with had seen battle only days earlier against a force intended to move through the Northern mountains, undoubtedly to infiltrate the more peaceful land of Crolia while it tried to deal with its own problems. While his people and the humans and elves to the North held few connections and had made no alliance, every soul lost to the invaders was a gain for them, and so their group had striven to halt the push in the mountains before it could reach the wintery Northlands. They had only been partially successful, the invasion force being larger than they'd expected, and while they had killed the alien leaders via dropping a small avalanche onto the floating monstrosities and their army via a scheme that Torin himself had devised, they hadn't quite wiped it out. The remains, mostly the advance scouts and flankers, had attacked them during the night and routed them, the alien hunters too dangerous to face openly in their own element.
What had followed was an increasingly desperate forced march across mountains, tundra, and desert that had lost many lives to both the elements and their enemies, but they had eventually managed to annihilate the last of their pursuers only a few short days ago. Many had died in the process however, and it was agreed that they should return to a civilized area to regroup, resupply, and gather reinforcements. It was with that in mind that Torin and those with him had come to Srikloeth-Tonn, the last true city controlled by his kind. He'd parted from his group upon arrival, their structure such that members dropped in and out regularly, and thus he'd come to the market square at the center of the city all on his own, where he saw a woman who looked oddly familiar wandering about with a great white cat....
~~~~Market Square~~~~
And so, three strangers, by chance or fate or the will of some god or another, came to the same place at the same time. One from the South, though originally from the depths of the Jeweled Sea, and the ancient city sitting at the bottom of it. One from the East, who had wandered far to the North and back in search of a friend, having found knowledge of themselves along the way. And, lastly, one from the North, his path winding and filled with dangers both seen and unseen. Each from disparate beginnings, and following different paths, their goals their own, come to a single point at the same time, there to witness something strange. Each saw the other for what they appeared to be at the time, Elowen the most unusual by all appearances with snow standing at her side, while Cosi stood out only because of her elven disguise, and Torin, despite his lineage, was all but indistinguishable from the crowd of his kin, even to Elowen who had known him from a time long past.
There, in the heart of Srikloeth-Tonn, with dozens, perhaps hundreds of people around them..... An angel fell. Hard.
Fell in the literal sense, in this case. Appearing practically out of nowhere, a woman of unnatural beauty, her skin dark like the people of Anudor and her hair tied in short braids and as black as night, and grave plummeted to the earth and landed with force enough to crack the paving stones with its impact and send a dust cloud soaring high into the air. No being of flesh and blood should have been able to survive such an impact, but the gleaming armor that the figure was clad in had seemingly dulled the impact sufficiently that the angel was alive.... Barely. What might have caused her plummet was impossible to tell, but it was clear that the woman was in dire straits, and that without assistance her death was assured. Blood pooled beneath her, seeping into the cracked stones on which she'd fallen, and bones poked through her flesh in several places as dying magics flared around her, their last breaths mirroring their originators.
Torin, though he'd been schooled well by the priests that had brought him up, knew little of angels. They were said by the priests of the Star Gods to be false divinities, to be no less reviled than the false gods that other lesser men worshiped, but his fighting companions had sung a different tune. Angels were the greatest of boons to those facing the aliens, for they would often appear in the direst of times to lay waste to the grey horde and their foul masters. Tales spoke of men capable of calling such boons when they were in need, and of the quests that they would give to aid the cause in recompense, but Torin had never even seen one of the winged warriors before, much less seen one in the last moments of its life. His old mentors would have said good riddance to it, or even helped it on its way, but his comrades would have done whatever they could to save such a champion. What Torin thought of it, however, was his business and his alone.
Cosi, while she had never seen an angel before, knew of them well. While they could not enter the undersea world in most cases, the angels held an amicable relationship with Adamantia. She knew that they were wise, and possessed of ancient lore that both mortals and her own kind had long lost. It might be too good to be true, but the angel dying almost literally at her feet might hold a clue that would give her a location to the temple that she sought.
Elowen knew of the angels, and while he hadn't ever met one, she did recognize them as members of her kin, albeit very distantly. They were beings of purity, strength, magic, and wisdom, their every breath devoted to making the world better than it was, and while their strength was incredible it was not without its limits. The armor of this one marked her as a Valkyrie, a warrior knight of skill beyond that of even the greatest warriors of the faerie courts, and while she was likely not long for this world, it was said that many angels who lived to see such power possessed vast knowledge. Perhaps she would know how to cure what ailed snow?
It would take great effort to save the dying angel's life, and if any of the three wanted to intervene in some manner, it would be up to them to do so. The people around them were as surprised as they, but none appeared capable or willing to help, their expressions too stoned for the time being to offer any aid.
Sorry if it's a little bookish or if I took too many liberties with reactions, and that Torin has a seemingly less compelling hook than the other two. This was the first thing that popped into my mind, and if it doesn't work I'll just figure something else out.
