Mordred thought back, to his first trip up the glowing moonlit stairs, to the city of visions. It had planted the seeds of so many things in his head... the Tower he wished to build, the Ravens he was breeding and training and modifying to be his eyes and ears, and most of all, what he planned on doing with the remains of the Chaos Lord Jhaleen he'd defeated and then rendered for his Blood Essences at PatternFall...
After arriving in the oddly lit realm in the sky, he'd been drawn down towards the sea, away from the gleaming image of Amber that was reflected there in the sky realm, to a place close by where the stair down to Rebma would have been. There was a great Tower standing there, appearing in the light of the full moon to be like the horn of an enormous submerged Unicorn. Mordred entered, and then...
He stood in a dark cave by a stone well, knowing that he was deep in the bowels of the Tower. Drops of moisture dripped from the ceiling as he peered towards the greenish-white light coming from a ledge at the rim of the well. There it was, the low-browed, broad-skulled head, its hair stained with streaks of brownish red and faintly discolored by madder and other preservative herbs. The three withered eyelids were closed. It was clear this had not been a person such as himself - the head alone was almost half again the size of his own. He jabbed his thumb with his blade, and let three drops of blood fall onto the dead lips. The three eyes opened then, and he fell into them.
He was young, barely out of adolescence, and Llewella had brought him to a great Tree that stood in mist and blinding gray-white light all around. He looked at his father questioningly, for the trees limbs spread wide and far, its topmost branches lost in the mist. The trunk was bigger around than any 20 men could stand with hands outstretched, its bark shaggy and coarse like the pelt of a beast.
She spoke no word.
Silent, she hung him upon the Tree, her movements deliberate and graceful, almost choreographed - but inexorable for all that. He was soon bound in a network of cords made from twisted bark ripped from the Tree, held tightly against the trunk, his skin abraded in many places. His eyes begged her to explain, as she'd bid him keep silent, no matter what befell him here.
She gave no answer.
Uneasy, but still trusting, he saw three veiled figures appear at her side as she stood observing him. One handed her a short broad dagger with a chiseled point. Taking this in hand, she bowed her head and murmured a few words over it - then used it to slash his garments from him. As if this were a signal, the wind began to blow cold, chilling his flesh.
He was alone.
Far down below he felt/saw one of the other veiled figures hand his mentor a branch torn from the tree. She took it and made three great diagonal slashes across his body, with its jagged end. Blood flowed down along his legs, to his feet and onto the tree's roots. At this there was a shudder in that against which he was still bound, as of a beast striving to shake off a fly.
It began to rain.
The branches tossed in the storm winds; the trunk itself bent and creaked, so great was the tempest. He was lashed by bone-numbing torrents, cold and harsh. The Mists were torn aside and he saw up above the Tree's topmost leaves, to a realm of light, of purity, of Order. There was a small city, a great tower, a mountain and a great golden palace.
A Glory stood up.
At the mountain's peak was a living flame, molten white-gold made flesh, a gleaming majesty. It was horse-not-horse, for never had there ever been a creature like this that would bear another on its back or carry burdens. Its horn spiraled up into the clouds, striking sparks off of them. Its eyes flashed with lightning, still leashed, but only barely.
Mordred came to himself, swam up from the vision and met the three blazing eyes above the silent slash of a mouth that that were all he could now see, saw the rainbow hued hair waving in an unfelt breeze. "It wasn't like that at all, you know. Not at all." Down again he sunk.
He looked down now, far along the trunk, to the roots well saturated with his blood, following them deep into the earth and beyond, to see at the very deepest point a well. Here the self-same three veiled figures were, dipping up great double handfuls of the well's dark waters and laving the Tree root with them, healing great tears and gashes in it.
The darkness stirred.
From the shadows a part of the root separated itself, came into the unearthly light to show itself to be a great serpent. Ignoring the veiled ones - and they it in turn - the immense creature turned to the root of the Tree and began to gnaw at it, scoring great gouges into it with tooth and claw. With every moment it undid the healing the three figures achieved.
The cycle continued.
He stood then, on his feet, armored in Rebman scale armor and bearing only a great spiraled white horn as a lance. Challenging the serpent with a great cry, he flew at it, only to be repulsed by a great lashing of its tail. It turned from its destructive work to face him, rearing up and gaping its maw wide enough to take him whole, with a deafening hiss.
He saw a weakness.
There in the hollow of its breast, where one scale did not quite meet the others, was a glimmer of pale flesh. He knew that only by sacrificing all hope of survival could he hope to take advantage of this and steeled himself to the task. Diving forward, under the clashing teeth his whole body the flung spear and the gleaming white horn the spear's head.
He slew the beast.
The hot blood coursed over him, burning like acid through armor and skin and bone, melting him even where he lay half in and half out of shadow. Then one of the three came to him and lifted its veil - an aged crone it was, toothless and gnarled, blinded by cataracts, breath stinking of the grave. Healing water poured over Mordred as he met his dead mother's eyes.
He screamed.
The serpent's heart tasted foul, the last dregs of blood still pumping from it to run down his arms and burn his flesh anew. Still he chewed away at its tough flesh, he knew not why - only that he must. With every bite his gorge rose, many times he thought he'd not keep it down, but gamely he kept on until it sat like a blazing coal in the pit of his stomach.
The three eyes of the severed head of his one-time foe were blazing, with hatred and power - he thought on what they might have seen when they were alive...
He saw the three veiled figures - no they were nine now - three threes of them, blowing upon the surface of the waters boiling up in the cauldron that had been a well. Their breath cooled the surface and dispelled the vapors, revealing an image of Llewella, taking bark and leaf, nut and berry, tree sap and his own life's blood; mixing it together.
Thus she fed him, there on the Tree.
He watched in the cauldron's waters as days and nights passed, as Llewella would reach into the ever-open wounds and pull shadows from him, liquid darkness that she cupped between her hands and then released into the air - as nothing. Soon they fluttered all bout him, vague and indistinct, muttering and whispering, as the fire grew in his belly.
It began to burn.
Mordred watched as his mentor took the branch and carved many symbols and signs into it with the knife, until its entire length was covered in dark etchings. She handed it up to his figure on the tree, which took it in hand, placed the jagged end at the juncture of his breastbone, just above the flaming agony that was the serpent's heart within him - and impaled himself.
The branch went deep.
Pinned to the tree now, his blood came forth, more sluggish than he'd have thought, slowly filling each and every line of the carved runes, empowering them with his life's force. His body on the Tree grew gaunt, kept alive only on the meager diet Llewella gave him, made of the tree's bounty and his own blood as days turned into weeks, then moons.
He died there.
At the moment of his death the heart of the great serpent he had slain burst into flame, crisping his flesh, melting his hair away, leaving him a withered husk. Soon the maggots came, eating away at what was left of him. Crows picked his eyes out of their sockets and ate them as he watched. Soon he was bones hanging in the wind, which whispered to him.
It spoke fell words.
When there was nothing left his mentor raised up her arm for a great raven to light upon it. Deliberately, she bit off its head, laving his bones with the blood that sprayed forth. One of the three, looking to be a female twin of himself, came and took the corpse from Llewella, dipped the wings in blood and traced symbols onto his bones and the tree upon which they still hung.
"I know I did not die," he said to the ever-watchful eyes and the silently writhing lips. "None of this happened - what are you trying to say to me?"
A hunched and crippled figure hobbled forth to the foot of the Tree. Powerful thick arms wielded crutches, the barrel chest covered with a soot-streaked leather tunic. The Smith turned and gestured, revealing an anvil - all of gold it was, at the foot of the Tree. Also revealed thus were the badly healed marks of the cruel blade that had hamstrung him.
He seemed familiar.
The man hobbled up to him and took down his bones from the Tree. He began to heat them in a fire that arose from nowhere. As they became white hot he placed them upon the anvil's golden surface and beat them with a mighty hammer - every blow was so intense it shook him to the root of his being - he was forging Mordred anew, sending shockwaves through his spirit.
He rebuilt him.
When his skeleton gleamed fresh and new, the Smith took gemstones and powdered them, squeezing with his great hands, mixed it with blood and tree sap to make clay. This he molded onto his bones as flesh, until a lifeless mannequin stood there, though somehow it was still Mordred within, observing all. For organs he took great crystals of myriad colors and placed them within.
He was still dead.
The rune-inscribed, blood-encrusted branch, that with which he had sacrificed himself, was then put deep within his core, the central pole about which the rest of his form stood. The last of the three came to Mordred, and stared deeply into his unseeing eyes. It was his mother as he wished to have been able to remember her, a grown woman, mature and powerful. Lips to lips, she kissed him.
She blew life into him.
It hurt, a rushing wind that set his bones rattling, wracking him with spasms as the fire of life flowed further into his form, infusing every extremity, filling every smallest place deep within. His skin became that of a man, over flesh now not clay, even the flame red glory that was his hair grew. Then the Smith drew from within him the branch, which was now in some way a Blade of Ebon, with bone in its hilt.
He was alive.
Mordred was upon the Tree, listening to the winds of fate - he heard words carried on the errant breezes - words dire and foreboding. They spoke of strife and kin-death, of blood shed in rivers, enough to fill the Shimmering Sea were it emptied of water. Shadows still fluttered about him, phantasms that might some day come to be and might not.
He stepped even closer, so the three blazing eyes were all he saw.
"The answer is yes. Yes I know what I am doing and yes I know what I want and yes let's do it."
The severed head that sat in a silver dish at the dried up well's edge smiled, the eyes brightened, the bloodless lips writhed as if they wished to speak, but no sound came forth. Mordred nodded, in answer to something only he could hear, and leaned closer, until they were all but touching.
He was one with the Tree.
All at once he could hear it all; the sounds of the leaves on every tree in existence; the chirps of every bird; the sounds of every living thing that was - Then came more. He heard the sap rushing through the trees; the slow grinding of stone on stone as the earth flexed and breathed; the myriad voices of every stream and river - and he understood it all.
He was one with the All.
Lines of fire stood out in the dark depths of the well's waters. Seeing them, he reached out - watched his hand catch flame and burn to a stump. Again he reached out - this time a spark leaped from one of the strange sigils into his eye and burned it out of his skull. Still once more did he stretch forth \x{2013} and then finally they rushed at him, all at once.
He burned with Knowledge.
S/he was a bog-wife, a sacrifice buried for generations under the peat, his/her skin turned dark and grained as a bog oak, tanned to unrotting leather. A thousand dawns warmed him/her, a thousand nights cooled him/her, while his/her brain fermented in the endless darkness. S/he dwelt in the mire, everlasting as amber and jet, one with the earth around him/her.
S/he was The Goddess.
He stood alone on a great dark plane, back to a tree, as the corpse-light grew about him. He knew the draugs were about, with their moon-pale eyes and the rotted flesh of their maggot-ridden bodies. Yes, here they came, earth-stained hands outstretched for life's blood. Sword flashed, spear dove and dove again as he pitted life against death.
He was The God.
He had stood shivering, atop Mount Kolvir, though the evening was balmy, at the base of those steps that led up towards Tir na N'ogth, wondering how he'd gotten there, remembering none of the journey back, watching the moon set and the beginning of dawn begin to paint the east with blood and amber. It would be a while before he ventured back up that staircase into the realm of shadows and might-someday-be-futures...
Thinking back, Mordred mused upon what had passed, what it might mean now that he was determined upon his course of action - thought it might and probably would take decades, he would do it; he would raise the Tower, he would wrest the Head to serve him, and most of all, he would walk the Pattern that had haunted hium since he was a child...
No, it wasn't Brennus at all, though his prattling had been the catalyst. This was something he needed to do. For himself.