Lightning covered the sky over the Lordship of Congard. A woman's screams echoed through the castle where the great master and lord of these lands was supposed to reside; here, he would finally witness the birth of the seventh child of the lord of these lands.
The Great Jarl Garou Aime, lord of all these lands, as well as the Great Archdruid of the Feynir and the great spiritual lord of his race.
The castle, unlike its superficial appearance, was not a crude stone and wood castle at all. Every building and wall around it was covered in silver and gold runes, as well as strange symbols and Sanskrit prayers that, like chants of adoration to the True Spirits, sought their blessing. The neat stone walls were cleansed by the immaculate properties of the ancestral power the Feynir wielded.
It would take her some time to get used to all this information and adapt to her new lifestyle as well, but despite that, she couldn't have felt more excited in her entire life; never before had she felt such a feeling of joy and freedom.
I had died, she thought, dazed, as she observed her surroundings in confusion.
Curiously, despite having been born just moments ago, her eyes were not blind nor did they take time to adapt to the light like an ordinary baby. Instead, as if it were natural, she felt comfortable receiving the vibrant colors of the scenery before her.
She couldn't help but feel that everything was even clearer than before; spectrums of light she couldn't even glimpse previously were before her eyes, and sounds that had never reached her ears before now penetrated her eardrums, flooding her with bliss.
She was alive. And in a cry of triumph at these events, she began to cry.
...
Time was a strange concept in this new world; a year was a blink to her immature consciousness.
It seemed her adult mind couldn't properly process all past knowledge instantly; there were gaps in her memory, but despite that, she could still, generally speaking, express herself normally for her age.
At least it seemed so. Until she detected, in a somewhat natural way, that at this point she could no longer be considered human.
At five years of age, her height was already superior to that of most ten-year-old children she knew, easily surpassing one meter thirty; a strange concept for her, who also managed to see unnatural events around her, abnormalities that twisted the normal reality of her previous world.
"Look, Eli, what I can do. I recently awakened my spiritual root," said one of her older sisters, who was a few years older than her, manifesting what appeared to be a small purple lightning bolt from the tip of her finger, crackling the air around her while a sensation of static subtly touched her body.
"Hey, look, I also awakened my spiritual root and it's fire, too," said her second older sister, snapping her finger and manifesting what appeared to be a flame from the tip of her thumb.
Trying not to be left behind, the shyest of the three sisters standing in front of her stepped forward hesitantly: "I... I also awakened my spiritual root, although it's not that strong. Look, Korelia."
As she said her name, suddenly in the extended palm of the little girl, who didn't seem to be over twelve (at least in maturity compared to a human from her past life), manifested what appeared to be a snowflake in her hand.
The perfect, straight, and symmetrical lines of a snowflake that had a vague hexagonal shape, while the branches of its arms extended as if it were a crystal sculpture, manifested to the eyes of the three girls as they watched it spellbound.
"It's beautiful," they all whispered, forgetting to compete as they enjoyed the natural beauty of that formation.
While Korelia herself couldn't help but feel inconceivable joy. The power she had always been seeking throughout her life, beyond beauty, beyond strength or wealth, was before her eyes; a power beyond anything she had known in her life.
True transcendence was within her reach.
...
Songs and music. She would normally enjoy them like an ordinary Feynir girl; the Feynir were a race that enjoyed arts and labor, just as the Feysir enjoyed battle and war.
But that seemed like an invention to Korelia. After all, she had seen seemingly wise men of the Feynir race beat each other in senseless arguments, like rabid beasts, just like the Feysir they mocked for their apparent barbarism.
And now she was watching a confrontation between men, or rather, the closest thing to it.
"Lord of these lands, I am glad you receive this humble servant of the Hegemony with great hospitality," said the bald man with a goatee and mustache, who was facing her father, with an arrogant expression despite his words.
Garou Aime, who normally had an aura of death and severity around him, seemed indifferent to the unknown man's apparent sarcasm.
His appearance could only be called the most regal among the Feynir: a man with skin white as snow, but amber-colored eyes and hair.
A golden olive wreath covered his hair; it was said to come from the sacred olive tree consecrated to the Matriarch Mátiles, the ultimate sign of authority since the times when the city of Lemur was the core of the Lemurian Hegemony, and the reason for its name.
Accompanying her father were, aside from his relatives and friends, obviously his daughters and sons, who sat on the sides of the long table with vast amounts of food being devoured hungrily by his diners.
The hall was decorated with multiple images of the ancient gods, as well as the ancestors of the Fey race, the Dannan, and specifically the ancestors of the Feynir race: the Vanir.
Gods, Korelia thought to herself with disbelief as she looked at the paintings with fascination, although deep in her gaze greed for their power shone.
"I am glad this banquet is to your refined tastes, Magister Elektrium," her father replied as he ate a loaf of seemingly ordinary bread and spread butter on it, while holding a chalice of wine mixed with honey in his other hand.
Obviously, each of these was a luxury, and although similar to their counterparts in her previous world, for Korelia their flavors and appearance couldn't be more different.
Every food item emitted a soothing and intoxicating fragrance, and most of these foods took days, if not weeks, to expire.
The worry about preserving food for the Feynir was vain; they were masters of growth and possessed nature's blessing, from the vegetal to the animal. No other race could likely compare.
Elektrium, Korelia thought to herself, piecing together the remnants of her father's conversation with an indifferent expression while concentrating on devouring the delicious cheese in front of her.
Elektrium didn't seem like a personal name; it seemed like a type of Magister, a position of power within the Hegemony's bureaucracy, one she had never heard of.
"You are right, Great Jarl. It suits my palate perfectly; it reminds me of my sweet home in Lemur. But I did not come to this place to bore you with diatribes and useless words, nor to be regaled with gifts and flattery. I do not come to test your loyalty to the Hegemony, Garou," said the unknown man with a serious, joyless smile. "What I come for is to give you a mission."
The word "mission" made everyone present freeze and stop what they were doing in an instant, concentrating their gazes on both Garou and the Magister.
"Magister Varega, feel free to speak in this place. All ears and tongues in this room answer to my authority," her father replied with an indifferent expression, but with a hint of interest that Korelia recognized after a long look. A look her father detected as he looked away and, with a smile so fast it seemed like an illusion, winked at her.
"The mission I have planned for you, Your Lordship, is none other than finding someone." His gaze suddenly fell on the scene of the images of battles and gods in the room. "What a beautiful spectacle. I cannot help but admire my ancestors more strongly seeing these images; just imagining them fills my eyes with tears," said the Magister.
With a bored expression on his face due to the change of subject, her father seemed to have a sudden impulse to throw his chalice in Varega's face. But he didn't.
"The Fey have their charm too, after all. We are both children of the divine races, although some more than others, obviously," he said while looking suspiciously at some servants and clients in the service of her father's clan; they were Feymor.
"And what is the mission you ask of us, Magister? Does the Hegemon wish to restore the glory of the gods?" the Great Jarl asked in a neutral tone, while his words denoted more mockery than his tone.
Korelia looked at the images of the heroes of the different progenitor races of the Fey and couldn't help but feel some curiosity. Fey civilization was quite similar to human civilization according to what she had seen, there was only something different: the scale.
Beasts of five to eight meters instead of two; in turn, the dangers of war and plague seemingly had a more mystical origin than rational. Plagues spread through words, diseases that affect the soul and corrupt the body, the perfidy of the flesh, and the madness of mortals upon meeting transcendent beings.
The world was chaos, but in this very chaos, an order existed. Peasants using oxen and plowing fields the size of cities, slaves used for all imaginable labors, cities so large and with entertainment so varied, from songs to duels of honor, as well as literature rich in blood and death.
Such was the world Korelia had come to know during these thirteen years.
"The mission is the following, children of the Dannan," Varega said with a mysterious air. "I am hunting threats to the Hegemony. Although rather, I could call it a threat, though it is never alone."
"What threat are we talking about?" asked her father.
"The same threat that has destroyed so many races and ravaged the mortal realm since the great sage Comnena Pechenega Jazar spoke of them in the first Liber."
"Gnosis." His smile had disappeared, and with those words that made everyone pale before that taboo, he added: "And a possible Archetype."