Chapter 5
Sire, we come as called.
—The Gray Angel (After a Battle Won)
Deep, deep in the ocean, in a silent obsidian darkness unknown to mortal eyes, seven hundred and seventy-seven minds that were one sighed to a slumbering consciousness after hundreds of years. They were not truly awake, rather hovering on the gloaming edge between consciousness and dreamscape.
Aeclari.
The word whispered through the dreamscape, streamers of searing blue and glittering wildfire.
In their dream, they searched for the danger that summoned them from their slow rebirth and long rest, and found none…
but still they sensed the cold fear that chilled the hearts of the beings they loved beyond all others.
There had been other aeclari, others who held their loyalty, but never like this.
Never until they had become more than themselves. Never until they had loved.
Aeclari?
A troubled shimmer through the dreamscape. For this was impossible. Two aeclari could not exist in the same time and place. How could they serve both? And yet…there were two.
The first aeclari…so old, so very, very tired.
The dreamscape quieted under the weight of that knowledge, as the age of the aeclari who had created them sank into their cells and pulled them under. But they were not as far into rest as they’d been before this partial waking, their minds hovering just beneath the surface of the world.
They listened.
They waited.