A lightless domain of ash suppressed the beauty of a once lively forest. Stole the light, and seized power from the star that kept the forest alive, and he would reset it. The sacred territory surrounding the floating mass of earth felt different from the rest of the forest. Constantly, throughout his journey through Moyra, the knight felt the imprint of something greater than life itself. However faint the imprint was. A tingle; something barely noticeable, but here, in the vicinity of the great tree–it was almost suffocating.
There were the eyes watching, as they always did, but this is different. It wasn't the oppressive surveillance of the plague, the immortal, unkillable plague. It was heated. That was the only way he could describe the feeling, and the further they ventured into this strange part of the forest the more the knight knew this to be fact. The forest itself was judging him. The tangle of branches that rubbed against each other not a few feet below him and bird, the barren trunks that had once burned with the intensity of a sun, the home of all who burned, it was watching him. Though it was powerless, it was still judging.
The tingle turned into the shuddering of his shoulder, and the twitching of his pinky. He was used to judgement, but that didn't mean he liked it. His life had been spent in judgement, mostly. The wind blew, and the sky growled, yet the forest remained quiet. The silent judgement said a thousand words. Was he not worthy? Well, of course not. No one was worthy to be in the presence of such an exalted being, but it felt…stronger than that. He knew his mission, and what it entailed, so why did it feel so much stronger than even that. He wasn't experiencing push back from the forest, just the judgement of something far greater than he was or ever would be. A breath left his lungs with anticipation and–
"Doubt. You're experiencing doubt, Elder. This forest is judging you. Father is judging you." The voice of Kanaft swiftly cut off his thoughts, interjecting. It took a moment, but the knight eventually found his mental voice.
"Is my life in danger… Kanaft?" Silence stood between them for a heartbeat before the bird's whisper invaded his ear.
"You are going to be safe. We both are being judged, at this moment."
"This part of the forest is uninhabited due to the weight of father's great presence, even when asleep, but father has allowed us in."
"And what would've happened if Lord Eos did not allow us to be here…"
"The unworthy are burnt to less than ash after stepping foot onto it, though I'm sure you already figured that out…" He trailed off, letting the silence bloom before harvesting it again. The wind between his feathers felt like the soft patter of a mother as Kanaft zoomed through it. A flicker of nostalgia for a past that didn't exist.
"There are few beings which are allowed to enter, and I am one of them, as the single pyromancer father allowed to come to life. You have been deemed worthy."
"I knew vaguely even before you woke up in my nest, that you were worthy, and when the forest lit a color I had never seen before I knew it to be true. Now then, let us wake father."
Being worthy. That was not something he had expected. It felt like so long ago, when he believed he was worthy of so many things. Partially because it was that long ago, but also because of the indestructible barrier between the man he was meant to be, and the one shell he was. To be worthy–it felt wrong. The knight had been aimless for much of his life, simply allowing the current to take him from place to place. Because of that, he'd seen wonders so beautiful the mortal mind would crack under the weight of it, and the depths of the greatest ravines of human depravity. He was a part of it, just as all warriors, and leaders were. Conductors of some grand scheme larger than a single soldier's life. Every life taken had been a reminder of his failure, in the past.
The blood on his hands made him unworthy in his eyes, and there was nothing anyone could do to mend that. Fathers fell to his blade, or fought alongside it. Brothers, husbands, mothers, sisters, and wives; daughters, sons. Each pint of blood spilt was another unrelenting memory of an event that shouldn't've happened; of a conflict resolved the wrong way. Violence. The mixture of agonist cries of anguished souls with the quickly filling lake of crimson made him unworthy of stepping foot into hallowed grounds such as these. It made him unworthy of a lot less, in his brown eyes, sunken only in expression, sullied by the taxes of war, and ways of a warrior.
His first kill had been his father. His first death, his mother, and not two days after was he sure that he would join them. Even then he deemed himself unworthy, and now, after all these years, he still hated himself. He would've laughed, if it was funny. He didn't even have a name to give to his own self-hatred.
A heaving, heavy sigh escaped his lips as he felt the weight of his age come crashing down on him like the sky itself–the sky beyond the ash, at least.
"Violence makes one unworthy. Violence without remorse, without care, and without meaning makes one unworthy. You are as violent as you are gentle... you see every face, everything that you're doing, and you know it to be wrong, you acknowledge the depths of your sin, and you carry it with you. That is not why you're worthy, Elder. There is no one way to describe why one is worthy to roam this forest, but you are not unworthy, and that knowledge is enough for now. Death is on your side, and he has been for longer than I've been alive–far longer."
"Can you stop peering into my thoughts? I'd still like some agency and privacy," the hint of amusement was helplessly waterboarded, leaving the knight's projection to the bird a bland animosity.
"If I leave you to your thoughts for too long, you sink like a rock to the bottom of a lake. You will not believe my words, but you have been chosen, found worthy enough to traverse these territories where only the Guardians dared to traverse, and even they treaded lightly."
Almost on queue with Kanaft's statement, the knight found himself looking out behind him as a pillar of white fire tore through the artificial night sky. It was terrifying. It eclipsed the ash in the distance, incinerating everything it touched. Shreifaya had broken out of her chains in record time, and she was mad. Outraged, even. The sky between the ash and the highest thrusting branch trembled with the might of Shreifaya. Her long, spindly body twisted and churned in the sky like a rabid animal, while the fire traveled from her jittery maw, which never stood in the same spot for longer than a second.
She was flattening eye after eye with the heat of the divine fire, incinerating the enemy before it could even begin to process what was happening.
"How come you don't use the divine fire, Kanaft? You said all beasts of Moyra could, yet I have never seen you use them." It was a random thought, but it functioned as a not-so-subtle shift in topic. It was better to put that conversation off for at least a little longer. Plus, Kanaft had his own worries. He could feel it, vaguely, a confused longing.
Kanaft saw through the shift like one would see their reflection in a clear lake, but chose against prodding further than necessary. The Elder was playing the blame game, but the only one to blame was himself, the root of all his problems. He only hoped that his lackluster response had given the knight was enough to puncture those thoughts.
"I haven't been given the chance to ignite the divine fire in me yet. Due to my being able to bend fire like no other, the fire does not come to me as fast as it does to others. My road is not clear, or short like the rest of my kin."
He could feel the knight shift a little on his back at that. Maybe the Elder had thought that he was older than he actually was.
"The fire is something inherent to all beings of Moyra, but that does not mean that all can use the fire. The raven that was hunting you when you first entered the forest was a youngling who had not even spewed his first fire, yet."
"And the other two…"
"They were older than me, that is for certain, but they belonged to the lowest hanging branches, they were a mindless pair of divine fire wielders, which isn't as rare as you would assume it to be," and, with that, silence consumed them once again.
The wind was nice. So many things were going to change soon, and he wasn't sure if he was ready for it. His home was the darkness of the eternal night, and, now, his home was reverting to a place he had never been, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to face a world both the exact same and vastly different. The intelligent creatures of Moyra had retreated to their dens, and fled long ago to the deepest recesses of the forest floor, or so deep in the thicket they were never seen again, and, now, they would all return. The horrors, the benevolent, the evil, and even the noble ones, held in the arcane depths of the watering hole. The darkness was his world–the lonely, hungry darkness.
"What does one do when their home changes, Elder?"
The silence on the knight's part was not shattered for a while. Kanaft assumed he was trying to collect his thoughts, and place them together, no matter how clumsily. He propelled himself forward with a single large beat of his wings. They were extremely close now. It wouldn't take long before they arrived at the floating island. The low, slightly gravely thoughts soon after came up, almost timidly.
"Crystal. My father called it crystal, but it was anything but beautiful. Before he died, as I would learn later in my life, my father was an addict. He was clean when I was born, and was for roughly a decade, but paradise can never be forever.
My father killed my mother, for some hope of getting his fix. I killed my father for that. With the same blade my mother wielded on the battlefield, and the same one that she was killed with. The home I grew up in caved in on itself when I awakened my strength for the first time. I had no home after that. No home for people, or a roof over my head, for that matter. My home changed much over my life. I found a home in my friends, the king, and even the remorseful gaze of Lady Eurel. A place cannot be a home. A home is the people you'd want in the place, the people you want to protect, and the people that help you protect, too. Those people will change in your life, just as the wind changes direction, and how the tide of war can tilt from one side to another. All you can do is adapt to it, and keep taking it in stride, whether it be the fading of a familiar land or the odd shift in someone you held close to you, as they walk away from your house of people in your mind worthy of protection. Keep moving forward." If Kanaft could smile, the bird would've, right then and there. There was the answer the knight had been looking for.
"And that, Elder, is why you are worthy of basking in these sacred lands." He paused for a heartbeat, allowing the wall of white fire to fade into wisps in the background, before making his final announcement to the knight.
"We have arrived."