025 – Ashakir III: The Storm Twins

025 – Ashakir III: The Storm Twins

“—what story would you like to hear next, Sarila? Is it Ayle and Aru? Old King Lorel? The Firespitter? Oh, none of them? It had better not be one of those silly Beyari tales your grandmother’s been teaching you, child! …Oh, is that right? The Thunderous Clash of the Storm Twins? What a wonderful idea, that’s my favorite too!”

—Caretaker Anahn of the Northern Acquisition Children’s Mission, to Sarila of Beyal, 742 Y.S.

“Resh, the Old Storm, sought to understand the People,” Sari recited, “But the Storm was vast and timeless, and could not comprehend the smallness of humanity. So it was that Resh decided to send a piece of itself to our realm. A titanic lightning bolt came crashing down onto the sands of Varrah, so large that for a time, Varrah-ir was not the only crater of the Desert.

“The lightning danced across the skies, splitting and recombining, until at last it burst violently against the sand—which turned the entire desert into molten glass—and became the Storm’s children in mortal flesh.”

Ai watched as Sari stepped towards the statues. There were two figures in front of them, each the height of four, no, five men each. All around her, it seemed as though the Temple of Storm’s beating heart echoed through the Temple hall, a steady rhythm that seemed to ebb and flow like the tide.

Th-thump. Th-thump.

Sari stopped in front of the first statue, which stood to Ai’s left.

The statue was of a beast of a man, tall, well-muscled, and imperious. He was depicted with ferociously bared teeth, long flowing hair, and a great beard tied off into twisting braids that reached down to his waistline. He was carved from marble—no, the statue wasn’t carved, but rather the stone had been moulded and shaped by an ancient mage’s artistic hand. Ai couldn’t feel out the design of the spell that was used to make the sculpture; it had become unwoven in the centuries since it had been cast.

The figure held one hand before him, grasping forward in a clawing motion, as if he had just thrown something. In the other was held a sheaf of stone lightning bolts, sharp, jagged, and deadly. The man’s face was twisted in a rictus of arrogant laughter.

“The elder twin was named Zazuz.” Sari pointed at the statue.

“Boastful, fickle, and mighty. He demanded worship and took what he wanted from the People. He believed that because he was the elder Son of the Storm, the world belonged to him.”

Zazuz. The name scratched at Ai’s brain. Zazuz. The Zeus. [TheZeusIsLoose].

[TheZeusIsLoose] was the leader of the guild Olympus [godz], a bitter rival to everything Karravar [kava] had ever done. He was a man who had treated the game’s sandbox like his personal playground, who advocated for a theory of might makes right with himself cast as the mightiest of them all. [Stormold] had held him at bay, ultimately defeating him during the final battle of Titanomachy so that Ai could establish Nor and the Ve’un network.

Ai turned to face the statue built in [Stormold]’s likeness.

“And the younger twin? What is he called?” Ai asked.

“Zatom.” Sari said.

Zatom. The Storm. The Storm-Old. [Stormold].

Was the ‘Za’ an artifact of the definite article ‘the’, from the English that Aedan and the transmigrated Players most certainly used? Or was it adapted from the name Zazuz, for the sake of equilibrium between the Twins’ names? There was so much Ai could only guess at.

“Zatom was just as boisterous and loud as his brother, but where Zazuz was avaricious and cruel, Zatom was righteous and just. He walked among the People not as their god, but as their friend. He ate with them. Taught their children. Lived amongst them. So when Zazuz’s fickle temper caused a great hurricane to destroy the coast at ihs latest whim, Zatom’s fury became a maelstrom.” Sari’s expression turned serious, clearly becoming more and more engaged in her storytelling.

Ai focused on [Stormold] as she listened to Sari’s impassioned tale.

Aedan’s in-game avatar was also depicted as a well-muscled and bearded man, though much thicker than it had ever been during Dirge. He wore an expression of unyielding determination. This version of [Stormold] was middle-aged, clearly at least a decade older than the last time she saw her friend.

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There were several marble orbs surrounding him, connected with metal cabling and posed around him in a halo, as though they were weapons. Knowing how [Stormold] had used [Eye of the Storm] as a remote-casting device tied to his very heartbeat, it wouldn’t have surprised Ai at all to learn that he had developed his foci further.