[center] [img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/55/fb/3855fb6fc7251d8924ab9d48d7a83ce4.jpg[/img] [/center] [color=#CC5500][center][h3]Rahken System - Mithra Sub-System - The Moon of Thotha - Pre-Compliance[/h3][/center][/color] "He wishes to speak with her? Now? Alone!?" The unbridled sense of pain in Kvasi's youthful voice crashed across the relative silence of the night, the artificial cool air of Thotha’s habitation domes washing around those few present on the balcony. “Peace, Nephew, I am sure he will speak with you in time. Matters are moving swiftly.” Iroah Khafre’s hand closed around the younger man’s shoulder, a tone laced with sympathy, but with no real conviction as to the truth of the situation. Below them, motes of light interrupted the deep blue of Night, the sky above dominated by the shade-wreathed enormity of the planet Mithra. “I am his Son, Uncle, she is-” “A daughter as much as Isabis, and a child as much as you, I understand your pain, nephew, but do not let it poison you. We must be unified or we will break. Go now, your mother will need your aid if we are to ride this night.” The man’s tone grew sterner as Kvasi’s protest bordered on spiteful, the almost alabaster grey of his long braids catching the light of the Night even as the dark coal of his skin did not. Even in advancing age, Iroah was still of athletic bearing, and the force of his gentle steering was enough to have Kvasi moving, even if it was willingly. Then the older man passed on, heading towards the far rim of the oval balcony. Sitting upon the cusp itself was the individual he sought. Legs dangling into the plummeting drop to the streets below, even at her lowered position the unnatural scope of her was evident. Almost a decade had passed since the bondsmen of House Khafre had found a unique child in the wilderness of their hunting-domes, surviving where any other infant would have been swift prey to the horrors kept for sport among the biomes. Already she towered over any other adult, let alone a normal human of her own age, a woman grown and more in mind and body. She was terrifying, not in the way of cheap stories but in the epics of old, a being forged for nothing but greatness. “Sekhmetara, what mysteries do you see out there?” Iroah spoke as he moved to stand beside her, one hand resting on her bare shoulder as they both took in the view, the nightscape of the small settlement gathered around the Khafre estate, and then, beyond its walls, the arid grasslands maintained by the ancient technology which brought life to the moon. The misunderstood gifts of ancient gods, much like the girl studying them. “Many, uncle. The sand and dirt, the stars.” A year previously she had explained her theories at to the workings of the domes to him on a night both much alike and utterly different to this one. He had not understood, and the idea of her simply being able to unwork such an ancient mystery should have been laughable, but for whatever reason he had believed her immediately. If only the High Priests of the Empire could see pass their own hubris as House Khafre had, recent events need not have played out. “I wish you had more time to ponder them, Child, but your father has asked for you.” His fingers squeezed once more at her shoulder before releasing, the subtly darker note of his own fingers barely able to dent the musculature of the impossible being. Only the elders, such as he, of the household could ever call her something so familiar these days. He was aware she allowed it out of familiar respect and little more. To call her a child would suggest she had anything to learn from her elders any longer. He believed it a kindness she allowed them, and little more. The thought of her unbridled by such, in a future when he and all who had raised her were no more, filled him with hope and dread and equal measure. Mithra would thrive or die at her whim. Perhaps both. “Not Kvasi? There is not much time, surely he wishes to speak to his heir, I can-” “Do not play stupid, Child, it is an act none can believe of you anymore. Tonight is the start of your destiny, allow an old man his right to set you upon it.” Iroah would not have raised the girl as his elder brother had, that was their one great argument, and he disagreed further still with what was to come, but his brother was the next Enkosi Kakhulu, not humble Iroah, and what was the duty of such a title if not to shape destiny? There was a glower of golden eyes, finally turned his way from the landscape, but they softened, as if remembering who and what he was, a sparkling kindness that he hoped would never dim, no matter his brother’s plans. With a rustle of the silks which clad the supernatural woman, she stood, crouching to allow Iroah to put his arms around her in an even and warm embrace. “No matter what he says, child, remember, your fate is your own, you do not owe us anything.” “I owe you all my life, Home-of-my-love, all that I am.” “You were a gift, Sekhmetara, never a duty.” With the soft words spoken between them, Iroah released his adoptive niece, smiling to her as he stepped backwards, even as his heart broke at the look in her eyes. His words had been unheeded, and so his brother’s would be. The gods save them all. “Go, hurry, our enemies will not wait to give us all moments of peace.” The false-winds which she had unravelled the year before swept around Sekhmetara as she left her uncle to the view she had been contemplating, although not for long, she knew he would shortly head to the Hall of Ukuqalisa as the steeds of the House were awoken from their sacred slumber. She had unravelled the complexity of that process years before, but had kept the knowledge to herself. She preferred the stories the Mithrans told themselves of their greatest weapons. Even though her strides were greater than any other human she had met, she still hurried to reach her adoptive father’s study, knowing well that any spent moment was a waste. The enemies of House Khafre, the loyal sycophants of the High Priests were closing in, the window of action was narrowing if House Khafre was to decide the terms of engagement. She had never spent much time in her father’s study, none of them were truely barred from the room, it was simply a sanctuary few intruded upon. Unlike the Great Hall where most decisions were formerly made, it was sparsely decorated, albeit exquisitely so. A carven desk of true wood upon a raised dais of marble steps, the four corners of the chamber framed by burning braziers of white gold. When she entered, she came to a halt at the bottom of the small series of steps, as her father rose from his chair to pace around his desk. He was not particularly tall for a Mithran noble, but the dias was raised enough that with her at it’s foot his head still cleared her own. “Good, you have arrived expeditiously.” There was always a fire to Inkosi Khafre’s words, the Heir Presumptive to the house as a whole with the advanced age of the current patriarch, even in the quiet of his own company, but when speaking with her, or her siblings, there was a kinder warmth of that flame. “We do not have long, Sekhmetara, our enemy will seek you more than they even seek to crush our household.” “Then they shall fall. The Priests are wrong, and those who follow them are weak.” The golden sparks of her eyes lit with determination as she spoke, but flickered lower as her adoptive father shook his head with something approaching a sad smile. “Perhaps, I am sure we would reap a great number of them, but more is at stake here than simply the ambitions of our house over those who would bring us low. I cannot risk my children out of love, and I cannot risk you out of fate.” Even with feet of distance between them, he could feel the form of his daughter tense, impossibly powerful muscles screaming rage at the anticipated order. “You cannot keep me from fighting with you.” “I can, and I will. Any father would be proud to ride with you to war, and out of love, any father would wish to keep his daughter from harm. But I am not any father, and you are certainly not any daughter.” Despite the evident sadness in his tone, there was steel to Inkosi’s words, more than prepared for the temper of his divine daughter as her tensed form rose to its full height, growing closer to rivalling him despite the advantage of high ground. “Had Kvasi or Isabis earned the ire of the Priests, I would have them fight, we would ride together and perhaps we might even win, a full scale war may trap us upon this moon, but unifying the Great Houses would be a noble undertaking of their lives, they would be known as some of the greatest heroes of our history. The Khafre name would be secure for a thousand years, perhaps more, perhaps less.” When he continued, his words had lost some of their warmth, but none of their fire. “To risk such for you? I cannot abide such a waste.” “Father…I..” “When I found you, Sekhmetara, it was the most auspicious day of all my days, but it was also one of pain. I knew then that the great destiny I had planned for the children of my blood was no more. I had a higher purpose, a greater fate to forge.” Sekhmetara searched his features for any sense of exaggeration, of a hint that he spoke with hindsight, and found only the raw emotion of truth, a crushing cocktail of hope and regret. “I knew my Son would be nothing, my daughter, nothing, to what you would be, what you must be.” She had, of course, known for as long as she was aware of other humans, that she was marked for more, but to hear the man who had raised her dismiss her siblings so still blazed through her like scalding steam, made worse by the truth of it. “Take them with you, leave them here to fight and die with me in glory, it is a fate worthy of them, but either way, my bondsmen will take you to the planet, that you might bring all Mithra to heel. And when you are done, you will find a way to the return to the stars that brought you to us, make the gods themselves weep at your feet. Do you understand, Sekhmetara? Anything else is not worthy of you, not worthy of the name we have given you.” FInally he descended the stairs, placing both his hands upon her shoulders, leaning to do so, in a motion which inclined Sekhmetara to kneel in respect, but as the motion began, his voice returned. “No, Sekhmetara. Never again will you kneel, to gods, or kings.”