The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T1.2 Arrivals

Editor's Note: 1.) Völva, pronounced (Wahl-wah), is a word from Old Norse and refers to a Witch-Seeress. In Into Infinity the term was reintroduced via the Mythica (see Valkyries) and is used commonly to refer to a witch of high station. A weathermaster is a witch whose primary set of abilities revolves around the classical elements of the ancient zodiac, though not strictly limited to this regime.
2.) ArQive contains names and words from the language of Xhif'kaxh. The "xh" digraph is pronounced like the "th" in "this". The letter "j" is pronounced like the "y" in "yes". ArQive also contains Kaidani (Kàé-Tan) names written in Kàé Làn. Ulloriaq and Qaanaaq are reliquary anachronisms from Greenlandic.

QSI-N_0005186433302
Ulloriaq/Halcyon's Weathermaster
Arrival Day :: Relicborn Temple Xhifuu
4 rotae before Glitch City TDE Collapse

Ulloriaq never liked Arrival Day. It was always a joyless occasion. The children, filled with resentment and fear, looked at her with a hatred as pure and potent as Azrael's wrath falling upon the world that so loathed him. They were surrounded by guards, the children. It was as much for their own protection as it was for the purpose of intimidation. Twelve men, the guards were, with bare arms of bulging muscle folded across chests their robes barely could contain. Each held an expression cold and stern, like a First Marine Drill Instructor inspecting cadets fresh off the bus. Imposing, menacing, statuesque figures of terror were the guards to a man.

Then there was she, Ulloriaq, Halcyon's Weathermaster, Headhunter of Relicborns, a thin, wispy, dark woman in a raven-coloured dress, her mane of hair unbound as it flowed like a shimmering silver waterfall to her hips. Stood behind the children, her back to the doors whence they had came. Those double doors, bolted shut and protected by the High Völva's wards, led to a short hallway, and thereafter a dock for her shuttle. Beyond lay the vacuum of Interstellar space and, in the middle distance, Ulloriaq's Syrinx-class Midwinter Cruiser—the Qaanaaq—upon which thousands of other Relicborn children lay in stasis, awaiting their own Arrival Day at their Home Temples.

There was but one way forward for those sitting in that dim, column-lined room now. The twelve Ulloriaq had gathered over nearly five Terran decades would walk the path so many before them had tread. These, Xhifuu's most gifted children, possessed of power so great it could snuff out the lives of billions, would spend their lives sequestered away from their homeworlds, away from the banals, training and mastering their power under the tutelage of those who came before them at the Xhifuu Relicborn Temple.

Mighty though the flows of their individual Wellsprings were, none of the twelve children assembled and seated on the cold, flagstone floors could muster enough arcane power to disturb even a mote of dust. Ulloriaq had seen to that. Like all untrained Relicborn she was tasked to contain, she had brought them into a pocket space Halcyon had created, and exhausted them to the last drop of power. Once capable of no more than a banal, Ulloriaq had them put into stasis until enough had been gathered to bring them to their Lossec's Relicborn Temple.

Even with wellsprings drained, Ulloriaq and twelve of the Xhifuu's Masters stood by, ready to intercede should one throw a tantrum or other such fit. Untested Relicborn could still overdraw their wellsprings to unpredictable, often fatal, effect.

"I'm hungry," Ch'maki Maai, a girl of no more than six, complained, breaking a silence that had pervaded the hall since Ulloriaq had brought them in nearly an hour ago.

"Silence!" barked Master Jabbu from the wings, startling the entire group.

Ulloriaq's brow furrowed, but held her tongue. She was in the Temple of Grand Matriarch Hjóni T'kmak'a. How the High Völva ran her Temple and trained her Temple Guard was not Ulloriaq's to question nor override. Only Halcyon, and those acting on her behalf, had such authority—authority she had not been granted.