Lorelei Side Story 1 – Past Duty


    The Order of the Golden Rose was an old organization. It wasn’t as ancient as some other guilds in the Abyss, but it had amassed enough history and traditions to be respected. As an order in the service of the one and only Lady, their hierarchy had been strict from the start and only consolidated further as time continued. Every man and woman had to understand their station and that station’s significance in the grand structure of the Order of the Golden Rose to ensure its success in protecting the innocent from the uncontrolled mages that would do them harm.


    Like all organizations, the Order of the Golden Rose separated its members into various ranks. Inquisitors, stewards, soldiers, knights, commanders, priests, seers, to name only the most basic. Those ranks were filled by those fit for the demands of the job. At the core of many of those ranks sat powerful families.


    Wardens of the Shield were members of the Brighton family. Consequently, the Brightons were the leaders of the Shield Branch of the Order of the Golden Rose. The sturdy nucleus of this carefully constructed organization, directing all efforts with the backing of their blessing – a power practically unique in the Abyss. Inheritance of Innate Abilities was known to happen, but a power that only existed in one woman in an entire bloodline at a time was highly unusual. Particularly one that appeared less to make the individual themselves powerful and more to put them in connection with a higher power. The highest of powers, in the case of this blessing.


    Around that divine authority sat several other families, distinguished through generations of service and represented by heads that bore the experience of hundreds of operations. All of them took pride in their occupation and trained their children to one day continue the work in their respective area of expertise.


    One such family was that of the Varniks. The seers of the Golden Rose were forced into their occupation. Where other families continued their legacy out of pride, the Varniks had an Innate Ability that was similar to that of the Brightons in one way: it put them in contact with Gaia.


    Prophecy was a fickle craft. Everyone who practiced it knew that much, including other minor seers that sometimes managed to step into the Varniks’ domain in the Order. The moment one spoke a prophecy, they were possessed by a level of understanding that could not be compared to thinking. Like a sportsman did not calculate the accurate path of the ball in his head before catching it, so did the seer simply let their instincts take over to create a conclusion they were consciously hardly, if at all, able to comprehend. Also like a sportsman, a prophecy could not be made relying on information one did not have. For the regular seer, collecting a wealth of information to draw conclusions from was deeply necessary to speak a prophecy that could come true.


    Varniks were different. Beyond trying to tell the future by themselves, they could attempt to draw from Gaia’s wisdom. The supreme deity of reality knew all there was to know of what was inside it. Having all information that existed available allowed one to perceive the future with the highest possible accuracy. A Varnik was blessed with an aptitude for this craft like no other.


    And they were cursed for it in their own way.


    Being in connection to the entire knowledge of divinity was difficult on the human mind and body. Varniks gradually turned blind after their childhood, their previously normal eyes becoming more and more pale. By the end of the process, the pupils vanished entirely and the iris was left as a silvery white. Any Varnik with the Innate Ability turned blind. This was what forced them into the path of the seer.


    Lorelei had cursed her fate when it had first reached out to her. She had been around twelve years old when it began to be visible. She had visited a mundane school at the time and did what normal young girls did. They went to their classes, tried to make friends, and fell in love with boys that hadn’t hit the part of their life yet where they even understood what that really was.


    His name had been Lawrence. That she still recalled it and his face had only to do with the way the events had disturbed her young mind. With waning sight, she had bumbled around school. The boy she liked had laughed at her like all the others. Threw mean words at her like all the others. When she had returned home, she had poured her heart out to her mother.


    Each vision strained her a little bit. It was perhaps the greatest curse of the Varniks’ outstanding perception that it was not a power that lasted for a lifetime, not in its entirety anyway. Being a vessel for the Lady’s divine knowledge had taken away her first sight, and in time her second sight would dull, worn out from the sheer amount of information she digested in service to her Lady and the Order.


    Through training and acceptance of reality, Lorelei accepted this eventual outcome as well. Callous as the words of her mother had felt at the time, she had been right. Service to the Lady was a great enough purpose to shoulder the burden of blindness. Many of her visions served to avert catastrophic outcomes.


    Simultaneously, the question of love never left Lorelei’s young mind. She yearned for it, to feel connected to a man on a spiritual and physical level. To have someone who she could rely on on nights that she felt lonely. To know that she would have something beyond her service in her life. To care for someone after her vision had grown dull, like her mother had cared for her.


    Each week, she would study the texts left by past Varniks. Long ago, she had found the passage about the ritual her mother had described, but its contents remained a mystery to her. Her blind eyes could perceive the words on the page in a way others could not. What was mere ink to others was magic confined into words to her. Words that refused to make sense at first. Bit by bit, as her visions grew in their intensity and frequency, she managed to decipher the tome.


    One fateful night, not too long before rumours of the Gamer had first started circulating, she had attempted the ritual for the umpteenth time. Each time she understood a little more and she was driven to finally unlock the secret of the tome and her own future love.


    She was in her bedroom, sitting illuminated by moonlight. This place and this hour were the only chance to do something for herself during the day. Wearing a white nightgown, she kneeled in the sparsely decorated room. There were no bright colours, no mirrors and no source of artificial light. That was, on a normal day.


    Embers of burning coal rose from a small bowl. It sat in the middle of a strangle circle drawn with powder on the smooth floor. Symbols made from salt and stained with red drops expanded the magical arrangement further. The tome sat in her lap, the important page open. Lorelei’s finger glided over the page as she followed the words.


    She chanted something, a melody that was less made up of words and more power compacted into sound. Her finger stopped when she reached the end of the page. For a moment, she felt relief, having finally managed to decipher it all. Then, disappointment, as nothing came to her. No understanding, no vision, and no revelation.


    Frustrated like she hadn’t been in years, she slammed the book shut and tossed the venerated text of her ancestors to the side. “It doesn’t work!” she complained out loud. “The language is vague and ancient, but it should work. It should show me the man who will love me.” Lorelei grabbed some of the salt from the circle and sprinkled it on the burning embers. Each grain vaporized in a puff of a strange, green smoke. She did it two more times, desperately trying for anything that could work. Energy impregnated the air. Then, after the third time, she felt words rise in her throat.


    “At the end of conflict, where you will make a new home, drowned in many lights, embraced and left alone by your future sisters, ravished by the purple and golden man,” she pressed out the stream of words, leaving her heavily breathing and confused. She had expected a vision, like practically all her perceptions of the future tended to be. It was unusual for a Varnik to speak prophecies. “By the Lady, what was that?” she mumbled, while scribbling the words down on a piece of paper, using a cipher. “I didn’t see him or his name. It shouldn’t do that. What does all this even mean?”


    She supposed it would make sense one day.