Chapter 1
A light in the darkness appears like a glimmering star. It flashes, and floods the essence of everything, revealing an egg.
Within it, two binary stars swirl and coalesce before merging and exploding outward, breaking the shell and splattering the darkness in nebulas and smaller stars.
From it, two beings emerge.
Brother and Sister, as humans would label them. Both immense in power and presence. Deities of all, and yet different aspects of the universe itself. The brother represents the physical. The sister represents the astral.
Sire, a bright yellow star who slowly took form, long-eared and antlered and beautiful and empty of feeling. Eris, a sleeping dragon so vast she was the cosmic void itself, her scales glittering with every star that ever was. Only her Astral form could explore this new playground as Sire could, but it was tethered to her sleeping form to start.
They were alone for too long and Sire grew restless and bitter. He could not stand Eris any longer, and his first act of cruelty was abandoning her. Going to explore where she could not.
Eris stayed close to her body and ordered what chaos she could. She lined planets up like books on a shelf and wove star hatcheries out of nebulae. She worked, and she waited for him to return, or for her astral form to be pulled back into the sleep dragon should it ever awaken.
When Sire returned, he brought her a carving as an apology. Moonstone, shaped in her likeness. She had not known she could cry until she did. Her tears, made of starlight and aether, rained down onto the stone and cracked it open. What emerged was a small dragon, alive and warm, who flew straight to her shoulder and never left. If one were to witness the chain of events that were Sire and Eris, they would note this would be the first Evolution of them as Primordial Deities. His physical structure and her emotional tears a display not known in the cosmos before this. However, more than that would shape this moment in time for the two and their trajectories.
Sire had not intended for that to happen, and when the thing he made came to life and chose her, he wanted it. Eris refused to give it to him, and it would not leave her shoulder. He tried again, but each time a different animal would appear, and every time, would imprint on Eris instead of Sire. 4 Dragons in total as he could only carve them in the likeness he knew her most dearly; a sleeping cosmic dragon.
On his fifth try, Eris had nothing left to give him, his anger at her such that he cracked open one of her star nurseries like an egg, poured its yolk and whites onto stone, and made something new. This one looked like a deer, only part of him, for he was a jackalope by nature. So this wasn't what he wanted either. He threw it away without a second thought.
Eris followed the creature and adopted it. She would find herself always following and picking up after him. Saving those which he discarded like nothing when she could see the real light in them.
She spent an age of the universe retrieving what he discarded and rehoming them on planets. When one planet filled, she found another. She stretched herself thin across the cosmos trying to be what her brother refused to be. When these failures began adding up, he would start pulling the light from himself. Much more pleased, these too, would lose his interest, and again he would abandon them.
Eventually, these beings would evolve until they developed their own conscious thoughts and desires. It was then the prayers of his forgotten creatures became a sound Eris couldn't silence. A weight she couldn't carry alone, but was forced to, as Sire ignored them somehow. This would mark another evolution. A cruel and uncaring God versus a kind and gentle Goddess.
Eris was desperate and so created four starlings from starstuff and dark matter. Small birds speckled like a night sky, and sent them out in four directions to help her find those who needed her most. For a time, it was enough. She could use their essence to teleport to whenever they found those in grievous need of a deity who would listen and act.
Then one of the starlings got lost.
The starling had wandered into a solar system with a great yellow star at its center. Sol, some would come to call it. The bird, made of dark matter, was pulled in before it understood what was happening. Consumed. Broken down into its purest essence.
And then sent back out.
Not as a bird, but as a spirit reborn on the small blue planet that orbited Sol, the world that would one day be called Gaia, or Earth. The first reincarnation the universe had ever seen.
The goddess Artemist would find the poor lost soul as a water nymph with no memory of stars or prayers or the mother who had sent her out into the dark. She named her Merope and brought the lost starling who reincarnated as a nymph, to the temple, where she became an Oracle beneath the care of Mother Pleione.
What none of them knew yet was that Sol had attracted more than the little dark matter starling.
Sire had given too much of his light away. Hollowed by it, he too had found his way to Gaia and was now bound to the warmth he could no longer live without. He wore the sun like a mask and called himself Sol. He was cruel in the way that only someone without empathy can be. Where Eris knew joy, he knew only greed. This, then would become their third evolution as Primordial deities, and it would be here that Sire would be faced with some of his creations he had abandoned.
He still did not listen, nor care, but instead gave into the humans primal lusts and greed, experiencing both for the same time. He was one of the more powerful “Gods” on Gaia, and technically the great-great-great-great grandfather of all of them as their lineage dated back to beings who coupled with his star-made beings. Upon procreating and having offspring, they would pass down their stars. With every star came elemental powers and it was these powers that deified some of the “humans” born to Gaia. Artemist being one of them.
It was the Wild Hunt that he and Merope would meet for the first time, neither knowing who the other was. She had known of Sire, but had forgotten him in her reincarnation. He had never known of the starlings that Eris had created on her own. She knew his jealousy would taint them too and had kept them a secret.
Sire’s presence rotted the edges of everything it touched. As Sol, anyone around him acted drunk on their own lust, greed, and jealousy.
Orion, who attended the wild hunt with Sire as Sol, he too succumbed to the intoxicating air the Sun King gave off. Orion set his sights on a group of Oracles known as the Seven Sisters, and he went from hunting beasts, to hunting them. Asterope, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Maia, Celaeno, and lastly, Merope. One by one, Orion's arrows found them, until all that remained was Mother Pleione at the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to go. She had hurried them out of the temple and somehow found herself the last one standing.
She prayed to the stars, as the Gods had abandoned her.
Eris was already close. She had been searching the cosmos for her lost starling for longer than she could measure, and in that same moment she felt the echo of a familiar spirit woven into the prayer of a desperate woman surrounded by seven spirits. One of which Eris had created herself.
Eris answered the prayer.
She held the souls of the Seven Sisters and Mother Pleione in the palm of her hands, and found herself weeping once again. Her starling, in her new form, could not transform back into dark matter, and so Eris blessed her and her sisters with their own stars and she carried them home. Not to Gaia, and not to the void, but to a place in the stars made just for them.
The Pleiades.
Seven sisters that were given a star cluster and the stars within it, to call their own. Temples built and Oracles trained for each Sister and the three elements they ruled over. Their pact with Eris also formed a new order; Starlings. Oracles who ascended to help Eris map the cosmos with Constellations they created, and use those same Constellations for Eris to teleport to in order to see her duties through for the most urgent of prayers.
Many “Sisters” were named and would pass on the mantle to other Oracles. This had been the case for Merope, who chose a new name, Aurora.
It is here that our story begins in truth.
—-
“Ok, I’ve got everything all set. Sable, Lyra, Aerie, are you ready?” The White haired Starling glanced over her shoulder from the control panel of their geode ship. The rounded, rock-like structure of it, read as a geode rock until crystalline wings grew from the sides. It was one of the rare bits of technology the Starlings had in their world of magic, but it was required for cases such as this when they had to travel in a flock.
Aerie, the teal haired twin tail Starling, glared at Aurora in response, “Been ready. We’re waiting on you.” Her lips continuously frowning as they usually did. Aurora didn’t take it to heart as Aerie was the epitome of “resting bitch face” incarnate. She glared like that at everyone, including her two sisters who were along for the ride.
Sable, the oldest Starstorm sister, was already in her seat buckled in and snoring. For one who looked so elegant with her long blue-black hair and piercing blue eyes, she was the rowdiest of the three, and yet, here she sat as if recharging her asshole battery for when they arrived at their destination in hopes of finding their lost cohort, Selenari.
Lyra, the youngest Starstorm, smiled enthusiastically and nodded at her friend, “Yupp. All set, but then again, we told you that a candlemark ago…so…” The short, light blue haired elf closed her eyes as she smiled encouragingly, “Take your time, but..hurry up.”
Aurora saluted and smiled, “Roger that.”
Looking back at the control panel, she punched in the symbols and a couple of numbers on the floating screen in front of her that doubled as the ship's bridge and navigation area. Looking it over, her violet eyes reflected the symbols and runes, and she nodded in approval, “Yupp. I think I got it.”
Lyra from the back shifted as she leaned over to see what Aurora was doing, “Is that why it’s taking so long?” Aerie followed up on her sister’s question, “Do you need me to come check your math? Cause now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t trust–”
Aurora held up her hand to silence her.
“Shut it. I have been practicing, and besides,” She turned again and squinted, “We’ve got a Starburst, which means we’ll be out of here, and over there, in a split second.”
Aerie rolled her eyes and grumbled, “I would fly there myself, but this IS quicker.”
Aurora put her hands up to straighten the black bow holding her half ponytail up, a nervous habit everyone else noticed but her, and then placed her hands on her hips in a mimicry of confidence. “Obviously this is quicker. That's what these ships are made for, but I know you’ve never ridden in one before, so it’s ok to admit you’re scared.”
The words were slung at the angry little woman in the back of the ship, with a hint of a grin from the first Starling.
Aerie grabbed the straps of the harness in her seat and looked up as if praying to the stars, which she was.
“Please Eris, don’t let us crash into a sun or a moon.”
Lyra giggled and leaned over to whisper at Aerie, “She’s bad at math, but she’s not THAT bad.”
Aerie glared at Lyra and continued her prayer, “And please help my dearest sister, Aurora, embrace reality. She who created the Great Archive Disaster.”
Lyra laughed and poked Aerie in the side,”It can’t be that bad. We’re aimed at the Iris Nebula. There’s like one planet there, which will make it easier to find Selenari.”
Her sister closed her eyes, her dark brows furrowed as she tried to hold herself in check, “Selenari is probably only missing cause she took directions from Aurora. She’s —” Aerie’s words were cut off as she watched Aurora going for the big red button.
Aurora didn’t turn to Aerie, but mocked her none the same. Before anyone else could tease her about getting lost again, she hit the Starburst button and vowed to show them. She’d show them all.
The ship created a star as it “burst” through space time, faster than light and sound. Now as the Geode ship came out of its Starburst, another false star was formed in its wake, and the ship was flung forward. None of the occupants had a chance to react as they did exactly what Aerie had feared.
And crashed through a Moon.
