The Sages

To-Rus, our indifferent creator, the great god of time, marches ever onwards and we, the To-Ri, his mortal children, march alongside him until, after a century or so, we collapse into the dirt. Our places are eagerly taken by our children who will, in turn, fall and be replaced. Such is the march of our people, it has been so since we lived in caves and mud brick houses, it is so now that we live in great cities of stone and glass, and so it will ever be.

Only To-Rus' Sages, their bodies warped, twisted, and withered by the passing of untold ages, keep pace with our indomitable diety. They are the living memories of the past, keeping alive the world that was and remembering those who had been left behind by the relentless passing of time.

Despite the importance of their role as the living souls of our people, they were not fated to lead or command. Their fate was to live beyond the cities, in the deepest reaches of the forests or upon desolate mountain tops, beyond even the clouds. They emerged only in times of crisis to heal the sick, mend the wounded, and salve their people. It was said that killing a sage was all but impossible, and any tribes that turned on their sages vanished from the world. Without their semi-divine guide, their entire people were left behind in To-Rus' wake, and within a generation, only rumours and the crumbling remnants of their cultures remained.

So I was told by my father, as he was told by his father before him, and his before him, an unbroken chain from the dawn of our people when the sages themselves were still young and To-Rus took the first steps on his eternal march. 

I know better now. As do millions of my people. The Sages are no mere divine attendants; they are divinity unto themselves.

________

To-Rus teaches that the passage of time is inevitable, that death is a consequence of life, and that the key to one day matching the pace of our god lies in understanding the world he left behind. I was an alchemist, a much-maligned trade as many of my peers ply theirs with only a thin veneer of deference to To-Rus' teachings: Their efforts fixated almost solely on transmuting lesser elements into greater ones. They claim that such a discovery would be the precursor to a generational leap in our civilisation, ignoring the innumerable teachings which tell of how all things will fall into place as our inexorable march continues and warn against undue haste. That wealth, fortune, and eternal glory awaited those who succeeded was an overlooked benefit.

I had no such illusions; I focused my efforts on the base metals and materials, knowing that our march was served by improving the foundations of our world rather than the guilding. To my eternal pride, I cast the brilliant flame of discovery on several of our creator's secrets and the bright light of understanding on several new domains.

I had found purpose and contentment in my life. Had I understood the true darkness concealed within the avaricious hearts of my alchemical peers, I would have acted in defence of my people. Still, I wrote them off as having fallen victim to heterodoxies. It was irrelevant: time, progress, and the cyclical conclaves would instil within them the truth of To-Rus' teachings, and we, their peers, would guide them back into the fold. So it had been, so it would always be, for such was the way of our people and trades.

It was the way of the world that each trade should interrogate and examine its members and find those whose actions served to slow our march by amplifying only their own station. If any such practitioner was found, they would be given leave to speak to their peers. Should they fail to convince their own circle of the worthiness of their endeavours, they would address the collected assembly of the city who would judge and castigate as needed.

To do otherwise would be to return to the Age of Stagnation and its tyrants whose reigns stopped our march for centuries and ended only in the Age of Flame when the very earth rebelled against the growing distance between our god and ourselves. The sages descended from their isolated haunts and dispensed grim and merciless judgement upon the tyrants, salved the world, and set us back upon our feet allowing us to continue in To-Rus’ wake once more.

I did not know then the horrific poison of avarice. I didn’t understand why we were cautioned against leaps and bounds. I didn’t recognise any of it until the Two Hundred and Thirty Fourth conclave. In hindsight, I should have... I should have realised it when, for the first time, the conclaves were not to be held in their sequence over the season of reflection but all at once. 

It followed from such a measure that not all the guilds could hold their conclaves within the sacred halls. 

It followed from such a measure that many would miss such a sudden gathering. 

It also followed that the halls would have to be divided in some way.

It was there that the poison became the first creeping stain of rot. A filth that had begun to saturate the souls of my people. A filth led them to argue that those thinking castes should be the ones who remain within the hallowed halls while the others which only facilitate our efforts should remain in the fields, quarries and places most familiar to them. I dissented, as did many of my peers, the strides of all are equal in the wake of our god. To argue otherwise was heresy, but seductive... we were ultimately outnumbered, and to defy the majority and cause our advance to falter was the gravest of sins. So it came to pass that the conclaves were held all at once, and what came to pass was a conclave the likes of which I had never seen.

Scientists, alchemists, healers... so many of them had realised such massive breakthroughs. They made such inexplicable strides in their fields that I was rendered both stunned and dumb in the face of their revelations. Perhaps I should have been more cautious and conceded more to the warnings in the dogmas of striding, but their gifts of understanding were too much to simply ignore. By the time the conclave ended, only a few others, far too few, and I had opposed the clique that had come to call themselves the Torchbearers.

Over time, the only thing that kept pace with their discoveries and revelations were their demands: Their hunger for the rarest of resources and their insatiable appetite for servants, attendants, and criminals. By the next conclave, they had successfully argued for their separation in much the same way as how the Ironmongers broke from the Coppersmiths or even how the merchants formed into their guilds. After all, the Torchbearers went ahead of the rest of our people; they lit the way; why should they answer to any of us? With seasons I went from being their equal to being equal to the plebs..

Again, I should have done more, but how could I argue with their results, with what they had done? It was only when they demanded that swathes of the city be devoted to their interests and strange changes began to overtake their attendants that I began to mutter. But disquieted mutterings were all I offered... Nothing could change the world's course, but slowly, my mutterings grew to grumblings to whispers, and finally, almost three full decades after the Torchbearers formed, I trusted myself to speak.

I was a learned man, an alchemist by trade, and one who had won no small recognition through my relentless inquisition of the Torchbearers' work. I was surprised by how quickly the crowds grew to hear me speak and how quickly they heeded my words. But I was, as I always had been, too far behind. I had intended to confront the Torchbearers with the teachings of To-Rus, to bring before them the tolls their inventions were taking on our world and its people, and to guide them to understanding. 

Too far… too far behind. 

They understood. 

It was I who was lacking in understanding. 

I didn’t understand that they knew of me as nothing more than an obstacle. I didn’t understand just how complete their transformation of our world had been. And I failed to understand that those such as I, who opposed the Torchbearer’s mandate and clung to To-Rus’ teachings, had no place in the new world. 

The night we were to march, they sent an emissary. A single man to thank me. They thanked me for gathering the malcontents, for drawing them in from across our nation, for aiding them in the final step of their glorious transformation.

A lesser alchemist would have fallen to the assassin's blade but fireworks had always been a hobby of mine. The Emissary wheezed his laughter. Mocking me even as explosive power seared his lungs and set the building ablaze. The city, like my home, burned. Blood, screams, explosions, bodies… The Torchbearers had been less than forthcoming with the true extent of their creations. Their engines of war, unlike anything I had ever seen, slaughtered the demonstrators. Even had we been prepared to fight, had we intended to fight, we would have been so much kindling for the pyre. 

I fled, with whomever I found, into the forests, and foothills, and mountains of the world. We ran until we couldn’t smell the smoke from the pyre of our dying city, or hear the screams of our tortured world. Scattered to the edges of our world, we turned backwaters into hubs and I perfected the final transmutation. Not of metal but of the soul: A Wise Man from a Fool. 

As the Torchbearers spread their influence so too did they spread fear. No longer confined to a single region or a single nation, the Torchbearers brought the world teetering to the edge of an uprising. In the eyes of strangers I saw the same suspicions, in their mutterings echoes of myself, in their actions… the same infectivity. They were as I was, but not as I am. When our world finally broke under the weight of corpses, demands, and bloody handed repression, I was ready to lead them.  

Our crusade was as indomitable and indefatigable as our god and though we buried the Torchbearers’ creations in corpses or swept them away in tides of blood, our people could not be stopped, would not be stopped. 

When the world seemed to be won, when the Torchbearers were reduced to their final fortresses in the cities their plague had once taken root in, they cried out to the heavens… and the heavens answered in tongues of flame. From the heavens they descended, raising villages, annihilating towns, reducing citadels to rubble, our world to ruins. The Torchbearers bore the weapons of their celestial masters with pride as they fell upon the cities that had expelled them, with zealous ecstasy they purged any and all who opposed them or their order. 

Every discovery, every great leaping bound paid for in the souls of our people, the bones of our world, and in return, the Torchbearers were to become Tyrants worse than any from the Age of Stagnation.

I fled.

Again.

There was no forgotten backwater that could shelter me from the eyes of the heavens that I could feel watching me. My people were dead, gone, enslaved, scattered: They had thrown themselves before the Steel Titans in desperation, for vengeance, or to die on their own terms. I spared thought but nothing more, my mind and eyes fixed on the growing darkness on the far horizon. The Black Forest was a strange place, a dark place where woodcutters offered prayers for mercy and of thanks to the spirits that lived within its dark glades. Even the Torchbearers hadn’t dared touch the forest. For all their contempt and disdain for the old ways, they still lived in fear of the old places. Deep at the heart of the forest where even light became malicious blades there lived a sage, our Sage, a man who even time had forgotten. 

I had a speech prepared for him, but when I saw him all I could do is fall at his feet and weep for the world and what we had lost.

He smiled and gazed at me with his blind, milky eyes.

He extended a withered hand and bade me sit.  

Offered me a drink.

And in his quivering voice, bid me speak.

I told him all, and as I spoke, I watched a change come over the ancient figure. His eyes began to clear, his posture slowly straightened, and it was as though uncountable millenia had fallen from his shoulders. But even so, he was ancient. His body seemed to be at the cusp of failure no matter how sharp his mind and I despaired. In spite of all I know of his kind I despaired at the thought that he would be the salvation of our people. What could he do against the machinations of celestial horror? The despair threatened to devour me until a laugh emerged from his feeble form, the laugh of someone so utterly confident in their own power that the machinations of their foes are like children playing war.

"Let us go meet them." He said, the mass of wrinkles which passed for his face brightened.

"As soon as we leave the trees..."

"They'll find us, yes. I'm old and have no patience for walking" He chuckled again. "Much better they bring us to wherever they are proclaiming their new order, no?" His smile silenced any objections I may have had. Even had I managed an intelligible reply, the word of a sage brooked no argument.

True to his word, the Torchbearer's soldiers found us moments after we left the menacing lights and shadows of the Black Forest behind. They might have killed me on sight had the Sage not accompanied me. Even soldiers, some of whom had only ever been raised on the Torchbearer's interpretations of To-Rus, knew of the Sages. No matter how the Torchbearers bastardised our teachings, defile our faith, and rejected our God, they couldn’t untangle the Sages from the weave of our history. 

If not for him they would have shot us. As it was, we were taken, bound, and flown… It was strange to sit next to the Sage and watch him experience flight with a calm indifference. I had barely begun to grasp my fears when I saw  the city of my youth. Overshadowed by metal clouds of alien warships I was again overwhelmed by horror, dread, and anger... the place where I had grown into a fool masquerading as a wise man was unrecognisable. It was a grim and twisted simulacrum of the place I once knew, bodies pretending to be people, corpses instead of trees.

A city hollowed, gutted, hierarchical. Horrific.

The Sage’s eyes had cleared, and the closer we drew to the city the younger he became until even the soldiers noticed and shrank back from the smouldering hatred 

They took us, locked in irons, to the centre of the city where the banners of the Torchbearers were largest and the twisting shadows longest: An open square suffocated by malevolence and fear. The crowds had been summoned, no doubt part of the grand display the Sage had foreseen. The Herald of Light, leader of the Torchbearers, brought his speech to a triumphal conclusion as we emerged from the ship that had delivered us. He choked on his own venom when the Sage glared at him, and, for a moment, the only sound in the city was that of the Herald coughing.

The Sage shuffled, unprompted and uninvited, towards the centre of the stage. He cast a second withering glare at the Herald of Light, approached the leader of the Aliens, and stood chains shattering as he drew himself to his full height. He spoke a single phrase to the Alien leader: 

"I've seen enough."

And burst into flames.

The pillar of fire erupted from his feet, drawing screams, shouts, curses, and paralytic fixation at the slowly warping figure at the heart of the inferno. As the flames died down and the figure became recognisable, a look of universal horror played across the faces of the aliens and shock among the To-Ri, who couldn't understand what had happened.

Short, shorter than the To-Ri by a head but stocky, muscular, and with a savage expression of absolute loathing. He moved faster than the Aliens could, their commander’s skull exploding in a cloud of gore, body crumpling leaving only a crimson mist where he had once stood. The Alien Chief’s guards tried to move but they were slow, too slow, a flash of light, a thunderclap, and both collapsed: cratering wounds pouring their lifeblood onto the stage. 

"Second in command?" The Sage asked, his teeth bared. An alien stepped forward, throat bared, snarling, but whatever threat he might have made ended in a geyser of blood from a slash that clove through his neck.

"Third?" The Sage asked

Another alien stepped forward, trying and almost managing to hold the Sage's glare while his companions cowered.

"Are you also an idiot?"

"No."

"Do you know what I am?"

"Yes."

"Pirate or POW?"

The alien licked his lips, his entire body trembling. "Pirate", it finally whispered. Closing it’s eyes.

"Bring down the sky."

The alien cringed.

The sky exploded.

Every ship the invaders had brought fell as a burning metal hail, a rain of fire to cleanse the world. 

"You know what comes next." He said to the alien

The alien nodded and said something in a guttural, inelegant language, prompting his men to drop their weapons and fall to their knees. The Torchbearers, forgotten during the play between the Sage and the aliens played out, were granted a scoff of utter contempt.

"Come." He said, finally turning to face me, softening it for a moment, in the way my father always had, before hardening it again as his gaze drifted back towards the aliens.

"You." He pointed at an alien "Fly us to the Torchbearer's spire." 

The alien fell over itself in haste, the others kneeling and paralyzed, the crowd still stunned and spellbound. I followed lamely behind. Even as smaller ships filled with the Sage’s people descended, part of me wondered how long it would take for the crowd to tear the torchbearers and aliens apart and if the Sages 

"What... What is happening?" The lame question was the best I could manage.

"The Terroid are being arrested. After all..." The Sage smiled, a terrifying predatory smile, ".... they are pirates."  

"And..." I paused as we landed. "And what was the other option?" I asked as we stepped out of the shuttle "Prisoner of War." The Sage grinned, evidently at some dark joke he was not inclined to share.

"So you gave them the choice of...?"

"Whether they should, option one, be taken to Earth for trial as Pirates where they will face years in penal colonies and or the executioner's coil or, option two, whether they should be arrested and afforded all the rights and privileges of an enemy combatant."

"Then why... Oh." I finally understood the dark joke "Did they lose the last war?"

"Badly." The Sage smiled again

"And then?"

"The 'then' is up to you."

"Why me?"

"Someone has to choose, and you're the only one who successfully made it to one of our outposts. So..." The Sage waved my question away. "The two choices you have..." he began, gesturing to the scarred landscape. "Is that we repair your world or leave it as is."

"There's a catch." The offer seemed too one-sided to be genuine

"No catch. Just a simple offer. Of course..." He grinned. "If you choose the former option, we'll take all the ruined ships and technologies the Torchbearers received after their open declaration of supremacy. Or we leave the world as it is. Your people will have much to rebuild but will do so with all the benefits and challenges alien technology can provide."

"I..."

"I'll break the rules a bit. If you choose the latter option, I'll throw in a language guide so you can at least read what the Terroid wrote."

“Can I…?” 

“No.” The Sage shook his head “You have questions and I could give you answers but…” He exhaled heavily “We keep our interference to the absolute minimum.”

“Why?” 

“Because we don’t like getting involved.” 

“But why?” 

“Jesus fuck you’re like a small child.” He laughed “Because we don’t want to make you copies of us. We’ve tried the whole save and elevate business and it never works.” 

“One question.” 

“Fine.” The Sage sighed “But then you have to choose.” 

“Why did you wait so long? Why did so many of my people have to die?! If you’re our protectors, why didn’t you!?!” I was shaking in spite of myself, with pain, sorrow, regret, and anger. 

“I’m sorry.” The Sage offered a small, sad smile “But we didn’t know. We don’t keep a garrison on every world with a younger race on it. That and until the Terroid actually invaded your world there wasn’t anything we could do. Trading with primitives…” The Sage held up his hand to forestall my indignation “Isn’t something we can police. So… we moved when we could.” 

“But then why did you wait until I found you?” 

“Because those are the limits imposed upon us. Politics child. Gets more people killed than anything else. And…” He sighed, heavily, “We are somewhat occupied at the moment. Small extra-galactic invasion going on. Fortunately the gulf between your people and the Terroid is only slightly wider than the gulf between my people and the Terroid. So we didn’t need more than a patrol fleet for this.”

"I…” I worked my jaw furiously for a moment trying to process the words, the implications, and the realities. 

“Look.” The Sage stepped forward and put an arm on my shoulder “Don’t worry about what’s happening up there. My people will make sure that yours get to space. For now the only thing you need to decide is whether you want us to erase this chapter from you people’s history.” 

“I… No… To-Rus teaches that progress can come at a cost and well..." I gestured weakly at the ruination. "Cost and benefit come in equal measure over time."

"That's a good choice." The Sage smiled. "I think it's what we would have chosen. Well then!" 

He clapped his hands. "That's that. You’ll find all the help I can give in what used to be my cabin. Whatever else happens, know that Humanity eagerly awaits you among the stars, and as soon as you reach your moon, we'll be waiting." He smiled again, a broader and more genuine expression of excited curiosity than I had ever seen.

He climbed into the shuttle and left. It was an unceremonious departure but perhaps it was for the best: I had a people to save and we had learned the hard way the consequences of leaning on others for answers. 

He left me alone atop the Tower of Illumination with nothing but my thoughts and the weight of my people for company.

My father had told me a lot about the Sages, but somehow, the unbroken chain back to the time of To-Rus had neglected to mention that they were a race of alien guardians. I would have to make sure to add that the stories I told my children and, hopefully, my children or their children would be able to solicit the truth from the Sages themselves. Once we, too, stood among the stars.