The candles flicker madly in the cold, wet air of Champoor. There is a smell of moldering wood, even in a domicile on this well heeled street. All the events of recent days threaten to slip like drying river silt between my fingers. The temple taught me how to hold my thoughts fierce enough to resist the grinding sand of ages, now is the time.

I was born in and grew up in the walled port-city of the Horns of Ahlat, a sprawling metropolis of decadence and squalor. My parents were poor but always knew how much to put aside for the pharaohs’ tax collector. Still, each year they grew older and I grew larger and hungrier, it was ever harder to make ends meet. It was like their prayers had been delivered when the Shai Cult began to put out a call for promising youths in our city. Though they dared not hope I would be accepted into their privileged and educated ranks.
At the anointed time, my parents took me off to the priests, standing on the docks before impressive barges flying the ziggurat emblazoned livery of the Shai. My parents had drilled me relentlessly for that day in maths and taken me on long walks to inspect and study the architecture of the Horns. Many of the children who came were from more blessed families, ties to the trading families, knowing how to read and having tutors. We were given compasses and maths tables and given tasks to build bridges and towers, the strongest or tallest earning glowing marks. I don’t know how I did it, but my parents’ efforts bore fruit and I narrowly earned a place on the final roster.

That was the last I saw of my parents. Within moments of the final roles being called, we were taken onto the barges and slowly poled east along the Smak’Qadam and then for weeks south, down what I knew at the time to be Cattle Lake and finally to Mother’s Lake with the capital, Inbu-Hedj, upon it. It was there where I became the man I am today. The priests taught us rigorously in scholarly topics like math and history. Later we were divided by further testing and I learned architecture and engineering.
I proved myself one of the brighter emerging minds coming up through the ranks of my discipline within the cult. Cult elders took note of me and my future began to be planned, my person invited to hear and understand the planning and direction of cult business. My studies did not end, but touched upon the heavenly circles of geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. My days were filled with attending to master masons’ every whim, but afforded me the opportunity to see them putting their skills to the test. The cult wanted to ensure that if such resources were to be invested in me that I understood the pressures that the faces of the cult must face. They did this by showing me the pride of the masters, the craft they held firmly, and I had my place in that – removing such earthly concerns from these men who brushed the stars.

This all changed in a moment. My master at the moment was inspecting the angles of a block of gold veined marble when a workmen lost control of his oxen and the block was knocked on its side, crushing my master’s lower leg. The site burst into activity like a ship changing the tack of its sails, he was rushed away by a half dozen men on a rough cut sheet of tent fabric and everyone was looking at me. We were days from Inbu-Hedj and stones sat on their sides upon the construction ramps half manned. Some foremen continued their work with fear in their eyes while others stopped with their heads hung in disbelief and shame. Within a moment, it was like an entire different understanding came upon me. Problems which once seemed beyond impossible became trivial and advanced concepts gave way to new thoughts and theories. The cult was astonished when my master’s relief came and the teams were still working, more when I was able to show and explain his diagrams and how I’d acted upon them to the letter of his will. Soon my glimpses into the inner workings of the cult became wide open doors. The elders hid me from society and tested me in greater mysteries while naming me a genius and likely polymath. The cult shared with me the cult within the cult, of our true purpose, honoring the history of the Shogunate. They told me of others like me who had come before, of Lookshy and the truths of the world. They spoke of it and its technology. Of the golden era that saw no one born poor and when the cult need not choose so few to teach, but when all children knew what priests of the Shai knew. It was this that set me on my greater path. To hopefully restore some of the infrastructure lost long ago and to build the world into a better place.

Yet, the older priest counseled me to be careful as I placed one stone above the next. The Dragon circled overhead and it did not suffer walls. Akhet had not been destroyed in the Wyld Wars, it had survived and held scraps of what came before. Five pharaohs, shoguns, had lived and ruled in Akhet before the Empress came, each leading a shogunate greater than the last. She destroyed all of that. Dismantled and scattered the scholars and their knowledge, took away their technology to fill her own troves, and killed or stole away their blood closest to the elements.

The Fishmonger Pharaoh did not give me a chance, like an earthquake he turned over stones and called down the eye of the Dragons and soon after their circling became a descent. The Shai told me what would follow. My brothers helped me escape that closing noose, that road was covered with blood and regrets. At the end of it, the purse of the Shai was opened to buy me passage, me and me alone, through Garm’s Gate and into Prasad. Here the Dragons roamed and roosted too, seeming no different than the ones I had fled. The last words my brothers gave me, ‘Go, go to Champoor, hide in the shadows and rain and garb yourself in secrets. Till we meet again…be safe.’

Years have passed now, away from the cult, laying low to avoid garnering any attention while working menial jobs to make ends meet. I worry my skills dull without stone to test them against. My brothers bid me wait, but what if they return and I am rusted and useless? The fire burns within me, the light seeking to escape and reveal itself, and hands ache to move mountains and redirect rivers. My soul aches as I betray my brothers, but I do it for them, I must hone my skills if we are ever to drive the Dragons from our lands.