Dance of the Sickle Staves

This is an RF Online fanfic I wrote for the RFO - PH site as requested by Vanguard Shinzenbi last September. You can find the site here: Dance of the Sickle Staves. But I'll post it here for everyone's convenience.


Dance of the Sickle Staves
by Rudolph C. Anongos Jr. aka rudewolf

**

Hour after hour during that sidereal Novus night, Religari laid still on the dew-laden grass at the Sunny Plains of Cora HQ, his mind a tangled mess of undigested figures of dips and tilts, arms spread wide like an angel’s broken wings. He could not account into his memory the final steps of the Dance of the Sickle Staves.

He had not a single nerve to bother him with his practice, none at all. What stirred him to an endless personal diatribe was a wandering hermit reave’s unsolicited comment. He was no good a wedding dancer, the reave had said.

Practice hours were long and a nagging personal attendant of a zealot was assigned to him to note his progress. On top of that, he was in want of sleep. Below his eyes hung dark bands of inverted crescent, masking their questionable iridescence with stress. Would Harax and her fiance applaud him for his dance?

Religari doubted his abilities when everyone else on that evening was fully confident in his ability to invoke Decem’s blessing and open the ever elusive Decem’s Eye – only through a perfectly executed Dance of the Sickle Staves, seeing that it had been the only method known to bypass whatever Force that had kept it locked.

The Decem’s Eye was a prized artifact of the Knights of Antiquity, a small cube that has only been opened twice, with each opening revealing fragments of the past and the future of Cora. It wasn't his job to open Decem's eye. But since a wedding was to take place, the Dance was compulsory so the task would have to be given to him. Letting anyone other than the bride's chosen dancer have a try at the Eye be considered taboo.

What reasons did Religari have to answer back to the wizened reave? It was not his choice to be the wedding dancer in the first place. But refusal to a betrothed woman’s request would only mean ten scores of misfortune upon him.

“And that’s a lot of bad luck to last a lifetime, kid,” as quoted by Mringankasekhar to him with one of his sheepish grins.

“That geezer!” Religari shouted out at the darkness. He wanted to cry. Lifting all one hundred sickle staves during the midway formation of the dance was just too difficult for him. He’s not even through with half of the whole routine. Mring promised that it will be all easy once all the staves were in the air in the midway formation but Religari realized later that what the archmagus told him was a lie.

Religari just sighed when he took note of the time. He looked up to see the clouds already tinted with the pink and orange hues of the approaching morning. It only made sense that Religari go on with his practice once more.

In his supine form, he raised his right arm and recalled his sickle staff out of thin air. Next, he intoned a basic wind spell, summoning a gust of wind that scooped him off the ground, setting him in a frenetic, clockwise spin upon landing on both his feet. His simple use of Force alone reverberated out to rekindle the purple flames of the one hundred sickle staves set standing in a spiral pattern around him.

The beat of the drums, the humming of the woodwinds and the plucking of the zithers’ silk cords played the accompanying music in his mind, a phantom ensemble guiding him in the midway formation of the dance

As his spin smoothened upon tilting on his toes, he shifted his hold on the sickle staff to his left hand, his right raised diagonally along the staff's angle of inclination. Being of light build, his lissome body bended slightly to the staff's weight, allowing the headpiece to hover just above the apex of the grass blades. Although his current position was circumstantial, the technicalities of the Dance required it.

“Earth fecund and verdant so,

claim Decem's scions to your bosom.

Humble grass beneath my feet

in Decem's overgrowth rejoice.”

He casted the spell without so much of a sound; a modified terra chant. Upon his staff's contact with the grass, Religari released the earthbound Force that made the interwoven pattern of plant life around him erupt into a frenzied mass of rapidly growing vegetation.

Wave after wave of viridian Force, the lowly grass that carpeted the ground writhed and twisted around the sickle staves as each tendril grew into long, slender, bud-bearing stalks that in no time blossomed into flowers of every kind and color imaginable.

The blossoms' fragrance was undoubtedly intoxicating. Religari had a hard time resisting the urge to swoon and his gentle spinning on tiptoes dared to falter.

'Not now. Not now,' Religari thought to himself hard. One wrong move with his rotation and his Force harmonics will collapse. 'Just give me forty-five seconds,' he pleaded to his lungs. In an attempt to continue the Dance, he took a deep breath and held it as he uttered the next noiseless spell to be casted, as the technicalities of the Dance had ordered him to do so.

“In gale, in gust, in lightning streaks

the darker path be chosen

In storms, in squalls, and dying shrieks

Decem's will shan't be broken.”

During the first, fifteen seconds, he felt like he was wading into the calm waters. He held the staff lateral to his body, reducing the friction caused by the bulky headpiece, giving him a chance to spin faster, along with the faster tempo of the phantom music that guided him.

Religari halted halfway through his 100th spin abruptly to release the strong blast of wind from his body. The shockwave of the blast shredded everything that it effectively pierced, the flower stalks and the surrounding trees mainly, throwing the aggregate of green and colored petals high into the air. Then came forth the several bolts of lightning from the Force-darkened sky when the faust made a single counterclockwise spin, resuming the clockwise spin thereafter.

The next fifteen seconds was tolerable. It felt like he was swimming in calm waters. As long as he had sufficient amounts of Force, it will make up for the loss of oxygen to his lungs.

The bolts of lightning arched from one sickle staff to the other between the seconds, igniting all the material caught in their strafe. The blaze consumed every morsel of vegetation left from the earth spell, slowly neutralizing the scent of the blossoms.

Religari was excited. He knew that if he kept on with the Dance at that rate, he'll be able to cross the midway formation threshold. An event where he is thrown out of the sickle staff formation by a violent current of Dark Force and lose consciousness for no apparent reason. His last attempt ended him in his spreadeagled form five hours previous.

The last fifteen seconds wasn't pleasant at all. He felt like swimming against whitewater. If he hadn't been moving, it would have been alright. But in his case, his spinning consumed half of his oxygen reserves and maintaining the flames of the sickle staves and casting the spells consumed much of the Force needed to supplement the inadequacy of real oxygen to his lungs, which, in reminder, were about to burst. His movements were strained.

Five.

Four.

Asphyxia onset.

Three

'I can do this!' Religari thought, concentration at his peak. He readied his lungs for the influx of oxygen.

Two.

Just a little more and the scent's gone. He was shifting his position for the flame spell, ready to gash his palm with the spikes of his staff's headpiece to cast sacrifice.

Yes, Reli, cross the threshold. You can do it! He thought he could do it even though his vision was blurred.

One.

Religari blacked out – again.

**

"Why did you bring me here?” Religari rasped out as soon as he opened his eyes. He knew Annwfn had brought him to wherever he was at the very moment, on a warm bed, covered by silk sheets and thick cotton quilts, head rested upon feather pillows. His throat hurt from the effort alone. He looked out of the windows. The sun was already high. How long had he been out? Had he been knocked out by the the midway formation’s energies again? He felt thirsty.

“You were lying unconscious on the ground. You were helpless, as you have always been the first moment I’ve laid my eyes upon you. I had to pick you up and bring you here for your body to rest. It was my duty. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, I don’t have objections eight-knot,” Religari spat out with a scowl as he helped himself sit up, clearly irritated.

“Manners Spindleshift. If you’re planning to blight me with one of your childish tantrums, I don't think I won't be able to guarantee your recently regained consciousness' duration,” Annwfn replied, throwing Religari a menacing look that swept away his morning irritation.

“So.. sorry if I have caused you trouble A... An....” Religari said, afraid.

“Annwfn,” the older Corite continued, “You were not breathing anymore. I had to revive you as fast as I could. For all I know, you could've died. I can’t afford to lose my brother’s wedding dancer on his special day. Besides, the Decem’s Eye is waiting,” Annwfn said, with a hint of concern in his voice. He may have maintained the cold, almost unfeeling expression on his handsome features but his voice gave away the care he felt for the young faust. Religari didn't notice, however. The older Corite sat beside him on the bed and recalled a glass of water from the kitchens three floors down his house and gave it to Religari who gave him a grateful look and drank it.

He was Religari's personal attendant who the child didn't consider an attendant because he really didn't attend to whatever he needed, except for now, which he considered a generous help. All he did was keep watch on the young faust – diligently – as if he was something of utmost importance. He had a dark and brooding aura about him that Religari didn't like one bit. Screwed egos of the higher knots, he said to himself after Harax’s fiance introduced them to each other.

Reli just looked down at his reflection on the water, his eyes watering with tears, crying yet again. He already crossed the midway formation. That was his limit as far as he was concerned. He had exceeded that limit by reaching the flame spell stance. The real dancing part would have started there, a dance with the blazes, then a dance with the waves, and then, the real dance with the sickle staves. The part which he hated most but that would have been the beginning of the midway formation's end. The beginning of the whole damned dance's end.

How he wished his mother was there to comfort him, maybe even help him with the Dance she may have known a thing or two. But she just couldn't do that right now, could she? She's been with Decem for as long as he can remember. He maybe a faust, unusual for a Corite his age, but he was still a young, terribly young child.

As if reading the faust's mind, Annwfn, the eight knot zealot Annwfn, wrapped Religari in his arms. Religari was stunned that for a moment, his tears stopped streaming down his cheeks. But the warm prison that he was in kept him aware of what was happening. It was strange. He hadn't felt it in a long time. Paternal experience. With conscious effort on his part, he leaned in to the embrace.

“Hush now. Don't cry anymore.” Annwfn inhaled the scent of the earth

The Dance of the Sickle Staves can wait.

Hu-on, guide me. I hope I'm doing the right thing..

But Religari's adoption can't.

**