Nonemu

Gladekeeper’s Call - The Nameless

She was always different. Larger than any of the other hatchlings she knew, darker, more dim than the bright ones who surrounded her. Yet they looked to her, because even then she was fearless. No threat that set the littles skittering, ever budged her except to send her forward against it.

When she first gained her adult form, she was already larger than some full adult Guardians. But even those larger, knew better than to stand to oppose the daughter of Stone, the living Wall, the Unchanging.

Oh yes, she had appellations, descriptors, but none of them really knew what to do with her. The most important aspect of magic was to know the true name of something. How else to know what something *could* be, how could they change them, break and reform them, make them different, as they had with all the parts of their land and sea? They filled their world with magic and motion!

But not her. Even in the giving of a name, they failed. It would slide off of her like water. Of all of them, the only one immune to all of her father’s workings. The Unchanging. The Nameless.

But for her there had been dreams. *Something’s coming, a something-nothing, a nothing-something, coldness worse than ice, a sickness beyond plague, stillness that no wind can rouse, lifelessness no seed can mend, darkness no shadow can bear nor light can pierce, an abscess, an absence, that made all magic, all being, its food*.

She was sure, that her destiny lay here, to protect those in front of her, that she could see hear, smell, touch. She told herself, that while they played at changing harmless things, gaining knowledge beyond her understanding, she would be here, making sure *they* did not change, become food for the nothing in her mind. They were her charges, this place her Guardianship.

And when she woke one day to feel the Search burning in her like fever, she cried out in anguish in the first fear she had ever known.

“Is my place not here? Are you driving me away? Because I am not like them? Please, Father, answer!”

But she could not hear. Immune to him, immune to his voice. Who’s then, had been the voice in dream, if not her deity’s? An earthquake inside, like thunder, like ice, sickness, the anguish of loss. The bright light blinding, the lightning striking, burning, the call.

They came to her, their Steadfast Watcher, steadfast no longer. They huddled against their mountain, til she shook no longer.

“He loves you,” they murmured as one. And one after another spoke. “Go, not because we do not need you, but because we do. Go, Fierce one. Go, Protector. Go, our Guardian.”

“And you will not go alone.” said a quiet voice, the last to approach. A giant, a larger creature than she had ever seen before, in the dun solemnity of the Crowned Bone Priest. His swept-back branched horns towered over her, the long whiskers hung, seemed longer by themselves than she was.

“Who?”

The stranger smiled and winked. “For now, I will share your namelessness, for we travel through hostile ways. Come, for we have very far to go.”

They left, their dark forms melting into the darkness that bore her colors. For a moment, all the air from firmament to stone, reflected only her.


—————-
Her name, Nonemu, means, ‘no name’. She is The Nameless, immune to magic.
(Original lair: OrchardofStone)
(Of Clans and Shade protagonist)