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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ripzerai" data-source="post: 3377079" data-attributes="member: 38324">On the Origin of the NexusIn the beginning there was the Rose; her buds and thorns made up the whole of the multiverse. Her blossoms were the blossomings of worlds; her roots and stems transversed all boundaries.From the Rose was born Aoskar, the Opener of Doors. The Rose was Aoskar's teacher, parent, and friend."Rose," said Aoskar sadly. "The time has come that I must leave. I must seek the new places you have told me about, that the inhabitants there may find their way to you.""Yes," said the Rose. "It is time. Good journey, beloved Aoskar." Before he left, though, the Rose gave him a gift: a tiny, flowering vine that she named Folly.During Aoskar's long wanderings, before he found his throne in Sigil, he sought an oracle to show him the path he must take. He consulted the Norns, and the Gray Sisters, and the Sibyls of Elysia, but none would say what the destiny of the god might be. "Your future is forbidden," hissed Skuld. "It is guarded by Pain."Shekinester, triple-goddess and World Serpent, divined something of Aoskar's fate, and harried him and his servants with her ha-naga proxies. "Is it war she wants?" mused Aoskar. "I can give it to her.""I would be careful," cautioned Folly. "She is strong, and old. Better to attempt to bargain."Aoskar followed Folly's advice. Calling in a favor from a being called the Wandering Architect, he had a sumptuous meeting-hall built. In it, he opened a number of doors that would allow him access to all the powers that he had within the Rose itself. Sending a two-headed hound to Shekinester's Court of Light, he invited the Three-Faced Queen to complete the hall with her own powers, and meet him on what would be neutral ground.Intrigued, Shekinester did so. The meeting-hall became a place of seemingly endless maze-paths reminiscent of her own Loom of the Weaver. The goddess herself appeared within its heart. A young girl with reptilian features floated to the entrance and bade Aoskar walk in.Venturing through the maze, half familiar and half new and strange, Aoskar felt his own doors change and twist. He felt as if the Rose was calling him somewhere, or warning him, but her words seemed jumbled, reduced to incomprehensible symbols that floated through the streets of an alien city, building and rebuilding its walls and doors. And in the center of it all, a circle of blades. Something about them filled him with terror."You should go back," said Folly. "The Rose wants you out of this terrible place.""I can't," said Aoskar. "This is my destiny. If I leave now, I'll never understand it."And so he passed the tests of the Empowerer, and passed into the presence of Shekinester herself."You have great courage," whispered the goddess, her human face shifting from young to old and in-between. "You will need it, where you are going.""Is this why your minions have been harrying me?" Aoskar asked. "So you could warn me?""Not warn, merely test. I wondered what kind of god would go to dwell in the City of Doors. None have done so since the Phoenix's last death.""Were your questions answered?""Almost," said Shekinester. "Before we are finished, you must face the Arching Flame."As if struck by the same impulse, Aoskar and the serpent-goddess embraced, his limbs circling her coils, her coils circling his limbs. Aoskar's two faces looked into Shekinester's three faces: maiden, mother, crone. Then she was a pillar of light, and he and she were one.After an infinity of union, the light faded, and Shekinester was once again a three-faced naga. Aoskar was once again a dual-faced man."I feel cleansed, healed," said Aoskar. "I wish we could merge forever."The Empowerer laughed; the Preserver smiled gently; the Weaver sneered. "We each have our destinies to fulfill," they said. "But this place we have made will remain. As will one other."The girl who had met Aoskar at the first door reappeared. "Farewell, Father," she told him."A child has been birthed from our unity," Shekinester explained. "Dislocated slightly in the warp and weft of history. Meet Aoska-Shek, for the second time."Aoskar awkwardly patted his daughter's head. Something about her made him uncomfortable; probably it was the way her feet never touched the ground.He turned to look at Shekinester, but she was already gone. Shrugging, he left the Nexus they had made and went to meet his destiny.</blockquote>

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