Dodoreimei rode the spiral current upon his song caster. Letting his voice ride in and out of the finely wrought haft and pull him along in the twining coils of unrooted lightning that hung in the sparse attenuation of vapors and plasma which suffused the great path of the procession.

He and thirteen other Grand Novice from the breadth of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers pulled the expanse of treated cloth.

This craft was a treasured relic, cut from bolts of the Nation’s slowly dwindling stock from the Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers Memory and song preserve them.

The hands that had forged this cloth that he pulled taught as one of two dozen others and more had no surviving descendants.

A memento and honoring of their sacrifice which none of their families would see the final reward of.

Treasured allies of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers which Dodoreimei had never met but knew there were Supreme Experts of his nation that had.

So the service and loss would be remembered here and now.

The Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers were not the only nation of that vocation among the People. Other weaver clans of a similar size and a similar nuance of craft yet existed.

But that order by Tradition had lived solely upon and within the protection of the Spiral Redoubt. There was a pattern and subtle uniqueness to their wefts and weaves that was distinct wholey from every other.

And twenty-two generations ago above the very place that he now held the relic aloft with other Grand Novice the Attack of the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic had come to their home.

Too small to concern great and terrible Augurotherindil and its hundred thousand branches of secret hate.

But it had leaped through the flights of the fiercest Wing Riders as they were dust to its might.

It had ploughed through the Watchers and Long Snipers before them too.

And so it came to the Spiral Redoubt and lay in the doom of its fiery teeth into the land.

The experts of all nations, guilds and orders of Spiral Tenders had fought and it was said that the light of the might speared the beast so brightly that all of the Novice rank who had not taken shelter were struck blind and sterile by the fury.

But the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic was unconcerned by this as they were but trifles to the beast.

And even while they scoured and speared it with all the skill and might of their skill it took a great life scouring bite from the cladding.

In that battle legend told that a hoard of least and lesser masters of war and fire then struck and no witness below the supreme expert survived what occurred. Yet even still one in twelve of the last master’s number perished.

After the Star Tooth was slain had been the great campaign against its carcass and the heaving flesh as armies which broke and battered the nations still held within its jaws.

It was then that the hated and where the most known tales to Dodoreimei were sung.

The Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh were implicated in many tribulation and sabotage of the efforts to dig through the cavernous flesh of Gregori Malefic.

The cowards claimed that the meat armies of the carcass were a world apart from their own mastery of Dergothresh and the secrets of its wood.

Whether lies or truth mattered not, for Dodoreimei had been drilled in the failures of his own nation and the loss of their allies. To have not seen the secret of the beast’s intentions was a fault of scouts and sky hunters.

In the end when all the fighting was over Two Guilds One Order and a Fraternity of the people were lost entirely in that incursion directly and a dozen more lost the vital cores of experts and master and had to be dissolved and their survivors integrated under new leadership and professions.

The names of these and other lost families, lineages, great elders and masters were held aloft in the lettering of the great banners all around the procession of The Gatebearer.

The esteemed traveler was joined by a trinket of transparency which she introduced as the conveyance of a trio of infantile beings. So frail, tender of flesh and uncoated to the elemental void that they had to be coddled like children from the bite of nothingness.

She was also followed by a strange beast of burden who folded and unfolded like a puzzle box toy. Sliding and flowing over itself in a way that would marvel and delight any child.

Dodoreimei could already hear the stirring murmurs in the long light casters of the crowd dealings and plans among many crafters of such hand trainers and expected that for generations to come there would be toys fashioned for the unpledged infants of The People in likeness to The Gatebearer’s animal.

And then at last the Song-Duel began.

The wing riders called forth the fiery spray of their mounts. Color and light exploded in profusions of skin tingling light all around the exterior of the spire. Faces had to turn away from the brightness for those without the blessings against glare grown in their eyes.

The roar of the people chanting for their least master or allies of such providing the undercurrent of the duel.

Dodoreimei himself sent his voice into the rhythm of the long light through his caster.

There was not a Least Master of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers. But The pair of Least Masters Reimeidoe and Domeirei of the Spearing Strike of Open Sky Snipers were everything but masters of the nation and mentored directly the supreme experts of Middle, Open and Close Sky Trackers all.

So it was the spirit of Dodoreimei that was with them as the opening chants were joined. Spun from the throats of masters as each spoke the breadth and depth of their righteous mastery.

The people gathered closer, the weaving banners of the fallen closing with one another Dodoreimei sang his choral tones but most of his attention was in holding position with his neighbors. Drawing in the fabric of the banners.

When the first duel was concluded the seal needed to be ready.

However he could spare a moment for the pair of least masters closest aligned to his nation.

Their voices weaving in and out of each other, claiming meaning where each left off, bodies moving in poised practices and whispering secrets of tension and focus that even now Dodoreimei could sense would make his eyes sharper.

“Paired for life to serve eternal

A dedicated hunt we know our struggle.

You would come to take the fruits of our game

But what right do you have to make that claim?!”

The light of the wings’ breath and exaltations seared harsher and brighter, enough to illuminate the fabrics that were closing ever tighter to the procession.

“We’ve cloaked ourselves starving in the blight of open sky

Where beasts of terror and vengeance swoop and fly

Every hunt of ours risks a hundred people gone.

To tooth, claw, starvation, radiation, and frost!

We bleed, die and strive for the treasures that we’ve wrought

Tell us gate bearer what people you’ve lost?!”

The last of the least masters joined on as was the tradition. Adding the necessary challenge of authority to one who dared to claim the gift.

The pact was sacred and earned after all, not simply given.

And then the voice of the gate bearer rang out, it was not among the long light. It did not come from the caster.

It was the feeling of hearing a voice in the proper air of a creche or training tent, or direct from one’s mother around them.

Of air conveying intimate knowledge.

Of a song directly from skin to skin.

Even though the procession was not yet enclosed and the festive pressurization was not even begun that voice was there inside Dodoreimei.

And as if the voice of the Gatebearer was the grandest master of all he felt his own voice rising to support and reinforce her rhythm as she sang her defense.

“Pain rising,

Despising,

all the trials that could be shown.

World weary

Dreary

A wretched effort I have known.

For in my soul I carry such a heavy load.

Here again on your people’s road.”

It was soft and gentle and not at all the way Dodoreimei expected to see such a great personage of legend to react to the challenge presented to them.

“You’ve known me

Truely?

All the fiction I’ve been shown.

Your daemon’s

Fury.

Laid upon only me alone?

You tell your tales and demand that It is for me to atone.

But it’s not by me this pain is sown.”

Her pose was despite her alien form hauntingly familiar, striking clearly the impression of the gray and worn coat of an elderly traveler and hermit. An image etched into his minds from many a tale, the pattern only now becoming apparent.

Emerging from the depths of the endless stories and tales and now obviously crude inventions.

There was a shifting in the pose of the least masters at this but although he felt himself shaken they seemed yet resolute.

The Gatebearer stilled the call on all their voices, a silence fell even as the work of building the great chamber of congress continued to slowly come together. Weaving clans, guilds and great orders moving between the fabric of the banners, sealing them together so they would contain the great force of the air that would come to fill the space.

As the silence that made all of their own hearts feel loud and deafening continue finally a single voice keened out softly, and with it pulling at all of them to softly trill and whistle in their casters to complement.

All the people wrapped and circled around them and yet united and pulled by one single voice.

Dodoreimei had never imagined such a thing to ever be possible.

Even the voices of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council were never attributed such a power. To both silence and guide the voice of all but the entirety of the people in the spiral?

To hold them upon the every tone of her voice and song?

To play their hearts like a song caster she had herself honed from the woven steel?

“When the last wing should fly

Past the last crumbling spires

And the last Anathema roars

Among the last dying Embers”

The voice carried ruin, cold, pain and empty despair, the voice that had seen worlds die and perish. Had seen a desolation that even these words failed to fully contain despite the unfathomable totality of their meaning.

“In the ghost of this forest

Though I may be changed and worn

Your descendents will still know me

As Pylo Courtesan”

She turned to look to the far distant triumvirate that rooted the spiral to the boughs of the tree. And the voice turned wistful and nostalgic, touching upon soft tender youth pained but also warm.

“When the first thread of bone

In those pillars were woven

When your eldest were unborn

And the ancient orders unrisen.”

The tales had said as much before, they had said so many things, and yet here and now Dodoreimei could hear the foundations for stories that would be told for a hundred generations more. Retold and grow dim and pale to the moment of now when it was sung fresh and true into his spines.

“When your ancestors were dying

And would pass away unknown

I came here to unite you

As Pylo Courtesan”

Pity, pain, worry and a deep reaching charity. Extended to struggling infants starving and lost in the fury and terror of the forest.

The echo of a memory of a moment of reality struck then. And all of them could not help but to cry and sing with that moment. Relief to exist, to live, to have been saved.

After the crescendo of voices stilled again she sang into the emptiness with a deep and sombre finality.

“When your star has collapsed

And you sing in its mourning.

And the future has passed without

Even a last desperate warning”

He could feel in his belly a quivering terror, he would not live to see such a thing to pass. Not even the most esteemed of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council could hope to live such an eternity. But here was a being that expected to be there for it.

To comfort them in that time of ultimate loss.

“Then look into the sky where through

The debris a path is torn.

Look and see The People’s Sister.

Is Pylo Courtesan”

And again they all of them knew they had to strive for that far flung impossible future, to persevere and reinforce one another. To be as one and unified despite the trials and trivialities of their individual nation or guild or creed or any such absurd divisions.

To be there to welcome her in that dire time as family.

As more than family.

Dodoreimei was still ringing with her counter song and the least masters seemed mollified.

And then in that sacred stillness that filled all the people a new voice joined in. Harsh and brash and bizzare.

It felt all but profane in the ringing chords of the moment.

“Oiy yo! Yo! Dour be the rythm but are we not here to party?! I am the Fourth of fourths Quarti!”

The silence of utter shock was almost more profound then the one bestowed by the great Gatebearer, the sister, the sovereign guardian.

“So Let me tell ya Frogbits about Pylo!”

And a tumult of insanity proceeded to pour forth.