Astra Ascending

At the alignment of the planets, when moon had eclipsed sun, Carina Allister had been born and her Destiny was set in motion.

Carina’s Destiny, rare as it was, was that she would be consumed by the moon on her 16th birthday.

What did this mean? Carina had never known what to make of her Destiny. Her parents knew, the royal advisors knew, her grandmother knew. Everyone understood what this meant, to be consumed by the moon. 

Consumed. It didn’t sound particularly vicious or malignant, Carina’s grandmother always spoke about how it sounded like acceptance, like a new beginning. Carina didn’t know what to make of that, either. 

Carina had only been a babe when her prophecy, her Destiny, had been foretold. She heard, through the whispers of the royal cooks, the servants and the titterings of noble ladies that her parents had been horrified, ashamed. Her grandmother had looked down at the small brown babe, wrapped lovingly in golden silk and smiled warmly, claiming Carina’s Destiny was one worthy of the gods. Her parents had huffed in retort, claiming their daughter had been cursed with a Destiny worthy of peasants, not gods.

Carina was the first of royal blood to be given what was known as the Eclipse, not that she knew that at the time, before her 16th Nameday, when things were really going to be set in motion. Before her, only the low members of society had been attributed to the Eclipse, the moon prophecy. Few people knew what it was, or more accurately few people knew what happened after the moon had consumed their chosen vessel. 

The mystery behind her Destiny constantly ate at Carina. She didn’t understand why it was so difficult for her parents to talk about. Yes they thought her prophecy wasn’t worthy of her, but it was her Destiny, it should be worthy of her. She just didn’t understand.

* * *

Carina stood patiently as Romais, a gentle lady-in-waiting, stitched up her blasted corset and did her hair, twisting pinning the long dark coils in a complicated up-do that hurt Carina’s head. 

“Excited, Carina love?” Romais asked cheerily, sliding a particularly painful pin into place. 

Carina’s brow pinched in discomfort but didn’t pull away lest she Romais’ hard work tumbling down. “Yes,” Carina said, voice dull and subdued.

Romais’ lips quirked at the lie. “Uh-huh, you seem thrilled, Princess. Will Nysa be attending tonight? I know the poor thing has been sick as of late.”

The mention of her best friend warmed Carina’s body and quelled her nerves, only the mention of Nysa could ever do that. Nysa was a year older than her, as he always felt the necessity to point out if the opportunity arose (or, even, if it didn’t). They had been raised together, both their mothers were best friends and so it only made sense that their children be raised at best friends, too. Carina had worried that he would become distant once they began school. Nysa wasn’t a wondrous beauty but he was a lovely sight to admire if you had a moment, so when they began to attend school and when girls had set their sights on him, Carina thought that Nysa would have left her in the dirt for the countless other pretty girls in the royal houses.

She had, in a moment in bravery that was rare to her, mentioned this worry to him. Nysa had promptly laughed in her face, kissed her head, then knuckled her head, and lovingly called her a blithering idiot. And that had been that.

“He should be,” Carina said, more liveliness to her tone. “He was sick, yes. I think the time off school was mere dramatics, though.”

Romais huffed a laugh, pinning the final coil of hair in place. “There we go, my love. All done!”

Carina took a moment to appreciate her hair and outfit in the vanity before standing, taking Romais hand to steady herself in the many skirts of cloth and lace. 

“Shall I go and fetch the other ladies?” Romais asked. They were to trail Carina as she walked out into her Nameday procession. She nodded and Romais disappeared behind the oak door. She popped her head back in a minute later and ushered to Carina.

It was time, then. Carina took a moment to get her breathing steady, to still her hands from their trembling. She exhaled, raised her head proudly, and left to be consumed by the moon. Carina scoffed at the thought.

* * *

The procession had gone smoothly, much to Carina’s relief. She prayed thanks to the Gods that she hadn’t toppled right over in her heels and stained her dress green with grass. She had also not been devoured by the moon, but she and Nysa had joked that the night was still young. 

“At least yours is interesting,” Nysa grumbled. “What did I get? ‘You will achieve and find many great things.’ Boring! I think pastries are great things, maybe I’ll be a pastry finder.”

Carina laughed loudly, earning her a few stares from some noble women. She returned their stares with as much gusto before saying to Nysa, “So? I think a pastry finder is a very fine Destiny. Much better than the moon gobbling you up.”

Nysa smiled at her, but his eyes were filled with sadness. “What am I going to do when you’re gone?”

The statement threw her, she and Nysa had always joked about her Destiny because it was absurd. The curiosity had worn off in recent years. When she was little, she had nightmares of a moon god eating her at a banquet on a star. When she was in her early teen years, she thought the moon was going to fall from the sky and land on her. Now at 16, Carina thought the Destiny she was given was a load of tripe and it wasn’t worth the time. She had thought Nysa thought this too, but clearly he took it at least a little seriously, still. 

“Nys,” Carina said, taken back. “We both know the moon isn’t going to do anything to me.” She rested a brown hand over his starkly pale one. “I’m not going anywhere. And besides, you think the moon can keep me from you, who else is going to find me great things?” 

Nysa shook his head, the sad smile still painted on his face. “Maybe I’ll find you one day, on the moon, or on a shooting star.”

“Maybe,” Carina kissed the back of his hand, squeezing him tighter. 

While they had been talking, her mother had floated over to them, her nose up-turned and mouth sour. “Carina-Leah,” Carina barely concealed recoiling at the name, “it is time for your speech.” Her mother took the hand that joined her to Nysa and moved to drag her towards the marble podium that was in the centre of the garden. 

Nysa stood to follow them but two royal guards blocked his way. Carina frowned, why the guards? “Mother?” she began to ask, but her mother was ignoring her. She left Carina at the podium and moved to stand in the aisle, Romais and the other ladies-in-waiting flanking her. Romais’ eyes looked wet under the moonlight. Maybe Carina was just imagining it.

Another pair of guards stood to the side of Carina. Her father, who had been drinking his share of wine for the majority of the ball, came striding over to the podium. She hadn’t realised that her father was going to do his own speech, but she couldn’t say she was surprised that he felt the desire to throw his weight about.

As Carina went to move back to make room for her father, his gruff voice cut through the garden. “Sir Landon, Sir Tunde, just do it now.” Her father waved a dismissive hand at her. “No need to delay it,”

Carina found Nysa’s eyes in the crowd and they shared a confused look. What were the guards doing now? Before she could think to question her father, two pairs of hands clamped around her wrists and were dragging her backward. She let out a startled yell as her feet slid out under her, Carina struggled to push up onto her feet, the guards’ handling of her making it difficult.

“What in Gods’ names are you doing?” Carina bit at them, wrenching her arms out of the grasp. Her left arm came free, unexpected to the guards holding her. Carina pressed her advantage and craned her arm back toward the guard, cracking him across the face. The guard swore and put a hand to his lip, which, Carina noted with some satisfaction, was dribbling a steady flow of blood.The other guard regained mobility quickly and quickly wrapped her arms behind her back. This time her struggling didn’t work, instead the guard released her, pitching Carina forward toward another podium.

No, not a podium. An altar.

Carina stumbled, landing heavily on her knees, indeed staining her skirts with freshly cut grass and muck. She heard distant commotion, she turned her head to hear better and recognised Nysa’s raised voice yelling at someone. Her parents or the guards, she didn’t know.

The guard who she had backhanded grabbed her roughly by the scruff of her neck and hoisted her partially on the altar, roughly turning her so she was laid on her back, legs dangling off the raised stone platform. Staring at the starry night sky. Staring at the blasted moon.

“Oh you bastards,” Carina spat, not that she knew what came next, or what came after. Nobody knew. The guard shot her a steely look and tied her legs together with another piece of rope, tugging at her harsher than necessary. 

The guard turned and bowed, “My King.”

Her father’s face replaced the circular moon hanging in the sky. She didn’t know which sight was more treacherous. 

“You have to understand, Carina-Leah,” he began. “Your Destiny is irreversible, despite how, low, shall we say, it is of you.”

“The low thing I see here is you,” Carina seethed, writhing in anyway she could on the altar, trying to dislodge herself from her bindings.

The king blinked, unphased. He raised a lazy hand, a signal of some sort no doubt, and turned, descending the altar with no final words for his only child.

A symphony filled the air, violins, bassoons and trumpets filled the night with their war cries, finalising Carina’s fate in a mournful song. Carina slumped, her back had begun to ache under the stress of her incessant twisting, legs hanging heavy over the altar, its stone slabs were icy prickles on her skin.

The music cut off abruptly. Carina startled when she realised why. A large white-tailed hawk was descending from the sky, from the moon, her feathers catching on starlight, weaving through the sky as she flew toward Carina’s form, splayed like a lamb for slaughter on her altar. 

This. This was the consumption of Carina Allister. 

* * *

When Carina awoke, it was to pale lights and an equally pale room, a breeze was skittering over her skin and leaving trails of goosebumps in its wake.. 

Awake. She was awake. And there were voices. Carina froze, feigning sleep still. 

Had her Destiny truly been fake? Had the consumption not worked properly? She had so many questions and she wasn’t confident that there were many people who could answer them. Instead, she lay motionless and listened keenly to the voices above her, trying to make out their accented speech.

“Poor girl,” a soft voice cooed. “Tying her up like that,”

A deep hum followed, “They made it a sacrificial ritual, of sorts.”

“Awful,” the soft voice agreed. “When shall we wake her up? She’s been asleep for a few hours now, I’m worried it’s taken too much out of her.”

Carina, carefully, cracked an eye open, looking at the figures through lowered lashes. Two people stood just off to the side of her body, a woman with a cloud of white-gold hair, and a man, who had dark coiled hair like Carina, his skin just as brown, but from where she was, his eyes looked liquid silver. Their clothing was a mixture of grey, white and silvers. What the hell was going on?

The man sighed and crouched down, his face hovering above her. Carina forgot her stealthy approach and instead tore her eyes open. The man jumped at the sudden movement, he held his hands up in a quick surrender. 

“It’s okay, you’re okay. My name is Hamal, this is my friend, Dianna.” Hamal gestured to the woman with the cloudy hair, she had a warm smile on her face now, her small hands clasped in front of her. “Do you have any idea where you are?”

Her words failed her so Carina nodded slowly, embarrassed by herself not being able to communicate properly.

Hamal only nodded and offered Carina a hand. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

The moon, the white-tailed hawk, her father’s nonchalance at her sacrificial capture. “I was tied down,” Carina mumbled, emotion caught in her throat. “There was a bird, the guards tied me down and it flew at me, I think it was going to attack me, I don’t know. I passed out,” 

The woman, Dianna, chuckled at this. “The bird was Faye, she’s mine. I apologise, she can come across as daunting, but I assure you she wasn’t going to harm you. She was the one who brought you here, actually,” Dianna spread her arms, gesturing to the room and beyond. “Welcome to the Astral City, Carina.”

Astral City. “The what?” Carina asked, dumfounded. She scrambled up to her feet. Hamal offered her an arm, she hesitantly accepted. She was unsteady on her feet and her head was buzzing, it would have been foolish to not accept his help, even if he was a stranger. 

“The Astral City,” Dianna explained, “is our home. You wouldn’t have heard of it before because nobody knows that it exists until you get here. That journey itself is no small feat. I assume you were confused about your Destiny?” 

“You could say that.”

Dianna chuckled. “Yes, well. Everyone here was prophesied the same Destiny. This isn’t a coincidence - we were all born under a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the sun. This is extremely rare.”

“Because we are born under the solar eclipse we are...different, in a sense.” Hamal took over, gently leading Carina from the pearl coloured room. The door led outside, or what, Carina supposed, the Astral City considered to be outside. Because, she realised with a rush of realisation and understanding, the Astral City was on the moon. The ground was a metallic grey and it glowed from within. The sky was full of small silver flecks, stray clumps of brown rock spinning in rotation. All the pieces of the puzzle configured themselves in her mind. 

“Faye, the bird,” Carina said, “she, um, consumed me?”

Dianna and Hamal shared a laugh. “You could say that, yes.” Dianna smiled. “I trained Faye to go out and find the next generation Eclipse, that being you.”

“When was the last eclipse?” Carina asked, interested now. 

“Nearly two hundred years ago now.” Hamal shrugged, nonchalant. 

Carina’s breath left her in a whoosh. Two hundred years? This seemed surreal. If only Nysa could see her now.

Nysa. The thought of him left her feeling empty, the excitement of the Astral City was squashed in a heartbeat. “Can I go back? Home, that is.”

Hamal and Dianna shared a sad look. “No, my dear.” Dianna said gently. “Hamal told you we’re different because of when we were born. We have starlight and shards of the cosmos in our blood. In the simplest term, we power the moon. The moon slowly consumes our energy, in return it feeds us some of its own power back, to sustain us longer. It’s a cyclical relationship, in essence.”

A burst of hysterical laughter escaped her. “I power the moon?” 

Hamal nodded, smiling. “Welcome, Carina. At last. We have been waiting a long time for you.”

Carina looked around her new home in total awe. She was ready to be consumed by the moon, even if she had to wait a little while.