Heart Rot

❶ - ONE

Listen, and you shall hear a story.

Once, alike in face as in personality, there lived twin brothers - and ah, you know now, don't you? Ten words spoken, and you can already predict how this story is going to end.

For they are twins, and there is always a special fate set aside for twins. For you see, no new child conceived escapes the eye of the great spirits - Hualma, of the day, who first set firm the ground and raised up the firmament, and placed all goodly things within it for our use, and Olin that is his mirror, lord of snakes and poisonous things, death and cruelty. Both will bring to bear their strength, that they may claim each person as soon as possible while they still endure in the realm of sight and sense. So the soul of every person at birth is composed of both aspects, mixed in measure. Some receive more of Hualma, and they are the saints and the holy ones, the leaders of their communities; some less, and they are the warmakers and lawbreakers.

But two children, in one womb - good and evil each the other repel, as oil to water, and that is why we each of us face such conflict throughout our lives, as the two sides of our souls seek to flee each other. But should one try to drink from a cup half-filled with water and half of oil, they shall take all the oil into their mouth first, before tasting even a single drop of water, and so two children in one womb receive not two blended souls but each unmixed, one of good and one of malice.

But who can tell a child's soul before they have ten, fifteen, nigh on twenty years to their name? So every set of twins born is a game of chance - that the one who is good will suffice, to outweigh the evil of the other. It is no coincidence that most of the great myths have hero and villain born of the same mother.

And out of myths? About five days' travel to the east - or four for those that drive themselves fast - there is a mountainside all bare of trees, where a section broke free and slid into the valley and lake below. There was once a village, where the rocky fen it formed now meanders, but of course no trace of it could survive such a catastrophe. Its neighbours, coming to trade, found only one survivor, a girl of barely marriageable age who they knew had been born with a sister of her own - a sister whom they had encountered a few times before in trading, sweet as honey and light as moth-flight, and who must have been one of the first to die, for her body was not found.

The girl who lived had had barely a scratch upon her and a heart as cold as the belly of a cave, for they never saw her mourn the death of her family and people.

And northwest, there is still a cliffside and waterfall that the roads bend widely around, and that must be guarded with talisman and garland, for near to that place lived a woman with her twin elder siblings, a brother and a sister, and the brother lusted after her in secret. And the one day, thinking that he like all others deserved to have a bride, he took her by force and slew the other, who, as it is right for a woman to do for her sister, attempted to defend her. And horrified by what he had done she fled to the cliff and cast herself off - but his seed had already taken root in her womb, and dying unborn and nameless the soul it would have been became a vengeful wraith in Olin's ways, drowning or maddening all who would come near in vengeance for its uncle's wrong.

Of course, that is the greatest extent that has been known to befall - most are far smaller, more human degrees of evil, a single murder or theft or the manipulation of records for unjust debt and credit, and smaller degrees of good, as most things in general do not happen on the mountainous scale of sorcery. But nonetheless, it is always a chance rather than a choice, for them. Fate is fate, and always fruits.