Return to Earth Eternal Official Lore
22 | MAGIC RETURNS TO EUROPE
Four years after Atan arrived at the Gardens of the Mist, a messenger arrived with urgent news from Chang’an, the Imperial Capital. The Empress of the Four Winds, Wu Zetian, had been poisoned and was dead. A new Emperor – Shun Go ‐ sat on the Lotus Throne now, continuing the Jade Dynasty. Atan was summoned back to the Imperial City of Chang’an to attend to the Emperor in a capacity left unspecified.
One who values his life typically hastens to fulfill the wishes of the ruling dynast, but Atan hesitated. If he returned to Chang’an he may never leave again, for while the Empress he had known was, for an Empress at least, reasonably level and well-intentioned, Shun Go came to power in the wake of a poisoning in which his own innocence was murky at best. Atan had no idea what his status would be upon returning to the Imperial Court. While he was formerly one of the chief advisors to the Lotus Throne, he may now be cast as a virtual slave once more; a freak and foreigner whom a paranoid Emperor may not trust.
Further, a thought had been growing in Atan’s mind of late. With his increasing mastery of the arcane, might he not try to return to Europe, spread the magical arts, and help free it from the dominion of the Blood Kingdom? Could the skills and knowledge he had gained at the Gardens of the Mist be the weapon the Beasts of the Covenant had hoped for during the century after century of Bleakness?
Atan spoke in confidence to Ping of the Imperial command, and of his hopes and dreams for freedom in his homeland. Ping listened quietly, without jokes, and when Atan was done he told a story of his own.
Artemis
When Ping was a young boy, he said, a year before he came to the Gardens of the Mist to learn magic, he had been visited by a Goddess who called herself Artemis. Ping had never heard of this Goddess before and seemed unsure whether it happened in a dream or not, but it did not seem to matter much, so real it felt to him.
Atan was also unfamiliar with Artemis. Though worship of her had once been scattered in pockets here and there throughout Europe, during the Bleakness many Beasts lost faith in all but Gaia and the Covenant she had sanctified. Artemis was still worshipped by some Noctari villages in southern Europe but it had been a thousand years since travelers crossed Europe and worship of her had died out elsewhere.
Ping said that Artemis had told him that someday he would break faith with the Lotus Throne and in doing so, create hope for not just the Middle Kingdom but for lands beyond the sunset. She said that Ping would put aside his loyalty to the Jade Dynasty and the Emperor for the sake of one Beast. As Ping grew older, the visitation, whether dream or not, grew dimmer in Ping’s memory until he was old and it was only a fond memory of childhood fancy. Perhaps he had simply imagined the whole thing. Who had ever heard of a Goddess with a name like Artemis anyway?
When Atan arrived at the village, Ping idly wondered if perhaps he hadn’t invented the memory after all. When he received the news that an Emperor rather than an Empress now ruled, the words of the Goddess began to weigh heavily upon his mind, and when Atan asked Ping for his advice, Ping knew that the moment was at hand. His choice was between his duty to the Kingdom and the Emperor and a hazy memory from his childhood that he still was not sure he hadn’t made up.
Ping’s Counsel
Ping thought for a moment before giving his advice to Atan. “You must bring laughter back to your people,” was all he said, and Atan never forgot those words. That very night he bade his farewell to Ping, whom he now looked at as a foster father. He knew they would never see each other again, for it would be death for Atan to set foot in the Middle Kingdom after refusing a command of the Emperor. It may be death to try to leave, but Atan’s mind was made up: He would find the Beasts of the Covenant once more, and he would do what he could to help his people.
The Journey Home
His journey back from the Lands of the Morning to his birthplace in Europe is, as was his journey into the East, a tale for another time, but know that Atan, recognizing that he’d been incredibly lucky to have passed through the Dragon Empire safely on his way to the Middle Kingdom, chose to take the northern route around the mighty mountains called the Pillars of Heaven, believed to be the highest and most inhospitable on Earth. He narrowly escaped Imperial agents seeking him as he crossed through the Province of the West Wind, and was caught once by and subsequently escaped from armed soldiers of the People of the Skull, whose great Khan maintained constant patrols along the border with the Middle Kingdom.
Eventually, Atan came across Foxen living in the ruins of the Border Holds. Surrounded on three sides as they were by the Vampires from the southwest, the People of the Skull from the east, and even occasional raids by Dvergar from far to the north, the destitute and always‐starving Foxen were among the worst off of the Beasts of Europe. When Atan told them he could teach them to use magic, they laughed at him, and when he demonstrated his new powers, they shunned him and told him he would bring down the wrath of the Vampire Mages on them.
One must not judge these Foxen too harshly though, for arcane magic was then less than a bedtime story, and their lives were lived in nearly all‐encompassing fear of the enemies that surrounded them and held dominion over them. Downhearted at this rejection by the people he sought to save, Atan headed south across the great Ukran Grasslands, trying to avoid the Bloodkin but twice slaying lone Vampires with the power of earth, air, water, and fire, until he came to what had once been Hayasa and the remaining Felines. There he received a reception wholly unlike that he received in the mostly‐conquered Border Holds.
The Hayasans responded eagerly to his demonstrations and soon the canniest among the half‐feral tribes of Felines became students of Atan. Magic had returned to Europe, nearly twelve thousand years after Solomon, first Overking of the Beast Empire, had outlawed it.