Editing Resplendent Aria of Flame (section)

== Backstory ==

In the distant North, there is a village that has never seen the Sun, the Moon, or the Stars. It rests in the cleft of a great mountain range and, by some quirk of fate, the shadow of those mountains never moves. Even the light from torches is dim in that place, and fires never burn as long as they ought. Still, the hardy people settled there because the scourges of the North, those antlered princes who reap mortals as slaves and the mad gods that dwell at the end of the world, never came near that mountain. Though dark and cold, the horrors of the North gave it wide berth, making it a safe place for a village.

In retrospect, they should have taken the warning.

Aria grew up here, in this quiet place at the edge of the world. Though life here was tough - food rare and fires brittle and dim - it was mostly without danger. Aria grew up learning to take care of herself and to survive in the rough wilderness, but her life was peaceful, for a time. Then when she turned 12 or so, ''they'' started to appear. The hungry ghosts were bad enough, but even stranger things lurked at the edges of the night. Dark, twisted things that were never meant to see the light of day, undulating shadows at the edge of vision and hungry mouths seen out of the corner of your eye. Strange noises coming from the heart of the mountain. People began to disappear, at first quietly, and then with screams in the middle of the night.

Fire kept them away. Mostly. But fire was a rare and precious thing here. There were tales from the old folk of places far in the South where it was a ready to find thing, easy and commonplace. But no one dared venture from the mountains, for the Fair princes that roamed the North and the Shadowlands with their dead were still, at the time, worse dangers. But Aria decided that they could not forever live in fear. So at the cusp of young adulthood she left that place, in search of a fire that never dies.

She was perhaps 14 when the saw the Sun for the first time. The moment remains in her heart.

By some miracle, she survived her initial trek to civilization. Not that the outposts of the North deserve to be called that, compared to the grandeur of the Realm, but for a girl from a forgotten village in the middle of nowhere it was dizzying enough. But Aria was uncommonly bright and quick-witted and well able to take care of herself. She lived of the land and learned to craft crude goods, she traded favors and labor, and slowly she made her way South. Along the way she learned about the world she had never known - about the distant Realm and the Immaculate Philosophy that spread from it. About the vast reaches of Creation, its spirits and its gods.

(Once, she asked if the Sun was worshiped. She was told that it was, but it was a matter only for the highest of priests, and not for the common folk like them. This answer did not satisfy her.)

Learning of firedust, she thought it was what she sought and yearned for the secret of making it. After much searching, she found a wandering man who knew of it. After much adventures in wrangling and proving oneself, her sifu taught her the Righteous Devil Style and its attendant philosophy - one that agreed with her very well. Still, she learned too that without the proper materials, firedust was not the answer, and so her search continued.

[[File:Resplendent_Aria_of_Flame4.png||thumb|Aria, in her gunslinging days]]

For a time she roamed much of the Northeast, in the style of the wandering heroes of her martial tradition. After more searching, she learned of the court of an Ifrit, an elemental lord of flame, said to gift those who passed his test with mastery over fire. Excited to have finally found her goal, she made the ardous way over there and managed to pass his test, and was gifted with the tongue of flame.

Triumphant, Aria returned home after some 8 years of travel, only to find that she had come far too late. Where once there was a village - her home, her family - there was now only broken houses and ruined corpses. Some of the bodies were... it should not be described. But Aria had learned things, in her travels, enough to identify the tell-tale signs of the perpetrator. Demons, or their summoner.

It wasn't much of a deduction, given that she was found soon after. The twisted woman she met brought with her an army of demons, but far more scary was the fragment of a page in her hand. It burned with a eldritch green flame, and upon seeing it Aria knew like she knew few things in her life that it was a thing that should not exist in this world. It lit up the darkness with an eerie flame.

"Oh my, did you come for this too? It was quite a find, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. I'm afraid, though, that it belongs to me." With a wave of a hand, the infernal sorceress commanded her demons to attack. Aria fought for her life, using all of her skill and the talents she had earned in her travels, but in the end she was overwhelmed. Out of firedust, out of breath, out of even will, she somehow clung to her last bit of senses. In the last moments of her life, bleeding from tainted wounds, a moment of clarity descended upon her. She knew what her last action needed to be.

Somehow she found strength from the depths of her soul, and fought her way past Blood Apes and stranger things to the sorceress that had summoned them. The infernalist's eyes grew wide at Aria's approach and she made move to flee, but with the desperate strength that comes upon those at the last embers of life Aria caught her arm with her own. Aria smiled a grim smile, and spoke with her last word the name of a god, engulfing them both in purifying flame.

And then a voice came to her, in her last moments. It was the voice of the King of Heaven, and sometimes when He comes to His priests He gives them great speeches and exhorts them to spread righteousness as best they know how. But to Aria he spoke only eight words, for He knew that was all that was needed.

''The fire that never dies is the Sun.'' He said.

And then there was a light such as that dark place had never known.

----

In the far and distant North, there is a forgotten cleft in the mountains that is forever embroiled in shadow. There is no village there and no people, nothing to see of interest. But if you carefully search the mountain and somehow manage to excavate a pile of rocks carefully arranged to look no different to every other pile of rocks, you will find a cave. And inside that cave, hidden deep beneath the earth and guarded by an earth elemental, there are the ashes of what might have once been a piece of parchment forever burning in a small brazier that never goes out - a fire that never dies