Secrets of Cinder, Part 2

A world in flux

What are the stars in the sky? In the Age of Robodroids one can easily locate travellers from afar who will tell you that the stars are distant suns, around which other worlds like Cinder orbit. And from the skies of those worlds the suns of Cinder appear as a single star in the sky. To people familiar with such things as psi witches and robodroids, the magicians of Cinder are merely manipulators of a certain kind of esoteric technology while demons are nothing more than grumpy visitors from alternate planes of existence.

But the storytellers of any era tell a different story. They say that the stars are the glittering silhouettes of the last four dying gods, the final four almost-survivors of the bigger, grander universe that preceded Cinder. One quarter of the sky marks out the Dying Dragon (which the Church tells us is the sire of the Divine Gold Dragon, making their god the rightful heir of All Things) while another quarter is the Mourning Minstel, a third quarter outlines the Weary Wizard, and the last quarter of the sky gives view to the Wounded Warrior, whose Heartstar faintly twinkles a somber red hue on clear nights. These celestial assignments are not symbolic, but the actual state of heavenly affairs.

Both views of Cinder, the superstitious and the super-scientific, are absolutely correct, at least under the proper conditions. Cinder exists in a state of perpetual quantum flux, wherein the true nature of such things as magic and technology greatly depend on the observer. Metaphysical questions such as “Do computers have souls?” or “are fire elementals magical spirits or plasmatic A.I.s?” are indeterminate until properly observed. And conflicting results between say, a tricorder reading and a divination spell, are certainly possible. Cinder is both a particle and a wave.