Amynas and Leur

Amynas

Amynas was an Aryati clone prince, one of several genetic copies of the ruling Hegemon. The Aryati were mortal, and all mortals aged. Aging is a function of Time on Life, which is a core part of Leur’s Creation. Though the Aryati sought immortality, they never unlocked that path. The closest they came through their advanced technology was cloning, which allowed them to replace aged bodies with younger versions.

Clones were created, kept in artificial wombs, grown, and awakened when needed. Duplication in the process meant more than one would be prepared. Amynas had two brother clones; the name Amynas means “spare.” He had no surname or other identifier.

Amynas was awakened late in the reign of the Hegemon Pankrator by an errant order. Because of his valuable genetics, he was not destroyed. Instead he was to be under-educated and rendered “harmless.” To this end Amynas was trained to be a musician and artist and assigned to perform menial tasks in Sordan’s great laboratories. It was in his capacity as a monitor of machines that he encountered the Leur in the stasis tank of the secret laboratory where the Aryati were conducting their study.

[Amynas was assigned to this facility because he belonged solely to the Hegemon; not only did Amynas have no exploitable personal connections or relationships but the Aryati ruler could order his immediate destruction if secrecy was needed.]

Though given menial responsibilities and trained for harmless pursuits, Amynas possessed the body and mind of a prince and warrior. Intelligent, curious, and amenable, he made friends easily and earned the trust of those engaged in studying the Leur.

The captive god fascinated him. Physically the Leur possessed breathtaking beauty—human in size and shape, outwardly male (the Aryati failed to definitively determine the god’s gender, if indeed Leur possessed one—the penis was merely anatomical and Leur later said they preferred the convenience), with ivory skin, fiery hair and eyes that, when open, were vivid green. The Leur was in suspension, however, and did not interact with anything or anyone around them.

Amynas felt great pity for the Leur. Though but one small extension of the Leur godhead, surely this Leur was themselves a being that deserved better than to be a source of biopsied samples and crude experiments. Did Leur cells burn? Yes... and no. Did Leur feel pain? Yes... at least on some level. Did Leur—this expression or the manifested godhead—know its current state? There was no way to tell.

Amynas was given permission to play music for the Leur. This was also part of an experiment—the expression could hear the music, but did it react? Sensors catalogued the data. However, Amynas, who was curious, also noted which melodies and expressions caused the greatest response... and not just in the Leur. The Leur expression was not imprisoned by restraint but by a stasis field that interfered with—blanked—their connection to the Creation and its godhead. They were silenced, every part of them, their body and being. The music Amynas played occasionally disrupted and rearranged that dissonance. Some of these rearrangements created lulls that enabled Leur to reassert their connection to the godhead.

Amynas did not tell anyone what he had noticed. The occurrences were scattered, fleeting, undetected because he muted the monitors. More and more he found time during his rounds of monitoring to sit beside the Leur’s stasis chamber and play tunes of his own creation based on the responses he was getting. He still did not get the complexity he needed and realized the problem might be his instrument. His music tutors had told him, and shown to him on one occasion, a Leur instrument known as a malyr, which few humans could play. Sordan had a malyr, one which had been used in its creation, kept on display.

Using his privileged, genetically coded access, Amynas stole into the museum each night before his rounds, took the instrument, and returned it each morning. For the hours in between he taught himself to play it, little by little building scales, matching notes to altered dissonance, and weaving new tunes. Using the malyr, each new tune Amynas wove shaped a song that smoothed away more of the dissonance until, one night, he played a melody that created enough of a break in the pattern for the Leur to awaken.

On that night in Sordan, Amynas looked up into open eyes as green as spring grass and gazed into the soul of a god.

Lokenalys

Lokenalys chose his name upon first attaining expression in the Leur citadel of Îs. It means “fire spirit.” This name was not known to the Aryati until it was revealed to Amynas. Before being captured Loke had been happily working on a newly created human-focused world design. Creating a human-appearing body for themselves had seemed to be a good first step. Male gender was a personal choice—most Leur expressed as female forms, Earth goddesses and all that—and Loke wanted to be different.

[The Leur godhead has no gender, neither are they sexual beings; Leur expressions, however, often choose a gender because genders are interesting, help them blend in, or serve a purpose toward whatever they are doing at the moment. Leur expressions create bodies to suit their situation, so they can and often do change sex or gender.]

Getting captured by power-hungry, immortality-obsessed Aryati was not part of the plan. Upon capture and removal, Loke’s design (world) disintegrated into an inchoate mess. His Aryati captors rendered him immobile and disoriented... but not insensible to pain or mortification (a Leur expression continues to present in their chosen body unless they have the cognitive wherewithal to create another). The greater godhead didn’t know where Loke was or what had happened to him, so there was scant chance of rescue.

But there was that Aryati musician (they were probably Aryati, but who really knew?) who kept playing horrible, discordant but sometimes also miraculously melodious tunes...

From his imprisoned state, Loke seized each rare moment of clarity to write a note into the air or even into the dull musician’s head. More. Again. This. Until one day the tune came out arranged just so, pitched precisely, played to perfection. Oh blessed musician!

Restored to control of his body, Loke opened his eyes and looked upon the young human. Though a god, Loke was young too, the newest of Leur’s expressions and probably not much older than his rescuer. He saw that the human was Aryati, tall and male, with golden hair and amber eyes, and a goofy wonderstruck expression that fairly shouted of good intentions. The mortal held a malyr in his hands, which he immediately let fall to the floor the better to press controls on the chamber to open it.

“My name is Amynas. I’m here to help you. Jump!” He extended his arms.

Loke gave Amynas a look that assessed his sturdiness. He jumped.

Escape

Evacuation of the stasis chamber of course set off alarms. Fortunately for the escapees, Amynas had mapped out Sordan’s utility pathways and infrastructure. Even more fortunately, Sordan was a Leur construct, sung into existence by Leur expressions—Loke not only understood everything about how and why and wherefore Sordan was built, he possessed the ability to change it. Create new passages. Close previously existing ones. Change a shallow stream they had just run across to one filled with suddenly deep water.

Sordan possessed a transit port nearby. Amynas wore an officer’s clothing—courtesy of his companion changing his service uniform into military wear—and Loke... was an Aryati woman of middle age, wearing the sash, emblems, and horned head gear of a Seventh Moon dignitary (they had seen one during their flight and Loke liked the outfit). Amynas was worried about being captured—the Hegemon would certainly kill him—but Loke was having the time of his life. [Loke having the time of his life would continue for quite a long time. He had quickly decided that designing a creation was not nearly as fun as being a fugitive in an existing one.]

After reaching the lunar terminal and transferring to a ship, Amynas and Loke were off world. They continued their adventures in the Aryati Outer Colonies.

Outer Colonies—and Vllyr

Loke and Amynas continued to keep company. For one thing, neither had anyone else they trusted. Each respected the other’s best qualities, found each other amusing, and overlooked that they were fundamentally not alike in the least. They liked each other and saw no reason not to continue their relationship.

Once in the Outer Colonies Loke and Amynas found ways to elude death or capture by World Prime authorities. The Colonial government(s) had been independent from the World Prime for many years, which allowed the pair to move more freely. They were welcomed also by the handful of Leur expressions which assisted the Aryati colonies in their exploration of the greater universe.

One consequence of Loke’s escape was that the greater Leur godhead honored Amynas for his deed by bestowing on him the name Malyrdys (malyr being both the instrument he had played and the instruments of Leur creation). “Malyrdys” means “singer.” This is why history knows Amynas more often as Amynas Malyrdys. It is also why one branch of his descendants became known as Malyrdeons.

Amynas became well-known among colonists as the Aryati prince who had a Leur expression as his best friend. That both were World Prime fugitives hardly mattered. They were interesting: a Hegemon clone who played music unlike any other and his god companion whose voice enchanted any audience. Amynas and Loke entertained hordes of starfarers and made themselves useful as high-level “helpers” in troubled situations.

And that is how they found themselves summoned to assist when one of the far colonies—two planets, twelve space stations—was destroyed by Vllyr.

What happened with Vllyr is covered here.

What happened after that, how Amynas and Loke found themselves again on World Prime and were present for the Devastation and the destruction of Leur’s Creation... how they fled to one of the Aryati-ruled pocket worlds... their separation and reunion and adventures... belongs to another post. Another history.

Because part of those adventures led to Loke’s discovery that the Devastation was not, in fact, absolute. The Leur godhead had somehow made a Second Creation—and that discovery led to the story being told in the Triempery Revelations.

As is ever the case with Amynas and Leur, that story starts in Sordan...

[I am working on writing the story of the Return: the Creation of the Three, the defeat of the Aryati and the Return from Exile, the births of the Wall and the Rill, and the foundation of the Highborn and their Triempery. I will publish posts about this story as I write them.]