Aunt Fiva's classes were far from the most interesting on their own, as they mostly involved 'talking amongst yourselves' and lessons on how working together helped the Spires to survive dangerous situations. But every so often she talks about history, and history you find can be full of interesting facts.
"As far back as our records date, the Spire-Carver, Depth-Watcher, and Swift-Step clans have existed here, though not always by those names." Aunt Fiva's wrote the three clan names onto the board using a piece of coral, "Indeed, our first records of people on these islands were an account of a man who would go on to be known as King Rangi Spire-Carver - a disaster had struck this region, and many fled as stormclouds enclosed every sea-path out. But Rangi and his clan refused to run from the home they had made - and it is said the King and his people pulled the Earth from the Sea as it tried to swallow it, creating the Spires, as each family of the Spire-Carvers pulled one from the depths below."
She continued to speak without giving time for questions yet, "Rangi was beloved for this, and no one fought him as he crowned himself King of the Spires. Fear gripped the hearts of the survivors who had stayed, and those who were left behind, as the storm that came upon this day of disaster never left, not in full, creating walls that kept the survivors in - but also kept the terrors out. For a long time, the people of the Spires believed themselves to be the last living people in the world. That everyone who had fled had died, that everyone who lived afar from these islands was destroyed. It wasn't until twenty two years after King Rangi's death that the first shipwreck washed upon our shores, bearing human life from beyond." A brief pause, and then a scan of the classroom, "Any questions on King Rangi?"
You raised your hand, "What kind of disaster was it?" There was no hesitation in asking it, because that interested you as much or more than this King figure.
"We don't know." Fiva lifted her palms to the air, "The only writings about it come from Rangi's personal journal, where it is described in metaphor instead of simple language. The Day of Dread was refered to by him least poetically as 'the end of all we knew and trusted, the end of life, of death, it was the birth of a fear stronger than destruction, more primal than death, and a power that made us look unto fledglings'. It's said the nightmares of that day haunted every survivor, to the point where the sounds of screams was a common nightly occurence. They feared so much that they forbade leaving, exploring - because if they left, they might bring back whatever destruction had left."
You nodded and she cleared her throat to continue, "During his time as King, the Depth-Watchers provided the food for all who survived on the spires, hunting fish within the storm walls, and the Swift-Steps became messengers, warriors, guardians, while the Spire-Carvers set upon making Rangi's kingdom livable. It was a symbiosis, where no one family could survive on its own, as even a Depth-Watcher would not want to live life in a shallow puddle, and too few Beasts broke through the walls for the Swift-Steps to always feed themselves."
"However, Rangi's death had horrible implications for our home - he was one of the last survivors of the Before, and many of their arts were lost. He held the Spires together with a power that no one within the fogged walls could match, that no one had attained in time after destruction. But when that power left, when Rangi closed his eyes forever more, the Three families were suddenly at par with each other. And each family wished to assert its right to rule. Rangi's oldest son Ailanu was killed when he tried to take the crown as king, though records are inconsistent on if the killer was a Swift-Step or Depth-Watcher. And this incident became the spark to the flames of war."
"Thousands died. Where once every Spire was teeming with life, there was soon a dozen that lay empty, left with rotting goods of families who had been wiped out to the man." Fiva spoke with a seriousness that she rarely displayed, as she talked about the madness of war, "And the war ended only due to the apperance of the family that would become the Heart-Menders. A small family of Blood artists who had shipwrecked on the island during the wars, but remained separate, the first Outcastes. You might expect me to say that the Heart-Menders led the families to find peace with wise word and kindness, as we see them now. But they did not." Your aunt wrote down the words 'Slaughter' on the board, "For Blood artists, a War was a time to grow strong and fat with power. The family roamed the battlefields, absorbing the blood shed by those stronger than them. And in time a small group of Jades and Irons now stood with Highgolds."
"We were not always kind to outcastes. Superstition that they might bring death to us all was strong in these times still, and the would-be Heart-Menders had faced great pain and discrimination. Their youngest son had been stoned to near death when attempting to barter at the market, their oldest daughter was stabbed fatally in a brawl just for crossing in front of a superstitious man's house." Fiva's face was drained, the topic not one fit for children, but one she had to teach anyways, "What do you think happened when these people gained power?"
"They took revenge." Kiri was the one who answered it, from next to you. She didn't normally participate, but something in her eyes were gleaming as she heard this lesson.
"To be more exact, they slaughtered people. Men, women, children, they took advantage of the chaos to grow strong, and then while the Three Families were distracted, they sunk into the back of the Spires like a dagger, and grew stronger on top of it. In ways small and subtle enough to be overlooked, to be blamed on the other Families. Except for the actions of the first Matriarch of the Heart-Menders, Dara Heart-Mender, the youngest son who had one nearly died to the people of the Spires refused to grow strong on death and slaughter, and saw his parents grief over his sister's death as a tragedy to be stopped. And so he went to each of the Families heads, and pled for them to see what was happening as they continued to war. The Families united, and they slaughtered the slaughter artists, whose family names were forever erased from all records."
"Dara married a daughter of each of the three clans, as reward for betraying his murderous family - and as lynchpin of a new neutrality between families, and an end of the war that almost destroyed the Spires and its people. This family became the Heart-Menders who we know today, healers better than any other, whose status as our non-combatants lends them a role as peacekeepers at time." Fiva smiled back at Kiri. But Kiri had already stopped paying as much attention as she had been, "Dara Heart-Mender being the one who institute the full ban on Blood artists learning deadly arts, due to his fears that another Slaughter group may be born, like had been born of his family."
"My family didn't arrive until a whole hundred and ten years after this slaughter." She wrote the name 'Soft-Storm' on the board, "Around two hundred years after the Day of Dread, or three hundred years ago. My family does not have the story that lay behind the Heart-Menders - we did not come baring destruction, we did not come wielding death, we did not come during a time of violence or turmoil. But we came in a most unique way - our ship did not wreck, as my forebearers sailed through the foggy storm. Ten Jades, twenty irons, all from different families, all on different paths of Cloud, all searching for a storm that seemed to disappear whenever a Gold was along. A storm that they found, and breached."
"Ten Jades was not a force capable of taking on the Families, it was not a large power. But for a group of Outcastes, it was unheard of, especially since they arrived with supplies, materials, tools, everything you might need if you disappeared. We established ourselves quickly on one of the Outcaste spires, which is why our family's spires are so close to the Fog Wall - though we do not protest this treatment, as it keeps us close to an ever present source of Cloud." She smiled as she said that, and then something you hadn't seen of her appeared as she opened a small case on the desk - a Drudge floated up next to her, "Most of all, we came prepared with what was considered a lost art. Soulsmithing. Extremely few beings can think to utilize that art without a Drudge - these constructs allow us to analyze, dissect, alter, and reform Bindings, which is the second key to making Treasures, next to scripts. And two of the Jades at this landfall had them, along with their four iron apprentices."
"We didn't earn our position with blood, with heroic stories. We earned it because we were too useful, too tempting. One by one all of the Famlies wanted to employ us, to pay us, and without the ability to leave, we embraced it. The six soulsmiths and their twenty four fellow Cloud users became the first group of Soft-Storms, under Matriarch Amihan. Becoming a Family was not instant, however - we were still seen as Outcastes. Until one day the Four Families looked at us with scrutiny - and realized we had recruited more Outcastes than any of them, teaching them the way of Cloud and of Soulsmithing. Within a hundred years of arriving, we became the Fifth Family, simply because we were happy to house and teach those who arrived here - allowing us to simply outnumber any one of the Four Families."
"Tch, do you even count as a family then? Shouldn't you all be in the Outcaste classes?" Tane huffed as he heard that, a little louder than he should of. But luckily for him, Fiva was ever patient, and not prone to being taunted by children.
"Amusingly, it was actually the at-the-time Depth-Watcher Matriarch who put forward the suggestion to make us the fifth of the Great Families of the Spires. The Spire-Carvers and Soft-Steps were the ones who were against it. You see, your family had benefitted greatly in our arrival - a lot of refining tools are the work of Soulsmiths, after all, and so your art was suddenly more possible to refine, so to speak. It was a couple generations later that my Grandfather created the Cloud Bridges between the Spires, and our kins strife began. For nearly a hundred years we were the greatest of allies. If only we could go back!"
She clapped her hand as she shifted her attention, "The lesson to learn here is that even within our home, safe as it is, things can bring change. Be it war, be it revenge, or be it simple wit. Life is never fully stable, as much as we might wish it to be. Try to make the changes you cause to be positive ones, my young aspirants."
