this sea is anything but tranquil

Cosmica is an old project. Though I've been working on it for 4-ish years now, there is not a lot of concrete information. And that's mostly because I've been unable to commit to much.

but the basics are that it's very much inspired by the cosmere, dune, and star wars.

There is a network of rivers flowing with magic that connect the planets together and allow people to travel between worlds. There is magic, which flows into the planets from these otherworldly rivers. There is a class system, a figurehead ruler, and a corrupt wealthy class oppressing the rest of the population. And there's a guy named Sitar who is destined to stop the world from ending.

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#the maker speaking > for everything out of world/out of character. Whenever I'm talking about the worldbuilding

#cosmica: house of odessi > for most writing

Fun lil thing, open tagged by @traderotales

Open tag for anyone, your word is REVEAL

I got SUNLIGHT. I had one for every letter except U, so I wrote something for it!

S - Sitar spit blood into the sandy floor of the arena, breathing heavily.

U - Up to this point, Sitar had lived in community housing of all sorts; from sleeping in the familiar barracks with his men to hunkering in a corner of the slave caravan.

N - Nonetheless, the boroughs had been decorated with the finest blue pigments their meager funds could buy.

L - “Leave your spy outside.”

I - Inyat leaned against him and sighed, “Hopefully you last longer than that.”

G - “Give this to me,” Zehura said.

H - He slowly sat, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the sheer drop, feeling the salty breeze whip up from below.

Title: Cut the Spiral

Cosmica mini oneshot for this week's @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt!

word count: 363

characters: Sitar, Inyat

notes: Kind of a directionless piece, but all progress is good progress. Explores a bit how Inyat has come to be a light for Sitar.

warning: implied suicide attempt? very vaguely? Sitar is not in a great place mentally.

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Sitar stood on the lip of the cave, overlooking the yawning sea cliffs and crashing waves far below him. Jhasa’s peninsular landmass created the illusion that he stood on an island, only able to look out at the unbroken horizon, knowing the whole of the city sat above and behind him like it was resting against his back. The waves below crashed and charged like a mess of soldiers. He remembered that kind of chaos well. He slowly sat, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the sheer drop, feeling the salty breeze whip up from below. He’d fought on a coast like this, once. Blood and salt mingling in the air, he remembered how terrified he’d been. Freshly enlisted, he’d gripped his weapon like it was a lifeline in a storm. That time seemed a lifetime ago. And yet, he was still fighting in that same chaos day after day. The arena was no battle ground, not like he’d known, but it had all the same characteristics. And he lost people all the same. He listened to the roar of the waves, roaring like the screaming of men dying. He remembered many of them, as many as he could. Even now he forgot the faces of his dead comrades in arms as those of the newly dead replaced them. Oh that he could spare them from the agony they were all trapped in. That he alone could shoulder this terrible burden. He knocked a stone down into the sea. It fell effortlessly, as a stone does, and he tracked its bounding free fall until it was a speck splashing down into the foam. So much death. So much chaos. So… pointless. He leaned forward. “Sitar?”

Inyat. He turned. She stood a few steps behind him, her hands politely clasped in front of her. A crease of worry furrowed her brow. It caused the two triangle birthmarks on her temples to draw together. His heart sang in his chest at the sight of her, the black gauze of death ripping away from him. “Are you alright?” she asked, tilting her head in concern.

Title: A Grave Misunderstanding

Cosmica oneshot for this week's @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt!

word count: 606

characters: Zehua, Antitian, Sitar (mentioned, vague)

notes: this prompt worked perfectly for the idea I'd had for the prophecy in this story for a while.

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“Zehua, a moment please.”

Zehua turned in the hallway to see the Temple Mother—Mitera Antitian Malahadinn—moving toward her. The Mitera’s dark blue temple robes billowed around her as she approached, like a violently spraying fountain.

Antitian gripped Zehua’s arm once she was within reach, holding onto her with a religious fervor.

There was something wrong, something deeply wrong.

“Hatah has spoken again.”

“You received a sign from it?” Zehua questioned. Antitian had come to her nine years ago, deeply troubled by a sign from Hatah, the holy one within the Origin. Now she came again, with the same ground-shaking look in her eyes; a terror at beholding the future.

“No,” Antitian said. She pulled Zehua by the arm into an alcove, speaking quickly and quietly. “It has shown me I misunderstood.”

Zehua’s brows drew together, a scowl of concern creasing her youthful face. Surely the Mitera was mistaken. Hatah only spoke to the Mitera, and those of such status were trained in all manner of prophetic scholarship to understand the signs they were given.

“You’re never wrong, it must be a new sign. Some sort of change of the path. Hatah does not make mistakes, and neither do you.”

Antitian’s grasp tightened around Zehua’s arm, then released her. The older woman turned aside, distressed. “I thought– you remember what I thought. The war, the man who would kill the Origin…” she trailed off, fidgeting with her hands. Zehua had never seen her so upset.

“Yes, I remember. Mitera, we are prepared for the war. What did Hatah say now?”

“We are doomed, Zehua!” Antitian hissed at her. She spoke with such venom that Zehua took a fearful step back and bumped against the cool alcove wall.

“The thing that’s coming, the beast to rip the Temple from Jhasa? It is coming because we are prepared for war. I did not understand Hatah before, when it showed me the terrible things to come. I thought I was meant to stop it, to prepare the acolytes for a threat from without. To crush whatever schemes the land-council was enacting against us. I thought that was its plan!

“I did not see that the threat came from within, Zehua. Within our own walls, the Temple’s destruction is already here, already rotting the foundations of the house! The Sun is coming, and he will scorch the waters of the Origin as punishment for our fault against him! He will turn the Temple inside out, he will destroy all we have built!”

“Who is the threat, Mitera? Do you know?”

“One of the slaves,” Antitian said. “I do not know which one. Perhaps that was withheld from me as discipline for my misunderstanding.”

She looked miserably resigned, her great age showing as the weight of this horrible mistake rested hard upon her shoulders. This was no way for a proper Mitera to act, and if any of the other priestesses saw her like this, Zehua knew there would be a coup in the Temple; the Mitera’s status was already rather delicately balanced.

“Then we kill them all,” Zehua replied, taking charge. Someone had to, else they all fall to chaos. She stepped closer to Antitian, standing tall over the older woman despite their differences in status. “I will give the order, let their blood fall on me.”

Antitian considered it for a moment, then nodded faintly. “Take care of it, Zehua, I trust you.”

Title: With this you'll live to see another day

Cosmica mini oneshot for this week's @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt!

word count: 421

characters: Sitar, Inyat, Zehua (mentioned), Elwyn (mentioned)

notes: every time I write something for Cosmica, I get a little closer to putting the whole story together. This is my first proper piece of writing for Cosmica on this blog.

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Hello! Yes, thank you for asking :)

Cosmica is an original epic fantasy (teetering on science fiction) universe I'm writing inspired by Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, among other things.

Its primary story, currently also referred to as Cosmica, follows three main POVs.

A soldier wrongly accused of treason, named Sitar Amerati, is sold into slavery and bought by the priestess of the Temple to fight and die in her secret gladiatorial arena.

A Temple guard named Inyat Sahgal, is desperate to learn about magic, but the dark secrets she discovers beneath the Temple may irrevocably change her.

A Temple spy, Elwyn De La Luria, grapples with what her superiors have turned her into, forced to be the bloodied hand that carries out the Temple's dirty deeds.

Thrown together by chance, these three outcasts may hold the key to toppling the corrupted Temple regime, but what else will their actions unleash upon their homeworld Urutae? You'll have to read and find out!

While not the only story I'm designing for the Cosmica universe, it is the one I'm focusing the most on at the moment.

Magic within the story originates from the Origin, a realm beyond reality and understanding that bursts with magic. Magic users, called channelers, are able to use their own bodies as vessels to focus the magic into reality. Magic in Cosmica uses a lot of water symbolism and imagery, and as such wave iconography is representative of the Temple.

Magic and religion are closely intertwined, those who do magic are connected to the Temple, and they believe the Origin and the god Hatah are one and the same. Only women are permitted to do magic or serve in the Temple.

Magic is also used to travel between planets, via the great rivers. There are three main planets; Meliore, closest to the sun and tidally locked. From here is where the Sunlords came from (more on that shortly); Urutae, second from the sun, where the main Cosmica story takes place; Nimahael, a forested moon orbiting a gas giant, third from the sun.

So originally, a long long time ago, the Sunlords lived on Meliore and were mostly content. Nimahael and Urutae were also populated with their own races, and while the Nimians knew magic, those on Urutae didn't.

The Sunlords first discovered the great rivers, which is a space between planets with magic flowing from the Origin to the planets from it. They first went to Urutae and subdued the people there, taking control and basically establishing themselves as rulers.

After a couple hundred years, they ventured off again and found Nimahael, and established themselves as rulers over it too.

One such option is the naginata which is a traditional Japanese polearm with a sort of curved blade on the end. I love polearms a lot.

"Please," Elwyn pleaded with the man. "He's sick and needs rest."

The innkeeper, heavy set with a thick beard looked Elwyn up and down, then glanced past her at Inyat who supported a feverish Sitar. She could tell the innkeeper was going to say no, so she pressed on desperately. "'There will be visions among the young and dreams given the old, they will prophesy of a coming frost...'"

"'...and of three strings in the snow...'" the man finished the passage quote, eyes widening as he understood what Elwyn was saying.

He wordlessly held the door open for them as Elwyn entered first to scan the room. When she was certain they were safe, she helped Inyat bring Sitar inside. The innkeeper led them to a room on the ground floor and helped Inyat lay Sitar on the bed while Elwyn drew the curtains closed and lit a lamp.

"We are deeply grateful for your hospitality," she told the innkeeper.

"Please, if there is anything more I may do to serve, I can bring whatever you need."

"This is all we require," Elwyn passed a slip of paper to him, and after reading it the innkeeper left the room.

As Inyat nudged the door closed, Elwyn said a silent prayer of gratitude that the coded words had still worked. Memories of spying and scouting missions blurred together in her head, places and faces, names and codes, it was a marvel she still remembered what codes worked with what contacts.

"I'll take first watch," Inyat was saying. "When the innkeeper returns I'll mix the broth for him."

Elwyn turned sharply to face Inyat. "No, you were awake nearly the whole night, let me take the watch."

Inyat shook her head, causing her low tail of hair to swing gently. "I will watch over him, El, you rest now."

There was no anger in her answer, just a calm certainty. It was already decided, and Elwyn's disagreement would find no purchase.

"Only for a couple hours," Elwyn conceded, dropping heavily into the chair beside the bed. She had felt wildly alert standing a moment ago, but now her eyelids drooped and she sighed in the defeated acceptance of sleep.

I love getting to work on my project while also doing school assignments

Magic is accessible for everyone. It is an element that exists as something like a liquid and also light. It comes from a distinct source that is constantly pushing itself into the universe, seeping through the pores in the fabric of reality.

People say it's the last vestiges of artificial super intelligence from before the war. There was no true way to destroy the machine, only to trick and corner it and lock it away.