The Quenched Star

"The Keeper of the Seven Keys. Loyalest seneschal of the Dancer with Moth Wings!"

The Keeper of the Seven Keys is not an understated bird.

Unlike the others, it is not glass, though its feathers appear like glassy bristles. It seems to be something like a long wreath of tinsel, twisted into avian form, standing on legs of black ice. Its wings are like spiky puffs of prismatic dust, like clouds cast in ice. Its long neck turns to point at Farok as he approaches. It does not seem to have eyes, only a ring of hanging keys, and a hanging hook at the end of its neck.

A long shimmering flake of tinsel peels off - a feather of the Quenched Star.

The neck of the giant tinsel creature reaches down and catches the Lantern that Gives Off No Light with the hook on its neck.

"The first and most important of my duties is to steward the Night Lantern. It calls the whispering urges of sleeping things to dance in the endless night we all exist within.

"I should like something of yours to join in the dance - your shadow!"

"Time for food...though I don't usually eat..."

With one, two gulps, the hour and minute hand are swallowed by the Keeper of Seven Keys!

The silver plumage crackles and the tinsel freezes into upright spikes. Coruscating purple energy shivers in waves over the giant bird's body.

"Every smith sees the work differently. To me, the original artifacts were seals. Locks, put in place by a capricious Lord.

"Now, let there be keys! Symbols of opening! Molded in the shape of the will of the Lord who Danced with Moth Wings!"

The keys, and then the sword on the head of the Keeper take flight, forming a circle as it inserts its immense head somehow into the Quenching Forge, and the shadow within burns with a bright, purple radiance.

Finally, one, two long weapons are removed from the forge.

At the end of their hilts, in place of pommels, they have holes where they attach to the shaft of the clock tower.

Their blades are black, shimmering with trapped motes of violet energy.

Spokes of teeth are arranged around their tips, an intricate starburst with twenty-four points evenly spaced like the ordinals of a clock.

"This is the work you have requested. See that these are placed in the right location, or delivered to one who knows their proper place." The Keeper of the Seven Keys tells Giovanna.

"An unformed creature of magic, to fill the emptiness you fill. A new life, yes." The Keeper of Seven Keys replies.

"An Egg from my Quenching Forge, filled with starlight. I have learned I cannot grow my children here. Perhaps traveling elsewhere will result in a stronger being."

"If I give you a Starlight Egg, you would be required to dream on it and help it hatch. Guide it into existence. You would be inextricably interwoven by that act of transcendent creation." The Keeper of Seven Keys instructs.

"I see that you are one to whom beasts bond. The creature you hatch would be bonded to you through your dreams, though its raw star-stuff originated with me."

In the center of the gathering, a great lantern that outputs no light - and where Novvy's light touches it, everyone can see it drawn in, converted into pinpricks of starlight.

A faint hum seems to flow from the lantern.

Perched on it, roosting peacefully, is a giant bird. Its wings and body are tubes of tinsel foil, like all of its children assembled to greet it.

It has no head, only a giant key ring, currently empty save for a long, jagged black sword, made of glass, with one edge teethed like that of a key.

It greets the tinsel birds with haunting, dissonant bellows from inside its chest, and the low jangle of the great blade that hangs from it.

The tinsel bird flies up to greet it too - and there are, perched next to it, six other tinsel birds, all with key-shaped beaks.

The six other birds leap into the air, their forms lengthening and changing, until they are keys too, and they hang next to the black glass sword.

"I am a creature of the heavens above, before these woods of quiet shade swallowed all." The Keeper of the Seven Keys replies.

"Radiance was once what I shed as I flew."

The gaudy, tinsel-bird that is the Keeper of the Seven Keys nods its jangly head of sword and keys.

"Perhaps beauty, beauty like that which the star once wore as raiment, beauty like my own sublime form, is what you seek.

"I could drench a feather in the tears of a star that remembers what once was."

The Keeper of Seven Keys flutters a feather onto the ground before itself, bows its ring, and the objects perched on it fly off one by one.

Each drops a tear onto the feather, which glows brighter, until it is bathed in a pale radiance.

The last to cry is the black glass sword, which forms into a great hawk, the size of a horse, with a helmeted glass head.

The Keeper of the Seven Keys ruffles its plumage, until a large, silver chest feather falls to the earth, tipped with glass, shimmering silver in hue, simultaneously flowing and fragmented.

"The raw material for a starlight shell, the Silent Plumage..."

The Keeper of Seven Keys thrusts this into the lantern where pinpricks of light dwell amid darkness.

It breathes a mix of fire and light into the core of the shadow lantern, and globular solids and rivers of silver flow and intermix. Without any visible stoking, they take shape, vaguely emulating Giovanna's form, forming into a perfect set of armor.

"Behold, my final gift to you." The Keeper of Seven Keys says, as it presents the completed pieced armor to Giovanna, as it sheds the last of its shimmering stored starlight, and reflects the darkness of the silent, ashen night.