At the ravaged capital amid smoke and ruin, Dilian enters the hightower and stands face to face with the impostor bearing his likeness. Turning to face him she does not speak, nor does he as they both take a moment to size up their antagonist. Dilian stands in baerre-skin leather from the beast that killed Q’isann’s brother, who Q’isann has now joined in death. Pale as a ghost, Dilian’s skin, beard and shoulder-length hair are as ivory as the snowy mountains.
The Archess before him is both a formidable nemesis and a vulnerable natural beauty, rife with conflict. Radiating brightly and appearing as a solar seraph, her primal inner toil has been summoned, saved and transformed by the shining sun above. Adorned in long, flowing ebony robes and ravenous hair reaching her torso, her face and skin have been burned and blotched by years of sunburn.
Aside from their faces the Archess and Dilian are of the same height, around the same weight and perhaps close to the same age. Despite their contrasting skin tones and appearance, they unquestionably come from the same tribe. This is no indigenous chameleon nor subterranean demon standing before him; this woman arrived on Crescendo on the same ship that he and his family had. The Archess sees past her adversary’s white skin, beard and hair, and recognizes her own face staring back at her.
Sahara Desert – Caravan to Infinity
On the day that she lost her family and tribe, Lily’s parents had insisted that her own turmoil not disrupt the captain while he steered towards their new homeland. Moaning in anguish, the pangs in her womb had been dismissed by nearly all onboard. While her father pleaded with deaf R’Nesto to turn the damned ship, she was unable to speak or signal with the love of her life. As Lily’s cries were joined by those of a newborn infant below deck, only her mother provided consolation until the ship suddenly crashed and sank.
Washed ashore east of the rivermouth and shipwreck, Lily was segregated from her tribe by a fierce panthera which chased her into the desert. Dehydrated with no food, water, shade nor shelter, she faced certain death. However like her family, death never arrived to claim her, as the bright sunlight improbably nourished her. Indefatigable, Lily was able to survive in the harshest weather and environment by drawing the light, her scorn as scalding as the solar sphere above. Drawing deep within the ground from the earth’s magnetic attraction to the star it revolves on, Lily concentrated the sun’s energy towards her and Escenda. Harnessing natural nuclear fusion from the core of Earth’s yellow dwarf star, its temperature thousands of degrees above countable range, matching and fueling her rage.
Magicians engaged in mystical duel by Dzmitri Auramchik
Reddening as she recognizes Dilian, she begins to utter his name but has lost her voice amid the thundering din she has created below. Taking a step towards the other, the two foes peer beneath their opposite appearances.
To his shock he recognizes her as Lilian, his twin sister not seen since she was lost in the shipwreck twenty-seven years past. Observing her brother for the first time Lilian’s ruthless years and tears of rage start to wash away, with her empire laid to waste. Overcome with emotion, she breaks down as does Dilian. The twin siblings comfort each other, and they finally embrace as one.
Beneath them in the ruined treetown Tilian, master Sho-lin and muse Mila arrive from the redwood with her and Dilian’s adult twins. Except for Pai-san and the hulking gladiator, the calamity’s few survivors converge at Escenda as Dilian and the Archess descend the hightower together.
The near-extinct Wescendant and Escendant remnant tribes stand and stare at the snow-maned Dilian and his raven-haired impostor, and collectively grasp that she is his sister Lilian who survived the shipwreck unbeknownst to all. Finally free from her enchantment, they comprehend that it was she who had impersonated her twin brother, ensnared Arch Aedan, and assumed reign of E’scend before taking control of the entire land. With the Crescendants forgathered as one, they collectively demand that Lilian face judgment before them.
The longest day has ended as the sun sets on the summer solstice, and the great clash for Crescendo has been resolved. At the ruined arbor village, Archess Lilian faces corporal punishment for her dastardly atrocities that nearly extinguished their tribes. Of the surviving Escendant adults only Dilian, Mila, their twins, Master Sho-lin, the pair of trackers and three archers remain, as the hobbled Pai-san and sole gladiator are not seen again.
Aedan stands and weeps, not with Lilian but with Ivera and their offspring. As Lilian’s treachery is revealed, Ivera accepts that his transgressions were the result of the Archess’s enchantment. Reunited as a family, Aedan, Ivera, Kaedan and Juna accept Aedan’s illegitimate son Tilian as their kin. As they count the survivors, all that remain of the Wescendant tribe are Lyla, Q’yn, two wedded warriors, and a sole paladin Pah-lud who takes the name P’Al-aedan in honor of their rescued Arch. As Juna and her half-brother Tilian embrace for the first time near Lepe Point where they first met so long ago, they understand that their attraction that set these events in motion was not romantic but familial love.
It is time for the unifying tribe – now numbering only twenty – to hold the Archess accountable for the souls of all those slain in the Great War. As the ten Wescendants call for Lilian’s head, Mila cautions them against executing her. The deposed Archess is held in restraints by the trackers and does not speak, nor does Aedan as he stands with his family nearby. The tribe starts to argue amongst themselves, and they soon scuffle.
Declaring that they be silent, Dilian climbs a tree stump and calls for their attention. He begins to croon an operetta, the likes of which he has never sung before. The tribe falls quiet and they all listen intently. In poetic meter and lyrical form, Dilian recounts all that has transpired. He tells them of the venomous lizard that bit him, being saved by his muse and the wise master, his journey to Wynterlyn with a blackbird and snow-covered hare, and how he healed himself and the tracker duo with the natural spring and smylia herb. He relays to them the guild’s quest that brought him back to E’scend and returned him to his family.
As he continues ambling verse after verse while Lilian stands silent, his remnant band join in his song – first Q’yn then Lyla, Mila, Sho-lin, the trackers and the paladin. Soon, Juna and all in the tribe sing with them along with the young children safe in their shelters afar. Even Tilian and all the others who were unable to sing can now join in the aria.
For the first time in all the land, its surviving inhabitants sing together in unison in an unprecedented, magnificent crescendo. The world stops for a moment, and all is in convergence. As the harmonic wave ripples back to its origin in the Escenda ruin, Lilian ultimately joins in their epic chorale.
Tree, swing, bird & rainbow sky by Pat Stanley Kurzenberger
After singing together in harmony, the tribe has spoken and come to consensus. Lilian will not be harmed, as they forbid executions and far too much blood was spilt during the war. No longer able to enchant the tribe, she is destined to spend her days within the redwood compound alone with her infant daughter and is never to leave. If Lilian does not comply, she will be incarcerated in the rooted cellar below where she once imprisoned Aedan.
Forever casting aside the title of Arch, a role he never desired, Dilian appoints Master Sho-lin to oversee the lands east of the river. The Shendoa river itself, once mighty and impassable but now spent, is now merely a stream that no longer divides the land in two, and the Crescendants are now one tribe and one people.
Dilian and Mila soon elope without ado and make their home together in the rebuilt treetown with their twins residing nearby. Escenda becomes an artistic commune again and on the stump where he had stood, others now sing out in turn to the gathered tribe using lutes fashioned from wood.
West of the Shendoa Stream, Arch Kaedan and Q’yn wed in a royal ceremony and start a family together in Wescenda. Aedan, who at advanced age declined to resume the role of Arch after his ordeal, lives with Ivera in retirement. Juna soon settles along the seashore with a tracker from the east, occasionally visiting her brothers Tilian and Kaedan and their aging elders to the north. At the rivermouth at Minuet Point, Juna and members of the unified tribe often visit the ascending rock totems constructed in memoriam at the shoreline, to the song of a lively cardinal.
Maypole traditions – Brighton, United Kingdom
EPILOGUE: CHAPTER ELEVEN ~ The Spheres & The Sea
Musical accompaniment for context
Ambient Instrumental Score: “Tabula Rasa” ~ Part 7 of 7
“Crescendo Chapters 9 & 10 Score ~ v1” (04:03)
Containing segments of ” Tabula Rasa”
Part VII: Resonatian
“Tabula Rasa” ~ A musical representation of the past, present and future of life on planet Earth
Composed & recorded 2010 by William Kurzenberger; Released on the album Solitary Road © 2010
Created and written by Bill Kurzenberger, December 2025 ~ All Rights Reserved
“As they sing under the treetown, they often chant in a Crescendo.”