Liam’s frustration with Thalgrim was that she was the kind of deity that needed to have her finger stuck in every single pie. And to make it worse, her powers were the exact sort that allowed her to control the pie without needing to exert herself. With the power to see fate at a near cosmic scale, she could ensure that she could always say the right thing at the right time to get exactly what she wanted. It made the consequences of her actions predictable in just about every sense.
In short, Thalgrim was the epitome of “Just as planned”, and made the world boring.
Liam wasn’t entirely sure why he’d written her into Crystal Skylights to begin with. Maybe it was a sign he wasn’t truly and fully the creator of this world; maybe it could serve as an argument that he’d only mostly been somehow an involuntary oracle of sorts. He didn’t care to find out if it was the case or not, seeing how he couldn’t just instantaneously will himself somewhere else.
The sentiment was apparently one shared by the priestess.
It had started easily enough. Umira and the priestess shared words, none in English, but the tones were obvious enough. The draxani kept speaking in lavishly cordial tones, bowing and scraping and apologizing. While the priestess held a politically neutral expression, the sort priests use whenever having to deal with something insufferable.
When introductions were over, the priestess quickly ushered them towards a lavishly decorated carriage. The sort of luxury ride that felt expensive just to look at. And look they did because it was exactly at this moment when the priestess appeared to connect the dots.
Umira and Liam had come straight out of a sewer, looking and smelling very much the part.
They couldn’t be made to sit outside the carriage because otherwise, the drakaras would track them down again.
The woman looked positively mortified.
“Don’t worry, you get used to it. I barely notice the smell anymore,” Liam gave her the biggest grin he had available. “Besides, I’m sure it washes off easily.”
Umira stepped forward, quickly speaking and bowing her head even more deeply. It got several weird looks from the knights, the coachman, and the priestess herself, but the woman in blue appeared to reluctantly agree to whatever the draxani had asked for. Reaching into her robes, she pulled out a thimble-sized locket and offered it up.
The draxani opened it, revealing the unmistakable ever-shifting glitter of aether. She rubbed her index finger against the tiny little bit of aether, enough to extract roughly the equivalent of a BB pellet. With trained ease, she extracted the mana and wove a spell, moving closer to Liam.
“Cleaning spell?” He wondered, watching the patterns. It was a far simpler thing than the ‘destroy aqueduct’ spell, the pattern resembling some sort of a seven-pointed Celtic knot bloated to the third dimension.
When the glowing pattern winked out of existence, an arctic freezing coldness dunked its way down Liam’s body. He yelped and jumped in shock, feeling like he’d just been transported into and out of a freezer a hundred degrees below freezing. The feeling was followed by intense stinging that went from head to toe.
It hadn’t been a simple cleaning spell; rather, it had been a sanitation spell.
Liam had just gotten a free full-body exfoliation alongside the removal of all the filth.
It was like someone had dipped him in menthol. His everything stung now. Everything.
"Motherfucking. AGH! This is not for soft-skins!" he shouted at Umira, who shot him what might have been an apologetic look.
The ones who were far less apologetic and far more amused were the knights. The duo bodily picked them both up and practically tossed them into the carriage. One of them followed through alongside the priestess, sitting down opposite Umira and Liam. The knight outside locked the doors, and at a wave of his hand, the glass windows began to shimmer in a way that made it hard to distinguish what was outside.
"You are safe from pursuit for now," the priestess spoke, her voice carrying a slight posh English accent.
"Translation enchantments? There's no English dictionary... is this a psychic variant? That seems dangerous," Liam perked up a little.
The priestess gave him an odd look. "This was urgent—"
"Can it wait a minute?" Liam waved her off, ignoring how the knight stirred as he turned to Umira. "Fiklishar, what does the word mean?"
She startled, eyes widening slightly, then darted her gaze at the knight and the priestess before looking back at Liam. "I-uh, the priestess has..." She spoke the words with a bit more guttural sound, adding a light German accent.
He waved her off, keeping his eyes on Umira. "Your brother is being held in the basement of a barn; the owner of the barn is Hassim Daal. The man is a 'self-taught' master of curses. Noor probably has one of his inventions, a ring that will poison him if he either gets too far away or forcefully removes the ring. To deactivate it, you need to drip a drop of Hassim's blood onto the ring before removing it. So if you kill the guy, it better not be by burning him to a crisp," Liam threw out the barrage of information. "Fiklishar, what does it mean?"
Umira sat there with wide eyes. It was an understandable reaction; psychic-based translation packed a bit more information than merely the spoken words. At no point in time were any of them speaking or understanding words from a different language; if a television were playing something in Greek, the spell would not work. Instead, what it did was latch on to the concepts and feelings one created within their mind when speaking the terms, and thrust it into the heads of those listening, leaving the recipients themselves to turn it into something meaningful.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
So when Liam spoke the names, Umira was also receiving some of the tangential concepts attached to them. The more alien the term, the more background was necessary to understand what was being said.
This was also why psychic translation was dangerous.
"I..." Umira sought words to speak, inhaling sharply. "It means that I will hold you to your promise."
"Not what I thought, but I guess it works." Nodding once, he turned to the priestess. "I'm listening. But I'm probably not going to do it."
The dark-skinned woman scowled. "I haven't—" She stopped, took a deep breath, and placed her hands on her lap, composing herself. "My name is Ilana. I am a high priestess of the Weaver. A divine message has been received; you are to come to the temple. The Weaver has a message for you."
The undertones of devotion, unwavering faith, and trust that came with the word 'Weaver' were impossible to miss. Still, Liam didn’t answer, the presence of the knights clearly meant the high priestess wasn’t really asking. Another aspect that was concerning was that Thalgrim herself hadn’t just shown up to tell him directly. Deities had limitations within the mortal realm, but talking was not one of them.
Thalgrim wanted to get him into her sanctum.
Which might have sounded like a cool thing under different circumstances. A god had none of those pesky limitations within their sanctum. One of the more concerning features was that the deity in question would not just be able to read a mortal’s surface thoughts but their whole life and every single memory, even details the mortal themselves might have otherwise forgotten.
“I’d like you to drop Umira off near Hassim’s farm. She has nothing to do with this.”
The atmosphere inside the carriage shifted to something more serious. Ilana glanced at Umira. “What is your relationship to her?”
“Your goddess should’ve given you enough details to know we only met a few hours ago.” He hid the grin when he noticed all three other occupants wince as if they’d been lightly tapped by a hammer. “I also wouldn’t put it past her to add the necessary details about Umira’s goal. It is time-sensitive, after all.”
“Liam, who are you?” Umira spoke softly.
His name, when spoken by the draxani, carried a bag of mixed feelings. Liam tried to catch all the connotations that came to mind but only got the chance to spot a mix of concern and genuine curiosity.
“I just happen to know things.” He grinned as he focused back on Ilana. “You haven’t answered my request.”
The priestess smiled coyly. “We’re already at Mister Daal’s farm; it was our first destination after all.”
“Fate, yeah, got it.” Liam shot Umira a frown. “You go rescue your brother; I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
She looked like she wanted to say something but glanced at the priestess once, then nodded and stepped out of the carriage. Liam waited a few more seconds, his eyes lingering on the door before slowly turning to the priestess.
“Miss Ilana, just to be clear. Your orders are to force me into the Goddess’ sanctum, right? I have no way to persuade you to change your mind.”
“That is correct.” She nodded, keeping her expression passively pleasant. “I truly hope there’s no need for violence. The Weaver was rather clear Lady Dalimor wouldn’t pose a threat, but she was strangely quiet about you.”
That was reassuring. Liam had suspected part of the reason why Thalgrim was trying to get into his head was to properly “fit” him into her plans.
“We can wait for your companion if you wish. I’m sure the infamous Lady of the fire-touch won’t take too long in fulfilling her objective.” The priestess leaned back, smoothing out her long robes. “The Weaver is not without mercy; our church can guarantee safe passage out of Al-Zahra for all three of you.”
“Your boss told you what she had intended for me?”
“Her goals extend far beyond the Caliphate’s borders, and you do not appear to be a local. Where do you come from?”
Liam grinned. “I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, would you mind answering a question? Are you human, by any chance?”
“Elf,” she corrected, the ever-cordial customer-service smile plastered on her face hiding whatever her thoughts were on the matter. “I get the impression you hold animosity against our church, but the Weaver was quite clear you have never interacted with us before.”
“Not in a way you’d comprehend, no.” He smiled ruefully, shaking his head, glancing at the door once more. “Would you happen to know if Umira has finished her business yet?”
The priestess pulled out her thimble, rubbing her thumb against the aether, barely enough to stain her digit in the ever-shifting glitter. Her eyes flashed gold. "Just about."
"A blessing, huh?" Liam cocked his head. "Gift of present or gift of past?"
People blessed by deities were something that approximated a monster. They could use special abilities for an extremely low cost in aether when compared to mages. The scope was limited, and it made learning spells harder, but their efficiency was top-notch. There were ways to get such abilities without the assistance of gods, but overall the process was… complicated.
Thalgrim’s preferred blessings allowed her followers to see events that either had happened or were happening, so long as they found the right strand of fate, that is.
"Both. It is one of the advantages of being a high priestess." She smiled ruefully, a genuine show of emotion as she tucked away the thimble. "I did not expect you would know of such details, Lord Carter."
"I always love details, such as the psychic nature of the translation enchantment." He smirked. "Do you know what an infohazard is?" He needn’t wait for her to answer; the woman and the knight both flinched ever so slightly. "Then there are more esoteric hazards, noetic, ontological, even perceptual. Get exposed to any of those and, honestly, you might as well kiss your sanity goodbye. They’re stupidly hard to stumble upon; deities don’t much like those suckers, so they actively hunt any creature that might work off of them." Every term he threw out was like a blow to the head; the two flinched over and over. The two looked more disoriented than in pain, but Liam began talking faster to not give them the chance. "Few exceptions apply, like how deities don’t much enjoy having their true names called out. As a high priestess, you must know Thalgrim’s name by now, right? Thalgrim is one of the less touchy deities when it comes to her name, but there are others that get really pissy if they find out their super secret name got leaked. That’s what my documentation talks about anyway, you know, computers, screens, and technology. There’s maybe too much of it, I think, phones, cars, planes, satellites. And atheism, so much atheism; I’m sure that’s a doozy of a concept to process for you guys. So many things you guys could be catching up on."
Both passengers held their heads, wobbling in their seats, eyes unfocused and looking dazed. The high priestess was trying to say something, but it kept coming out as a deep groaning sound. The two were suffering what could only be described as a literal information overload.
They’d come to their proper senses in a few minutes if not sooner.
"Anyway, I think that’s my cue. Thanks for the ride, and enjoy the culture shock."
Casually stepping out of the carriage and closing the door behind himself, he waved at the other knight as he looked at Liam with a confused expression. In front of him was a rather small mud-brick house with a rather equally unassuming single-floor, long building right next to it.
Liam moved at a light jog towards the larger building, and the moment he heard the carriage door open, he began to run at full sprint.