Tariq Yulvenir, patriarch of the Yulvenir clan, warily sat in his study. The wood creaked under the dark elf’s girth, his protruding silk-covered belly brushing against the lip of the desk. In one hand, he held a goblet filled with wine; in the other, a stack of parchments that spoke of the impossible.
Opposite him was a woman wearing the blue garments of the priesthood of the Weaver. A highly irregular visit, those of the church of Fate rarely were allowed to involve themselves in politics.
“You’ve confirmed it, then?” He broke the silence, taking a long sip. “I no longer have a fate.”
The elf grimaced slightly. “Not one I can read, Patriarch.” Her voice was stern.
“If the Weaver has deemed my fate to be worth hiding from the eyes of even her high priestess, then what would that mean, Ilana?” He asked, putting down the goblet. “This has never occurred before.”
“It is indeed highly irregular,” she confirmed.
Tariq observed his guest carefully. “And have you encountered any other… fateless?”
The question was a barb, one that caused the priestess to stir in her seat. For good reason, too—even the lowliest gnat had a fate. Eat, shit, and die, but it was there, a strand for those properly gifted or trained to find. For there to be mortals whose fate was just not there any longer could almost be claimed to be heretical.
“All are part of the Weaver’s tapestry,” she spoke, a second too slow. “If this is all you wished to confirm, I will take my leave.”
“I would never dare encumber a high priestess’s schedule.” Tariq bowed his head. “You have my gratitude, and if the church requires anything, the Yulvenir clan would be more than happy to help.”
“For a price, no doubt,” her words were sharp, her expression unamused.
“As a devotee of the Merchant, I can give nothing for free.” He flashed her a smile with pearly perfect teeth.
With a scoff, she departed, and Tariq was left alone with his own thoughts. His eyes lingered on the parchment, a report concerning the stranger’s last known location: a farmhouse with a basement that wouldn’t have been out of place in the palace itself. It had been found empty, but there were signs of some kind of altercation involving the followers of the Weaver.
There was but one strand of fate to be found at the location, pertaining to the coachman of high priestess Ilana’s personal carriage. Tariq recognized the signs of intentional obfuscation, but it was a surprise to see it being used by the Church of Fate.
“Rania, bring the stranger to me,” he commanded one of the dozens of shadows standing at attention at the edges of the room. With a bow, she approached to pick up the report, hastily leaving the room.
Turning his attention to the unopened letter on his desk, the paper was kept closed by an aether seal that marked it as a message from the palace itself. An invitation Tariq could not refuse.
“It’s not every day that someone foils a plot from the Sultan.”
Leaving the letter unopened, Tariq turned to a small metal box. Within, there were six items. The merchant quietly marveled each time he looked upon them. A shirt and pants made of wool, perfectly uniformly weaved. A blue robe of incredible softness, made of a material Tariq had never seen before. A porcelain cup with words written in a language none could decipher. And a thin glass and metal brick with internal components that betrayed impossible complexity. And a singular pink slipper, its partner lost somewhere out in the city.
Each individual piece would have been worthy of a noble, clearly having been crafted by the hands of experts whose techniques were tightly guarded secrets or lost. Perhaps they had been made by Gods of bygone Ages.
Whatever the case was, whatever the stranger’s past was, Tariq knew he owed his life to this pale human.
And all followers of the Merchant paid their debts.
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Heresy, blasphemy, anathema.
Ilana’s thoughts were wrought with words and ideas that were not her own, that had been placed there by the thing that was Liam Carter. The spell of translation had granted her glimpses of understanding, peeks into mountains of knowledge and oceans of ideas she’d not even thought to be there for her to peer into.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
It had been so much that she couldn’t retain it all. Her mind greedily sought answers to questions, to shine a light on the questions now burning within her, even as she wished for nothing more than to forget.
The worst of all these ideas was that ludicrous word: Atheism.
A world without Gods.
An impossible world, how could mortals live without the divine? How could society hold itself together without the blessings? Priests and priestesses had important roles to fulfill, and though these roles varied from age to age, they always remained. Because while the mage and the enchanter could pioneer their spells into the wilderness of the unknown, the blessed were they who kept the world together.
If not for the Gods, then growing bread in times of starvation could take hundreds of times the aether, or worse, take too long to tackle the catastrophe!
Was this what her mentor had said when he’d spoken of a crisis of faith? Ilana did not wish to believe it; the old man had referred to it in the broader sense of switching which deity to serve. Not to contemplate the prospect of there being no deities whatsoever!
Pulling out her thimble of aether, she rubbed her thumb against the holy substance, extracting the mana. Just as she’d done every other morning since meeting the monster, she tried to seek Liam Carter.
Someone’s fate was no different from an object upon the tapestry of the Weaver. The larger fates would draw in smaller ones, coalescing, growing, becoming heavier still. There was no question that Ilana’s fate had joined Liam Carter’s; there just could not be any other possibility after the severe impact of their encounter.
But the spell came out blank, returning nothing, not even a whiff or a sign. Ilana shuddered, hugging herself within the privacy of her carriage. She dared not use the blessing upon herself out of fear that she would find the same thing she’d discovered on every one of the rescued prisoners: nothing.
“Thalgrim,” she uttered the name of the Goddess in reverence. “I beg of you, please tell me what I am to do.”
There was no answer, only silence.
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Lady Umira Dalimor stood at the deck of the Barb, pretending to look at the dunes far below. In truth, her attention was on the human male currently sitting at the edge of the railing, legs kicking off against empty air as his eyes remained lost in the horizon.
There were many odd things about this particular human, the most recent oddity being his apparent amnesia. Liam Carter insisted he’d “temporarily” given up his past to a Goddess not of the pantheon to guarantee their survival. Each of those words were concerning on their own, but together? They made Liam a heretic, a cultist that worshiped enemies of the pantheon. Yet Lady Umira did not fear him, nor did she wish to expose his secret. As a noble, she was no stranger of the game deities played, and didn't begrudge his actions. It had been this Goddess who'd saved them, and the one who'd provided Liam with a blessing, adding considerable weight to his words.
“A war is coming,” Liam whispered with a tone of finality, speaking perfectly fluent Rethian. It was an old secret tongue only used amongst the Dalimors.
He’d picked up on it after stumbling upon the two siblings talking to one another. His blessing was… odd. Liam could no more control it than he could the weather. If there was a trigger to it, they’d yet to find out what the conditions were. What they did know was that, once it did activate, Liam would be able to fluently speak whatever language he’d heard last. Once the effect wore off, usually after an hour, but sometimes mere minutes later, he would retain a great deal of what he'd spoken during that time. In effect, he would gain fragmentary knowledge of any language he was exposed to, vastly hastening the learning process.
Umira was certain the human was now learning at least a dozen languages at the same time. Slowly, in bursts of comprehension, but learning nonetheless. Though odder to her were how he shared the secrets of his blessing so... openly. The gifts of Gods were often tightly held secrets. There were drawbacks to having a blessing, often ties and obligations to the divine, but the advantages were impossible to ignore: in effect, they granted that which magic or enchantments lacked the complexity or efficiency to achieve. A priest blessed by a God with aspects of Fire could hold the power to summon explosions at a fraction of the aether it would've taken Umira to create through her spells.
Yet she had the distinct impression the human just didn't deign the blessing as anything more than a curious tool.
A trinket.
“Knowing who fights in this war might prove useful. We could prepare some alliances, perhaps earn favors. Information is a powerful thing,” Lady Umira tried to coax out more details.
Though Noor dreaded that Liam had accidentally learned their secret tongue, Umira felt a little thrill at it. The human clearly knew many things, and though he could not fight even if his life was on the line, he could think. And right now, the two sole remaining Dalimors desperately needed a plan to find a path forward. The Sultan had robbed them of a chance to regain their lost nobility, now they were adrift in a storm, branded assassins, and in search of a safe port.
“You’ve got a point there. I’ll think about it,” he said, making a dismissive gesture. "Not much we can do for now."
It was the sort of non-answer that made Umira suspect the human was a former noble. Whatever his cards were, he was playing them close to the chest. She couldn't begrudge him that, not when she owed him for having helped her find and rescue her sibling.
"I think my shift is about to start, so that's that for now," Liam added, turning around and letting himself drop back onto the deck. The human had been given the job of cook aid as a way to pay off the exorbitant debt they owed the captain. All of them had assigned work and payment plans.
But truly, the only hope the four of them had was Lady Umira herself. As a mage, she would earn plenty of gold once she took to the battlefield.
The Barb's crew were no ordinary mercenaries. They hunted monsters. And they'd picked their group up while on the way to fulfilling a contract.
To kill the creature that had wiped out the small city of Nuremo.