"Please, mother, please don’t die!"
Noor’s heart clenched, he froze, right hand pinching the pearl of aether, left one holding the blade. Magic or steel, either option could prove the solution to the problem before him. Yet those words brought him pause, made his approach that much more cautious. A cornered mother and her hatchling were ten times fiercer than any other creature of equal size.
There was no easy way up to the hatchling, nor could he find a proper vantage point. The only way he was certain of her presence above the monster was the source of the voice and the glowing light… meaning his only option would be to climb the cracked ruby-like body of the durastella. Its gargantuan legs were covered in hairs that, to the draxani, were closer to spines, each of them as long as his tail and wickedly sharp. Worse, they were made of the same glass-like substance as the monster’s carapace; surely, disturbing them would cause noise.
He’d clamber up carefully, ignoring the soft sobs, and—
CRACK
Noor’s tail froze straight, slitted eyes turning to the limb that had shifted ever so slightly.
"Mother!?" The one atop the monster spoke. "Please, please tell me what to do."
There was no answer, none that Noor could hear at least.
Yet the stranger gasped.
The green light shifted, casting ever-shifting shadows through the refractions of the ruby monster. The one holding it had hastily moved over the edge of the durastella, looking over in Noor’s direction.
"I-I-I know you’re there! Show yourself! Show yourself or I’ll ask mother to hurt you!"
Noor cursed under his breath, slowly stepping out from behind his cover, raising his hands slightly and hiding the pearl of aether between his clawed fingers. "I mean you no harm." He used the same Caliphate-common, trying to mimic the accent as well.
The stranger looked like a dwarf, with a short, stocky build and the first hints of a pubescent red beard. It wasn’t much of a surprise, seeing how dwarves were more common within this region of the continent, but there were neither beads nor braids to mark her beard, her hair was ragged, dirty, and poorly kept. The girl might have been thick, but for a dwarf, she was thin, the sunken eyes a clear sign of being malnourished. Her clothes told a different story; they were finely made, well-dyed a deep green, yet had the same kind of wear and tear as the rest of the girl.
"My name is Noor, of House Dalimor." The draxani bowed his head slightly. "What is your name?"
She shook her head quickly. "I will not give you my name."
For a moment, Noor feared he’d made some faux pas, but seeing the girl had not grown either more nervous or hostile, he had to guess this was some sort of custom. The people in the Blue Mountains had to face very dangerous monsters, many of them holding strange and exotic powers. It wouldn’t surprise him if there was such a thing as creatures that could unleash horrible things on someone if they knew their name.
"You can refer to me as Girl. Why are you here?"
She asked the question with a surprising amount of conviction, tiny hands clenched firmly as she puffed up to stand as tall as she could. A bravado that hid the nervous shiver when he shifted his weight.
“I was traveling, but the ship I was on needed repairs,” he quickly said, not wanting to lie, but also not wanting to give away anything crucial. “I-”
“Stop!” The girl barked out the command, her eyes full of fear and fierceness in equal measure. “Why. Are. You. Here?” As if to punctuate her question, she stomped on the durastella once, and all its legs shifted ever so slightly.
Noor felt ever so slightly heavier.
His tail stiffened.
Trying to cast something would take too long; the girl was too far away to attack. Was throwing his dagger the only option? He wasn’t confident it would land, nor what would come after. Was the monster coherent?
No, even if he had a clean shot, hurting the girl would only get him killed. Especially if the monster could still unleash that crushing weight upon him.
“My sister is badly hurt,” he gritted his teeth, tightly holding on to the blade. “You have something that can heal her.”
The shift was immediate; the dwarfish girl perked up, her brows rising high. “You know how to use it!?”
For a moment he considered telling her that he could. If she led him to the object the demon sought, then surely he’d get his chance to strike. But he had to focus; this wasn’t the time, his sister was the priority. Stranger alliances have been struck in less strange situations. “No, but one of my companions should be able to,” he said, holding back the urge to immediately follow with a command for the girl to bring the thing.
She glanced over her shoulder back at the source of green light, and then down at Noor. “I can share.” She stomped her foot once. “But heal mother first!”
Was she insane? “No.” Healing the monster would get them all killed, even if it somehow didn’t touch the dwarf; everyone else would be its next meal! “We use the item to heal my sister, and only then does my friend heal your… mother.”
At that point in time, he’d only need to overpower the child, and Noor would be able to finish his contract with the demon.
“I-”
“The wounds your mother has are massive; they would take long to heal. My sister will expire by sunrise if nothing is done.” Noor pressed, seeing the hesitation in the dwarven girl. “Time is of the essence.”
The girl fidgeted, looking down at the durastella, and grimacing. “Fine, but you have to promise to the snow, the sky, and the moon.”
He swallowed, glancing at the monster. It was a durastella; they had strange powers, particularly to make things either heavier or lighter, but they had no odd esoteric powers. It was similarly impossible that the child held any kind of divine tool that had been made to enforce deals. That, and the child had not used any names, so this couldn’t involve demons or gods either.
“I promise to the moon, the sun, and the stars. Once my sister is healed, I will ask my friend to help your mother.”
Despite his dismissal of potential threats, Noor had half-expected something to happen. But nothing did, at least nothing arcane in nature. The dwarf appeared satisfied with the promise, giving a solemn nod. “Bring your sister and your friend.”
Ah.
Noor grimaced, his brows furrowing. He didn’t know where Umira was.
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“Certainly.” He bowed, hurrying towards the tunnel and waiting until he was well out of sight and certainly out of hearing range before calling the demon’s true name.
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Maridah was old, older than any of the deities that sat on the pantheon, old enough she remembered when Gods walked the land boldly, when the norm was to fully manifest onto the mortal realm. It had been an Age where mortals had truly thrived and multiplied, grown well past the protective boundaries of their walls. An Age where the divine would form coalitions to hunt down creatures that could have destroyed any individual God, or even entire continents.
The creature at the bottom of Cracked Bay was one such beast. Barely nascent, not even a challenge to Maridah during her prime, but a creature that had grown far faster than it should have. A monster that had thrived from the neglect the mortal world faced.
It was at times like these when she wished she could rush to the Triumvirate throne, pull down each of the young Gods and throttle them. To squeeze their necks into a singularity and point at the devastation of the city. To scream at them how this was their fault, that they could have prevented it, that if they were so fearful of one tyrant then they could have worked together to remove her.
It was the powerlessness that made her age feel heavy like a mountain. She was a Goddess, it was impossible to forget anything, not without strenuous effort. Maridah still remembered in vivid detail when she’d stood in her own pantheon, when she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Gods whose names had not been spoken in a billion years.
Memories.
She’d barely touched those as of late, even as they lingered at the edge of her thoughts, an ever-present veil promising to pull her back to better times. Times when she was great and mighty, times when “Whisperer” caused equal awe and fear. Times when her true name would be used as a curse upon those who sought to hide secrets to do harm.
Now there were a total of two mortals that knew her true name.
One of them spoke it with familiarity and ease, yet an ocean’s worth of turbulent emotions. Feelings she found to be holding as well. After the altercation with Liam, she’d been left distraught and distressed. Every day had been spent preparing to uproot her domain, it was work her aspects could have handled, but that she’d taken personally if only to keep from the temptation of spying on the human.
When she felt her true name being called, the tiny moment of excitement died out when she felt the utter terror that came with it.
Maridah was of half a mind to ignore him.
Pulling through the connection, she nudged a hint of power of the manifestation, just enough to not break appearances. She could have bothered to put some effort into not looking as that which he imagined her to be, but didn’t bother. Besides, it was amusing to watch the draxani stiffen like a board and drop to his knees.
“I-”
She silenced him with a wave of intent, causing him to tremble slightly. Maridah focused on the flea currently perched on Noor’s shoulder, pulling at the aspect and integrating its memories with her own.
A wave of surprise and amusement washed over her, it appeared the draxani had been tricked. “You made a promise to the triumvirate, and your promise was to a descendant of a member of the pantheon.”
The little mortal shivered, clutching his shoulders, the draxani equivalent of going pale. “I-But-”
“She is a changeling, and the durastella is her guardian.”
The mix between divine and mortal could only go one of two ways. If the one to carry out the pregnancy was the God, then the result would be a demigod. But if it was the mortal that grew the child within their womb, then the result would be a changeling. The differences between demigods and changelings were like night and day, with the former being the only one capable of fully manifesting divine abilities, and the latter being the only one able to create offspring of their own.
Maridah could taste the faint traces of divinity still lingering upon the girl and the monster; the pieces were not hard to fit together. Some God had taken a secret trip to the mortal realm a few thousand years ago, and left the monster to protect the lineage that spawned from the union. Or perhaps the durastella had been the warden, keeping the family safe but trapped away from other mortals, thus protecting the secret.
“No matter, the promise was made, and you will fulfill it.” If he didn’t, then there was a very real risk the father would become aware of what had taken place here.
But there was something else that bothered Maridah, the Weaver had clearly been involved in this. Had she set these things up as a way to gain a link of fate to whatever God had spawned the changeling’s ancestor? But to hijack that connection, the Weaver would need to… ah.
A hero born from great calamities, carrying a fate linked to those innumerable deaths, and hidden amongst those strands, tiny connections to the pantheon. Maridah could imagine the Weaver could accumulate those connections, until she could influence the fate of whatever God she was targeting.
How many more “heroes” were in the making or had come to exist during this age, solely because the Weaver had put them there?
Maridah couldn’t unmake fate like a certain mortal could, but she hadn’t been entirely idle during her isolation. She knew a thing or two about how to entangle fates.
“Since you will not be able to give me that which we agreed, you will pay a different price for rescuing your sibling.” She empowered her voice as she spoke, imposing her presence and bearing down on the tiny mortal. “Become my follower.” The smile she flashed bore countless fangs. “And swear to protect that little changeling.”
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“Wait, wait, wait,” Liam interrupted Maridah’s narration, scowling as he chewed on some meat he’d pulled from the fire. “That doesn’t count as having a follower; you coerced him into it.”
Maridah regarded him for a moment, scowling back. “Does too.” There was a tiny little snort that came from the human’s lap. Bunny had let out an amused sound at the Goddess’ reaction. “Anyway, once he agreed—”
“What about the elf?”
“He was dead already,” she waved off. “What matters is that my strategy to undermine the Weaver’s plot is to—”
“But how did he die? You said Noor ran away from him.”
Maridah huffed. “When they fought the insectoid, they cut him in half and thought him dead.”
“Yeah, no, always crush an insectoid’s brains and every limb after; it’s just common sense,” Liam muttered. “How did Alan do it? Did he hide away and—”
“I will not tell you." She grumbled petulantly. "You interrupted my very important story,” she said. She was irritated and the feeling only compounded whenever he looked at Bunny, so smug, sitting on his lap as his warm hand idly scratched her. “Be satisfied with what I have shared already.”
The aspect knew a secret, something big and juicy; Maridah could see the weight of the secret upon the lagomorph, like a mountain being balanced on a needle. And Bunny had refused to tell her!
The Goddess would’ve forced her to share, but doing so would mean reabsorbing the aspect.
When you have perfect memory, there are things you need to forcefully set aside to make existence more bearable. To leave it in a box you can reach into when it’s convenient rather than have it present in your mind every waking moment. That had been the exact purpose for Bunny’s creation; unlike the other aspects, she’d been meant to hold on to things Maridah was better off currently without.
Maybe… maybe it was time to take the aspect back in? No, that wouldn't be of any help right now; she needed to focus on her domain's migration. Joining back together could wait until after she'd settled down in her new home.
"Well... if that's all you've got..." He idly sat back, letting out a sigh. "Ah, I guess I might as well ask how you plan to do the domain thing? You're going to create a bunch of aspects and have them protect your relic? Cracked Bay isn't exactly close."
The Goddess sighed, refocusing her thoughts and shaking her head. "I chose against such a route; if a single priest saw us, they would sound the alarm."
"But the Weaver..."
"She knows I exist; she no doubt sensed my intervention with her little plot. But you are right that we should keep her from sensing where you or my relic are," Maridah gave him a stern look. "You know of the heroes to be, and the events that thrust them into such positions. So long as we avoid those places, then the Weaver would have no way to sense us."
Bunny piped up. "Could you at least use Wolf and Stag to get us out of the jungle?"
"Actually!" Liam sat up, eyes taking a glint; he began to draw on the dirt with his finger. "We're near the north-eastern border of the Caliphate, so the Blue Mountains are to the west. Right? Then maybe we should use Turtle instead."
"How so?"
"The river flows straight out into the lake system where Cracked Bay is. I know that sailing through that on Turtle would draw too much attention, so all we need to do is hop on land near the mouth of the river." He traced the lines, horrible as they were, trying to make the point. "There's a fishing village called Torum in that area; from there we can take a boat."
"Liam, a relic isn't something easily concealed; it would be impossible to miss for anyone that got close enough, if you intend to share a boat..."
"Who said anything about sharing?" He grinned. "I know about more than just prospective heroes, and there's someone in Torum I'd like to meet."