The trip to Gelginea Monastery was taking far, far longer than Soliene liked. The city layout was more complicated than she was used to, which in turn made what she was hoping to be a straight shot to the Monastery a lot harder than she wished. There was also the fact that Nyal, the young and cheerful child that she was, couldn’t but stop and look at everything interesting she saw. The market, which they had ended up in by complete accident, was easily the worst of these as every bobble, treat, toy, clothing, or otherwise attracted her attention. Soliene was happy that none of them had any money on hand, leaving the only thing Nyal got being a simple white cloak a priest had given her for ‘modesty’.
She had instantly put it on, less because of modesty and more due to feeling out of place.
The same priest was a godsend for them actually getting to Gelginea Monastery within reasonable time. As the three girls made their way up the stairs leading to the monastery, Soliene couldn’t help but let her jaw drop. The structure was as grand as her father had told her it was, made with greater care than many castles or government buildings she had seen. Above the door was the biggest display of that care, and the one that finally made her feel like she was somewhere she truly belonged. A giant, stained-glass depiction of the great oracle herself: Rag’na’rog.
“That’s our home up there,” She called out, motioning with her head to the window. Lilac and Nyal looked up to see, both of their jaws dropping at the piece of art before them. “Our planet, our soil, our water and our lives are all here thanks to her. It is said that, when the end of a cycle comes, we are taken to her heart by the Oracle of Death, ready to be molded for the next.”
“The beastkin is right. Though souls from one cycle to the next may be similar they are not the same,” Il’jan’i called out, Lilac’s eyes straying from the window for a moment as she listened. “Doesn’t that make you feel better? All the people we kill will likely be better in the next cycle. Doesn’t that make you feel a bit better about the Harpens and Brunell?” A lustful chuckle escaped the dragon. “Doesn’t it make you feel better about Kali?”
Lilac’s hands curled into fists, and then immediately let her hands relax as she tried to calm herself. She brought her attention back to the stained-glass window, doing her best to ignore Il’jan’i’s words. She wouldn’t allow them to reobtain control of her so soon, especially in the middle of a city. Instead she focused on the serpent depicted before her, noting how the beast’s head seemed to be landscaped in far more detail than anywhere else on its body.
“Even knowing it is true, the idea that this is our planet feels odd,” Lilac said, raising a hand so that it looked like she was holding the window above her palm. Teolus tilted it’s head in confusement at her words. “If I tried to go back home and tell everyone, even ignoring setting the Harpen free, I would probably be killed. I’ve seen far too much that Acamus would consider dangerous.”
“Makes you wonder how Rag’na’rog herself would have thought of our current situation,” Soliene said, starting to walk up the final few flights. Nyal was the first to follow after her, then Lilac. “I can’t imagine she would be too happy with us all if she was still alive. Pretty much everyone is mad at each other, one vessel is trying to kill the other.”
“So it was possible that a lot of the problems that plague our cycle didn’t exist that she was still alive?” Lilac asked, getting a nod from the Numaran. She clutched her clothes, having to force her feet to keep marching despite how much she wanted to get lost in her own dark thoughts. “So many lives wasted. So much bloodshed that many previous cycles had no need for. Whatever killed our planet did so much more harm then it likely even knew.”
Saying it out loud made the thoughts in Lilac’s head louder, eyes traveling to the ground in shame at her parents and Il’jan’i. The dragon growled as she felt her vessel’s line of thinking. Every bad decision, every mistake, and every murder that Lilac committed was dumped on her. Il’jan’i was more than familiar with the fact they were a monster, even embracing it, but Lilac refused the call of who she was. Not to say it didn’t approve of some of the Acamian’s attempts to change themselves, but they refused to accept what they had chosen to be. They refused to do the one thing Il’jan’i knew they used to enjoy: kill.
It did not matter if the Acamian changed her name, or how much she told those around her she was good. A different name did not absolve her, and neither would any amount of good deeds. The blood she had chosen to spill could not be blamed on anyone but herself, and that remained a fact written in stone. Even if the Nyal’s historia refuse to show it, Il’jan’i knew the book knew just as well as her that a hero was not her vessel’s true calling. It only left the question of when they would realize it to be true.
“It’s pretty,” Nyal chimed in, oblivious to the tone of Lilac and Soliene’s conversation. “I like it.”
As Soliene reached the top of the stairs, she looked to the Harpen. She smiled at the Vessel of Death, and turned her attention back to the stained glass depiction of Rag’na’rog. As simple and ultimately naive as the statement was, Soliene couldn’t help but agree. The window was indeed pretty, and the idea that something could be one exceptionally simple idea was oddly comforting. It lacked the fear and pain of the world around her, reminding the Numaran of back when she felt able to believe the world around her was peaceful and happy.
It was even sadder to know that time had only been eight months prior. She brought a hand to her face, feeling her fur and allowing her smile to grow a bit wider. It was nice having it back after it was shaved off against her will, leaving her to bake under the sun. The feeling the sun left on it was far more pleasant then the quick burning it left on the skin underneath. A burning no Numaran should ever have had to feel, as the act of shaving fur was considered a crime. Soliene was unfortunate enough to say that she knew exactly what it felt like.
“I’m sure there are things just as pretty inside,” Soliene stated. She heard Lilac’s footsteps stop next to her. “Ready for a repeat of the city gate?”
“No, but I’m the reason we came here,” Lilac replied, unclipping the book from her belt and holding it in her hands. “We gotta do this, no matter how much I don’t want to.”
“Too right! Am’a’ros wanted us here, so we need to find out why,” Teolus cawed, gaining a nod from its master.
Lilac took the lead, Soliene falling to her left while Nyal stayed on the right. The door into the monastery was open, a few people walking out as they walked in. Soliene figured that mass had ended not too long ago, meaning that the high priest would likely be around. Those thoughts faded away as she looked around herself, staring at everything around her with awe. An awe that Nyal showed vocally with a gasp.
Their eyes of the children remained not on the rows of chairs or the few people chatting around them, but once again on the windows. Three depicted the currently Oracle’s overlooking Rag’na’rog. Three more depicted a human and Harpen, and the last of the side windows depicted some other creature. A creature whose body looked like they were made out of molten rock, horns on their head, hooves for feet, and eyes glowing crimson red.
“What is it?” Nyal asked the girls around her, stopping to look at the unknown creature. She couldn’t help but feel a connection to it, as did Pho.
Lilac and Soliene both stopped and stared at the creature before them. While Soliene allowed the piece of art to stain her eyes with its beauty, the Acamian felt a feeling similar to Nyal. It wasn’t a happy feeling, but it wasn’t angry either. She felt sad, and to her surprise Il’jan’i also seemed to take on a more somber tone as they looked at it. It felt like the window was trying to draw out an old memory, despite both the vessel and oracle knowing no such memory exists.
“I don’t know,” Soliene answered, half a trance as she looked at the artwork before her. “My church back in Numar didn’t depict such a being. Could it be the form of Rag’na’rog’s vessel?”
“No, the form of Rag’na’rog’s vessel is a mystery.”
Nyal and Teolus both jumped at the new voice, attention turning to an older man in red and gold robes. He wore a gentle smile, had very little hair on his head, and had eyes that seemed to look in the opposite direction of each other. All the three girls knew was that he was a member of the church. As he reached them, the older man turned to the window Lilac, Soliene, and Nyal had been staring at.
“What you see before you is a demon, the first race of our world and the only ones directly made by the great oracle herself,” The man explained, his voice soothing and gentle. Nyal, unable to understand the majority of what he said, looked back at the window. “Human, Harpen, and Numaran are the result of natural evolution, guided by the Oracles of Life, Death, and Balance to sapiency every cycle. The demons were given their sapiency from the start, born from Rag’na’rog’s earth with the ability of self-though. They were once thought to be immortal.”
He spread his arms out, his joyful tone faltering. The smile on his face followed suit.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“They were not. When Rag’na’rog took its final breath all but one demon breathed theirs too. That survivor’s name is Calamity, the guardian of the holy city of Gelginea,” He shuffled his feet so he was looking at the girls before him, taking notice of how Nyal’s eyes twitched, her feathers glowing slightly. Pho’s interest had been piqued at the name. “That is not how you would know them, however. You three would know them by their other self: Ar’ga’rou, the Oracle of Death.”
“Ar’ga’rou?” Pho and Nyal both called out, their voices mixing together.
Lilac looked back, biting her lip as she heard the way the phoenix and Harpen’s voices joined together. The older man walked past the Acamian, staring at Nyal for a second, and then dropped to his knees before both of them. Soliene took a step back, just as confused as the two vessels as to what was going on. The old man placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head, the sudden silence making the three girls before him intensely aware of the amount of eyes on them.
“Calamity told me I would have some young and unique visitors today. They were right,” He whispered, lifting his head. His eyes landed on Nyal and Lilac, the earlier smile reappearing on his visage. “Nyal Mols Mors, Vessel of Death, and Lady Reonda Perciple, Vessel of Balance, I am honored to be graced by your presence. I am Jasper Corentus, high priest of the Church of the Originists.”
Nyal and Lilac looked to each other, then to Jasper. Both had no idea how to handle what was being done before them, Lilac specifically feeling uncomfortable with the gesture. Soliene, meanwhile, watched from the side. She could see others in the monastery looking on in interest, some of the other priests and priestess present having also dropped to their knees. It made Soliene more than a little aware of how odd her relationship with the two vessels were. Where others around her seemed to see them as deity, she saw them as a naive little hen and a murderous monster.
“You… you knew we were coming?” Lilac asked.
“Yes, but I think you would agree this isn’t the best place to discuss this all,” Jasper replied, rising back to his feet. “How about we take this discussion upstairs. I know you aren’t here for pleasantries, and it is far quieter in my study,” He turned to Soliene, his smile refusing to fall. “Of course, you are also welcome.”
“I, um, uh,” Soliene looked down, took a deep breath, and then raised her head back up. “Yes. If you are okay with it.”
----------------------------------------
“That’s… far more complicated a situation then I had expected,” Jasper said, looking between the three girls before him. “For children your age to have to face death so often is horrifying. I can only be glad you are all still alright.”
“I don’t think ‘alright’ is the best word to describe our situation,” Lilac explained, glancing at the room around her. “If things were alright, Nyal would still be with her parents and Soliene would still have her eye. I haven’t been alright for far, far longer.”
She could see various works of literature lining the bookshelves around her, from religious to fiction to historical. Soliene, Nyal, and herself had sat down on a couch as Jasper took a chair next to his desk. Both the Historia of the Past and Historia of the Present were placed on his desk, the high priest looking at their closed forms like they were sculptures. To the Acamian, it seemed far more accurate to call the room a mini-library than a study. She might have to ask to borrow a book or two later on.
“I… guess that is fair. Especially considering what you and your family are responsible for,” Jasper said, his words causing the Acamian to wince. “I do apologize for calling you Reonda down there, but a new name does not absolve you of blame. The same can be said for you being the vessel of an oracle. The blood your family is responsible for spilling can’t be overlooked.”
Soliene smiled, happy to know that even the high priest saw what she did. “Which is why, outside of not having anywhere else to go, I accompanied her and Nyal here. The poor hen already has one more person on her tail than necessary.”
Nyal innocently smiled at the sound of her name, unaware of the context it was said in. Jasper couldn’t help but feel somewhat jealous of the hen’s innocence and naivety. He was certain nearly anyone else would have come out of experiencing death scarred, but not her. Perhaps her brain had hidden the emotional and mental scarring of the event, or perhaps she was simply too young and lucky to understand the full extent of what she had gone through. Jasper didn’t know, and as long as her grasp of Acamese remained basic that was all he was gonna get.
“I know we are here for whoever Lilac is gonna see, but since I have the opportunity I would like to ask something first. May I?” Soliene asked. Both Jasper and Lilac gave her a nod, the Numaran letting out a sigh. “First, while you know these two I doubt Vessel Calamity told you about me. My name is Soliene VerBansk, daughter of General Alvero VerBansk. You probably know him from what his troops did in the Valadia province a couple years ago by New Numar. He was the one in charge of it.”
Jasper’s eyes widened at not just the name but the event Soliene mentioned. His expression turned sour, looking away as he recalled what had become known as the Valadia Slaughter. The Numaran Army, led by General Alvero, had launched a surprise assault against the northwestern border of Reine, taking the troops stationed there off guard. All who had been on station died, and soon the surrounding villages and land were raided. Civilians slaughtered, corpses of soldiers, men, women, and children all placed on Reine-made pikes and spears as a message. The only reason more of the Valadia Province didn’t fall was because General Alvero was removed. The reason behind it was unknown to all of Reine, but Jasper hazarded a guess.
“You… aren’t fully Numaran, aren’t you?” Jasper asked. It was an insensitive question, and one he knew the Oracles would judge, but he felt it necessary to ask.
“Ay, I am. You can imagine what the army did when they found out,” Soliene replied, a solemn nod following her words. “We are technically accepted, but the government does everything in their power to make sure half-humans, their parents, and any family have as hard a time as possible. The laws that protect every pure Numaran back home didn’t apply to me,” She raised her hand up and pulled off the glove, eyeing her fingernails. “I got away for a decent amount of time hiding due to the fact I look just like any other Numaran. Then, some kinds realized my names weren’t as strong or sharp as theirs and… that is as far as I want to talk about it.”
“Of course. I will not force you to explain further when you’ve already told me more than I expected,” Jasper explained. He made a quick silent prayer, one that Lilac felt to some extent in her soul, and then continued speaking. “Know that you are safe here. Rag’na’rog accepts all, and to turn you away would make me unable to call myself a follower of her will.”
“Thank you, high priest. However, my worry was not my own safety, but that of my fathers,” Soliene said, staring at one bookcase to her right. It didn’t hold anything of interest, her eye was tunnel visioned on it for some unknown reason. “My father and I meant to come here together, you see, but we got separated. Someone found out who he was, and they called the guards on us. I need to know whether he got out of that situation alive or not. Can you tell me?”
Jasper looked away for a moment, and then turned back to the Numaran with an unsure smile. “No, he is not here in Pierzé. However, there was never an execution or announcement made of his death. I can assure you that he is alive, even if he is not here. In fact, someone here would surely be able to tell you his location”
Jasper’s eyes drifted to Lilac, Soliene following him. She blinked a few times, needing to hold in the urge to smack herself as she realized how right the high priest was. The Historia of the Present could see anything on Rag’na’rog, and that meant Lilac could help her find her father. Soliene felt stupid, unsure the idea had slipped her mind. No matter how it had happened, though, she had an opportunity before her and she needed to take it.
“Lilac, would you be willing to ask the book where he is?” Soliene asked, not able to look at the Acamian in the end. The fact she had to ask for their assistance made a piece of her sick.
“Of course, Soliene,” Lilac replied. She held her hands out to Jasper, the older man grabbing the Historia of the Present and placing it in them. She opened the book quickly and pressed her hand to a page. “Historia, show me General Alvero VerBansk.
Jasper leaned back as Nyal and Soliene leaned in, the Harpen more curious as to if her historia was any different while the former prayed her father still lived. The girls watched as, unlike with Nyal’s and Klaus’ historia, the black ink in the Historia of the Present started to form a picture. The picture in question being a Numaean man, back turned, looking out a window. The walls were stone, the floor covered by a patterned carpet. Soliene felt tears start to form in her eye, her lips trying and failing to form a smile.
“He’s alive. Papa is alive!” She said in a blubbering manner, her emotions hitting her like a battering ram. “Where is this? What is the name of the location?”
Lilac looked to the bottom of the page, the historia having placed a caption under the picture. “Barborasa. Your father is in the capital of Reine.”
The announcement caused Soliene’s eyes to widen, her heart skipping beats, That didn’t make any sense, and yet as she looked down to the caption herself she saw it was true. A historia couldn’t lie; they were the record keepers of the past, present, and future, untouched by the bias of sapient races. What it spoke was truth, and the truth before her was that her father, a Numaran general wanted by Reine for his part in the Valadia Slaughter, was in Reine’s capitol. He was alive, but she wasn’t sure if the tears now fell from her face in terror or joy.
“I… I need to go get him,” She said, getting up from the couch and running to the door. “He’s in danger there. I got to go sa–”
“Soliene, he is in Barborasa,” Jasper said, cutting off the Numaran as she reached for the doorknob. “You can’t genuinely think that heading into such a location would be safe for you. Would your father want you to–”
“Forgive me for saying this, high priest, but shut up,” Soliene replied before opening the door, leaving the room, and slamming it behind her.
While Jasper simply sat and shocked and Lilac recoiled at the force of the slam, Nyal got up from the couch. She reached for the doorknob with her talons, turned it, and opened the door. She looked to the Acamian and high priest, then considered what she was doing. Pho had filled her in on what Soliene planned to do, and feeling determined to help someone she had accidentally harmed, she raced out. As she did, the Historia of the Past vanished in flames.
“Do you also want to go after them?” Jasper asked Lilac, now the only guest in the study with him.
“No. Nyal is safer around Soliene than me,” Lilac replied, feeling a self-planted dagger in her heart twist at her own words. “Besides, Am’a’ros gave me something to do. I need to see it done.”
“Right,” The high priest said, nodding as he slouched forward. “Might I ask what that is, then?”
Lilac closed her eyes for a second, taking in a huge breath, and then spoke. “Am’a’ros has a letter that needs to be brought to Gelginea. If what you told me is true, I have no doubt that it is for Lady Calamity.”