“Two months. I was assured that you would not take more than two months in your expedition, lady Blue-feathered. Yet-” he flipped a page on a calendar, then again- “I have been waiting here-” two more pages, faster this time- “agonizing-” he’d taken the calendar off the wall entirely, and was paging through it with a single feather- “for two years!”
“Nope! A year and a half!” A-ait barely resisted a groan at Oi-i’s willful ignorance. It had to be willful ignorance- he refused to believe anyone who’d managed to survive as much as she had could be that dumb. Or maybe she was just a really good guard… perhaps she’d stick to that. It would do wonders for her ego.
“Whatever the exact amount of time-” the amount of venom dripping from the bishop’s voice made her feathers bristle at the implicit threat- “you have caused an incredible amount of frustration for our department. Oi-i’s parish had to be reassigned to a different, much less capable priest, and the entire guard structure had to be altered after A-ait’s disappearance.”
“Does that mean we’re in trouble?”
“Yes! Yes it does! You fail! A-ait, you’re reassigned as a third rank bodyguard now, since you must have gotten tons of experience with this dimwit-” A-ait gave him her best nestling eyes, because even if it was sarcasm on his part that was truer than he’d ever know- “and Oi-i’s being reassigned to paper-pushing for more competent delvers.” A breath, and a semblance of calm returned to the office. “Now, did anything interesting happen on your two year vacation?”
No, A-ait inwardly begged. We’re already in trouble- just let us serve our totally fair and entirely deserved- by you, because these thoughts were almost exclusively directed at Oi-i- punishment. Then maybe you’ll get your parish back.
Of course, Oi-i would never go so far as to make things easy for her. “We met a god shell!”
Cue flying papers and expressions of wrathful disbelief. “What!” Once the bishop was finished choking back incoherent words, he appeared a lot more serious. “I’m sure you’ve read all the scriptures. You didn’t bother it, right? Please don’t say we have a vengeful titan on the way to the surface right now.”
“Probably not… it didn’t look like it was going to stick around.”
“Where you found it underground?”
Oi-i shook her head. “On the surface! It brought us up after our conversation! That’s why it took so long to get back- it put us on the other side of the world!”
The bishop sighed softly, echoing a shuffling of papers, and to their great consternation- a request for a detailed and immediate report. For not the first time over the past two years, A-ait cursed herself for ever listening to the cheery ball of feathers-for-brains, and resolved herself never to do so again.
………
A-ait ducked out of the miserable rain into the equally miserable parish church fastened securely to the far-away mountainside. Oi-i had convinced her to bring them there, and to maybe, definitely won’t make her, tell some stories to the kids about their adventures. Why she didn’t know- Oi-i was the pure essence of happiness in the room. She was just a guard.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Still, it seemed to make the nestlings happy when she entered their little room dug deep into the stone of the mountain- though deep was a misnomer compared to the vast depths- to watch over them. The steady drum of the rain, just faintly audible, provided a dull counterpoint to the intense awkwardness that was just sitting and staring at a bunch of barely-fledged babes.
It took a week. A week of looking at those sky-blue feathers and desperate eyes, of sweet words and judging disappointment of children to crack and tell them everything. They ate it up, ever clamoring for more-
Next time, she promised. Next time she wouldn’t let Oi-i convince her to do anything.
………
In the fourth age of the world, when but four of the chosen yet lived, two of the feathered kin of sky delved deep into the earth and met the one, and spoke with it for a time. For all the novelty of the situation, for all the bone-beasts rarely moved for anything, it would have been a relatively unremarkable footnote in the story of stone, were it not for a simple mistake by the bone-beast.
In its sanctum at the center of the earth, where the remnants of formation’s fire yet shifted with vast heat, the bone-beast saw their lifeforce and its weakness, and thought to reinforce it. A courtesy, no more- for surely a creature but decades from death lay at the end of its endurance? A miscalculation, in the end, but several thousand years worth of life force made for a strong guard.
Decades after their delve, priest Oi-i found herself bishop from a general lack of other qualified candidates. Five centuries later, when none could truly doubt her immortal pedigree, and in spite of her heretical claims, she found herself Prime over all the council, with her faithful soldier A-ait there to guard her against treachery within and without.
Mostly, as it would be written in the histories for ages, as it would be taught in schools across the world and spoken of as whispers in the dark- mostly she was there to guard Oi-i from herself.
Such was the ascension of the immortal blue, and crimson sword. So reports the forty second scribe of her eternal reverence, Ko-oi Emerald-wing.” A-ait slammed the tome shut before thinking better of it and throwing it at Oi-i across the room. “Drivel! Slander and worse! Loyal guard? You haven’t gotten me to do anything without coercion for hundreds of years!”
“Yet you still defeated the rabid metal-kin rampaging across the lowland provinces.” A-ait shrugged, trying not to let her embarrassment show. “You saved thousands of lives after the dust-storm in the deep-shard desert.” A-ait scowled at the wall. “Somehow, you managed to negotiate with the renegade factions and bring them back into the fold, despite hundreds of years of animosity against the heresy of fire.” A-ait was tapping a talon against the floor- she knew where this was going. “You succeeded in delving the lost arc of the founders, despite thousands of prior failures-”
“Spit. It. Out!”
Oi-i shrugged half heartedly, in that way sure to annoy her. “You’ve done a lot of dangerous stuff. A lot more than anyone else. So, I need you track down some reports for me-” an image slid across the desk, a familiar form for all its strange coloring. “A god shell, reputedly recently appeared, smaller than the one we found. It shouldn’t be hard to tell them apart- apparently-” her face twisted in hesitant confusion, and maybe a little bit of fear- “half its body is bloody.”
………
[ISON note - establishing connection…]
{Initializing - Early Warning System mod 432870. Initialization complete. Resonance code interface locked.}
{(1) hidden command.}
{Acknowledged. Entering Standby.}
[ISON note - connection established with (10) intrauniversal objects. Significant timeline deviations are being logged and stored here.]
[ISON note - all systems nominal.]
[ISON note - two connections lost. Estimated cause: intrauniversal conflict.]
[ISON note - three connections lost. Estimated cause: intrauniversal conflict.]
[ISON note - one connection lost. Estimated cause: intrauniversal conflict.]