Time had become porous. It left great gaps, holes which the god filled with unnamed dread.
The Croithi, who the mortal and semi-mortal species knew as gods in the more common tongue, had known great aeons. The elders of their species could remember people who were untold of in story or stone. Pictures at the faces of rocks.
But there was a difference knowing that span of time, and finding oneself in it, stranded, against their will.
The millennia could not have passed like that, could they?
Oh, if they only could leave this place that wasn’t. It was no [Lot], no skill of creation. They stretched out a hand against the air, feeling the false nature of what had been wrought.
A mystery, made by some great archmystic. Cloudhome. One who had seen the [Truth] of the world, made a journey that even a god would fear——
——they hung among the stones of the henge.
The vault of the heavens held its usual allure, only diminished by the little Goblin that peaked between its stones. One of those that had come before.
“ARE YOU LOST, LITTLE CHILD?”
“I’m not to be here, father says.”
The god moved out to the outer boundary of the perimeter of standing stones. This far they could go, and not a breadth longer. In this shape, without the aid of a living companion to walk with theirs was the body of a thousand glittering sparks.
“You are pretty.”
“AM I NOT?”
“You are,” the small red Goblin spoke, as all children must do; without artifice, without guile.
“YOU FATHER IS WISE, FOR THE WOLVES OF THE PLAINS ARE EVER HUNGRY AND YOU WOULD BE AS A MORSEL FOR THEM.”
“You would protect me.”
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“WOULD I?”
“One day,” the girl said, her blue eyes filled with faith,”I will be your paladin.”
They bent over themselves, retching without a body. That…that had been the first time. The first time they met her. The memory warred with what they could last recall, that small window in the tower. There, they had felt certain arrogance, and a thing that was quite darker. Madness.
The two faces were hard to reconcile.
At the beginning she had been so…innocent. What had transpired so, to make that girl into the hard woman who would face not one but the armies of two continents?
They sat there, pondering the question but no fortunate portals into events which had since passed availed themselves to them.
Time passed, and they stared up at this seeming of the sky, enjoying it even as they knew it wasn’t real.
“You have seem to have gotten yourself into quite the mess, Steward of Fevered Dreams.”
They leapt up standing.There had been no Goblin behind them a moment ago, yet one now stood there.
“Do I know you?”
The Goblin craned her head, inspecting them. They could feel the [Affinity] even this space, and she was no lesser like the healer before. This one could have numbered among that legendary host.
“You will, and you did,” she said with the intimacy of long friends.“In the Era of Ceremony and Bronze I came to know you, though you tried to kill me. In another Era I had to stop your host from dying for the people who remembered your crimes were ever so wroth.”
Thick black horns glinted in the sourceless light.”But you don’t recall that, do you?”
“I think…I remember the beginning and the very end.”
“That is well. They have yet to ruin everything quite yet then.”
She squatted down, the train of her long dress pooling. Her skin was the proper Goblin shade - a dark green - and it comforted them, like few things could. A reminder of the natural order of things.
“The Golem offered to pay me great sums of money for this little endeavour but I told him no. For one such as you, I would do it for free.”
The Golem…?
“Do what?”
“Try to heal you,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You have tried before,” the god repeated, tasting the title they had used. Steward of…
“I have it on good authority that this time we might succeed. There are [Affinities] in this modern age that could make archmystics quail; ways of healing that was once reserved for those who had taken their [Affinities] to the edge of leveling.”
“How…” They came to the realisation that this Goblin would speak forever if not stopped.”How are you named?”
“Oh? Polite, are we?”
Her posture stiffened, taking a stance that seemed not far from what the ruling Archons of their old Era would assume.
”I great you Steward, in the manner of the Goblins, for though you were a great fiend, too you were once one of our great allies. I am known in this current Era as the Healer of Seactir though that would mean little to you.
When I was born, the stories of the Crusade were merely old, not ancient.”
They latched onto that.”The Crusade? What do you know about the Crusade?”
“Aren’t you the one I should be asking?”
Silence reigned the cloudhome. They spoke eventually, reluctantly.
“I cannot remember. Only pieces remain.”
The Healer’s eyes were sad, and too filled with a shade a cousin to regret.
“There is nothing wrong with your body. We have been here before, old god. It is the mind that ails you.”