Okoli’s house was more of a hut than a house. Built from the combination of clay soil, a bit of mud, and dried palm fronds for a roof, it barely stood taller than Urden and was slightly taller than the elder’s previous home, but it was definitely wider. The brown walls bore scribbles in colorful chalk, giving it a certain decor. Urden noted some parts bore writings most likely the product of a child.

He bent as he passed through the door, entering the house. At one corner, rested a lantern casting a warm yellow glow over a section of the room, the floor had folded up parchments of paper scattered about it. Urden needed no closer inspection to know they were just tree barks shaved until they were paper-thin, brown and slightly flexible. It was a trick he had taught the elder on his last visit.

“Papa, close the door. Or would you like the mosquitoes to eat us alive?” It was the voice of a child and Urden smiled at the sound of it. The words had been spoken in the Alduin tongue, something he decided was perhaps one of Okoli’s rules of the house.

“You see,” Okoli complained, but Urden heard the love in the elder’s voice. “My head ache every day because of child. I grow too old for this.”

The owner of the voice came out from one of the smaller rooms as Okoli covered the entrance with a bunch of dried palm fronds woven together. The child’s skin was not as dark as most people in the village. It took on a lighter brown glow.

Brown eyes watched Urden and he watched back.

“Father!”

…………………………

The child ran to him and wrapped her arms around Urden’s shoulder with a piercing shriek of excitement. She dangled there until he held her. If the child had screamed any louder Urden would have needed to check his ears.

“Be quiet!” Okoli chided the girl. “Your voice very loud!”

Urden settled the girl on the floor where she let him go. He looked down at the girl and she beamed back up at him. It was strangely prideful to see how much she’d grown in the time he’d last seen her. She had only been seven when he’d met her, after all.

“Dinma,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. I’ve missed you.” She spoke the realm tongue more fluently than Okoli, and Urden had a feeling that though he spent the better part of eleven months teaching it to her, her retained fluency in it was credited to the elder.

Dinma had been the reason he had crossed paths with the chief priest. He had met the girl in his last visit, a touched, which was rare in the village. They often became the chief priests, but a female touched was rarer in the village. No one had known she was touched until the chief priest had pointed it out.

The man had wanted to have her killed but knowing of her touch, Urden had stormed the shrine the morning she was to be sacrificed after being dragged from her parents’ hands in the dark of night. The elders had chided him to leave. Outsiders had no place in the shrine save the sake of judgement being passed upon them.

Ignoring them, he had warned the man not to lay a hand on the girl. He had been teaching her for more than a week before it happened and as he’d stood before the priest her eyes had begged him to save her.

The chief priest had chanted words in their language but, Urden, having no time for the man’s spoken nonsense preyed upon him, drawing on the primitive fear that lay dormant in all men. It was what helped people survive, but it could also be the death of them. The man had choked on his nonsense, fighting against his fear and had eventually succumbed.

Urden had warned the elders of the visits he would make to the village to check on the child. They knew what he would do if he came and did not find her safe. After all, who would dare to stand against a man who’d faced off against a priest backed by their gods and won. They knew he would bring down his wrath upon the village.

Urden commended their loyalty to the village. It was greater than most lords of the Alduin kingdom ever possessed. Still, they had feared him then, and they feared him now. He had seen it in their eyes earlier. It was as evident as jilted lover hiding their pain.

It was when he had taken her from the shrine that he’d learned her parents, refusing to give her to the shrine, had been butchered. Suffice to say, he had found the men responsible for the action and committed them to Vayla without hesitation.

He’d left Dinma with Okoli and his wife when he left. Okoli had been the only man he had trusted with the task and he’d felt a child would’ve done the man’s slowly crumbling marriage good.

He had been wrong on that note, apparently.

“Tell me a story,” Dinma demanded in all her childlike fervor as she and Urden lay in her dark room in the growing night when the moon was surely at its peak.

“I will,” he said with a smile. “But first, how is your Vrail? Stop frowning.”

“I’m not frowning,” Dinma complained. “Besides, you don’t know. It’s too dark to tell.”

“I do know,” he teased. He couldn’t see her, but he had known the question would make her frown. The parchment that had scattered the floor of the house had writings of the Alduin tongue scribbled on them with ash mixed with water for ink, and bird feather for writing. Very few had Vrail scribbled on them.

“I know it’s hard,” he said. “But it is important.”

Now he knew she was pouting. At twelve years she was behaving very much like a normal girl.

“Alright,” she conceded, her enthusiasm deeming.

“Now,” Urden said, pushing the conversation on. “Do you want to hear the story of Arnesh?”

And like that, all the life came back to Dinma. Urden could almost see the brown of her eyes twinkle in the darkness. And so he told her the story of Arnesh.

“Long ago,” he began, “a man travelled the expanse of Vayla. He was made of flesh and blood like every other. He travelled to her reaches, seeking her secret. His search proving futile, he labored and toiled. He chose never to succumb. He believed he had time on his side, for this man was young and had begun his search at a tender age. An age perhaps too tender.

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“In time even his labors and toils succumbed to themselves, and, eventually, so did he. He found a cave, moist and cold, to live out the rest of his days until his bones grow brittle and old. He did this, secluded from humans because among the animals he found solace, but in his fellow men of flesh and blood he felt naught but contempt. In the dark night where he lay begging for sleep, the face of a woman appeared begging he take heed. Her face was a beauty he was meant to never have seen, and her visage shone brighter than the brightest of stars. Yet, he thought her familiar.

“She told him a tale of a god, not so brittle but ancient and old, even to her, and the cruelty he bore on whomever he saw. She told him of a god so old he had dined when time woke and it was from him that time continued to run. And this god now walked Vayla, tainting her soil. He was called Arnesh. Where he was, was unknown and, if he wasn’t stopped, Vayla would grow, too, to be brittle and old. The man implored why he was chosen—why the woman did not seek another. Her answer was simple. She told him of how she had watched him labor and toil for what he sought against all odds. His expression twisting in confusion, he reminded her of his defeat and she told him his journey had granted him sight.

“It was the truth that she spoke, for surely there were men, but none could see her, not even the Hallowed. Each man needed a power to see what she showed, for even the Hallowed would crumble at what he was about to know. The man was no Hallowed, this he knew. But unlike other men, he was Tainted, and his ability was superior, abounding upon itself in multiple folds. Thus, he required more than all men to behold Rin, the goddess of war and death.

“He took up her quest, following a trail the souls of the dead lit for him. He focused his will and labored and toiled. He had a new goal in mind, one at the behest of a goddess. She had promised him a secret, one that belonged only to Vayla. How she knew this was simple. It was because only the dead saw the end, and they were her to command. The man focused his search for a god he was not supposed to know and soon it would be known that this was not a god he was supposed to find.

“All through his search, he avoided men for he had grown bored of them at an earlier age. He spoke to the dead, or rather, they spoke to him. Sometimes Rin would grace him with her presence and tell him tales of the gods. Of Tarr the old who took only the aged, living her the souls of men who died only in war. Tarr was older but not old as Arnesh. She told him of Berlak who was younger, the youngest of them all. She told of few gods but did not speak of them all, for Arnesh was her goal and not any other.

“Soon the man covered Vayla, total and whole. Still, he found no old god as the goddess had him seek. Something was wrong and he showed Rin his thoughts on a night when there was no moon.

“‘Maybe this god is playing you,’ he said. ‘Maybe his warping your souls, manipulating them to tell you what he chooses.’

“The goddess of death pondered and spoke of the impossibility, but he had seen it in her eyes. The goddess had known there was truth in what he spoke, and one thing the man had learned was how much she sought the god she sent him after. If a goddess feared this god, what did she expect of a human, even if the human was not Hallowed but greater than most.

“She sent him on his way at the crack of dawn and he followed the road she showed him. He would find her god as long as she showed him Vayla’s secret. In time his search proved futile and he found himself giving up. The goddess of death taking pity on him, she conjured her dead and sought what she promised, giving him a clue to the secret he sought.

“He went on his search as the goddess pondered. The god she sought might not have been on Vayla. She had searched Vayla because she had found the god nowhere else, but upon Vayla the gods were banished, unable to walk. But this god was old, older than all and, she suspected, older than man. Giving up on her thoughts, she took to a passing fancy.

“She had promised the man the secrets of Vayla but he had shown so much greatness. So much so that she wanted his soul. She plunged him into wars, whispering to the Hallowed and the unknown, bidding those who worshipped her to violence, for only through war could she have the man’s soul.

“Wars fell upon the man, but determined, he rose with every battle. Where his blood spilled Vayla burned, her skin, hair and bones sizzled and scorched. Winning each battle by a breath of air the man pushed for his goal. Eventually, he arrived at the entrance to Vayla’s secret and Rin closed in on her prey. But something was wrong. As the men surrounded him, he laughed something sinister, putrid and old. Rin knew in her being now that the man had found the god she sought, but what deal had he made that he would look down on a goddess as she presented her visage, heralding a war men could not survive.

“In anger and fury, she summoned her war. Crazed in laughter and content, the man slaughtered all who raised their weapons against him. There was a reason he held men in contempt, for even in their gifts, they were weak. Watching the goddess, he let his fury leak. He bellowed an anger announcing himself to Vayla and plunged his hand in the dirt. Thus he told of his tale. His words were so few; two lines at the most. But at the end of it all, Rin, the goddess of war and death, paled.

“‘I have been man long enough, in weak flesh and blood,’ he said. ‘Now surrender the secret you hold. I am done waiting.’ Grinning at the goddess, he uttered his words, and thus, he spoke, ‘I have waited long enough, and I will wait no longer.’

“Rin trembled at what she had wrought. In fear she called on her souls and focused all that she was into a fight the man had once won. This time the Hallowed and those touched by his blood ignored her call. They lived their lives. But soon each if the fallen was raised from the dead. The Hallowed and those that were not. The gifts that they held from Vayla’s love was twisted in death, their gifts broken in both body and soul. These things, for that is what they were, became a stain on Vayla’s dirt for ages abounding. For time immemorial. And they walked the ends of Vayla dead yet living… Broken.”

With the end of Urden’s story, the room fell into silence. It was the kind that followed just after a climax is told.

“What happened after that?” Dinma asked, bright eyed, breaking the silence as though it hadn’t even existed. Urden had intended to put her to bed with the story. Apparently, he had failed.

“Rin won,” he answered simply.

“And…?”

“She became very weak after her victory.”

“So now she’s a weak goddess?”

Urden sighed. “Yes. But she’s still alive. So don’t make her angry.”

“Is Arnesh dead?”

Now Urden found himself wondering why he had decided to tell her the story. “No, he’s actually still alive.”

“What?!” Dinma sounded annoyed. “So the goddess couldn’t clean up her mess.”

Urden chuckled.

Do goddesses get angry at little girls?

He didn’t know.

“Dinma,” he said softly.

“Yes, father,” she answered. She always called it like a child called their father and not the way a priest was called.

“The goddess of death will be angry with you,” he told her.

The girl grew so quiet Urden taught she had stopped breathing for fear of the goddess. The silence only lasted a few minutes before she broke it again.

“Let her get angry,” she said with all the bravado of a child. “I’ll beat her up if she comes.”

Of course you will. Urden smiled. “Dinma.”

“Yes, father.”

“Go to bed,” he begged. “The night is old.”

“Ok, ok… but what about Arnesh? If he’s alive, do people like the village worship him?”

“…Yes,” Urden replied after a pause.

The thought of it saddened him but there was a reason there were so many gods. It was only normal there were those who still worshipped Arnesh.

“Unfortunately, they do. But not by the name Arnesh…” He let his words trail off, closing his eyes. Maybe if he pretended to be asleep, she would let him be.

“What’s he called now?” Dinma asked.

Urden gave no response. He committed himself to the act of sleeping.

With no response. She asked the same question again. When Urden did not answer, she stopped.

Urden smiled in the dark, proud of himself as he drifted asleep.

“I know you haven’t slept yet,” Dinma said abruptly.

She might be the only child Urden had ever liked in this life, but she was still as annoying as all of the rest of them.

He wondered what it would take for her to fall asleep.