Sleeping Man [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczM0swG4SvyOLVMZbiuRRuNcwprH9ANzB5oTMepaXmmqRNAKBUE1-cwk0Jee77UBAHuqXYtouaWw7zxvtms7bAJmP5bXCn6Oa17QwKGLBTAQMUL0fY7SCGYVZrQYcni9YjujtRT__zBihcE_7wmZD17h=w613-h919-s-no-gm?authuser=0]
Phoenix blanched at Everin’s use of her Divine Title and begged, “Please never call me that again. I’m just their little flag that claims more territory for them, remember?”
Kara looked at her in confusion and began to ask, “What does a flag have to do with– you know what? No. I don’t need to know. I’m not bound to Scholar like this desperate idiot–”
“Hey!”
“Did you or did you not risk your life based on one of her hair-brained schemes to learn something new and have it spectacularly fail instead?” the Sunlight Champion asked, placing her hands on her hips as she stared the Avatar down, like a mother scolding her kit.
“I wouldn’t call it a failure exactly,” the much younger voxen retorted morosely, “We both lived.”
The Obsidian Caster gave Everin a side-eyed look, “Uh huh. Now I’m here to make sure that doesn’t change.”
“What does that mean?” Phoenix asked with a raised brow.
“While I admit this is likely one of the most secure buildings in the city –second maybe to the ducal palace at the center– Lord Wayland is still vulnerable here, which I hope to help remedy a bit more.”
“What exactly do you want us to allow you to do to him while he’s unconscious, Paladin Fairweather?” Dazien asked, crossing his arms and making an obvious display of standing between the two paladins.
Kara actually snickered in a way that totally reminded Phoenix of a fox and she wasn’t sure why. As far as she was aware, nobody knew what foxes said so how would they know what their laughter sounded like?
“Aren’t you adorable,” the golden voxen cooed, “Insinuating I need your permission to do anything. Don’t worry though, I’m only planning on setting up a little self-powered defensive ritual that would take an Obsidian like myself or a gang of Ruby Casters to break through.”
Dazien frowned at the woman who could easily break him on accident and said, “I apologize for the insinuation that you would take this family’s wishes into account. I know that I’m merely at your mercy should I try to stand between you and your goal but I won’t simply bow before your whims either.”
Kara blinked at the gemite, her expression blank for a moment, then gave a toothy grin, “No need to be so serious or defensive. I can see now that you’re very protective of your family and I didn’t mean to threaten it. Just trying to offer my help. Relax, little prince, I’m on your side here.”
Dazien seemed to relax slightly at those words but his frown remained as he said, “Thank you, Paladin Fairweather. Forgive my… abrasiveness. I haven’t slept for longer than I should, and have been postponing my ascension. I’m becoming on edge, I think.”
He paused for a moment, glancing from Kara to Phoenix, then to Paul, and back to Kara as he added, “And I would politely request that you not call me by that epithet again, please. Just ‘Dazien’ or ‘King’ is fine, it’s what the others call me.”
Phoenix wondered for a moment why he seemed to dislike the moniker, she thought it much better than Rayna calling him “little lordling”, but then she remembered that what Kara had just called him was what his mother had nicknamed him.
She could understand not wanting to let others use the name when it was tied so closely to someone else. While her own mom didn’t use one for her, she had been given one by her best friend, Jin, who liked to call her “Sunshine.” Supposedly, it was because she had been so cheerful whenever they were together, but she suspected it was due to her obsession with the movie “Annie” at the time they first met and she kept singing about the sun coming out.
The blonde quirked an eyebrow and asked, “I heard the orphans referring to Phoenix here as their Princess, so I figured that made Lord Wayland the King in this scenario, and since you just claimed them as your family, that would make you the Prince, no?”
Dazien chuckled and shook his head, “I see you’ve done some reconnaissance but not actual research. I’m from the orphanage originally. They call me ‘King’ and Uriel is ‘Senesh’. I doubt you heard them say our real names. I’m not sure some of them even know what they are.”
“That does make some of what they were saying make a lot more sense now,” Kara admitted with a laugh. Then she gave a muffled clap with furred hands and said, “Well, let’s get this over with quickly so we can go watch over your ascension. Sapphire will be harsher on you than Crystal was from what I’ve witnessed before.”
“Wait, what does that mean?” Phoenix asked in concern.
“We can go over the details later,” Kara interrupted the reply the Defender was about to supply, “First, let’s get Lord Wayland settled.”
The Wayfarer gently tugged on Dazien’s arm and he easily relented, letting her pull him out of the way and allowing her temporary champion access to the vulnerable man who meant so much to both of them. Orebela gave her a tiny nod and she thought perhaps it was one of approval. She then realized that if the Familiar thought her summoner was in danger, the Child of Theia would have already made a move to protect him.
This helped her relax more than anything Kara could have said about her intentions. While the goddess Champion might have promised her a champion, she wasn’t sure exactly how far the protection extended to other individuals and many other deities hadn’t made a move to protect her mentor beforehand.
Perhaps some wanted him out of the way for some reason? It was hard to imagine after Dazien’s suggestion of them being guided by the gods to meet, but perhaps that was just to get her here in time to save the city? If the job was being handled by Kara now, did that mean Paul –and, by extension, Dazien– had outlived their usefulness?
A furred hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she turned slightly to look into the odd black and white eyes of the rainbow voxen, who gave her a reassuring smile, “Don’t worry Phoenix. I might have my contentions with Paladin Fairweather, but I’ve heard of the ritual she plans to enact, and it’s likely the best protection we can offer given the circumstances and resources at our disposal.”
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“So how does it work?” she asked cautiously, watching Kara move to the side of the bed and effortlessly throw back the fluffy comforter completely off of it.
Paul’s body looked much better than the last time she had seen it, bloodied and rotting from Banes that almost killed him for good. Someone had stripped him down to just silvery compression shorts, leaving little to the imagination but somehow maintaining the Paladin’s modesty. She wondered if those tan muscles would eventually atrophy like hers had done from being bedridden for so long, but she was fairly certain that his mostly magical body wouldn’t suffer in that way.
The only other thing that caught her attention was the prominent mark of a stylized sun seared into his chest: the sigil of the Purifier. The blackened mark he had gained from standing against his god and falling from grace. He had once promised to tell her the story of it. Now, she wondered if it would be a lot longer before she’d ever learn about her mentor’s past.
“The Boon his talent gives is likely the only thing allowing us to keep him here on this mana-starved tundra,” Kara said as she pulled out the most ornate wand Phoenix had ever seen before. The main shaft seemed like a thin, solid, spiral of pearl that had been shaped into a wand-form and attached to a golden handle that had three prongs of gold flowing out and around it in a helix spiral.
“It’s an extremely advanced form of living stasis that utilizes Dimension and Time magics to preserve the target and, to put it in simplified terms, summons mana from the nearest source connected to the Aether, in this case, that’s likely the planet’s core. This way, he won’t starve to death or need an outside source of fuel,” the Obsidian Caster explained as she waved the elegant wand over Paul’s body, causing him to give off a faint glow before hovering into the air.
“This ritual uses his own mana reserves as a small maintenance cost to keep a thick defensive force shield around him that only he, or those bonded to him, can pass through. Once he leaves it, the ritual ends. Until then he’s practically untouchable.”
“You said it would take an Obsidian to break but how if his mana powers it?” Dazien asked curiously despite his exhaustion that was becoming increasingly apparent to her.
“It takes a continual trickle of his mana, which in this case should be instantly replenished by his stasis Boon, while the initial up-front cost will be paid by me and be of my Caste,” Kara explained while moving the bed out from under the floating body with a single tail.
The Wayfarer involuntarily shuddered at the thought of how close Dazien might have come to being crushed by one of those tails himself. Then she made a mental note to tread a bit more cautiously with her words when talking with a Caster that could move a solid wood four-poster like it was made of styrofoam.
As the golden voxen readjusted Paul’s position hovering in the air to be vertical –similar to how he had been during the last ritual she had participated in with him– Kara began to use the wand to scorch the ritual diagram into the floor itself, intricate runes and circles connecting them together in a much more familiar pattern to her but at an obviously more advanced level than what she normally worked with at Crystal Caste.
She was actually comforted by the fact it was unlike the completely alien design the Soul Reapers had implemented. While it was still difficult for her to completely decipher, it didn’t feel impossible without some kind of guide.
The sight of Paul’s brand reminded her of another enemy they might need to be concerned about and she inquired in little more than a whisper, “Can it keep out a god and his minions?”
The room went still at the question, aside from Kara’s wand moving in a blur to burn more runes into the air, and they all glanced at her, making the connection with her gaze fixed on the punishing sigil. The Obsidian Caster nodded towards the Emerald and said, “Why don’t you take that one, Avatar Starlark? I want to focus on this for a bit.”
Everin nodded and began addressing her worries, “Like any other Caster, a deity’s follower will be kept out if they’re not strong enough to break through the defenses,” he assured but continued expounding, “While I believe a god could manifest a projection body –the type we normally see them as– within the defensive barrier and likely even walk through it with one, they can’t hurt Paul with it.”
“The divine beings can’t directly interact with the physical world. Not like we can, at least,” Dazien spoke up to contribute to filling in the gaps in her knowledge, “It’s why they need people to do things for them. They can touch souls but those souls have to be willing. Paul would definitely not be willing in this case.”
She gestured towards her dad’s chest and the blackened scorch mark in its center, “Then how could they do something like that?”
Everin took up the explanation again, “Because he had been willing. He was a Paladin; blessed, sworn, and connected to the Purifier. As a final act in breaking that connection, the god marked him as Fallen. Much like your mark, it lets anyone who senses it know that he is an enemy of the Purifier. Most clergy that discover a Fallen of their own deity will feel duty-bound to end their life.”
Phoenix stared at him, horrified by the idea of being forced to kill some stranger for no other reason than a god didn’t like them, “So they’ll just murder him for walking down the street? Wait, does Scholar or Rebel have any Fallen? Are you going to have to kill random people you meet?”
The tie-dye voxen chuckled, “I feel like your experiences are a bit skewed. Becoming Fallen for any deity is an extremely rare occurrence on the grand scale of everything. It normally means turning on the very concept you dedicated your life to. As I said, you had to have been willing initially; a devoted clergy member like myself or Paladin Fairweather. It’s not like the Destroyer could show up right now and mark me as Fallen just because I don’t like destroying things.”
“So, for Rebel, you’d have to, like, become a king?” she asked, glancing towards Dazien warily before adding, “Or maybe just a tyrannical one?”
“That’s probably the easiest way,” Everin agreed, “I’m not sure what I’d have to do to piss off Scholar… Ah, she says to tell you not to start burning books as that would anger both her and Rebel, and you’d understand what that’d mean.”
Phoenix snorted a laugh, “Message received: don’t become the magical version of Hitler. I’ll admit that was my first thought when I learned about the Renseres trying to ‘cleanse the world’ to the extent that even Paul had a problem with it.”
“Anyway, we shouldn’t need to worry about the gods getting involved with Paul,” the Avatar concluded, “They probably prefer him like this for the moment. Out of their way. We can start worrying more when you get closer to Ruby and he’s about to wake up.”
As though a signal to the end of the conversation, the room became filled with bright blue light as Kara activated the ritual. A shimmering blue-tinted dome appeared around the floating lord still hovering a couple of inches off the ground and softly glowing like she often did.
“Now that’s done, let’s go watch you ascend, King,” the nine-tailed voxen said merrily.
“Ah, I was planning to do so in a few hours,” he began to correct but Kara cut him off.
“Nonsense. You look dead on your feet. I’ll go collect the others and be back before you get set up in that warded training room downstairs.”
“Okay, first, how do you know about that room,” Phoenix asked, suddenly concerned that this Obsidian Caster had no concept of boundaries or propriety, “And second, why would we need to go there?”
Kara gave her another feral grin as she answered, “I can move very fast and that was the only room I found here that could contain the screams.”