· · · · · · ·
Deep in the eastern mountains, Rangort's monks had conjured up golems and carved out a lair. This had been their secret operation base for months now, which Claire thought they should have used to help the other clans organized, but alas. Rangort had peculiar ideas about being conversational with other units of life.
Fortunately, they couldn't hide from Claire and she had put her foot in the metaphorical door. Now it served as a sanctuary for the citizens of Sailoon City. The nasty fall out of their raid on the torture mountain would be the wrath of the devils. Claire had delivered the Sailoon royals to the doorstep of the monks, got them through the door and let Sailoon Justice persuade the rest. The monks weren't wicked, they didn't turn down anyone once they were forced to be involved.
In tracking Lyos, Dynast had beelined for the obvious Sailoon, only to find it empty. Dolphin didn't reveal herself, but some of her devils were seen exploring the outer world. Not that finding any traces would help when teleportation had been their final travel method.
Claire managed to throw "gotta be rested for optimal reincarnation" against "stay up late and help the refugees get settled" and slept that night. Most of that time was spent flow reading.
By godly standards, the valley of the ancient dragons was not very far. On the idea to find out where Luna and Filia had gone, the sensation of a talisman shard drew her there. What exactly she looked at was an enigma.
She caught word of Luna flying around and eventually traced her. God only knew what the woman was up to, she was all over the place. First she checked Sailoon, then hijacked an elven teleport post to get further down south. Eventually she came to the ancient dragons. All she found there was a message scribbled in the side of the mountains : Don't worry, it's alright. Stay put, I'll come talk to you soon.
Luna didn't stay, didn't respond and didn't come back. She just cursed a lot about weak minded dragons. No idea what she meant to do now, but she could be tracked so that wasn't an immediate concern. She tuned out before the knight noticed.
Beyond that, Claire kept her eyes open for devil activity and checked on Sailoon's other cities. A select few dragons had been sent to defend those, which brought in more refugees during the night, but for the most part they went into hiding in their own country. If it was clear a city would be targeted, shelter could be made before the strike. Devil activity was scarce, all things considered.
Nature spirits whispered that the armies congregated up north, around Shabranigdu and Dugradigdu. That wasn't much useful, and the monks had angels that probably told them as much. Claire hoped they wouldn't send the Sailoonians home, in case she needed them still. In the morning, she would converse with the earth serving dragons and from there on she needed a foot in with her own tribe. She needed to lead, somehow.
Seconds thoughts were a nuisance that sleep couldn't save her from.
In the early morning, a gong sounded. Soon after, Orun appeared at the door. It was too heavy to push open for a human, so Claire tore herself from sleep and activated the internal lock. Orun stepped in with a basket on her back and another on her arm, each stacked with food.
To Claire it was just food, but Lyos recognized all sorts of favored things on it. He'd spend the night in an enchanted pool to lessen the pain of the curse, and couldn't be bothered to dry off as he staggered into the central room of their quarters.
"How are you doing?" Orun asked while unpacking the food.
"Aside of the arm and everything else? Good. I had the weirdest dream : Xelloss turned into some sort of abstract art installation while waxing about the nature of chaos, and Filia looked on like she was bored."
"Oh, you caught that?" Claire asked. "That wasn't a dream, I saw it while trying to track Luna."
Lyos just stared at her.
"What?" he got out after ten seconds. "Why was Xelloss bad cone art? ... Wait, does that mean the end happened too? Why on earth did Filia agree to go to Wolfpack Island?"
"I do not know, yes and I do not know," Claire said. "We may now speculate that they both lost their minds."
"But why was he bad abstract art?" Lyos asked again. "... what is abstract art?"
Orun handed an oversized quiche to him, which replaced his curiosity with fresh hunger. With the curse on him, he ate even more than usual.
Seeing him so focused on nothing but eating and killing those damn snakes, Orun said, "If you can't handle it right now, we can write the letters later?"
"No, let's get it out of the way. You found paper, right?"
With the entire village getting up and away in chaos, they had a lot of connections left behind; anything from trades to friends and family. Once in Sailoon, they had contacted all of them, but only with partial truth. Now, they wanted to tell the truth.
Orun and Lyos spoke of things that did not interest Claire personally, though she had to pay attention. Lyos cared because it was his life and his attachment, it couldn't skip this.
After Lina had returned to her continent, Lyos had filled the void by raising warriors and helping Orun's village rise back to its feet, using knowledge he'd gained from traveling the lands. A map on construction here, a lesson on agriculture there and every white magic spell Amelia could teach him.
All of that knowledge would be obsolete once the Aqualord was reborn, but it had not been, once. A little of the right information in the right place had more use than all the right information where nobody could get it.
Well duh, was Lyos's response to that. Isn't that obvious?
Once, it hadn't mattered to Claire because her priorities had been lesser.
Lyos kept the letter to his mother last; they didn't have a good bond. She wondered what had gone wrong there, and couldn't explain. Not that this particular thing would matter much, but other little things had.
Heh, little things.
She knew what had to be done on the big scale. Stop Valgaav. Simple. But she also had to be a practical god and this involved acknowledging that emotions played a powerful role in chaos. Just throwing general advice at people? Not gonna work. In fact, she'd tumble face first into problems if she did not watch out.
In retrospect, telling Lina no more than that the world might end if she cast the Giga Slave was so amateurish. She had known that Lina and Gourry loved one another in a romantic way, the kind of state that sends brains into an irrational, idealized state for its early stages. Lina had not walked away with any more intense thoughts about the matter than a cementing of what she already knew : the Giga Slave is dangerous. Value of life? Nah. In the end she cast it anyway, having postponed it to the worst time. Granny Aqua's advice had not only been useless, through the Claire Bible Lina had perfected it into a more dangerous state.
And now, Volphied had strung her and everyone else along because she didn't see how all the little things worked together.
Clearly there issues with the execution of her "ensure everyone lives as long and well as possible" drive. Issues on par with shooting oneself in the foot and then trying to tie the wound by jumping in a tar pit.
Lyos grinned for the first time that day. "You're growing up a little."
Damn herself, that was offensive and sadly true.
· · · · · · ·
The monks summoned her later that morning, once their number was complete. Thankfully, they let Lyos have his peace for now. Keeping his pain in the back of her experience was hard enough as it was. She was called in alone and brought to a windowless, round room.
In human form, Rangort's monks concealed their faces behind hoods and masks that resembled smiling human faces. Well crafted expressions, but they became eerie to humans if they looked at them for too long ... hence the hoods. The uncanny masks only showed at times the humans had to fear punishment.
The monks wore them even before her. A test perhaps, or did they truly think of her as human now? Even their cloaks concealed their astral forms, though not their emotions.
An angel stood behind them, no face she recognized. Likely, there to report to Rangort and to sample emotions.
They sat her lonely before a half circle of them, in the position of the subordinate.
"Why did you hide from Earthlord Rangort?" the monk asked. "And we have been told you fled from Zelas's island. Why?"
"I did not hide, I was taken around against my will. Luna Inverse had killed the angels my sibling sent to retrieve me because she does not trust you, and that gave Zelas a window to arrive. Now, with Valgaav out, staying concealed has no more purpose, the real enemy knows I exist. I want to come clear to as many as possible about what's going on."
"Inform everyone? How senseless. Did you truly become a child?" the first monk asked.
"I can be more clear if I would know how much you know of the plan. Tel al-Metallium."
"I understand, but Earthlord Rangort prefers Elmegiddo. After all, we do not intend Shabranigdu to ever leave that place, as we do the gods."
"Well then, you know a fair deal. All I would like is my own dragon clan to be brought into the loop. We can leave that fool Ospirias away."
"Your own clan. You want to lead them, perchance?" another monk asked in bored disbelief. "You who did not recognize the strategical maneuvering of the Hellmaster until it was too late? You are incompetent."
"Ah ah ah, that is unfair. I shall leave military things to those who know. I only want spiritual leadership and I need to start somewhere. Right now. I need to guide and I need to understand my people to do my job in the best way possible."
"You may do so after your rebirth. Or did you perhaps not intend to unite with Rangort to lead the dragon clans into one great nation?" said the slightly prickly monk.
"Ha! You were inattentive a thousand years ago, and now you're just barely crawling up from ignorance. We've been organizing for centuries!" said the one with a hefty dose of pride.
Claire yawned to buy herself some time, and to convey her disdain. "Well ... how fair is it if I just wait around for you all to decide I'm competent enough? I might as well begin learning now."
At this point, the calm but cynical one said, "You know they do not see you as a leader, or they would have frequented the Claire Bible for that time. They do not bow before what you are now. Why play games with them in this difficult time?"
"I am no stranger to my own dragons and elves. My error was my own distance from my people. Let me bridge it. It will do no harm to the cause. I merely need you to confirm to my clan that I am in fact the actual Aqualord."
"Are you, now? We find it very unusual that you'd spend so much time holed up in your own mind to learn from human life, rather than communicate with your sibling."
Secrets in her mind, she needed a convincing lie.
No ... how about a reliable truth with some spicing?
"I feared the Earthlord would interrupt with my development. I had reached the conclusion to develop the cognitive skills for emotional bonds. I'd been developing love, which I believed Rangort would disapprove of. It deemed it worth exploring this angle, though I have reconsidered now I know how Valgaav exploited it."
It stung, when she said that. It shouldn't be doing that.
"Hmm. Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Xelloss. Now that was where I went wrong. He thinks it's like practicing, say, abstract art."
Not quite directly where the test had come from. He'd just wanted her to be fascinated the way he was ... which Rangort knew about, and might have told hir angels and monks. On top of that, Zelas and Xelloss were already capable of a halfassed variant of attachment to people, which Rangort might've spoken of to hir monks.
The lie bore the fruit of disdain and contempt, but also diminished suspicion. Those were easy to tell apart, one born from anger, the other from fear. Good. Fools weren't typically suspected of deicide.
"Well, it is good that you have been set straight," the unofficial lead monk said. "How about we discuss a better plan from now on, hmm?"
"Lead the way," she said. "I would gladly converse directly to my sibling if only that were possible right, but I shall respect you as substitute."
They had a lot of questions, and she dutifully answered as if she wholly agreed to share power with Rangort.
Was it worth it to rely on Xelloss and Filia for fusion magic? Were deity channels even needed?
They could find a way to reincarnate Luke with his mind intact — as long as his loyalty to Milina existed, it'd work. Milina was their ally so far.
Rangort continued healing, soon hir sight would operational enough to track down Luna and the angelsblood talisman.
Should that not work, they might reformat Milina into Siephied channel. This would take time on a preexisting creature, but Milina was a chimera already.
The biggest obstacle was contacting Lina Inverse to get her cooperation for the reincarnation. Just reaching across the worlds couldn't be done with talisman and a trail. Xelloss was the best at tracking her, not just because he knew Lina and her magic so well, but because he'd spent a thousand years becoming a jack of all trades. He had experience with tracking that didn't rely solely on the flow.
The monks suggested that once Rangort was strong enough, they could just grab Xelloss and make him cooperate somehow. If Zelas complained, they'd get rid of her and the priest would want his own survival and cooperate. Claire knew this would probably backfire, Xelloss was entirely too loyal to Zelas and the consequences of taking his mistress away would not be pretty. Last person who had tried to claim Xelloss got a prime audience with the Lord of Nightmares.
She couldn't say as much. In the plan as Rangort knew it, there wouldn't be a strong reason to worry about Zelas or Xelloss. In this plan, Zelas wasn't going to have a chance to claim all of the Igdu power, or in her absence, neither would Xelloss. Dancing around this part wasn't too hard, though. She just pointed out that Luke wasn't an actual channel yet and really, let's not waste resources.
She began to see why it might be fun, for Xelloss, to manipulate people.
· · · · · · ·
They didn't confirm her identity, not the way she had hoped. "Technically it's the real Aqualord" one of them told Azonge and Milgazia, that was it. No impact, nobody sought her out. She wasn't invited in strategic discussions either.
With little else to do, Claire either tended to Lyos or resolved small conflicts between Sailoon soldiers and the dragons that had so recently taken over their city. Claire tried to mediate conflicts and disputes as well as she could, which was to say barely. Gods, what had she been doing for six thousand years? She couldn't make a single step without being reminded of what a waste of time she had been. Circumstances weren't even that much of a catalyst to blame for her ignorance. Her little revelation had been at breakfast, with no dramatic prompt. It should have been easy to get there, if only she had bothered to think earlier.
During noon, a priest from down south teleported in with a variety of magic gems that might ease Lyos's pain. Claire had been out right when he was retrieved to a special section of the underground. Since she could cut across a canyon to get there faster, she unfolded her wings and flew the short distance — no devils were near, it was safe.
Well, no devils, but at the bottom of the canyon there was definitely something astral disrupting the flow. She lowered just a little, wondering why the angels did not notice it.
Ah, no need for alarm. Seated on a weird red mount, the Sage of Siephied waved at her. She wasn't worth fearing, so Claire descended.
"Greeted," Lassandra said, and Claire froze as she tried to grasp why she didn't feel very greeted.
"Sage of Siephied, what brings you here?" she asked.
"Boredom," and the lie was so clear she didn't even need to think about it.
Lassandra ran a green hell gem over her fingers, playing as if she didn't have a care in the world. She whistled an old song, the mere sound of it bent the flow to her. Claire couldn't tell whether the world was her spare storage or whether she was so one with the flow, she existed as an extension of it.
The difference was disproportionate even with Claire's limited sense. If she had even an inkling of the Sage's powers, she could learn so much faster. Why did this woman have all that? Not even gods were this attuned.
"Dynast and Dolphin are on Elmegiddo," Lassandra lied. "Their high ranked devils are not. It will be safe to remove enemies from the island. There is no need to fear attracting godly attention."
Well, that was useful to know, but why did she tell her alone? "What are you doing?"
Lassandra just smirked and asked, "Is it easier to forget Val?"
"I did not forget."
"Did you process?"
Claire blinked, then narrowed her eyes. "What are you going on about?"
"Did you ever cry when you were born?"
"Of course not, I am not human."
"Would you like to know what it's like?"
"What, crying or being human?"
"Neither," and that was a lie again. "You do not want to know."
That ... that was a lie too. She did ... want ... to know. She didn't. She did. Maybe she denied it. She did.
She barely noticed the Sage jumping off her mount and sauntering close; she had to figure out this ... thing ... contradiction ... she wanted to ...
Lassandra laid her hands on her shoulders, pushing her down. In the same motion, Claire shrank back to her child form. She hadn't initiated this, but it came naturally.
"What are you ..."
A life law circle she hadn't realized had been cast broke open, somewhere invisible, and a flood of emotions poured in. Like she'd been a void before, Claire felt things she hadn't ever experienced. After a the initial confusion, she matched them up with things she'd tasted ... but the resemblance felt too distant. Casting aside grief was hardly the same as living through it ...
"... doing to me ..."
The emotions pulled up an array of memories, first and foremost Val. She lost her focus in the torrent.
Val was false, so no point mourning him and feeling sad for her own loss was so useless, but now all that poured in and caused a chain reaction.
People need to learn the names to describe their own pain before they can figure it out. Claire didn't even know where to begin.
She asked Lassandra, but got no answer. She asked herself, but could only compare to lives she'd touched while passing by. She tried to make sense of grief by categorizing it to its sources, but that didn't help they way it mingled with other thoughts.
Valgaav had betrayed her, but she had betrayed her own people a thousand years ago. She had let them build and believe a religion that worshiped her because she allegedly deserved it on base of being a god. Even as she thrived on their faith, she had done nothing in return until the war became inconvenient for her.
Up until now, that had just been a tactical miscalculation. Treachery and loyalty had nothing to do with it, let alone did grief and regret. This was supposed to be just about dealing with Val. She could handle that. When she'd walked into Valgaav's dreams and found no Val, she decided not to care. It wouldn't be logical, even if it bothered her.
"I don't want this," she whispered. It came out strangled and with tears. "Don't. I can figure these things out by thinking, it get in the way if I have to feel ... stop it, please. I don't want it."
"You want to move away," Lassandra said, which swung her conscious mind into more contradiction while the mortal feelings assaulted her mind with regret and sorrow and loneliness and missing something and most of all guilt. She'd tasted it before, she had never felt it. This was ... worse than anything she'd known before. If this would last forever ...
"~ It will last forever. It will never get better, ~" Lassandra thought at her.
"I don't want it any second longer!" she roared out, or at least she tried. It came out pathetic.
"That's not okay," Lassandra lied, a soothing fibre in her voice.
"I don't need it to be the person I have to be. As far as I have a choice in who I will be, I don't need it," she choked through the tears. "It isn't fundamental to me, it just gets in the way."
"I deny everything you say," she lied. "I do this to annoy you. However, don't you think you need to know what you're cutting, so you don't leave bits behind?"
That was a good point ... assuming that was the point. The way this woman talked, it was hard to say.
Lassandra hummed an old tune and felt nothing herself, at least not intense enough for Claire to notice ... now ...
Did she suffer compassion fatigue after ages, was she a psychopath, was she not human at all? No way to tell. All emotion she got from the sage was curiosity and a little bit of joy — fascination, then. She had no guilt. All of it growing had to be the fruit of Claire's mind, filtered through humanity ...
... she could not just be the Sage. It shouldn't be possible that a mere human could just supplant the very functions of her soul like this. It only made sense of the resonance between them had the same root, the same soul ... if the arms around her belonged to Siephied.
The very first thing the Sage had told the gods when cotnacting them thousands of years ago was her identity, Siephied. She had lied, as always, but then what was she?
Lassandra couldn't be, but it became easier to think about something other than Val or the war.
There wasn't a clear cut line where Claire could tell that now, Lassandra had stopped. It had to be some point before she stood up and walked away. Quiet settled in, and the feelings ebbed, but the memory of the experience stayed.
She stood up and unfolded her wings. Without looking back, she returned to the palace.
Her wings out of magic obeyed, but her physical legs didn't walked quite right. Fear, she realized, lay below the fading blur of other emotions.
Why had she even let that woman do this to her? She ... wanted to, right? It didn't make sense to want it ...
She staggered through the halls, painstakingly aware of every fibre in her body. That sensation should have been exiled for months, but it returned full force on the brink of mortality.
Orun came running down the hall, and Claire filtered a little backdrop information from her mind; Lyos had sent her, of course.
I'm alright, she meant to say. The purpose was to make her stop worrying, not to answer a question accurately. She didn't how she was right now.
Ah, as a priestess she caught more than just that. She knew what it was about.
Orun knelt down and embraced her, full of sympathy. Claire let it happen, could intellectually understand it was kind of her, and more than before didn't ever want to be like this. It become despicable to her, right then, that she'd forever grieve for someone gone ... no, who had never really existed.
She gently pushed Orun away. "I do not need comfort, I need to speak to the monks of Rangort. It is urgent."
Orun looked very much like she didn't believe Claire, but nodded and said, "I will go find an angel."
"Thank you," Claire said, while quietly wondering whether she could keep the experience of gratitude if she threw attachment out. That at least felt nice and uncomplicated.
· · · · · · ·
Once she had the monks and Lassandra in one place, she laid out the tactical details the Sage had shared.
Rangort still wanted to conquer Elmegiddo. In theory, e had the power for it. In practice, e was currently too clumsy to use it without risk of wrecking the island. With Dolphin there, it wasn't worth the risk of her destroying everything, but now it was clear she wasn't, an invasion could be done. In theory. Cleaning out Dolphin's occupation would have to be done with smaller entities.
Thanks to Luna wiping out a good chunk of Rangort's angels, that fell to the dragons and, in the self proclaimed service of justice, the Sailoon forces. Claire wondered whether the monks had complied with sheltering them just to get this favor, since they were awfully quick to accept their help.
She let the preparations for invading Elmegiddo to others with more experience in warfare, and alas, that meant Rangort's monks. Really, she might as well start keeping a list of things to stop failing at.
Phil and Amelia would frontline the human involvement of the invasion on Elmegido, naturally. They had a lot more experience with ground-bound warfare than the dragons, many of whom had never bothered learning to fight in their human forms. The elves were better at it, but they had a dose of arrogance too, which led to clashing with the Sailoonians. Those who had become chimeras could keep up with elves, so that boiled down to arguing about whose experience was most relevant.
Observing the Sailoon royals clash heads over justice seemed educative, so she paid attention.
Oops. Rather than learn anything useful, her own mind began to put her experience under Lassandra together with this.
What would it be like to live like Phil and Amelia? They bore sorrow but she was strong anyway, and they had room for happiness. They were the product of genes, of incubation in a womb, of education, experience and interaction. Claire herself lacked the first three — comparing herself to them felt wrong.
Nevertheless, their compassion for other lives was a very useful motivator to make Ospirias move faster, so the war would be over sooner and less would die. Claire had to propel herself with gritted teeth just to make the pressure go away, but for the Sailoon royals, energy to do this came like a second nature. It didn't seem hard to be like this.
Maybe that's what Lassandra wanted her to consider. Motivation could make it easier to do what's wright.
On the other hand, a few hours later, said motivation to do Justice to the world drove Amelia to confront Claire.
The princess strode into their room, gloomy determination waving off of her. Claire could eat it, just barely.
"Miss Claire, we need to talk about the fate of mister Lyos."
Here it came. Lina had once end cracked a joke that Amelia wouldn't like it one bit once she found out. Prepare for an onslaught of justice speech, and Zel would have a few things to say too, she had bet.
Just for safety, Claire sat right at Lyos's side and let the curse on his arm break the flow. That way, they could talk without any angel looking in.
Amelia sensed this, hesitated, but then stepped into the distorted zone and crossed her arms.
"Mister Zelgadis told me everything Orun told him, and I just heard you're going ahead with the reincarnation before miss Lina returns. That means miss Lina isn't there to figure out some way for mister Lyos to survive, right?"
"There's no way for me to survive even if she were around," Lyos groaned, while burning away a snake that just emerged.
"Can't you just take the power out of Lyos to absorb it?" Amelia asked. "Surely there must be a way for him to survive."
"That's like asking to make a river flow upstream without using magic," Claire said. "Stray power clings to souls by its nature, that is how knights and sages come to exist in the first place. The soul of the gods work differently. Did you never wonder why the remaining gods never merged with each other, thus becoming near to Siephied's power, and take down the sealed pieces one by one?"
"I assumed the gods were too lazy," Zelgadis said.
"Ha! I won't contest that, but if we could have return Siephied to existence, we would have. Too bad we can't just cough up new souls. We cannot even destroy equivalent souls without taking our own soul and doing the astral equivalent of using it as a bludgeoning hammer. We can program our corpse to act in a certain way, but there's no going back. And I? When you get down to the bottom, I'm a subdimensional database given fleshy form and a makeshift soul. I can't contain that power, Lyos can't wield it. The best we can do is throw it all in the blender and have Lina go chaos on it again, hoping she can use the pieces to stitch it together."
"So, no blending ... this is like when the power of Lyos and Valwin cancelled each other out?" Amelia asked.
Claire nodded. "Right in one. If we just set it loose, it dissolves into the flow or it rushes into unstable little me. I then go boom."
That sank the mood more. Hmm, she had just shot down their hopes. Right.
"There's gonna be someone similar to both of us," Lyos said. "It's not quite like cessation of existence ... but it'll change into something that I would never be, I guess. But, I'll get rid of this damn curse."
Orun almost choked up, but physically only her dim smile faltered. Her emotions sunk to near poisonous.
For the first time, it occurred to Claire that Orun was about to lose another person whom she loved. Claire had known it, but hadn't found it anything worth really thinking about, nor had it evoked an opinion or feeling.
It meant something now, but she had a hard time understanding what it was to herself. It'd do her no good to explore it. She had to be a guardian, whether or not the plan fell through, whether or not her rebirth even happened.
Amelia bent down and put a hand on Orun's shoulder. Two leaders with loss in their life. Amelia didn't even need to think on what to do, or why to do it. It was just like her, to offer comfort.
Lyos with his curse couldn't get up, didn't have the energy to do what he wanted, and didn't know how to make Orun feel less awful. It tempted him to drop it all, but he didn't, because he knew many more like Orun would exist if there wasn't a god in place soon ...
... maybe Rangort was good enough after all?
Claire could not tell whether that was his thought, or her own.
That was unacceptable. She dissected the pieces and threads. At its root lay Lyos's compassion trying to balance two needs, two loves; Philia and Agape as some cultures defined them. Friendship, and universal love. The latter served Claire's needs better, and developing it might hypothetically make her own experience with carrying out her programming less unpleasant.
She wouldn't quite be herself, but then again, that didn't matter to her. Maybe the best way to be attached to people and like existing was a middle way. She could come to appreciate certain types of people, rather than the people themselves. Worth exploring, even if the look Lyos gave her was rather horrified, and what he felt even worse.
Horror wasn't something she'd take along, she decided.
· · · · · · ·
Night fell, and most went to bed early to be fresh in the morning. Claire meant to use her sleeping time for scouting, but Lyos distracted her with his hang ups about humanity. It had sunk in, by now, that Claire had decided against this after her little encounter with Lassandra. He couldn't understand.
This all dissolved into arguing about their identity, which was old news till Lyos wondered what their name even would be. That one was new, so she indulged it.
"Ragrairyos," Claire said.
"We don't actually know whether my personality's going to be in there," Lyos said. "Though, my name is pretty cool. How about Ragradyos? The d gives dignity."
"Claire needs to be in there too," she said. She tried pouting, but didn't like how it looked.
It'd be so convenient if he could just agree with her, but it became evident she was not the dominant personality by grace of being (technically) the older mind. At least in a separated dynamic.
"~ Claire, protip at life, don't ever say talk out loud about your wishes to brainwash people. ~"
Lyos felt very strongly about his mind being taken over, for good reason. However, the thought had come into her own mind uncalled for, just a natural product, and she could not choose whether to share it.
"~ You're going to take that value along into Ragradia with all your might, aren't you? ~" she asked.
"~ You bet. You're going to have a damn moral compass about possession whether you like it or not. ~"
Duly noted and taken into consideration regarding mental welfare, but with no moral value assigned. That somewhat satisfied him, but not by much. Lyos wasn't exactly a bastion of virtue, but he found it ironic how much more he had compared to Claire. That was also duly noted.
She was about to resume the name argument when Orun arrived, bringing along Milgazia.
Orun had a rather confused look. "He said he'd like to assist, but ... I'm not sure what with. He also asked about whether you're sure of everything."
"I absolutely am, more than ever," Claire said, before realizing she might have to ask what he even meant.
Milgazia approached her without bowing or much regard. Most of his emotions was weariness and doubt. "I would like to know why you plan to continue with your revival."
"Why? Because there needs to be a better god, I can make that happen. Now that Shabranigdu is back, it's all the more pressing, so I take risks."
That didn't ease his messy emotions at all.
"But if this machine was built under guidance of Valgaav—"
"Volphied," Claire said. "Valgaav is her general, but he doesn't have the wits to design this machine."
"Volphied," he said with an uncertainty in his voice. Ah, that's where the doubt came from, he didn't like having to think about evil gods. "If an enemy built this machine, how can we trust it will do what you want?"
"We are betting that Lina Inverse will have the upper hand in Elmegiddo. End of discussion, Milgazia."
She meant to sound confident, but she had plenty of doubt below the surface. Mentally she rewound Val's memories of his drawings, which he'd let her look at once in Kataart. Good order, she had never even noticed he hadn't been real. The construct was that good.
Rangort had thought all along that the drawings happened because of inspirational visions slung at the child. It wasn't certain at first whether he received them, but then he began to draw ... and play them all ... Xelloss took those drawings back every time, having been told it was the best way to check for whether he remembered anything of the past life ... nobody suspected ...
They should have. Val's hollow was unprecedented, but since it didn't disable holy magic per say, it hadn't reeked foul ... right under their nose the entire time ...
No, don't think about that. Emotions didn't listen to reason, but she could prevent them from getting worse.
Like waking from a haze, she got her mind on track. Lyos had reached out his healthy arm for her shoulder, now he pulled back.
Val's drawings had first and foremost been a clue what pieces went where, when it came to putting together the collapsed machine. However, there had been specifics too and if Valgaav could just craft messengers out of regular animals, he could have altered things after Lina had figured them out. There was no clear way to tell as of yet.
There. Done. She could think about this without getting emotional. Damn Sage.
"She fazes out sometimes," Lyos said. "She's still looking for Luna, if she thinks she's got a hold, this happens."
This was not in accordance to her honesty policy, but Lyos insisted they don't go tell the unstable dragon about their own unstability.
Hmm, now he brought it up, Milgazia did seem a little horribly broken. Nothing to see on the outside, but that was some hefty poison dripping off of him.
Would she know the right things to say if she felt sorry for him?
Not really, probably. She didn't need to do that, because Milgazia on his own said, "If I can be of assistance, I will do so."
How odd. Almost desperate to be needed, a far cry from the stoic dragon she knew.
"Yes, you can help. I want to ... try drawing someone into a dream, so I can speak with them. Luna Inverse. Will you dream for us?"
"~ Is that safe? ~" Lyos asked.
"~ We hid our presence from Valgaav well enough, this dragon will be easy. I want to know what Luna's up to, and I have no other way to be serving life right now but to get a hold of the angelsblood talisman. ~"
Oblivious to this, Milgazia nodded once. "Where must I sleep?"
"You can lay down on the couch, and wake and leave once we are done. I merely need a golden dragon's signature to pull in Luna."
He nodded again. Claire cast a sleep spell, whole Orun traced the magic. She had danced with Luna to catch the memories of gods, she would hold her soul's trail.
Luna got farther away from the disturbed north, but she was a human still and there were thousands of miles between them and her current location. She had to make a few stops for food and rest. If she was parallel to them, the night would soon stop her in her movement.
· · · · · · ·
"So this is your dream or your nightmare?" Luna tapped the cold, morphing walls of the Claire Bible dimension. "Or maybe it already was both and you couldn't make up your mind?"
Claire leaned against the wall and let it melt into a relief of her old dragon self. Lyos's consciousness took his human form atop her head. All human, except his coat blended into the scales.
"It's already started," Lyos said. "The moment Claire got out of the Bible, we've begun to merge. All that's left is for Lina to put the pieces together. Stay out of it, Luna."
"Oh me, yes, I am completely convinced now, my apologies. I'll retreat at once under the weight of having seen the error of my ways!" she hollered up from far below them. Her voice carried an undertone of a dragon's rumble, rather than this being a second voice.
Luna knew about blending human souls and godly power too well for listening to the argument there was no going back.
"So, you bring me here to argue the virtue of sacrifice, hmm?" Luna said.
"It's no virtue, but a necessary harm," Claire sneered. "Virtue implies value, but that differs per culture. Some call it heroic first, others tragic; there is no consensus, so I don't bother anyone with virtue. No, I just want to stop people from dying and it's clear that we need a better god on the scene. I want you to stop interfering, but to argue, I'd first need to know what you want."
"I don't want to lose my power," she said. "It's mine now, and it's awesome. But it also means I'm going to exist several hundreds years less than anyone cause of that damn reincarnation thing. Recycling into a god, offed by Megiddo, same thing. I want my own shot at an afterlife as I see fit, just like all other humans. I don't wanna get sacrificed."
"That has nothing to do with me," Lyos snapped. "Like we'd want your damn mind mixed in! Stay out of our business!"
"And what the hell is your business? Not being in hell. You're gonna stop existing, right? Why? Don't give me heroic bullshit here. Why do you believe this will work out?" Luna manifested a giant claw, pointing it at Claire. "You could just as well call her a dictator now. She gave up giving a shit about people when Val betrayed her. How's that gonna be good for people, hmm?"
Claire took a cue from Rangort and dropped a rock on Luna. "I beg to differ. I paused personalized affection only."
Luna's wrath set Claire ablaze, but she just killed the sensation of burning in herself. Perks of being a god fragment.
Startled at the rising contempt, Orun stepped between their line of sight. "Luna, why does it matter to you? None of this will affect you, and you're not doing this for Lyos's sake, right?"
"Yeah," Lyos said. "Do you really think we want you inside the new Phied? We don't need your egoism."
"What I think is that you'll just erase me in the process, like what happened with Laust. I bet my power can give you a boost."
"What did you hear? Is it something Filia speculated on?" Claire asked.
"Filia didn't need to speculate, she heard the criminals testify. Xelloss killed Laust to experiment with soul gates. I wonder why, maybe on how to steal powers? I bet they're preparing for something."
Chaos damn it all. Why did Xelloss have to drop that little detail?
"Laust died to cover for the southern sealed Shabranigdy and Xelloss is naturally curious and driven to compete with Filia. That had nothing to do with Elmegiddo," Claire said.
"Yeah, sure. Got any evidence for that?"
Claire fell silent.
In itself, putting a machine that can summon godly power to it in the middle of the world was questionable to any godly creature. Lina had dismissed the idea of telling this to Luna point blank, because they had no evidence they were not going to use it on her.
Now there was seeming evidence on the table they were sacrificing unwilling allies for reasons explicitly related to soul gates of mortals. Which Luna now knew could be used to pry power away from gods and into mortal souls, something she was never supposed to learn, let alone do. Orun now carried a fragment of Valwin, there was no denying it.
"Nothing to say? Hmm, I am so surprised. Why, Zelas put Xelloss in front of me and had him explain the whole plot. I could even taste his emotions, and she did not use her command to make him lie. I'd have noticed that since he dislikes it. I learned that Laust's death has nothing to do with my fate, yet here you are, not talking." Luna snapped her finger. "Oh wait, that did not happen. It's almost like there's a secret that'll make me do something incredibly bad ... for your plan. Obviously, I'd do it only because it's good for me."
"Do you really think Lina would sacrifice Laust?"
"I think Zelas and you all would. As for my little sister? She once was ready to sacrifice everything for a man. Who knows what she became while she was away exploring the worlds?"
With that, Luna kicked them out.
· · · · · · ·
The virtue of sacrifice ... oh, right. Residue of dreams fell in place, and she realize what Luna meant to do. She wanted to stop Lyos was participating in the rebirth.
Great. If Luna actually found Claire and Lyos here, that would be a problem. Nobody stood even remotely a chance.
So, how to get the monks to leave in the middle of the night?
She explained them Luna wanted Elmegiddo destroyed, and then decided to lie.
"We really ought to hurry and get there before Luna, though. When I shared dreams with Luna, I noticed a lot of remnants of Filia's knowledge there. She might have figured out how to channel godly power on her own."
"What?"
Time for ignorance, which she got by tilting her head just a little like a confused child. "Well, she is a chimera affected by the pillar and she's got control of how she changes now, right?"
Do please be afraid of what she could become, so she suggested quietly.
This was complete and utter nonsense. Being Siephied's channel wasn't anything one could become by picking up knowledge or chopping off pieces of gods. She'd seen Luna's transformation up close and it wasn't anything that could be modified into being a channel ... but she was the only one who had observed her during this process. Lyos was also here, but with his curse it wasn't the same.
It scared them just enough.
· · · · · · ·
Getting a reasonable escort of army proportion in the sky still took a few hours, then they had to hop them all across various beacons, and then fly into the distorted area. By morning they were above the sea, and it became harder to find any trace on Luna's whereabouts.
Was this the distortion of the ancient battle, or Luna learning? She might have leeched information out of Claire's dreams ... who knew?
Rangort resided in the outer line of the unstable zone, which did not allow immediate teleportation, but they could get close enough by a nearby island with a beacon. From there, it was a short flight to the god.
Short for dragons in that it took maybe half an hour at their top speed. Claire took on her smallest form and stayed close to Lyos, keeping down the pain of his curse. Orun sat behind them in silence, using her holy power on the dragon to help it fly faster and contain the curse's effects.
Rangort had projected leagues worth of giant worm in the sky, which looked like overkill to Claire but eldritch to Lyos. He was a mere mortal, size could impress him that way and power could inspire awe, both emotions Claire had never really developed. She didn't care to either.
"Daaaaamn ... " Lyos muttered. "It's gotta be like twenty miles long. Can we do that, after ... you know?"
"We can."
"How is this even possible?" Lyos asked. "There's so many pieces."
"Gods are far more in tune with the flow of the world," Claire said. "Many of those spare islands are actual matter from this world, called to them on adjusted natural law. Rangort's main body is the serpentine entity, the sky islands surrounding hir are upheld by their power."
As they rose higher, an angel shifted into the physical world before them.
"Please follow me," he said, before leading them to the sky above Rangort and past the islands. The southern dragons occupied those, and a few empty ones were reserved for the newcomers. The three leaders instructed their legions where to go, at which point the angel said to leave that to him.
They ought to join the strategy meeting, and he pointed at Rangort.
By now they were well above Rangort and could see a small group of dragons atop the god's head; monks of the south and priests of the second holy order of the east. "Go there."
"We are the land on Earthlord Rangort?" Azonge cried out.
"Yes, as you clearly heard," Ospirias said. "What's wrong, are you afraid?"
"No! Of course not! But to use a god as a landing site is surely disrespectful!"
"That is for the god to say, surely," Ospirias snapped.
"Let's just land," Milgazia said.
He made it sound easy.
It should be easy, really.
If not for unexpected things happening.
First, Valwin showed up to the and brought along storms and panicking sky spirits. Flying ahead became a little bit harder.
Five minutes later, Vrabazard joined in.
Just as Claire wondered why both of them had appeared at the same time, Luna fell down from the sky on burning wings, right behind Lyos.
"Hi there, heard you liked to sacrifice yourself. Bad boy, we're not playing that tune," she said.
Before he got a word in, she scooped him up and away she was. Off into the clouds that Valwin brought along.
Well, that had gone fantastically bad.
Milgazia looked back, as if to make sure that had really happened.
"Yep, that was Luna and we're in deep trouble," Claire said.
"What is she up to?"
"Stopping my rebirth, and apparently getting my siblings into a fight." Maybe she shouldn't sound so careless, cause that just panicked Milgazia.
"Why does she want this?"
Had nobody briefed this guy?
"Good question, let's answer it later."
Valwin steamrolled close to Rangort, irregardless of the damage it caused to the dragon armies. E should see them, but e didn't heed them ... and Milgazia noticed.
"Do we even matter to the gods?" he asked.
"You matter to me, but not to any of the others," she said, patting him on the shoulder.
And it could be debated how much he mattered. Azonge was cooperative, Milgazia was only notable because he lived. His value to her goals was not unique.
"Not even Earthlord Rangort?"
"No, of course not," she said. "The gods not caring has nothing to do with their disorientation. Can we get to a safe spot now?"
He didn't affirm this time, just swooped ahead. In the half turn, Claire got a look at the sea below them. Just a glimpse through the rushing clouds.
And because this apparently was going to be an all around meeting, there was the Zelas's Wolfpack.
"Milgazia, Azonge, there are devils around. Don't attack them!" she called out. At least not till they knew what Zelas would do.
They heeded her, as did the monks of Rangort (for now). Ospirias didn't.
Zelas's armies tried rather hard not to engage with the hostile dragons. Oh well, she had tried securing their safety.
Now, if Zelas was here, anytime now ... and there they were.
Draconic Filia rose to Milgazia's side, and Xelloss on her other side. He waved, but she looked frantic.
"Miss Claire, where is mister Lyos? Did miss Luna get him?"
"Yes," Claire said. "And what got you, that you're suddenly working with the Wolfpack again?"
"Nothing got me, I got the truth! And it's ridiculous! You all just presumed we'd be too weak to protect touchy information. Well, I'm going to talk to miss Luna and put everything on the table, like it should have been from the start!"
"Nice to know even gods are not spared that tone, miss Filia," Xelloss piped in, with a sprinkle of hope and amusement. "But this is really a bad time. We ought to find miss Luna, right?"
Lyos was ... somewhere else. He just saw lots of sea and chaos, that didn't help at all.
"I can probably give you a direction, once we're out of this storm," Orun said.
"Affirmative," Claire said. "Any minute now."
Filia didn't feel like waiting, but she had to. Claire tried to avoid getting any of her absolutely sick emotions near her, but at the same time, she was just a little curious at Xelloss.
He hovered in the social sense. Well, not like usual. He ... paid attention in a new way? Hard to tell.
The moment they were out of Valwin's turmoil, both Filia and Orun scried for Luna's trail, and found her headed east. She was too far off already to be seen, but following it was their best bet. Filia turned wings and shot off, but Xelloss lingered.
"Lord Beastmaster would like a word with you, though in this mess I seem to have lost trace of her. So I guess I'll just ask it," he said. "How much did you spill?"
"Nothing that'll endanger you, I'm just being communicative with my dragon clan," Claire said. "At least, I would be if they accepted me as the Aqualord."
Milgazia cast them both an odd look, which somehow ... worried Xelloss? He shot a quick glance at where Filia had disappeared. Probing possibilities, perhaps? He was more alert, and more ... he had something extra. Maybe his abstract art efforts were hard to digest.
"You did something that made you a lot more interesting, Xelloss."
His smile flickered, he forced it back and looked fake.
"I suppose I did something. I tried to imagine being her to figure out how to make her listen again," he said, finger pointed up. "I'm not sure how well that worked, but I am making some sort of progress, so it'll do. It'd be embarrassing if we couldn't get fusion magic to work again.
To her own surprise, Claire laughed. Of course he would, first child of the traitor wolf pack, find that a compelling reason to experiment with himself, when magic depended on social bonds.
Really, it all boiled down to logical choices and potential mental components. What worked for him might not work for others, and so it was for Claire too. Xelloss had tried long to get her interested in the world just by fascination, but it had never occurred to him he should have talked about the fabrication of personality.
"What's funny?" he asked.
"The way you accidentally helped me along my road," she said. "Now go with your dragon and be useful to Lina and your lords. I'll get to the center of Elmegiddo and wait there until I get to be useful for my people."
She didn't need compassion and empathy if she could just have an outsider's interest in the way minds worked, and for an added bonus, get herself a hobby.
· · · · · · ·
