by J. Langland
Beragamos blinked at this unexpected request, taken by surprise, but he quickly nodded. “As you request, Your Godship.”
Etterdam, Arcem Conclave: DOA + 14, Dawn
“You seem rather morose today,” Lilith commented to Sentir Fallon as the two of them and Aodh sat watching Etternon, the local star, rise above the horizon while sipping local ice wine. They had been discussing their next steps.
“Things are getting awkward on Nysegard,” Sentir Fallon replied sourly.
“Awkward?” Aodh asked. “There are many words for that wasteland; awkward is not typically one of them.”
Sentir Fallon snorted. “The Storm Lords, whom you may recall have been of considerable assistance to us, are making a very significant advance upon one of the largest resistance cells, a place called the Citadel of Light.”
Lilith groaned, shaking her head. “How overly melodramatic!”
“Yes, well, in any event, they have been raising forces and planning a huge purge of the Citadel for the last few thousand years, and are now putting it in place,” Sentir Fallon said. “I have been working diligently to withdraw Tiernon’s forces from the plane in order to both assist them and to cover my own—our own—dealings with them; I don’t want to lose too many avatars and saints. It’s a long story, tangled-web issues, you might say.”
“And so your betrayal of Tiernon is making you sulk?” Aodh asked.
Sentir Fallon shook his head. “We have discussed this many times; it is not a betrayal. Not if I can keep the casualties to a minimum and over a long enough period. It’s called managing the situation so that all parties arrive at a mutually agreeable state.”
Lilith rolled her eyes. “Whatever you need to call it to keep your stomach calm. What’s the issue that has you so concerned?”
“Is it the heir of Orcus in Nysegard?” Aodh asked.
Sentir Fallon grimaced in semi-disagreement. “Not so much. While Orcus was an ally of the Citadel of Light, this Tommus has a very real and current grudge against Tiernon and his forces. Further, I believe he is still too weak to risk his own resources on assisting the Citadel. No, the problem is on Tierhallon’s side.”
“What do you mean?” Aodh asked. Lilith was staring straight ahead into the rising Etternon.
Sentir Fallon sighed. “I have worked to keep both Tiernon and Torean’s forces out of Nysegard and the fray, as I’ve said. However, Hilda of Rivenrock—the one who is investigating this Tommus demon and Sir Talarius—has managed to insert herself into the Citadel of Light and has dragged Inethya, the Prophetess of Nysegard, and Dashgar, the Attendant Archon, as well as another of our saints, and several saints and archons of Torean, into the entire mess.”
“So they are going to be there to defend this Citadel?” Lilith asked.
“It appears so. They are also working to coordinate with the avatars of the other Siblings.” Sentir sighed before taking another sip.
“And you can’t stop or discourage them?” Aodh asked. “I thought you were in charge of that localverse.”
“I am, but there is only so much I can do without raising questions, and Beragamos went over my head and got Tiernon’s explicit approval.” Sentir Fallon scowled as he said this.
Lilith frowned and looked to Sentir. “Beragamos will not be there, will he? That would be a rout!”
“Indeed!” Sentir closed his eyes and shook his head. “Fortunately, he is not going. However, I am still left with two possibilities.”
“Two possibilities?” Aodh asked.
“Yes,” Sentir said. “The first, and most likely, is that the Storm Lords will fail in their plan to revive the works of the Dark Apostle Stoivenychas, and will suffer serious losses at the Citadel thanks to divine intervention from Dashgar and Inethya and the other avatars—”
“Which would make them very unhappy with you,” Aodh interrupted.
“Us,” Sentir corrected him quickly. “But indeed, and thus complicate other things.”
“Or? The other possibility?” Lilith asked.
“Or they succeed in reviving the work of the Dark Apostle Stoivenychas and the Five Siblings take an incredible, mind-numbing defeat that will be extremely uncomfortable and difficult to deal with,” Sentir said.
Lilith shrugged. “However, you will have advised against it, and have been overridden by Tiernon himself. It will not be your fault.”
“Yes, but it will raise questions and discussions I would rather not have to deal with.”
“So, what is the probability that they can recreate the works of the Dark Apostle Stoivenychas?” Aodh asked.
Sentir shrugged. “A few centuries or so ago, I would have said none. A tremendous amount of his work was lost with him. Clouds Of Disintegration are very good at eliminating things.” Sentir sighed. “However, they have another ally who has considerable experience with the work they are interested in.”
“Who?” Aodh asked.
“An archdemon named Exador,” Sentir Fallon said.
“The same archdemon involved in this whole Astlan—Lord Tommus thing?” Lilith asked in surprise.
“The same,” Sentir Fallon said, nodding.
Lilith shook her head. “What an amazingly small multiverse!”
The Inferno: Mid Third Period
“I am so glad you were all finally able to come to breakfast,” Captain Cranshall said with a tight grin as the last of the expedition to the melted castle sat down in the mess. Cranshall, Heron, Dante, Barabus and the four knights all crowded around the small mess table, while XO Stevensword looked on from the doorway.
Sir Lady Serah stared bleary-eyed into the cup of hot tea in her hands. “Lack of sleep is a severe problem when dealing with a hangover.”
Barabus sighed over his own tea. “What exactly did we informally agree to last night?” the Arch-Vicar General asked.
Chancellor Alighieri groaned and said, “I think we may have agreed to allow Melissance and her brutally beautiful bodyguard to join us in our quest for Talarius and the greater demon.”
“Does it strike anyone else that allowing a fallen avatar and the wife of an archdemon onboard might not be the best idea?” Sir Samwell asked. Of all of them, he seemed the least hungover.
“It has struck me so several times,” Heron said. “However, they were so pleasant and persuasive, I found it nearly impossible to disagree with them last night.”
“We do sort of owe Melissance something,” Sir Lady Serah said.
Gadius and Gaius both groaned, putting their heads in their hands at nearly the same time.
Barabus raised an eyebrow. “Her story was quite compelling. We truly did her wrong—Talarius in particular.”
Gadius sighed. “Reflecting back upon it, our reactions at the time do seem particularly mean-spirited, unjust and out of line with Tiernon’s own teachings. In retrospect, I am not sure why we were so certain she had chosen ghoulism.”
“And why have we never questioned it until now?” Gaius asked.
“So did you formally agree to their joining us?” Captain Cranshall asked, clearly not thrilled with the idea of having two such passengers.
“Only a short-term agreement to negotiate a contract detailing the rules of our engagement and cooperation,” Dante replied, his voice slightly muffled due to the fact that his head was resting in his arms on the table.
XO Stevensword moved suddenly, making room in the door for a member of the galley crew. “You may wish to raise your head—we have bacon, ham, eggs and toast arriving!” Stevensword said.
“Ugh… grease…” Sir Lady Serah groaned.
Oubliette: Early Fourth Period
“So how many more sessions are there?” Tom asked Phaestus as the others filed from the room.
Phaestus shrugged. “My lesson plans call for another five to six sessions, then we have practice sessions.”
“How are we going to practice?” Tom asked. “Do you know anyone who would want to volunteer for a stay in Tartarus?”
Phae
stus chuckled. “In terms of our normal clientele, very few are so trusting.” He shook his head. “However, it is not necessarily unpleasant. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Tom tilted his head and looked questioningly at the god.
Phaestus smiled. “’The prisoners are all in suspended animation of some form, depending on their species. While there, they dream.”
Tom nodded; he knew this. “As is the case with Prometheus; he continuously dreams that an eagle is ripping his liver out while he is chained to a stone.”
“Exactly.” Phaestus nodded. “Most people assume that his punishment is literal, but that would be very boring for the eagle as well. Very few eagles are that vindictive. Actually, only Zeus in his eagle form is that vindictive, but even he has better things to do and would eventually give up. Thus the dream sequence.”
“It does seem efficient,” Tom agreed.
“It is. We can custom tailor the dreams to create the perfect agony or hell for the prisoner without having to have some demon or another creature saddled with doing it.”
“Of course, demons do love torture,” Tom pointed out.
“Yes, creative torture is something they tend to enjoy, but even so, it gets old over time, particularly if the punishment is particularly redundant and repetitive,” Phaestus said. “However, we can do other sorts of torture that are more subtle and disturbing.”
“Such as?” Tom asked.
“How about a glutton in a room full of delicious-looking cakes, pastries and cookies? He or she feels compelled to eat them, but finds them a bit dry. Ideally, one would dunk them in some milk or other liquid, but the container is perpetually empty,” Phaestus explained.
Tom frowned. “Pretty sure that was a TV commercial for the milk industry.”
Phaestus shrugged. “Who knows more about torture? Imagine being kept perpetually pregnant and lactating and attached to a milking machine three or four times a day?” Phaestus shuddered. “I’m a male, but I can sympathize for female animals in such a hell.”
Tom shook his head to clear it. “Back to the point of it not being necessarily bad. Do you mean that we can program pleasant dreams?”
“Indeed.” Phaestus nodded. “In fact, we were working on developing dream programs to sell to deities who wanted to reward followers—minions or others—with a few centuries of pleasure. That was interrupted, of course.”
Tom shook his head. “I get it, but it seems like a very odd product.”
Phaestus shrugged. “At some point, it’s all about killing eternity, isn’t it?”
“Killing eternity?” Tom asked, before suddenly remembering his conversation with Tamarin. “You mean immortal existential dread?”
Phaestus grinned. “Indeed. Being immortal is not necessarily easy.”
Tom shook his head. “So this place”—he gestured to their environment—“is about sixty thousand years old?”
Phaestus nodded. “Almost sixty-five thousand years since we began construction.”
“So when was Vosh An-Non, the first D’Orc, created?” Tom asked.
Phaestus inhaled, thinking. “I wasn’t there myself, but from what I was told, it was about four thousand years before we came up with the plans for Tartarus. Vosh was just over two thousand years old when I met him.”
Tom shook his head, not being able to comprehend these sorts of time scales. “So exactly how old are the gods?”
Phaestus barked a laugh. “That is a very complex question. It depends on which gods you are talking about—not only pantheons, but meta-pantheons and specio-generational pantheons. Then, when you consider the nature of time, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“What do you mean? I’ve been talking with Tamarin and Erestofanes, but I’m not still not clear on this,” Tom said.
Phaestus shrugged. “In the grand scheme of things, time is an artificial construct that only exists in Midgard—the Planes of Orc or Man, as one would have it. The Elemental Planes have no concept of time. The Outer Planes are reflections of Midgard so they have time, but it’s not absolute. The Astral Plane is even weirder; time there is subjective and relative to the person or spirit in the Astral Plane.”
“I have heard and read some of this, but I am not sure how, if time in the Outer Planes where the gods live, is all relative, a reflection of Midgard, then I am not sure what this means for them or how they evolved there if there is no fixed time,” Tom said.
Phaestus shook his head. “No, they did not come from there. None of the gods did. All of the gods, of whatever specio-generation, evolved or were created on the material planes and then migrated to the Outer Planes. That’s why they are so focused on the material planes. They really can’t give up their fascination with materiality.”
“So you evolved there?” Tom asked.
Phaestus grinned. “Evolved is a complex term. Evolution is a process that happens to a species, not an individual; however, for animanic beings, mana wielders, there can be forced or controlled evolution; induced living mutation, if you will.”
“I am getting confused,” Tom said.
“Welcome to the club.” Phaestus grinned. “We—and I mean most of us who are interested in studying such things—do not know who the first gods were. We believe they were some species, or multiple species, that did evolve and learned, or developed the ability to harness mana and animus. These beings subsequently created many other species, such as the Sidhe, some of whom eventually grew or evolved, or became newer gods.”
Tom was going to need time to think that through. This was quickly spiraling to a bigger, more complex conversation than he had intended. “So I think I am getting off-topic from my original question,” he said. “How old are the current gods we are dealing with, such as you and your family?”
“I have multiple families.” Phaestus grinned and winked at him. “However, I get your point and will answer the slightly broader question first. The current specio-generation of gods, those that are mostly humanoid and that we interact with the most, are less than a billion years old as a whole. And that includes the Titans; the Olympians are perhaps half that age.”
Tom shook his head. “Are you saying that you are half a billion years old?”
Still grinning, Phaestus said, “I don’t actually know.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked.
“I think I am a few hundred million years old, although obviously I don’t remember all of that time. However, there has been a ‘me,’ if you will, extending back that far.”
“A ‘me’?” Tom was completely lost.
“My core animus, or a contiguous and continuous regeneration of it. Meaning a pure, single strain of perpetually regenerating-slash-recycling animus that has maintained a continuous consciousness over that time period,” Phaestus said. “I just do not have concrete memories spanning that entire time. Much of it has been lost in the recycling process, if you will. Older and older memories sloughing off like a dragon’s scales as new memories, or scales, are formed.”
Tom sat silently for a while, trying to digest that. “That seems rather daunting, frightening even, and I think I mean that in an existential sense.”
Phaestus grinned. “It does, but it’s not that bad. That’s the beauty of the Phoenix Cycle.”
Tom nodded. “Tamarin and I talked about that a bit.”
“I suspect that the Phoenix Cycle is the one key thing that makes gods possible. If a being can master the Phoenix Cycle, they can keep going for a very, very long period of time. It is the ultimate regeneration, rebirth.”
Tom nodded and then paused. “But wait, isn’t that just reincarnation? Your other pantheon, the Nyjyr Ennead, are proposing to do exactly that.”
“Sort of,” Phaestus said. “The processes are similar; however, reincarnation is simply the repackaging of animus in a physical, material, body or form. When we typically talk about the Phoenix Cycle, that is a rebirth or recycling of the animabody, the entire animus collection.
&nbs
p; “Those we call immortal—demons, avatars, gods—have the ability to maintain their animus, or soul, without materiality. Mortals do not; not without assistance, whether arcane or divine. Thus, mortals can repackage, rebind their animus to material forms upon death. Immortals can incarnate at will, subject to mana constraints, and form material bodies or dissolve them,” Phaestus explained.
Tom shook his head. “That is heavy. I’ve got a lot to think about. I appreciate it.”
“No problem; it’s all part of the cycle.” Phaestus chuckled.
All part of the cycle? Tom worried as he left the control room. He did not like where that phrase took his thoughts. There was no way he was part of any Phoenix Cycle. He could see now that many of the others might be thinking along this line, but it was clearly impossible. Orcus’s animus had been completely drained and lost; there was no core amount of animus left to recycle.
Further, such recycling, if it had been possible, should have been done several thousand years ago. It would not be randomly happening on some far-off technology plane. Tom had not spontaneously regenerated himself on Earth. He had a completely normal mother and father. Or had had a father, as well as a stepfather. He was sure his real father, a physicist, would have laughed at such crazy spiritual nonsense.
Perhaps he would go for a flight around the volcano, get some exercise and clear his mind before the day’s council meeting. He wanted to be clear of disturbing thoughts so he could practice some more on his shapeshifting with clothes. He’d spent a couple periods last night doing this, with Antefalken’s coaching, and it would take several more nights. This clothing business was much harder than simple shapeshifting. Creating something that was you, but physically separate and materially different—that was very tricky.
Freehold, Lenamare’s Dining Room: Late Fifth Period
“I want to take this moment to thank you for such a gracious going-away dinner!” Hilda raised her glass of Amiepen 429 Toristan, one of her best reds, in a toast to Lenamare and Jehenna.