by Eric Vall
Both of my minions were unskilled, Morrigan with her elven power and Rana with the Eye of Alipsis, and sooner or later if they continued to use them without training, they or someone else in our party would end up hurt or injured by their hand.
“I’m not chastising you because I want to upset you. I want you to learn something from your actions. What if you had gotten hurt? Hm? What if one of your sisters had gotten hurt? What would we do then?” I asked in a low voice, and Morrigan’s lips trembled as she imagined different scenarios in her head.
“I’m sorry, Master, I will work harder to control my power and learn how to use it better than I do now,” the elven woman whispered in a low voice, and I let go of her chin to stroke her cheek once more. Her skin was soft and warm against mine as the potion worked through her body, but I stared her down with a severe expression.
“We all should be more careful,” Rana interjected, and the elven woman bowed her head with my concentration momentarily broken from her face.
“Yes, I was referring to you too, Rana,” I stated in all seriousness.
“Wha-what?” The fox stared at me as she rested a paw on her chest flabbergasted. “I didn’t almost pass out because I pushed out too much energy!”
I let go of her elf sister and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Yes, but you are untrained with a sword, and yet, you keep using the Eye of Alipsis like you have been,” I firmly said as I stood my ground and rose up to my full height in front of her. “You don’t know how to use the Eye properly, and it could endanger your sisters.”
“Hey! That’s not fair!” the fox said as she stomped her foot, and I raised an eyebrow at her sudden outburst. “You said I could use the Eye of Alipsis during the battle against Tintagal, and now I can’t? That makes no sense!”
“This is a different situation, my dear,” I told her as I began to explain. “Out on the battlefield, there is enough room for you to maneuver and use the Eye as you please without endangering yourself or anyone on our side. Here, you are on a tight space on a mountain path with very little room to move around. If you had miscalculated your blows by even an inch, one of your sisters could have been hurt or even killed.”
My words sunk into the stubborn redhead, and she lowered her blue eyes from mine as she kicked out at the dead leaves at her feet. Silence had enveloped all of us, and I turned my head to the piles of Blood-Curdler bodies thrown about the rough path.
The four gods that aided us were gone, and I could no longer sense their powerful essences. When I turned back to my women, Annalise was the only one who had caught on, and her brown eyes were heavy with unasked and unanswered questions as I swung my head back and forth down the path in search of our visitors.
I knew the time when I would have to tell them everything, about my past, about being cast out of the heavens, and the truth behind Isolda, was fast approaching, and nothing I could do would stop it. It was a topic that had been heavy on my mind for a very long time, and I had dragged it out for long enough. I couldn’t go on keeping my secrets to myself when each of my minions had lain themselves out for me and spilled all of their deepest and darkest secrets.
I thought back on the time in the forest god’s dungeon, when Rana had told me about what had happened with the sorcerer and her family. It wasn’t something I took lightly, and it had brought us a step farther into being able to trust each other but would my minions… my women… my lovers trust me and stick by my side when I told them the whole story of my life, and how I came to be in that dungeon so long ago? Would they fear me and cower in my presence?
There were so many things about telling them the whole truth that made me uncertain. They had pledged their lives and souls to me, but this would be a true test of their words once they knew all of me. I hadn’t told them for many reasons, but the main one was that I wanted to protect my women from the beast that I was. The thing I knew to be true was that I was a different man than who I was when I resided in the heavens. I hoped beyond hope that my minions would be able to see that and look past my misdeeds. I wouldn’t say I was a better man or even a good man, but since meeting them, I was a different one.
If I had to reveal everything to them, I would have to tell them about Isolda. My minions had heard a few things about her in passing, but they had no idea who she was or what she did. I had described her briefly to Carmedy once, and I could still remember my first love’s beautiful face, but other than that, they knew nothing that had to do with her, and I would have liked to keep it that way forever.
My and Isolda’s fate had been intertwined so deeply that she was a crucial part of my story, and I knew that I would have to tell them about her first before I even began to tell them about who I was and where I came from. If the god in the castle above was who I thought it was, then the moment of telling would be sooner than later, but there was still hope in my chest that he wouldn’t recognize me or the power that came from me. It was unlikely, we had been too close for him not to know who I was even in my avatar’s form.
Not to my surprise, Annalise spoke first before any of my other minions, and I turned my head as the words slipped from her supple lips, “Those people were here again, those gods.”
“What?” Morrigan asked as she turned her head and stared at her sister in disbelief. From the expressions on Rana and Carmedy’s face, they hadn't noticed or seen our visitors. The swordswoman ignored their shock and kept her chocolate brown eyes on me.
“What did she say to you, the woman with the bow? I know you spoke,” The High Queen pressed, and I knew I would have to tell them something, and I went with the one option closest to the truth that I could come up with at this moment.
“I asked her what she was doing and why they were helping us,” I stated in a firm voice, and all eyes came to rest on my face.
“And?” The fox asked eagerly as she took a step closer, and I gritted my teeth without them seeing.
“She told me that the Sanctum of the Heavens has been opened,” I said, and I felt my first wife’s eyes narrow on mine for a second.
“But why are they helping us? Aren’t gods, ya know, the ones who kicked you out of the heavens?” Rana went on as she cupped her chin and ran over this new information in her head.
“Yes, they were.” I nodded to them, and Morrigan was the next to come closer as Fea and Macha flitted down and rested on her shoulders.
“It is like Nergal said,” the pale woman said as one of her delicate hands reached up and stroked the black feathers of Macha’s wing. “He told us his daughter and some friends stormed the gate into the heavens and tore them down. Maybe she is the one he spoke of. Maybe that gray-haired woman is Nergal’s daughter.”
“Yes, that is what I assumed,” I praised as I reached out and touched her colorless hair.
“What was her name?” Carmedy asked as she scrunched up her face.
“Ruituri, I think that’s what Nergal told Master,” the swordswoman answered, and the feline nodded in agreement as she remembered the name.
“Did you know this Ruituri, Master?” the elven woman inquired as she ran her white hair between her fingers and looked up at me with those mesmerizing black eyes.
“Not that I remember,” I told them truthfully, and each of them nodded in time to my words. “But I recognized Nergal vaguely though I never met his mistress, Cybele.”
“Do you know who would know?” The feline grinned as she rocked back and forth on her heels, and all eyes swiveled to look at her curiously. “Haruhi. Remember, she told us she knew a ton about all these gods’ and goddesses’ stuff. She read all those tomes and texts and stuff. She practically could be a professor on all this!”
Chapter Eleven
“Should we contact her, Master?” Annalise questioned, and without a word, I nodded and reached into my void pocket for the orb that Makar had given me so long ago in Valasara.
I turned the milky white sphere over in my hand as my minions crowded around me, and we heard the f
amiliar crackle as we all thought of the white-eared cat at the same time. For a second, just as before in the Liebe’s dungeon, there was silence on one end, then suddenly, we could hear the other cat’s voice as she sang to herself in the silence of the library back home on Canarta.
“Haruhi?” I called sweetly, and there was a loud crash from the other side of the orb as the dark-haired feline fumbled whatever she was holding in her paws.
“M-Master?” Haruhi called back anxiously, and I chuckled deeply in the back of my throat at her voice.
I could imagine her in the library right now easily, surrounded by the books and tomes that she loved so much. I had never been to Canarta, but I sometimes liked to imagine it as a hot place but not as sweltering as Valasara. It was an island, but I had been shown that not all islands were warm or tropical like the cold mountain of Machstein. When I thought about the short librarian we had met in the city of Eifersucht, I imagined she was comfortable as the lazy afternoon sunlight slanted in across her pretty face and illuminated the smattering of freckles across her round cheeks.
“Are you okay?” Carmedy asked in a concerned tone as she tilted her head closer to the orb. “It sounded like you dropped something.”
“N-no, I’m fine.” Haruhi laughed good-naturedly as we heard her shuffle around. “I was just on my way home from the market and dropped one of my bags.”
“We are very sorry that we startled you,” Morrigan said clearly, and Haruhi’s laughed lilted through the sphere in my palm.
“You guys are okay, don’t worry about it,” the white-eared cat assured us as we heard her trudge along whatever path she was walking, and soon, we heard the jingle of keys and the sound of the wooden door creak as it opened. “I should have known it was you because of the weird crackling noise, but it’s all right, I’m just a little jumpy today.”
There was a strange twinge in Haruhi’s voice. She sounded tense, like she was trying to force the happiness in her voice, and I immediately picked up on it.
“Is everything all right, Haruhi?” I asked with concern.
“Well, uh...” The librarian stuttered as she attempted to come up with an excuse, but I could see past it. We hadn’t spent much time with Haruhi, but I felt as if I knew her well from the times we had spoken to her, and there was definitely something going on that made her uncomfortable.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I assured her.
A soft purr reached our ears, and without even seeing her face, I could tell that Haruhi was blushing profusely.
“N-no, it’s better if I tell you,” Haruhi whispered hastily, and we listened as she closed the door and shuffled to a more private room where no one would hear our conversation. “I don’t know how to say this diplomatically, so I’m just going to say it.”
“What is it? You can tell us, Haru,” Annalise asked in a concerned voice, and once more, Haruhi purred at the kind words.
“A couple of days ago, some people came to visit me…” Haruhi started then took a deep breath before she continued. “I have no idea how they knew who I was or how I had any contact with you, but they came into the library late at night and interrogated me about you and your activities for a few hours.”
“Do you know these people?” I questioned as my whole body tensed. I could hear the fear in Haruhi’s voice.
“No, but I-I think you do,” the librarian murmured into the air as she spoke to us on her end. “They wore white robes, everything they wore was white, and there were golden bands around their heads. The robes had these really big sigils on them. I think you know the meaning of it, Master. It looked like a two half circles, and one is inverted so that they touch at the curve. Through the bottom half of the curve is a straight line that intersects both and on the upper curves of each half circle, there are two downward slashes. Can you tell me what it is?”
“That is not a sigil,” I growled through my teeth as my eyes narrowed on the sphere pressed against my skin. “That is a protection symbol, and I know it well. You do too, don’t you, Morrigan?”
“I do, Master.” Morrigan let in some emotion as she barked out the words, and her usually impassive face was strained with hatred. She knew exactly who had come and terrorized Haruhi just as I did.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Haruhi murmured through the orb, and we turned our attention back to the orb.
“I’m sorry, my dear, let me explain,” I soothed, and the heavy breathing on the other side of the sphere calmed at my soft voice. “You were visited by what I believe to be a branch of the Holy Band of Mages.”
“The w-what?” Haruhi cried, and Carmedy cringed against the loudness of her friend’s voice. “Why would they be here questioning me? I haven’t done anything!”
“You said they were asking questions about me?” I asked, and Haruhi went silent on the other end. “I have been informed that the Holy Band of Mages discovered that I was no longer held in my dungeon and are attempting to do something about it.”
“Okay, firstly, not cool on their part.” Haruhi giggled quietly, and a small smile spread across my lips then she went on. “Secondly, how did they even find me? I’m in Canarta! That’s almost a world away from Machstein! A world away from wherever you guys are now!”
“I can explain that it’s something very simple, and I’m surprised you didn’t know,” I chided her through a chuckle. “When a mortal comes in contact with a god or deity, something called a ‘divine imprint’ happens. Think of it as walking through some mud. It clings to your shoes and where ever you go, it leaves a small trace of the mud along with you. It is something that happens unintentionally, and I apologize if I imprinted some of my power onto you.”
“With the way that Haruhi acts around Master, she’ll take whatever imprint of his she can get.” Rana chuckled under her breath as she elbowed Annalise, and the only thing the High Queen could do in response was to roll her eyes and chuckle lightly in her raspy voice. From the soft intake of breath on the other end of the orb, I knew that Haruhi had heard what the redhead had said but didn’t protest or object.
“They must have followed the trail of my divine imprint and found you at the end like damned bloodhounds, for which I am very sorry,” I uttered sadly through the orb to the frightened white-eared cat. “I hope they didn’t scare you too much and that they won’t return to bother you anymore.”
“They tried to force me to drink some type of weird liquid,” Haruhi whispered, and Carmedy’s emerald eyes widened. “I didn’t let them, and they ran off after I pulled the dagger we hide in the desk in case of emergencies but… they threatened to come back…”
“Was the liquid they wanted you to drink a cerulean blue?” Morrigan asked, and I noticed that her hands were shaking.
“Y-yeah, why?” Haruhi stammered out, and from the tone of her voice, I knew the white-eared cat was on the verge of tears.
“Haru,” Carmedy said in a serious tone that I had never heard before, something that silenced all of us as she continued to speak. “Don’t ever let them make you drink that stuff.”
“Carmedy is right,” Morrigan stated firmly as she gripped my hand fiercely.
“W-why? You guys are scaring me, and I’m already pretty freaked out at this point.” Haruhi shuddered.
“I only know this because I was forced to drink it too,” Morrigan admitted, and I raised my eyebrows at her in surprise as she explained further. “We all know that I went to the Holy Band of Mages to be taught magic, and I was found out after a few months. The Holy Band made me drink this serum of which you speak. They held me down and shoved it down my throat. I told them everything they wanted to know and more. Whatever you do, do not drink what they offer.”
“S-stop with the scary stuff and just tell me!” Haruhi cried, and from the way she sniffled loudly, we knew that she was crying now.
“It’s a truth serum,” Carmedy stated in a grave voice. “I’ve never had to take it, but since Mauntenraion is a pa
cifist island, I’ve had to make enough of them to know what it is and what it does. Don’t let them give it to you, at all costs.”
“Shank ‘em with that dagger of yours if you have to!” Rana cried, and Haruhi let out a snort of laughter through the orb.
“Y-yeah, I’ll, uh, do that the next time they show up on my doorstep.” The white-eared cat giggled through the orb, and it was plain that she was feeling much better, the tension alleviated by the redhead’s joke.
“Other than that, are you all right? Nothing for us to worry about on your end, my dear?” I inquired, and the only sound that reached us through the orb was the soft crackle we were used to when using the sphere to speak to anyone.
“Y-yeah, I guess,” Haruhi muttered after a long moment with melancholy tinging her voice, and I sensed that something else was wrong other than the visit from the Holy Band of Mages. “My dad’s hearing has gotten worse, and he had an accident the other day, I’m just worried about him.”
“We’re so sorry to hear that, Haru.” the swordswoman whispered as her usually sharp eyes softened in on the orb in my palm.
“I want to say it’s all right and that everything is fine, but I just have a lot on my plate right now, and this whole Band of Mages or whatever is not helping.” The librarian sighed, and I nodded though she couldn’t see it from where she was.
“Oh, maybe we shouldn’t have bothered you.” Carmedy whimpered as her black ears lowered to the sides of her head sadly.
“No, it’s no problem. Anything for my five favorite adventurers,” Haruhi said through the orb, and all of my women seemed reassured by the cat’s words. “What is it that you needed me for?”
“We need some of that godly expertise of yours.” Rana smiled as she came closer to the orb and looked down at it with bright blue eyes that glowed in the dimness around us.
“Sure, what do you need to know?” the white-eared cat asked back.
“Have you ever heard of the name Ruituri?” I inquired, and there was a moment of silence on Haru’s end, then the sound of a door opening and the cat’s shuffling steps as she walked through the aisles of books in the library.