God Squire

Ch. 3 Rustling

In Avalik there is the believed and those believed in. Faith is power and that power can be infinite or finite, just or corrupt, real or imagined, but exists nevertheless. To have faith in Avalik is to have understanding even in the hardest of times, so to be faithless, to doubt, though natural, can be a real bummer.

Born and raised under the faithful banner of the Squall, Chill had spent his entire life in service to the Storm Mother, Odith, and never questioned anything. She was a goddess forged in the blizzards and hurricanes of the Yestermoor pantheon of deities.

When he was but a child held aloft the lightning rods during a mighty thunderstorm daring lightning to strike him, an event that took many of his kin. He trained and ached in the muddy training fields as more of his brothers and sisters fell. The grief channeled into rage for to power the magic of his faith, that there was balance in the chaos of the storm. Becoming a berserker like his father and his grandmother before him. He questioned nothing.

Then came the crimson fields. Battle after battle against the Dusk Conclave and their shadowy god. Chill learned the more you kill an enemy the easier it becomes to forget they're people. Who's beliefs have defined them much like Chill's does him.

The knights of the Dusk Conclave wear an armor made of darkness. When slain the armor dissipates from their bodies, leaving them in common cloth and helm doffed. Chill never paid attention to the slain enemy, laying their expressionless, until the last battle where he saw a boy, a child, dead at his feet. This was his greatest enemy, yet he knew this was wrong. So he leapt out of the battle to reassess and now...

Now, as he fell through a seemingly endless dark void, he questioned everything. Why did they battle the Dusk Conclave? Why did his friends have to die because of some age old grudge between two gods? Why had the Storm Mother forsaken him?

The most pressing question was, how far will he fall for? Thankfully, another hole opened and he crashed into a pile of leafs.

He stood in a rustling and found himself tired, but mostly unharmed. Around him was a dime of plant life. A calming alcove that he was standing in the center of, Perhaps, his luck was changing.

"You killed him!" A woman yelled.

The brave willed for his spear to bolt into his hand and turned on the potential enemy, but nothing came. Because the Storm mother's power was far from him now? Had his doubt already broken years of faithful service?

Instead of a foe he found a young lady, around his age, in magus attire. Her hair and eyes a glimmering silver, but otherwise of average features. Her robes featured a myriad of arcane glyphs: wands, pentacles, chalices, and swords that seemed to shift and faintly glow. Her staff, of long smooth ivory wood, had a violet colored gem in the tip. Chill had only dealt with his tribe's shamans and battle shadow mages but she seemed something entirely different. Unbound by the kinds of magic he knew.

"Hello," He smiled uneasily. "I did what?"

"Miremoss," She said, as if that name meant something. "You fell right on top of him and scattered his being to the winds."

Chill looked around seeing nothing but the remnants of a pile of leafs. "Who?"

"The god of the island!" She exclaimed, then took a breath and sat. "He was the pile of leafs."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Chill frowned, then started picking up the leafs. "Maybe if I pile them back together..."

The woman sighed. "There's not enough time. We've got to get going."

"Going?" Chill paused. "I do t even know where I am?"

"This is the isle of Grey Moss," She stood and grabbed him arm. "We better get moving before they figure out you've killed their god."

Her grip tightened and Chill decided it was better to flee with his witness to deicide than deal with the locals of Grey Moss. They exited the alcove into a spiraling realm of towering metal and flying carriages zooming around. Others surrounded them, humans in odd clothes with tiny glowing mirrors in their hands.

"We're not in Yestermoor anymore, are we?"

"The crimson fields?" She said. "No, far from there. Your warring pantheon is very far from here, in more ways than you could possibly know. I suggest you do as I say when I say if you want to get home safely."

"That's enough condescension," Chill said and waved her grip off of him. "Who are you?"

She sighed again, giving him the impression she did so a lot. "I'm Blythia, magus trained at the Concealed College in the Arcane Arts, chronomancer of the highest order, Oracle of Past Promises, and the Mistress of Yesterday."

"I... am more confused," He said.

"Of course you are, you're the fool," She smiled, as if that explained everything. "I'm the Magician."

"You think I'm stupid?"

"No, I think that's your role in the grand joke," She said. "Have you not heard of the Tarot, the Major and Minor Arcana."

"No, I was raised in the Mother Storm," He said. "I know battle and chaos and order brought by the end of a conductor spear." He went to hold his spear aloft, only to remember he didn't have his loyal blade. "I must have lost my connection in the void."

"Why were you in a void?"

"I think I insulted a god," He said, though he still didn't know. He had so many questions yet not the words to ask them. Nor the patience, so like all unknowing men trained to move forward, he trudged.

"Fickle things gods," She shrugged. "Almost as bad as us mortals."

"I guess," He frowned, though doubted someone titled the Mistress of Yesterday's mortality. "Why are you here?"

"I'm simply a catalyst, a guide on your journey," Blythia said. She began walking through the city again and he followed. "In short, I'm here to aid you."

"Why?" He asked.

She shrugged. "In short. Because helping you helps me."

"Helps you what?"

She laughed loudly as she walked gracefully through the crowd.

Chill paused, fearing this magician was manipulating him, seems she saw him more as a resource for her plans, than actually wanting to help. Yet all these other people were stranger still and he had little choice.