Luke Everhart
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Chapter 199 - Of Gods And Regret
🕑 Added 2025-02-17 11:30:03 +0000 UTC“Are you okay?” Rel asked as they traversed the yellow lit, hexagonal corridors of the ship. “You’re so quiet.”
“What? Am I?” Nar asked.
Rel looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry. You’re thinking about your training, aren’t you? That was selfish of me to drag you away from…”
“No, no! It’s not that!”
He sighed, and checked the lone corridor they were in. “I just… I don’t know what to think about… It. Them.”
“You mean the Radiants?” Rel asked him, frowning.
Nar scratched the back of his head. “I guess… Yeah. You know about how I… Well, you know.”
She looked at him for a moment, confusion evident in her deep, emerald eyes. In that light, Nar could’ve sworn that there was some golden deep in there somewhere as well.
“Oh! You’re talking about that time. By the pillars? When you aura was going wild?” she asked, her eyes going wide at the memory.
Nar nodded, his face burning.
“I mean, that was far enough, I think. But do you still feel like that?” she asked him, stopping to consider his flushed expression. “Do you still have all of that… Resentment?”
“Sometimes,” he confessed. “When I remember about… Stuff.”
And you. Trapped in this fucked up class because you wanted to save me… And stuck to that damned Source for the rest of your life, Nar thought, avoiding her penetrating gaze.
“It’s… Normal, I guess. It’s not like our whole lives from before are just gone,” she said, after a moment of silence. “But try not to think too much about it. And yes! I know it sounds crazy to just… Forget. But we’re forgiven now, you know? Well, at least you guys are.”
“Rel…”
“I just mean, don’t let it control you, like it did back then,” she whispered. “Memories are memories, and what’s the point in living in them? Best to just… Start fresh, you know?”
And can you? Start fresh? He asked himself.
He sighed. “Sorry. I'm being a…”
“Party pooper?”
“I have no idea what that means, but I can make a guess,” he said, frowning. “But yes, I am, and I’m sorry.”
She bumped into his side.
“It’s fine! Don’t worry about it!” she said, her easy smile back on her lips. “Come on! It’s not that bad to go to church! I promise you!”
Smiling, Nar resumed walking after her.
“So… Tell me about things,” he asked her.
“What things?”
“You know… The alfin, and the Source, and this Order thing. You know. Things.”
“Oh, just all of that?” she asked back, laughing. “Well, uh, there’s not a whole lot to say after what I told you last time at the party.”
Nar nodded. “I remember, but there has to be more, right?”
“Uh… Not really? I mean, yes, there’s a crap ton to it, but it’s really not that interesting,” she said, adopting a pensive look. “Let me see… What’s interesting?”
“If you can’t tell me…”
“No! No! It’s really just not that interesting!” she panicked. “Wait! Did you know that the Source is the most expensive thing we have aboard? More than the engines and everything else?”
“I do,” Nar said, grinning at her surprised shock.
“How?”
“K told me,” Nar said, still grinning.
“K?” she asked, frowning. “Who’s that?”
It was Nar’s turn to give her a look. “K? The… Strange old guy that gives you advice on your path?”
Rel shook her head.
“Lives in a really creepy and dark deck on the ship?” Nar continued, and once more Rel shook her head. “But his room is filled with lines of light, and there’s a computer and data and…”
Rel laughed and held up her hand. “Stop! I really haven’t met him!” she said.
“Oh. No way.”
She shrugged. “Why would I? I already know what my path is, and Aedina gives me all the help I need.”
“Aedina?”
“The priestess,” Rel explained. “It was starting to feel weird calling her the priestess all the time. First thing she told me was that I was safe, the second thing was that her name was Aedina, and the third thing was to just call her by her name.”
“Uh…” Nar said, nodding slowly at that. “So, is she your master, then?”
“Uhm, yes and no, I guess,” Rel said. “The Master of Rangers is my master, teaching me combat, archery, and all of that stuff, but Aedina’s teachings are more on… Repentance itself, the Church and all of that, I guess. She’s helping me understand about living with the Radiants as a sinner. On understanding what’s expected of me in order to repent for my crimes, and, I guess, just in understanding what my life is like now. And what the future’s going to be like…”
Sinner. The word would always taste bitter in Nar’s mouth, no matter how forgiven he was, how far he got from the B-Nex, or even how much time passed.
“And what’s that? The future, I mean?” he asked.
Rel interlaced her fingers behind her back, her expression thoughtful.
“Well, as an alfin, I’m always welcomed to join her order, even as an auramancer, and even as penitent,” she said. “By the way, there are actually a lot of auramancer orders in the Church, it’s not just aethermancers.”
“Oh, really?” Nar asked, genuinely surprised at that.
“Yup. The Order of the Alfin Protectors of the Sacred Source, and yes, that’s a mouthful, so everyone just calls them the Alfin Protectors, is actually an order of mixed aethermancers and auramancers.”
“And that works?” Nar asked. “I thought we weren't supposed to mix.”
“They make it work somehow, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “In faith, all things are possible.”
“Hmm…” Nar said.
“But I can also join the Order of Penitents and Martyrs…” she said, her tone trailing off.
“Those are both Church orders, though. Does that mean your future is tied in with the Church?” Nar asked.
She nodded. “In some way, more or less, yes.”
In truth, it was a bit surprising to hear all of that faithfulness talk coming from the archer, though given her path, past and the amount of time she spent in the ship’s chapel, he couldn’t really fault her. Though he wasn’t sure of what to make of the fact that the Church seemed to be asserting itself as such an undeniable presence, and even destination, in her future.
“I have a confession to make,” he said, steering the conversation elsewhere, unsure for the moment of what to make of Rel’s revelations.
She frowned at him. “Go on…”
“I don’t actually know what an order is.”
She stopped to stare at him, then burst out in incredulous laughter.
“How was that not the first question out of your mouth?” she asked him. “Or at least one of the first? I told you about the Alfin Protectors thinking you knew what that meant!”
“Sorry,” he said, hanging his head. “I have no idea. Kur’s the one studying on all of this stuff, you know?”
“And you’re just waving your sword around and cycling your aura?”
“Well… Pretty much. That’s what I am,” he said, grinning without a shred of remorse.
She groaned. “You need to do better than that, Nar! Your dad’s going to rely on you when you get him out! What are you going to do then, if you have no idea how anything works in the Nexus? Let me guess…”
He smirked. “Ask you guys, of course!”
She slapped his arm and stormed ahead.
“I’m joking! I’m joking!” he said, running after her. “I’ll do some studying once I have time.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “You can just ask us… Anyway, an order is… Ugh! How do I even explain that? Okay, so there’s the Crystal, right? Ignore the Radiants for now.”
“Okay…”
“Under the Crystal there’s the Primarch and the 24 Underarchs, yes?”
“One for each Radiant?” Nar asked.
“Yes! An underarch is like the top priest or priestess of one of the Radiants, if that makes sense?”
Nar nodded.
“Right. Then, under them, there’s the whole hierarchy that makes up the Holy Church, but it’s not all just the one, together, single kind of thing. It’s like… A body! Yes! That’s what Aedina said. The Church is like a body with all of its parts! Every part obeys the brain, but each part has their own responsibilities and they more or less govern themselves. Does that make sense?”
“Yes?” Nar said. “I think so.”
“Hmm! And there’s all kinds of orders! There’re military orders. There’re healers' orders. There’re admin orders, knowledge keeping orders, and so on and so on. Each does its own thing, and together, it makes up the whole of the Holy Church,” she said, opening her arms in a wide circle.
“And the Alfin Protectors are one of these body parts,” Nar said, nodding to himself. “They look after the Source aboard aetherships.”
“And in the Nexus too,” Rel added. “Don’t forget, there’s a whole lot of alfin back there, and they all need access to the Source too.”
“Wow. They must be huge then,” Nar said.
“We are! There’s like millions of them!” she said, smiling widely.
We? Nar thought. It had been followed by a “them”, but he knew that he hadn’t misheard.
“Do all the alfin join this order?” he asked, just to be sure.
“What? No! Of course not. Alfin just live their lives, like all the other sapients.”
Hmm…
“Anyways, the Source is obviously sacred, right?” she asked, to which Nar nodded. “So every single drop out there is accounted for. Say, if the one we have gets lost, the order will have to recover it, and Tsurmirel would have to pay a really, really heavy fine. And the Scimitar would probably never be allowed to carry the Source ever again.”
“That seems… Understandable, I guess,” Nar said. “I mean, it’s not something you should just go and lose!”
“Right? The worst though, is if it gets stolen…”
A shiver ran down the length of his back. “Stolen? Who in the Pile would steal a piece of the Source?”
Rel shrugged. “Aedina didn’t say. I don’t think she meant for the conversation to go there and she quickly changed the subject,” Rel said. “But if a drop of the Source does get stolen, it’s a huge deal! The order has its own Named Few and they are sent right away. Anyone caught with the stolen Source…”
“Death?” Nar asked.
“Or worse,” Rel said, with a shiver of her own. “And no. No idea what that means either.”
The Church, orders, Named Few, the Silent… Nar thought, as they walked in silence. The Nexus just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s like I haven’t seen anything yet. And all of this talk about the Church…
“Oh, look! We’re here!”
Nar looked away from the side of her face and realized that they were approaching a small, white and rainbow hued door, and his heart leaped at the pearlescent sight of it.
“Don’t worry,” Rel said. “You’ll be fine! And if you’re worried about Aedina, then don’t. She doesn’t bite! And she’ll probably be inside with the alfin under the Source, anyways.”
“Uh-hu,” Nar said, nodding.
The white door opened by itself as they approached it, sliding into the wall like almost every other door in the ship did, and a sweet, smoky scent reached Nar’s nostrils.
“What’s that?” he asked, inhaling deeply. “I’ve smelled this before…”
“The incense?” Rel asked. “It’s nice, isn’t it? So relaxing, right? It’s burnt as an offering to the gods… But come on.”
The inside of the chapel was a lot darker than Nar had expected, given the bright, pearlescent nature of the door, and for a moment, he couldn’t make much of what lay within.
“Come on in,” Rel urged him with a whisper, smiling back at him as her face disappeared in the darkness.
With the magnified and sudden return of his earlier apprehension, Nar stepped into the darkness after Rel, and the door closed softly behind them, plunging him into a deep darkness. With his heartbeat in his mouth, Nar took a step forward in that darkness… And in that moment, Something glanced past him, as though he wasn’t warranted or merited any proper attention. He was but a mote of dust floating in a tiny corner of nowhere in the endless Creation…
But then, there was a pause. Slowly, the gaze came back around, turning Its attention towards him…
“Nar?” Rel asked, shaking his arm. “You alright?”
Nar gasped and vision and sound rushed him. Before him, two rows of pews stretched towards the altar, where some kind of sculpture was carved in white, pearlescent polished stone and gold in what seemed to be a perfectly lit up room. Nar had never seen that sculpture before, but some part of him immediately recognized that it represented the multifaceted, crystalline physical form of the Great Crystal itself.
Above it, the symbol of the Holy Crystal was drawn high up on the wall, surrounded by the 14 Radiants of the 14 Great Houses, and around them, in slightly larger size, the other ten symbols of the remaining, unaffiliated Radiant Ones, formed an oval mural that glinted white, golden, pink and pearlescent in the dim candlelight.
The Big Guy, Nar thought, his eyes drawn to the only other symbol he recognized, even as his heart continued to gallop within his chest. The Gray One, God of Death.
The green-blue glowing silver lantern in the dark had been endemic amongst the Undeadz, its glow mirroring the one that shone from their eerie eyes. They wore the symbol on shiny pins of the same color in their uniforms sometimes, or they had t-shirts emblazoned with it, while off duty within their alcoves. There had been posters of it on the walls, and silver lanterns with green-blue glows had dotted the gun decks alongside all of the RGB glowing within them.
“Nar?” Rel asked again.
“Y-Yeah?” he said. “I-I’m okay.”
“You don’t need to be so nervous,” Rel said, frowning at him in half-concern and half confusion.
“What? No! I mean, no, I’m fine,” Nar said, trying to ignore the onset of sweat across his body.
Rel looked back towards the altar… No, to a small, heavy looking door nestled next to it, and Nar followed her stare.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She nodded. “That’s the Sanctum. That’s where the Source is…”
“Right… Well, go on in before you miss your slot.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, her eyes remaining glued to the door, and her tone startled him. It reminded him of Yearning Rel…
“Yeah, yeah. Of course! Go on. I’ll just…” he looked around himself. “I’ll just sit here. Enjoy the incense, you know?”
She smacked his arm, finally pulling her eyes off of that small door. “Idiot! I’ll be right back!”
He waved at her, waiting for her to disappear behind the closed door to the Sanctum, then he dropped heavily on one of the long, black metal benches.
What in the pile was that? He asked himself, his breathing ragged and sweat pouring down his neck and back. His legs had gone numb underneath him, weak and almost unable to bear his weight, and even now, his hands shook as he clenched them into trembling fists.
Had he imagined it? The darkness… That gaze… Huge and immense, belonging to Something much beyond him and his puny mind to comprehend.
“Agh!” he cried, raising a hand to his temple.
Just trying to remember the sensation sent a splintering pain shredding through his brain, as though his mind would explode inside his skull if he persisted in seeking to understand something he was not meant to even contemplate.
“It’s best to let it go.”
Nar startled, and found that a woman was now sitting at his side.
She was clothed in a white, pearlescent robe, with a strip of multi-colored lines stitched down the left side of her collarbone that reached down to her chest. The first line of color was metallic gold, the second one a rainbow of colors, and the last two were red and pink. Pointy ears poking out of her golden, bright, shoulder length hair completed the look, and her dark golden eyes stared straight ahead, towards the altar.
“You have drawn the attention of one of the Twenty-Five,” she said, dreamily.
Nar gulped, his heart pounding. “I-I have?”
She smiled at him.
“Don’t worry. Once in a while They see something that catches Their attention. Or someone. And They just take a peek,” she winked at him. “Consider yourself blessed that a god found you interesting enough to merit a second glance.”
“Right…” Nar whispered, staring towards the altar.
A god had just glanced at him.
A. God. Had. Just. Glanced. At. Him.
Him.
Out of nowhere.
No big deal at all…
“Don’t think too much of it,” she said again. “After all, this is not your first time speaking to one of the Radiants, is it?”
“What?” he asked.
“The Ceremony of Repentant Weapons?” she asked him. “All ex-Climbers stand before a Radiant and request to Climb, do they not?”
“Uh, it has a name?” he muttered, scrambling for anything to keep the conversation moving past his obvious startle. “And it, uhm, really wasn’t the Crystal that I spoke to?”
“Holy Crystal, at the very least,” she corrected him gently. “And everything has a name. And it depends. All Radiants take part, according to Their Wills, and some more, some less.”
“Right…”
Nar leaned back on the pew and took a deep breath.
“That’s it. Keep breathing,” she told him.
A Radiant just glanced at me… Nar thought, the thought forming slowly, like jell-o. Was It the same one that I talked to before?
“What-What about…”
He licked his lips, struggling to form his question.
“Your class change?” she asked. “Or Rel’s?”
Nar stared at Aedina in surprise. It was obvious that's who she was, but how had she known?
She grinned at him. “Rel has spoken much of you. Don’t worry! It’s all good, I assure you. Though it was your Master of Blades that came to consult me, as he must, in all the dealings that involve the Divine. And no, you are not the only one the faculty comes to consult me about… There’s an apprentice on-board with what we suspect is an affinity related to death, and more than likely, they will be sent to the care of the Order of the Keepers of Death, as any death related aspects are always trained and maintained under the direct supervision of the Gray One and his spirits.”
“Even for auramancers?”
“Especially for auramancers…” she whispered, her stare growing distant for a moment. “But to answer your question, again, it depends. Look there, upon the Holy Radiant Concord.”
The Holy what? Nar thought, confused. Does she mean the symbols?
“Do you see the one that is a twin-sword, surrounded by thorns?” she asked him.
He nodded, a little unsure.
“That is the Symbol of Meullum-Herfthuri,” she whispered, joining both her hands in an imitation of the Symbol.
Her two hands joined at the palm, with the right one pointing up, and the left one pointing down, and both index fingers stretched, while the others were contorted into painful looking positions, as if to mimic the thorns that covered the twin-blades of Meullum-Herfthuri.
Probably that’s exactly what it is, he realized, mildly horrified at the tight paleness of her finger joints.
“Meullum-Herfthuri is the God Martyr of Duty, Sacrifice and Steadfastness,” she said, her tone still a hush. “He is also known as the Merciful One, and the Granter of Second Chances. However, he is also known as the Twin-Faced One, and is also referred to as the Destroyer, and the Butcher God.”
Nar sat up straighter, a shiver running down his spine.
“It is Him that usually reaches out to the penitent,” the priestess said. “And grants a second chance to those who truly seek to make amends for their horrific deeds… Like Rel.”
Nar’s jaw tightened on its own accord. So This was the One who had reached to Rel, down in the B-Nex, offering her a way to penitence… And it was also to the Twin-Faced One that Nar owned his life, wasn’t it? But what should he say, given the price that Rel had been forced to pay that day? That she would likely be forced to pay all her life?
The Butcher… Damn if that wasn’t a title worthy of respect.
“As for you…” she said, her words trailing as she scanned each of the symbols. “I truly wouldn’t know who has made that promise to you, or pushed you down this unknown class. Apologies, but I continue to pray in the hopes of receiving divine enlightenment.”
“Oh! No! Don’t worry!” he stammered. “And, uh, thank you!”
Her eyes danced as she returned them to him. “You’re just as Rel described… Reliable. Strong. And sweet and innocent, despite everything you’ve been through… Despite everything done to you.”
Nar kept a frown from his face and looked away from her penetrating golden stare.
“Rel holds a great debt to your party,” Aedina said. “In her heart, in her soul, she will do anything to repay it, but she holds herself accountable to you above all else… And I hope that you will never take advantage of that. Nor of her.”
“What?” Nar said, snapping his eyes right back to hers. “I would never do that!”
“Hmm. No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she mused.
She eased a crease on her robe with careful, long and purposeful gestures. “Admiration, debt and… Worry. These are the things she feels the most for you.”
“Worry?” Nar asked, unsure of whether or not he even wanted to know.
How long is that damned woman going to take? He wondered, glancing at the narrow door to the Sanctum. And shouldn’t this priestess be in there with her?
“Indeed. And can see why,” Aedina said.
A finger suddenly pulled his chin sideways, and Nar found himself face to face with her golden eyes once more. Drawn in, his muscles relaxing as he peered into the depths of her stare, finding pearlescent pink and rainbow within…
“In your fights, and even here, now… I see it. It’s very faint, and one must go looking for it, but it’s there, nestled deeply within your aura, despite all of your efforts to keep it concealed.”
Nar sought to pull away from her all-encompassing golden eyes, but he found that he could not. Or perhaps that he didn’t actually even want to. They were such kind, understanding eyes after all…
“You know of what I speak of, don’t you, Nar?” she asked, her eyes growing before him, pulling at him, as though to swallow him whole into that aetheric reality. “Saving your father drives you, but when things get rough, and you need to dig deep, it’s something else than you hold onto, isn’t it? Something else that answers your call…”
He remembered shining blue death falling upon the fleeing Climbers. He screams of utter agony and all of those sounds in the purple darkness, where all of those people had been left behind to suffer as he fled. He remembered burning corpses on a bridge, and cannibals assaulting a cubeplant…
He remembered a shiny, metallic blue dot at the tip of a finger, and the fists and kicks raining down on him, curses and insults hurled at a curled-up child. An Unclean.
He remembered the machine, draining him dry, reaching for his very life essence, and he remembered what had befallen the Unclean, trapped in their neighborhoods as that plague ravaged through them.
He remembered the cries and the begging coming from the back of that house, where he had gone in desperate search of food… And there, at the very bottom of it all, a child screamed. It screamed and screamed and screamed.
Not in fear, but out of grief. Out of rage. Out of resentment for all the unfairness and injustice that had been piled upon him. Of all the things that had been done to him, and of all the things he had been forced to witness… And these had all been things that should have never happened were the Crystal truly been All Kind and Merciful.
And at the bottom of it all, he remembered… Pop.
His aura exploded, deepest darkness and brightest, sterile white flaring from his core, flooding through his body and mind.
“GET OUT!” Nar roared, jumping to his feet.
Angry, snarling and snapping aura covered him in black and white, pushing the pews aside, shredding through the one he had just been sitting on and forcing the priest to leap away from the reach of his shrieking aura.
“Nar?”
In an instant, his aura vanished, retreating back whence it had come from, and he looked towards the altar to find Rel staring back at him with a confused and hurt look.
“You have to let go, Nar,” Aedina said. “Or you will one day regret it all. Your path. Your affinity. Your choices… You will end up somewhere you never wanted to go.”
Nar balled his hands into shaking fists and clenched his jaw. He wanted to shout. He wanted to scream! Who was she to bring it all back to him like that? And she hadn’t just seen into his mind… No! She had forced him to live through it all again! Through. It. All. Again!
“What happened?” Rel whispered.
Nar snarled through his teeth, memories and feelings, sounds and noises and smells roaring in a mess within his head. What could he even say? And with Rel staring at him like that, like he had offended her most important person in the world?
He turned and stormed off.
“Let it go, Nar!” Aedina's words chased after him. “Or you will come to regret it all.”
Comments
Faces The Wind
My hope that Nar was living in defiance of something that was only pretending to be a god just took a hit. Actual gods would be so much harder to oppose, that takes playing their games because you are too weak but they are bound by their rules. And screw that priest. She blatantly screwed with his path and potentially his affinity for her own purposes! I have a personal rage against that sort of thing and am worried for rel on top of it all. Please don't join the order of martyrs, Rel!
Kulshan
Hope he does
Tristan A
Well, it's interesting. Obviously from one perspective if Nar wishes to live a "happy" life he needs help and adjustment... BUT, isn't that what the powers to be want him and all the climbers to do? To forget and forgive and move on? That's how billions or trillions of people have lived in destitute conditions for probably millions of years, without a single one of them even knowing the cause of it all. Because they "healed." A sword doesn't need to be healed because it's sharp and can hurt people. That is not say to say Nar shouldn't seek help regarding figuring out his mind and emotions. I'm just being a little introspective on the nature of "healing" he should be looking for.
Matt M
I have a feeling he is going to end up tearing the whole thing down one day.
Uroš
Nar needs help but he needs to ask for it, not have it forced on him like this
