I stood in the wrecked living room that Celameth, Alis, and I had lived in together for a few precious months. The thick carpet was torn up and burnt in places, showing the seemless grey floor beneath it. Those wonderfully welcoming sofas were scattered all over the place, wrecked and burnt beyond repair.

What had been a precious home for me was now ruined.

‘Klarric,’ Alis said. ‘We have to bring her into our home.’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

Something strange was interacting with the tight seed locked deep within.

She averted her eyes. ‘No. But… But I cannot keep you— We cannot keep her in the dark any longer.’ Alis looked at me, her beautiful freckled face still troubled but resolute in her decision. ‘She needs to know what we know.’

‘Why can you not tell me here?’ Celameth asked.

Alis turned to her, ‘it will not be a short discussion, and I never liked this place. I like it even less now.’

‘Come here, Alis, Celameth. I’ll take you there now.’

‘No need, I have already started my preparations,’ Alis said, before fading away.

The seedling knot within me eased slightly.

‘Where’s she gone? There was no magic. I couldn’t feel the mana echo.’

‘Just come here, we’ll explain it to you in a moment.’

Celameth made her way over to me. She walked in a regal manner, gracefully flowing with a straight back which once again made her appear as if she was royalty and I a mere peasant. Which I really was compared to her.

‘What’s the matter, Beloved? Are you not pleased to be alone with me once again?’ Her regal manner slipped, and she rushed over towards me, catching me in a warm hug. ‘I must admit that I missed you whilst I waited for you to arrive. It is really good to see you again.’

Once again the flip between the regal persona and the beautiful woman persona made me doubt myself. I relaxed slightly into her embrace, she felt different now than she did before. Her hair no longer rubbed my cheeks the wrong way, instead the long smooth, glossy hair felt nice against my cheek.

Her once firm body was now softer, but I could tell from the tightness of her cuddle that she had lost none of her strength. One of my hands slipped from the tight hug and slid down her body, feeling the curve of her waist that had not been there before.

No longer was it hard not to tell what sex she was. It was painfully clear, and painfully clear she had a wonderful feminine body. I longed to remain in this tight embrace for a while longer, but I knew Alis was waiting for us. So reluctantly, I pulled away from her slightly.

She looked at me with bright eyes that seemed sad to lose her contact with me. I gave her a kiss on her forehead. In one hand I took her hand, and in the other I touched the flattened river stone Aggard had given me.

As I opened myself to the divine spirit, a twinge of sadness overcame me as I felt the familiar blessing of Aggard touch me deep within before it overfilled me and formed a storm of divine blessing around me and Celameth.

This time, it didn’t feel like I was drowning in the blessing. Instead, it felt like I was being pummeled by something I could not understand or withstand. It flowed through me and started forming a bubble around Celameth.

When the pummeling storm stopped, I fell to my knees on the hard flagstone floor of the entrance porch. The suffocating heat from the fire was too much for me. A panicked scream and cool hands were all I could focus upon.

I then started to painfully and awkwardly float out from the entrance hall and through the large rustic and homely expanse. My arms hung uselessly by my side, dragging along the floor. However much I longed to crash onto the floor and stay there, my guided floating was not so kind. I floated into my bedroom, our bedroom. Without any gentleness, I fell onto my bed. The eyes of those strange golden and silver figures stared at me.

The door clicked shut, leaving me trapped with those staring eyes. All of them judging me, tempting me, pitying me, filling me with things which I had no word nor understanding about.

My awareness drifted away, dragging me down into a nightmarish scene of destruction. The leaves hanging from the trees were brown, not with the crispness of autumn preparation, but with the sick limpness of death.

Even the grass was withered and brown. Large sections of it had been ripped up in scars which maimed the landscape. Even huge trees had fallen, as if caught in the strongest of storms. Some had been shattered rather than simply fallen. And their destruction lay not in a single direction but often in contradictory directions.

The other flowers and hardy plants which had once dotted this idealistic forest landscape were dead. Their withered brown bodies joined in with what their neighbours. It was hard to understand what had happened here.

But the haunting smell of the putrid miasma gave a clue.

In the middle of the destruction lay one humanoid figure crushed by a much larger, swollen and deformed ex-animal beast.

The figure looked small by comparison, their cinnamon skin blending in well with the withered brown of the plants squashed beneath him. Their white toga, was ripped and stained with the vivid redness of blood and the horrid brownness of the dying landscape.

The beast had been a simple bear at one time. All the basic features were still generally visible. But somehow it had been infected by a potent miasma, so it had swollen in size and twisted into a mockery of the noble animal it had once been.

Off to one side, a beautiful olive-skinned woman, wearing a simple pale blue sheaf dress, was kneeling on the dead ground. She cared not about the stains on her dress as she screamed in grief, crying for her lover. Sticking out of her neatly braided hair were two pointed ears reminiscent of the elf-like Anthal.

‘It was here Aggard lost the first love of her life,’ a gentle masculine voice, one with a power and depth, much like a kind grandfather. The voice spoke into the void of silence which surrounded the otherwise realistic, yet silent, image. ‘It was she who told us of the impending threat. She was our merely our junior, and we were prideful in our power of being elder gods.

‘I was the most prideful of them all and treated her harshly. Yet she did not give up. We gave up. When we realised the strength of our foes, we fled rather than face them. She alone stayed behind to face them, at great sacrifice to herself. She refused my summons and became a Fallen. Even after her fall, her husband watched over her and was proud of all she sacrificed.

‘Though he would have loved to seen her once again, he was happy she once again found love. In the ages since we departed our realm for this afterlife for gods, we have learnt much. And I, finally, wish to repay Aggard for all that she had done for us, and the world we had abandoned.

‘Unknowingly to Aggard, I twisted the blessings she imparted unto the two of you. And I stole a part of her away, so she could be with her husband one final time. One of Aggard’s friends gave some of their power to strength Aggard’s blessing on your wife, Alis. I am giving you an equally large blessing, most of which will come from me.

‘Finally, I am doing what I, as the foremost elder, should have done all those long centuries ago. Though I can no longer act directly, I ask that you act on my behalf to aid the legacy Aggard wished to leave behind.

‘There is no need to reply, for I know you cannot,’ the gentle voice said. ‘I know you cannot, and even if you could, I am no longer around to hear your reply. This sacrificial gift of mine to you is freely given, as was Aggard’s gift to you and Alis.’

The tainted, putrid stench of the vision was but a horrid aftertaste compared to the light pine, and smoke tinged, scented air of the cabin. Those gleaming eyes in the statues were now all dull. Even the once brilliant metal of the statues was dull compared to what they had been.

My armour weighed heavy on my body. Too heavy, for I was unable to even lift my arms, let alone climb out of bed.

Yet there was a lightness inside of me, a lightness I had not felt since long before I died on Earth.

A lightness born of freedom.

I wondered just where this newfound freedom would take me, and whom would come with me.