In the year 755 CC, as well as in the year 746, maritime visitors to Hearth Bay were greeted by the idol. Those who had never seen it, called it the colossus of Vassermark, but such a crude term was not fit for the towering statue to Saphira. I say “to” because it certainly was not “of”. The artist, several decades back, had elected to depict her at the direction of the local angel. Purely by coincidence it largely looked like that angel instead. Ask the sculptor all you like and he would have told you just that.

Recently, the statue was destroyed during a siege of the city. Shipboard artillery pounded the idol to rubble, and, sadly, I didn’t even have time to pick it apart before the locals had scavenged every piece of marble for it for themselves. To this day there are gaudy windowsills and expensive window keystones and more. Like a pastry chef had sprinkled garnish across the city.

But, when the Sea Bird’s Rest arrived, and when Jacque Mordare arrived, it was the idol that greeted with outstretched hand. The local temples kept a rotation, burning a pyre light in the palm to declare across the sea the city was there and their allegiance was to Saphira.

Before I cover the arrival of the Sea Bird’s Rest, I will tell what I know of Jacque’s journey. It was nearly at the same time as our leaving Podrest, so the evens remained in fresh memory of those involved.

For someone living off the charity of the Ashe family, the writer had terribly little to his name. However, his name opened doors. He had fans and sympathizers. They had copies of his essays in circulation, much to his surprise. Small business ownevers in the city viewed him like an early celebrity. Some fell over one another to be the man to put him up for the night when he arrived, and so he came to the home of a merchant by the name of Shyler. The man owned half a dozen trading ships, two of which regularly traveled to Jarnmar. He himself had never set sail on one, but he relished the stories that came back on them. He relished his feasts as well, but his rotund state is not the point.

Jacque, fully aware of etiquette, chose not to mention the cause of his trip to Hearth Bay in so many words. In fact, he hardly had to say anything, for his admirers were the sort that did all the talking for him. They barely heard a word from their man-made idol until he said, “I’d like to meet with the angel.”

This was a request that caused quite a deal of consternation, but it also pricked at the prides of his hosts. After all, how could they be good hosts if they couldn’t appease the very reason of his journey? And so, through a series of favors ultimately leading to the high priestess of the angelic cathedral, he secured a moment to speak with Saphira’s representative.

Acheliah, whose history shall come at a more appropriate time, welcomed him half-heartedly from her bed. Much in the form of a human, she had sculpted for herself what one might reasonably call the perfect female form, if one does not mind their partner a head taller than them and occasionally equipped with wings. She was the very same sort of creature as Golden, a Divine Beast, but one who chose to live among humans almost enough to delude herself into thinking she was one.

“My greetings, my name is Jacque Mordare,” the writer said as he strode from one end of the room to the other. He had expected something akin to a king’s throne room, and instead found a chamber one step removed from a bedroom. Rather than chairs, Acheliah had colorful pillows strewn everywhere. Rather than historical tapestries, wine amphoras served as decoration. A Divine Beast has no need for reminders of the past, in a sense they are embodiments of the past.

“My little sister says you have some questions for me. I’ve given you this opportunity because she hardly ever asks anything of me. So, don’t waste my time,” Acheliah said. She laid on her side, head propped up and one finger pointing at a thin pillow a few feet in front of her.

Jacque frowned and knelt where directed. The incongruity of the angel’s statement troubled him, for the high priestess was old enough to have great grandchildren, and Acheliah had a timeless youth. “I want to ask what humans were like, when first created.”

Acheliah narrowed her eyes. “Humans were created to serve the gods, exactly as you are now. The only thing that has changed is your cities. Every virtue, every vice, just as you are now.”

“I find that quite hard to believe. I’ve studied the problem thoroughly, and to me it is clear that the circumstances of one's birth determine a great deal of who they come to be. Crudely speaking, the nobility have made themselves into another stock. I believe the differences lie in authority during childhood, and perhaps some nutritional differences. When mankind is such a malleable creature, your answer that we today, in our cities and armies and civilizations, are exactly as we were before all this… I can’t accept that.”

Acheliah rolled upright and crossed her legs. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Are you calling me blind?”

“Impudent, aren’t you? I think you hardly get out much either, else you’d know that there have been cities here in Lumisgard even longer than there have been humans. From the moment you apes first thought, you had all the tools necessary–”

“But not these tools, not these cities. Ruins or caves, what’s the difference? There are historical records that we only recently domesticated cows, and surely that did something to us. You gods gave us the minds we use to think, so don’t fault me for putting it to good use.”

“I assure you, the only thing that has changed is the amount of metal you’ve pulled from the dirt and what use you’ve been able to put it to. You’re still naked apes that never grew out of wanting your swaddling clothes. You just embellish them now and call them fashion. The most impressive thing you ever do is by divine gift.”

Jacque scowled. “Well, I don’t have a stigmata, so I have no personal experience with that, but I can say that no matter what ability it grants, a stigmata is only as good as the man can make of it. I once met a man that could make plants grow to maturity with just a touch, but was he a farmer? You’d think so, but he was a drunken lout in a gambling hall. Civilization corrupted him!”

Acheliah sighed. “Freedom to choose means freedom to fail. That is no concern of the gods, or of mankind as a whole. You’ll all die in the end regardless.”

“And what of people who die without even getting one single choice in this world?”

That gave the angel pause. She tilted her head. “Everyone has choices. Even slaves.”

Jacque scoffed. “A slave has the choice between obedience and death. That’s not much of a choice.”

“Live on your knees or die by your principles. Surely you’ve heard of that.”

“I’ve never in my life met someone who would die for their principles; but, I’ve met plenty that would send others to die in their stead.”

Acheliah laughed. “You should go to the west some time. You might learn a thing or two.”

“You never answered my question though. What of those who– truly– never had a choice? Why do children die?”

Acheliah paused. She flicked her wrist and said, “Sometimes it just happens. What do you want me to say about it? Sometimes people do stupid things. Sometimes there is undiagnosed disease. Sometimes someone else has sinned. You don’t always have a choice where you survive. You might as well be asking why old people pass away.”

“Why do old people pass away? Why do we die? You god things made us this way, and as far as I can tell, the only thing that was on your mind was the structuring of hierarchy to put yourselves at the top. The whole manifestation of state and government that has made Hearth Bay so great, the funneling of labor from the working class up to the royal family. Well dressed thugs and warlords, and you in the church are no different.”

“You should watch your tongue, human. You’re blaspheming.”

“The only purpose I’ve been able to divine out of death is to prevent one man from accumulating wealth forever! It’s to force him to eventually disperse his possessions among his children and so start the cycle over again, keeping humanity forever in a loop of rise and fall, child to adult, always parasitizing one another. Am I wrong?”

“You think far too highly of yourself, you bipedal worm.”

“In fact! Because it’s evidently apparent by you yourself, right here in front of me, that death is not mandatory. Indeed, the gods could have let each of us live forever in an endless garden of plenty, that the gods have chosen for us to live like this. Your mother decided it was right that the great mass of humans should work beneath royalty, and they beneath you, and you beneath them. A feudalism of authority, of religious ideology. If it is right to be so, you should damn well be able to tell me why this is right? Because no sane man the world over would ever choose to live like this!”

Acheliah rose and strode to him. He scrambled to his feet only too late, and she grabbed him by the hair. Digging her fingers through his chestnut locks, she twisted his head back to look at her. For a moment, she studied his eyes while he was too shocked to know what to do. Then she jabbed a finger through his temple.

This wasn’t to kill him, but to read his memories like a picture book flipped through.(1) It left him bleeding and staggered regardless.

“You lost a child you didn’t know you had. I’m sorry,” she said, flicking him back by his collar.

Jacque fell to the ground gasping. He swiped and clutched at the wound on his head, feeling spasms of thought like waking dreams run through him. Fear took root as he crawled away, and yet he turned back to her. “What do you have to be sorry about? Pity? Is that all it is? The pity of seeing a lesser being suffer? It never seems to motivate you things to help!”

Acheliah followed after him, one stride at a time, never letting him cower away. “We operate the temples, do we not? We teach you more than the raw facts of the world. Saphira more than the others, we teach you how to think and why it’s important to think. This is not for you to turn your spite against us, but because there may come a day where you will be needed. You humans will be conscripted or consumed to deal with things from beyond the veil of Lumisgard. We learned our lesson during the last war; against those apes which didn’t need to die. This is a much more stable civilization, and nothing brings prosperity like stability does. Unfortunately, it seems like you’ve… well, aped a portion of their immortality. You’ve invested your soul into your writings and spread them out like embers from a fire. I’m going to have to stamp them out, you know that? Do you have any idea how much work this will be? If I’m even able to at all! You’ve put heresy to paper and I can only imagine what some people are doing right this very moment. They must think they’ve found a grand thing, a secret kept from them. They’ll mistake the need for me to crush it as censorship. I can hear them already, screaming at me that only the truth needs be censored… as though they aren’t all children in my eyes.”

Jacque hit the wall, almost crawling up it to get away from her as ever more blood dripped from his skull. It stained his clothes and left a trail she trampled over. “You’re monsters!”

Acheliah smiled. “Feel free to complain to Shepherd when you meet her. She was designed to have patience for people like you,” the angel said before she caved his skull in with her heel.

Direct scanning of a soul is not pleasant for the victim, but it does create a remarkably accurate recreation of events. Even if it is many years later. Even if the soul is an angel’s.