Part VIII: Rebirth

By Nevena Dals, Disciple of Cerebel

Eno always used to say that things were darkest before the dawn and that we needed to hold onto hope if nothing else, but I didn’t believe him back then. I do now. I sought my death in the Fifth Corner and I did very much find death, but it was not in the manner I expected. As the Vaerminan ate my dreams and through them, my life, it grew sickly with the Divine Disease—so much so that it found only its own death within me and I awoke from my coma to feel it all. To feel the beating hearts. To smell the rank odors of the Undercity through the dozens, if not hundreds, of noses. To hear the thoughts of the many men who found refuge within me for a handful of coin. I thought I had been forsaken by Cerebel, if he had ever existed, but I had not been forsaken at all, but left to mature and I have done so.

Throughout the Undercity, the Divine Disease spreads like wildfire and I am the one who brought it to them, but I feel—whole—again. I hear their thoughts as they notice the budding tumors and they scramble to hide them from their peers, not knowing that it spreads like a plague through these crowded walkways. I feel their fear as they think the worst conceivable thing they could have imagined has come to pass, but they don’t understand what it’s like to experience this oneness yet. Maybe they never will, but I hope they will—at least eventually, but for now, I am trying not to trouble myself with worries of my children, but with celebration of the blessing I have received. I have been given a second chance and shown that even in my darkest hour, I was not alone—that I am never alone.

I didn’t recognize it before, but these months beneath the world, they were always a test. I was being tested by Cerebel and he knew that ultimately, I would do as I had been chosen to do, even if I did not know it. He believed in me even when I could not believe in myself and I denounced him and even declared him to be nothing but a figment of my imagination, but still, he stands behind me if not in body, then in spirit.

Things are changing with me as well. I see it. I see my skin is beginning to take the rotting, macerated look of the Afflicted and my eyes are becoming more and more sunken. The bones of my face have become soft like a baby’s head and though I fear for this, I trust in Cerebel now that I know he still stands with me. I trust in him as I expect my children will trust in me when they begin to turn, but I will not be here to guide them in body, just as Cerebel is not here to guide me in body, but I believe they will do what must be done when the time comes, but I can not stay here. It’s only a matter of time before word reaches the surface and the Order of War is dispatched for a second crusade against the Undercity and though I wish I could stay to be a mother to all of my children, I have a calling that can not be ignored even though I only now recognize it.

Cerebel saw in me potential.

I don’t know what purpose he sought to utilize that potential for, but I do know that he saw something in me that nobody has ever seen before and that’s why I can’t pursue him any longer. I can’t keep chasing him as I was before I lost faith. I need to trust him. I need to have faith in him as he has in me and that means moving forward, even if I do not know which way forward necessarily is anymore.

I thought forward meant looking for Cerebel, but that’s not forward. If he wanted me to find him, then he would show himself to me, but that does not mean that he has forsaken me. He is with me and I know that now; I know that to be as true, for it weren’t, then I would not be here. The Vaerminan would have consumed me in full and I would be naught, but I was spared that by the mark Cerebel placed upon me in Kirinibbi and now it is my time to live up to what he saw in me.

I am making preparations for my journey to Red Mountain partially in hopes of learning more about this mark Cerebel has placed upon me and partially in hopes of becoming one with the rest of the Sixth House. There was a time when I thought I knew what family was, but no family I have ever known hears the thoughts and heartbeats of one another, and I hope to join the rest of my family and reclaim what I felt in Kirinibbi. My destiny awaits and I shall deny it no longer.