Chapter Thirty-One.

It had taken most of a day of flying and stiff walking to bring us close to White Ford, but Grafton had called us to a stop shortly after night fell. We’d (finally) left the unending swamps behind for an old-growth forest, and while my eyes weren’t especially bothered by the fading light; the rest of the crew weren’t as biologically gifted. Everyone was impatient to get moving, but none of us wanted to risk running into a monster in the dark. So we made camp, set a watch, and tried to get in at least a little sleep on the knobby, root-covered ground.

We were startled awake by the rumble of cannons and the red light of fire filtering through the trees.

It was a mad scramble to cover the last of the distance to the town— especially since I couldn't just fly up alone without putting everyone else at risk. By the time we made it, the crew were exhausted from the scramble through the woods, and the town was crawling with hordes of [Blight]. Not as many as had swarmed the caravan, but more than enough to overwhelm the town's defenses.

Looking at them was hard. Monsters were wearing the faces of things I cared about, insulting the memory of the only family I had left, and I hated it. To make it worse, I found one of my worst fears hiding in the backline of the horde; [Blightshapers]. Bodies of the townspeople were being dragged to a quartet of bloated, slug-like horrors and infested with [Blight]— twisting them into an insulting parody of their former existence before being sent back into the town to fight. Sickened by the sight, I did what any somewhat irrational being would do, and burned those living insults from existence.

After all that, the last thing I expected to see in this town was a familiar face.

"You have got to be kidding me."

It was absurd. I couldn't wrap my head around the multiple levels of impossible that would have to collide in order for me to run into the Emissary right now. Speaking of, she looked… not well.

Her eyes were locked on me, almost manic in intensity. She was hyperventilating, struggling for air between gasps of pain. The simple clothes she wore were soaked with sweat, blood, and the oily ichor of the [Blight]. The angelic wings she’d once used to devastating effect were nowhere to be seen, and the closer I looked at her, the more I noticed that she looked uncomfortably frail, like she hadn’t been eating. Her cheeks were sunken, the skin stretched too-tight on her once-perfect features. It painted an odd picture that I just couldn’t quite understand, but had my guard up in suspicion.

"Is this, not… what you wanted… monster?" She wheezed out, waving her hand weakly to gesture at the carnage around us.

"Coming… for me just… wasn't enough? Had to… destroy, everything else…"

"Uh… what?? Lady, I'm only here as a freaking caravan guard. Literally just picking up parts and trying to help out once we saw the place was under attack. The last time I saw you— or even thought about you— was all the way down in the Heart-Ward. What the hell are you doing here? How are you here?"

A squirming pile of black flesh wriggled free of some rubble nearby, and I blasted it to ashes with a snarl.

"And how are these things giving you trouble? What the hell is going on??"

She flinched back from me, her blood-and-tearstained face morphing with confusion and shock.

"You, you didn't— haven't even…" She trailed off quietly, slumping in place like the world had collapsed out from under her, and I abruptly felt guilty for yelling. Which was very conflicting for me, because the last time I saw this lady she'd done a very good job of trying to murder me with a giant heavenly laser beam. She'd been pretty unhinged about the whole thing too— lots of 'die abomination' and 'face the judgement of Heaven!'.

On the other hand, I'd immediately turned the tables with Anathema and almost killed her.

The truth was that while this woman had an outsized impact on my life with her actions, the total time I’d actually interacted with her was probably less than fifteen minutes— and that includes the time I’d spent in the afterlife as a paralyzed soul-blob. She tried to kill me, I returned the favor but was talked down by Murgui, then she disappeared. Bigger things had taken my attention after that, and my encounter with the angelic being had kinda faded into the background. Now she’d reappeared in front of me, apparently in significant distress, and I was growing more and more confused.

“Why are you here?” I reiterated, trying to keep my voice even. She didn't answer, just staring off numbly. Sighing in frustration, I stood up from my crouch and made to leave.

"Alright, somebody here has to know what's going on. I'll just—"

One of her hands snapped out and latched onto my coat, the sudden movement drawing a suppressed whimper of pain while she glared up at me fiercely.

"Don't touch them! I won't… let you…" she gasped out, her other hand struggling to lift her glaive from the ground with trembling fingers.

"Whoa whoa, easy." I held my hands up placatingly. Sinking back down, I folded my legs beneath me and took a deep breath, shoving aside a particularly intrusive flash of old resentment.

Where was that protectiveness when I needed it?

"I'm not here to hurt anyone who isn't one of them, ok?" I said, jerking my head to indicate the smouldering remains of the creature I'd just torched. "I'm just trying to figure out what's going on."

Without releasing her death-grip on my coat, she leaned back against the ramshackle barricade. Her glare didn't let up in the slightest, though she did at least stop trying to lever the glaive up with her other hand. We sat like that for a couple minutes while her breathing slowly calmed.

"Your bargain." She eventually said, her voice full of distrust.

"What?"

"Your deal with the gods— the Heavens were asked to make peace with your presence. They decided… they decided I was the only point of enmity between you, and I was…" she trailed off, reaching up with her hand and touching her cheek. A glowing rune flashed into being for a split second, a deluge of meaning coming with it.

—Forsworn—

It was the weirdest sensation, like remembering a whole paragraph of words out of the blue. In an instant, I knew that she'd been exiled and that her main crime was 'negligence'— along with a host of lesser infractions. I frowned at the intrusive rune, because along with the vague pile of details related to the former emissary's 'sentence', it also carried a built-in feeling of aversion that I could sense trying to subtly influence my mind. [Cosmos] was having none of that, though.

Piss off. Nobody allowed in my head anymore but me.

The feeling faded, but I could still feel my metaphorical hackles raised over the attempt. The woman misinterpreted my frown and spoke up.

"Is this… not what you wanted?" She repeated her question from earlier, confusion mixing in with suspicion in her voice. For a minute, I studied her, trying to sort out my own confused emotions.

"You know… a few weeks ago, I might have said yes. Anything that gave me a little payback, a little more control after what I’d been through, would have been welcome. But this…” I looked around at the wreckage of the town around us. “No, I don’t want this. And I’m ashamed I could have felt otherwise.”

Silence stretched out awkwardly after that, neither of us sure exactly what to say. Scattered gunshots still sounded out from around the town, but my [Baleful Star] had done an excellent job of burning out the comparatively smaller attacking horde. It still shone harshly above us, radiating vindictive glee as it continued to search for any group of [Blight] monsters in the open. For now, I was content to let it do its thing, especially with the unpleasant sensation of mana-burn still grating at my nerves.

"So they really just… kicked you out?" I blurted out curiously.

The former emissary glared at me in response.

"Yes." She replied tersely.

"And they thought that would improve my opinion of them??"

She bristled for a moment but quickly deflated.

"I do not believe affecting your opinion was their sole intent. The Eyes of Heaven were more concerned with eliminating a source of contention, and then remaining distant. My banishment was a convenient way to accomplish both goals."

I chewed on that for a minute, but it ultimately just reinforced my initial thoughts about heaven's 'rulers'.

"Yeah… they still sound like assholes."

She snorted unwillingly, but hissed in pain after— trying futilely to shift herself on the broken barricade.

Oh yeah, she got thrown here, not sat. She probably needs a doctor right about now.

"Shit, let me—" I reached out to try and help her up, but she flinched back and I aborted the motion.

"—Right, yeah. Ok, um…"

Man, that is an uncomfortable train of thought to go on.

Brushing aside the stray feelings of guilt, I tried to come up with a solution for how to move her without touching her. Eventually I spotted a broken chair half-buried in the barricade and had an idea. Summoning four shield-hexagons, I concentrated and braced them against the sides, back and underside of the chair. Within a few moments I had a crude, floating 'wheelchair' ready to go. As gently as I could from a distance, I scooped her up and floated the wheelchair beside me. She continued to shoot me distrustful looks, but seemed much more comfortable with this solution.

"My glaive… please." She asked.

Shrugging, I picked it up and laid it across the chair in her lap.

"Sure. You know where a doctor is?"

She grimaced nervously and nodded.

"Miss Wyydham should be somewhere around the temple." She pointed at a tall structure towards the center of town. "She will likely be… quite upset at my injuries. I have been under her care for weeks already."

I nodded, and carefully started making my way down the street with the former emissary in tow. I did my best to avoid the less monstrous bodies lying around, quietly repeating the mantra of 'deal with it later'.

So she was sick. I wonder what happened? Also, this is getting annoying.

"Well hopefully she's more happy you're alive than upset you got hurt. I'm Ray, by the way. Or Kosimar, I guess— been having a crisis of identity lately."

She was quiet behind me, though I could see her fingers clench the haft of her glaive over and over as we moved.

"Lyr'Rael."

I arched an eyebrow at the unusually timid response, but decided to take the win.

“Nice to officially meet you.”

She didn’t respond, and a second later I looked back to find her out cold— still clutching the glaive with a white-knuckled grip.

I should probably hurry.

Luckily I didn’t have to go far, as the barricade Lyr’Rael had been defending was only a few blocks down from the temple where people were apparently taking shelter. A group of injured guards and townspeople were scrambling to build up another barricade around the temple; dragging an assortment of pews, shelves and chairs out the open doors and shooting fearful looks down the street. They were being directed by an old priest who noticed our arrival long before anyone else.

“Contender.” He said somewhat coldly by way of greeting as he approached us. “You have my gratitude for your intervention, but the Accords have deemed this temple neutral ground.”

I cocked my head in confusion— both at the man’s hostile tone and the terms he seemed to expect that I knew.

“Uh, sorry for helping then?” I said, defensively.

“Your ‘help’ immolated dozens of my congregation. I thank you for ending the threat, but I must ask you to leave.”

My face heated and I felt anger rising up in me at the accusation, but I shoved it down.

“Nothing human was killed by me tonight. If the [Baleful Star] targeted them, then they were infested by the [Blight]. I was just trying to make sure nobody else died with them.”

“Do you have any proof of this?” the priest demanded.

“I— uh…”

Shit, I can’t say that I know because I made them.

While I was struggling to come up with a solution, Lyr’Rael’s voice broke in weakly.

“It’s true, Father Aeden.”

The old priest’s eyes snapped over to the wounded girl in recognition before he rushed to her chair.

“Lyr’Rael? You’re alive?? We thought you fell at the barricade! What happened? Do you know this man?”

She bore the barrage of questions stoically, waiting until the priest finished to respond.

“He is— Ray is telling the truth. I was attacked by the townsfolk. They were… husks. Oily darkness wearing human skin, hollowed out from the inside. There was no saving them.”

Father Aeden frowned, but nodded after a moment.

“Very well. I should like to get a more detailed account from you later; for now, let's get you back to Wyydham.”

The old man straightened, turning to me and giving a shallow bow.

“It seems I was hasty in my judgement, Contender. You have my apologies, and further gratitude for returning Miss Lyr’Rael to us. If you would follow me?”

Accepting the apology, the next few minutes were a whirlwind of faces and corridors through the temple. Lyr’Rael was carted off by a stern-looking woman who launched directly into a scolding tirade on the poor girl as she was dragged into a makeshift hospital ward. I was led to an empty meeting room and asked to wait, and seeing nothing better to do I took a seat.

For the next twenty minutes I tried to think through exactly what had happened. It couldn’t be a coincidence that I ran into Lyr’Rael here, I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how or even why someone would arrange this. My first instinct was to blame the Spider but… this all felt too direct for her manipulative style. The Void Leviathan had given me a play-by-play of how the spider liked to operate, and this just wasn’t it.

“I don’t think she’d be able to see me directly like this anyway. Can’t see someone outside fate or something.” I mumbled out loud. “I wonder why that is?”

“Because she’s a talentless, meddlesome hack.”

The hair on my neck stood straight up. Sitting across from me was a smiling old woman with a faded lavender shawl draped over her shoulders like a cobra’s hood. Every instinct in my body was abruptly screaming that I should sit very, very still.

“Good evening ‘mam, sorry I didn’t see you come in. Can I help you?”

She cackled, the sound sending shivers down my spine.

“So polite! Most youngsters have no respect these days.”

Hopping off her chair, she skipped over and patted me on the head.

“You can call me Goodmother, dear. I’m here to see you about a little debt.”