“Sometimes, the truth is staring you in the face, just waiting for you to recognize it for what it is.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“The manifestation… It was a construct of pure mana…” muttered Aideen as she caught on to what the Deity had been hinting at her all this while. The truth which was staring her right in the face, yet she failed to notice it until then. “The same kind that our bodies as Unliving were made out of… in the same way, even?”

“We did inform you that it was something you would without doubt notice yourself with time, did we not?” asked the Deity almost teasingly. “Would you not agree, Child, that this discovery is something that would have come to you naturally even without our hints? Perhaps something in the future would make you remember this particular tidbit and you would extrapolate to the conclusion from there as well, would you not?”

“I likely would, yes. Now that I’ve made the link, it was so glaringly obvious I’m surprised I didn’t think of it in the past month at all,” admitted Aideen. To be fair, her mind had been occupied with the health and care for the nearly thousand survivors over that time, so she had little time to think about other things in that period. What the deity said was true, however. She would notice the similarity between the Deity’s manifestation and the bodies of the Unliving some day. “Are we… some sort of copy you Deities made?”

“Incorrect, Child. If we have to put it into words… you and yours are much like our manifestation back then, except that the source was from your souls, instead of from us,” explained the Deity with a shake of their head. “That term… Unliving… is somehow fitting. You and yours are the souls of those who should have departed but still clung to the world of the living, your attachments strong enough to manifest your bodies once more.”

“The birth of the affinity you wield and your kind was no coincidence. They were something we Deities had planned for ages. The reason for the affinity’s birth should be obvious. The elemental cycle was imbalanced due to the missing spot, and it filled the last missing one which will allow the cycle to balance itself better as time passes.”

“And ours?” asked Aideen with more confidence since the Deity had shown nothing but goodwill towards her thus far.

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“The birth of your kind was something Tohrmut proposed, based on his long-time Champion’s existence. I presume you have heard that we Deities at times chose Champions from amongst the mortals, Child?”

“I have heard stories, yes, though nothing concrete about it.”

“The stories are true. We choose our Champions to serve as the living embodiments of an affinity. An anchor for the affinity to use as a guide, in a way. Most of us chose from those whose lives had ended, Tohrmut being the sole exception. His Champion roamed the mortal realms from ages past, even to the present, and this has benefited his affinity greatly. As such, we wish to reproduce that effect with our own Champions as well.”

“You wish for Champions who roamed the mortal realms?” Aideen queried with some amazement. By that point the novelty and nervousness about having a conversation with a Deity had long fled her mind, so she asked what crossed her thoughts without any hesitation.

“That is so. However, Child, as you might well surmise, the existence of such Champions, people who would be unaging and unaffected by the passage of time, would be noticeable, would it not? Even if they happened to be from amongst the long-lived, all that would do is to delay the time when others would grow suspicious of such a person. We wish for our Champions to be able to live as themselves, in whatever manner they choose, so this sort of noticeability is not in line with our desires.”

“But then we came along, and by now most people who see an unaging person would just likely write them off as one of us, would they not?” said Aideen as she brought the thought to its logical conclusion. The Unliving were unaging and untouched by time, remaining as they were during their moment of death, with some even going through the trouble to regain their youthful looks with the help of skilled Fleshweavers like herself. They were a perfect disguise for the sort of Champions the Deity mentioned.

“I see you have reached the conclusion yourself. That is good. This is indeed what we had in mind, so as to allow our Champions to walk the world once more, yet without attracting undue attention to themselves. Those we have now only exist in our realm, and even with the companions we allow them, we noticed how they would often lose their motivation to keep going after some time had passed. We hope to allay such issues by allowing them to walk the world again. To allow them to experience the joys of the world once more.”

“That’s kind of you,” noted Aideen somewhat undecidedly. An eternity where all she could do was watch others while being unable to live her own life sounded a bit torturous to her personally, but that wasn’t something she felt needed to be voiced at the moment.

“To be honest, Child, we had not expected to visit you this soon. We had thought that you should be allowed to grow on your own some more, perhaps wait until you have achieved your desired goal first, before we would appear before you, but clearly circumstances thought otherwise,” stated the Deity, which surprised Aideen somewhat at the implication that the Deity had been watching her.

“We think that you would be a fitting Champion for the affinity born alongside your kind, and so we have watched your life thus far. You have done great things, and we also realize that someone like you would never be content with just watching from far away when you could be there to help out instead. It was one reason why we waited to appear before you, as we had thought that the time was not ripe yet.”