H - 121: You Will Know It (Patreon)

“Steel yourself against an excess of compassion,” Anessima warned. “Yes, I know how heartless that sounds; it is a lesson hard-learned. I, and many of my peers, have caused great unintended suffering by trying to do too much. I hope you will learn from our mistakes rather than your own, but know that if you tread down the same path, we will meet you with compassion.”

Kaln was having trouble concentrating on what she was saying over the glut of information he was now experiencing. It was painfully clear this would have fried his mortal brain; his partially-ascended state, supported by the Shepherd herself, was enabling him to not only perceive these conscious pleas from countless surrounding mortals, but to process it. Even so, it was too many voices shouting at once for him to make sense of it.

“Here,” she said gently, and he felt her touch upon his mind grow firmer. Kaln could tell how carefully she was aiding him without intruding upon him too intimately, helping him to handle these experiences without inflicting her own essence upon the formation of his godhead. At this careful exertion of her will, the noise…did not diminish, but he found his ability to sort through it amplified. “By the time you have the power to do this for yourself, you will not have the need. You will naturally hear your people, to the exclusion of others. But now, when you have not yet found your people, you lack this discrimination. Perhaps you will find them today. And then again, perhaps not; believe that it is also well if so. This is too important to be rushed, and you are still very early on the path.”

It was like changing the focus of his eyes to see at different distances—not something he could have explained how to do, but second nature once he got the trick. More complicated, of course; the categories of mortal souls were too diverse and interconnected, but Kaln was at least able to shift his focus between them now.

The first that jumped out at him were those who exerted the weight of divinity; it was as if they glowed, their presence overwhelming the others. Here in Boisverd, he immediately saw the Flock with their tenacity, their stubborn calm in the face of fear. The Machanites seeking solutions through their own cleverness—and the application of their weapons. The Hunters were in their element, systematically bringing down the rampaging colossus spiders one at a time. And…those… They had to be followers of the Jongleur. Kaln knew better than to dismiss anyone whose thought process he didn’t understand as “insane,” but now even with this bird’s-eye view of what the least populous of local faithful were thinking, he could not parse them. This combination of boredom and glee seemed…maladaptive.

There were others, too, here and there; the Evervales were insular, but Boisverd was near the southern border and there were traders, travelers, diplomats. Smaller sparks of the imprint of other divinities—

“Leave be the faithful,” Anessima advised, gently pushing his attention away. “You are seeking your own people, those whose purpose resonates with you intimately. You will know them when, and indeed if, you find them. Some gods do make a sport of poaching one another’s followers, but you are in no position to play that game, little brother.”

Indeed, he did not want any drama with anyone on her level. Thanks to her guidance, he was able to tune them out, to cast his perceptions through the others filling the city, reacting to the crisis.

Reacting, also, to the sudden change as the spiders turned in unison and began charging toward Anessima’s cathedral. Shadrach’s angry complaints right next to him seemed distant, as he was fully occupied with more transcendent matters.

“And this is why we don’t ask fucking Eclipse for help! He could just as easily make them freeze in place, or not respond to that spell until it’s finished—or, hells, just fire off the spell instantly without all this preamble. He is literally just doing this to ratchet up the tension!”

“Compassion will prompt you to help everyone who asks for it—everyone, in fact, who needs help, whether they ask or not,” the Shepherd continued, her relentless calm helping to drown out the mage’s dissatisfaction. “It is a fine impulse, and crucial for mortal beings, made complicated by power. And more complicated still by godhood. There is grave danger to you in forming yourself into a being compelled to solve universal problems, to try to help everyone. As a case in point, I suspect something along those lines is what happened to our friend the shadow. Never doubt, Kaln, that it is trying to help—to do what it earnestly believes is both right, and best. The carnage we see around us now is the end result of a powerful being thrusting its idea of a solution into the totality of mortal affairs without regard for the repercussions.”

That was a sobering warning indeed, made more so because of how readily he believed her. Even not knowing the Entity’s true origins, having little insight into its nature… That fit too cleanly, explained all the contradictions. It was trying to save the world, and constantly failing, because it had forged itself into a thing that fundamentally could not understand people, or the consequences of its own actions.

But here and now… Ruling out those through whom the power of other gods coursed helped a lot; there were so many of those, and they shone the brightest in his perceptions. Focusing his mind again made them slide to the background of his awareness, leaving…

First, he found himself aware again of the drakes, whom he of course knew best. They were focused and clearly working on an actual plan, the details of which he couldn’t tell. Kaln deliberately pulled himself away from that, and the next candidates who jumped to the forefront of his divine sight were the adventurers they’d brought, who were now atop that cathedral. The Eclipsian he ignored; the others… Wait, Zhiiji had come? Actually that made sense, it would be out of character for her not to involve herself in anything tumultuous going on. Spooky had stayed with the chef, he noted, rather than the other Legionaries.

That wasn’t it, though. Kaln was not quite sure what he was supposed to be looking for, but the lack of anything there reaching out to him seemed telling.

“There is no way to describe it in advance,” Anessima murmured. “Rest assured, you will know it when you see it.”

From the adventurers atop the cathedral tower, his mind slipped naturally to other adventurers throughout the city. They were working in small groups and a few alone, as adventurers did. Bright souls focused on their tasks, in their element amid the danger, helping wherever they could.

No…

Kaln had never heard the term “Shadow Guild” before today, but as he let the awareness of Boisverd’s adventurers slip through his awareness like sand through his fingers, his mind parsed the important details as he became aware of them in particular. The slum districts were not undefended—figures in masks and black cloaks raced across rooftops and through alleys, pushing rampaging colossus spiders out with spells and weapons, driven by their peculiar sense of honor to protect those whom no one else would.

Something about that resonated with Kaln. But…no, not quite. They didn’t call to him. They didn’t…need him.

“It may be, little brother, that you will find nothing,” Anessima said softly. “That is well, if so. It is always a mistake to dither out of fear or uncertainty, but in the realm of strategy, nothing is sometimes the correct thing to do. If what you seek is not here, you must wait and let it come to you in its own time.”

“I’m not…sure,” he said in rising frustration. “Something about this is… There’s something. I just don’t know how to…sort.”

“You are looking for those whose nature aligns with your own,” she said. “If you are not finding them, take a moment to regroup, to think. Consider yourself, rather than the throng. Who are you, Ar-Kaln Zelekhir? Who do you plan to be, across the long march of history ahead? What will you do for the world, specifically? Who is it who will need you?”

Who was he?

Kaln was once more taken back to the moment of his ascension, to Hii-Amat’s first introduction of herself, though images and sensations—to his reply, trying to encapsulate his identity in a handful of impressions to share with her.

That was the right track, he sensed, but not the extent of it. That trivia of his life before Dragonvale, before the Entity, before Haktria… No, that was part of him, but not the truth of him.

Who was he? Who needed him?

This was it, he sensed. The truth of himself would tell him who he could reach—who he could help, if anyone. Dragons? He had power over them because of the role Atraximos had inadvertently played in his earliest apotheosis, and power through them because of the bonds he had formed with his family. That would always be the cornerstone of his divinity, but there was more to him.

Kaln was a people person. It was a question, now, of which people.

Not who he could reach—he could reach anyone, that was his whole thing, always had been. But who needed him.

What…had he needed?

His mind flicked backward, recalling the Entity’s last stand in the lair in Dragonvale, its proclamation of its goals. A world full of small gods of vengeance, a world where no one dared abuse anyone else. A world doomed to a spiral the Entity had rendered itself unable to foresee—but which Kaln and apparently every other godling it had tried to elevate did. Anyone who did not have that self-imposed blinder understood what a cycle of escalation was.

Perhaps…there was something in that. The Entity had said it failed every time; Kaln didn’t know how many attempts it had been made, but it seemed significant that all of them turned away from it at the last minute. There were definitely plenty of people out there short-sighted enough to grasp at vengeance at the cost of all else. The Entity seemed to specifically pick people who would be able to see the trap and avoid it in the end.

This was promising. This resonated. Kaln could feel lines of tension forming, linking him to…whom? They were still lost amid the tumult. He wasn’t quite there yet.

“Peace,” Anessima urged softly. “Calm. You are close. Let it come; do not push. Know yourself, and you will know your people.”

Know himself… But what facet of him? He wasn’t about to become a god of scribes and librarians, there were already several of those, and while that background had helped form Kaln’s personality, it was but a fragment of who he was. He was going to become a god of dragons… Was it really to be only that? In fact, what would it mean, to be a god of dragons, and…anyone else as well?

Who else needed it?

A memory slammed down upon him, one he had lost ages ago—immediately, in fact. Because that was what so often happened to dreams.

The first night he had spent in Izayaroa’s arms, the old nightmare of prison and Haktria’s rejection had formed, but they had been driven away by the shelter of the dragon’s wings.

Something was happening. Kaln felt channels growing, the shape he carved into creation shifting. His identity and divinity growing stronger as it assumed a form.

The Evervales, and Rhivaak. A dragon could be the ultimate symbol of oppression, or of hope. There were few forces in creation so potentially destructive. There were few more powerful guardians.

That was it.

The question of what Kaln would be to the world, was the question of what dragons would be. That was the truth of him: stamping out the legacy of Atraximos, cementing the path of Izayaroa and Savasmittar. Not a compulsive, retributive destroyer like the Entity had intended, but a sheltering wing to stretch over those who had no one else.

Kaln hurtled back in his own mind, through his memories, to the darkest moments of his life. Betrayed, abandoned, alone, imprisoned. Huddled in that cell, bereft of his life and any possible future. Vulnerable to a creature like the Entity, with its sweet whispers and dark promises.

The souls around him shifted in his awareness, most fading into the background, and he found his people.

***

He was everywhere at once, his mind locked onto the three dragons in their gallant defense of the city, and everywhere else that defense was needed but could not reach—except now, he was not stretched or confused, but fit in all those places.

***

A young woman ran, stumbling, through the stampede of gigantic arthropods, choking on sobs as she kept her eyes locked on the wailing shapes of two small children huddled against a hastily abandoned storefront. She didn’t know them; it didn’t matter. They were alone, and helpless, and these obviously frenzied monsters were surely only seconds from putting a claw through those fragile little bodies and there was no way she would reach them in time and even if she did there was nowhere to go, oh please anyone grant her strength—

And strength was granted, roaring through her like a bellyful of fire spreading to every limb. Suddenly she was bounding between huge skittering legs with impossible speed and precision; in less than a heartbeat she had swept a child up into each arm and launched herself into an impossible leap. The phantasmal shape of wings spread behind her for a moment, and then she kicked off a stone wall, shooting back across the street and landed flawlessly in a sheltered balcony where she huddled, shielding the frightened little ones with her body.

***

The power of Eclipse was a tornado centered upon the peak of the Shepherd’s cathedral, threaded through with other forces—with the touch of Anessima upon that sacred space, and also…something else that Kaln could not quite parse.

He was aware of the mage, Lilith, brandishing her staff defiantly at the sky and shouting something that rhymed, legs braced and free hand swept behind herself in a pose too dramatic not to have been practiced, while behind her the bard ripped impossible chords from the not-a-guitar in his hands and the apparatus hanging on his back blazed with power and pounded a rhythm through the air.

All three drakes swept down in coordinated unison as the hordes of colossus spiders reached the cleared area around the cathedral, Vadaralshi and Vanimax blasting them away with torrents of dragonfire while Pheneraxa soared after them in a tight loop, dousing leftover flames and pushing the spiders back with wind spells.

***

A boy of barely eight suddenly abandoned his ineffectual hovering over his two sisters and the other patrons at the back of the bakery, charging forward with a strength and speed he’d never imagined he possessed until he’d felt the desperation to do something break within him, unleashing a hot torrent of power.

The proprietors were struggling to protect their shop and the neighbors they’d brought in to shelter, but those monsters were trying to get in at the same time and they were just stronger. The lad ducked under the arm of the portly woman straining valiantly to get the door shut, slamming his body against it with such force that two protruding spider legs were severed cleanly by the impact—then, leaving her to drive the bar home, he lunged over to the display window where her husband was actively wrestling to pull down the heavy shutter against a chitinous beast attempting to push its way through. One tiny fist struck the creature right between its mandibles, hurling it across the street, and he and the baker dragged the shutter and latched it in place.

They all braced for the next…nothing?

It seemed like the other spiders were skittering past now. The shop could hold. They were safe.

***

Three dragons were an entire force of nature, but they could only be in three places at once and the spiders were an amorphous horde rushing in from every direction. Already the drakes had switched tactics, Pheneraxa continuing to sweep the wide space around the cathedral with spells while her siblings dived skillfully past its sides, dislodging dozens of climbing colossus spiders with their bodies and enormous wingbeats.

It was no longer enough.

Lilith was now rising bodily into the air, pointing the skull tip of her staff all but accusingly at the whirling sky above. Greg kept his eyes on her, grinning maniacally and carrying on with that pounding music of his even as his overworked machine began to emit sparks and flickers of visible static electricity. The mage’s chant must have been audible to her nearby companions, but it was obscured to Kaln’s ersatz awareness; his senses upon the site were those of a god, but weaker, and this was between Lilith and her god. He could also sense something dark and mad blazing from the bard, feeding into her power.

The first colossus spiders to scale the central tower were swept off by Spooky, who flashed rapidly across its upper reaches in a constant series of lightning-quick charges with her spear, too fast for mortal eyes to follow or giant crustaceans to evade.

Soon, even that line of defense was not enough. The first claws crested the lip of the tower’s roof, and Zhiiji and Riocco brought their blades into play.

***

Smaller vignettes were playing out in dozens of places; reprieves were granted as the attention of the spiders was turned toward the Flock’s cathedral, but people were still struggling to fend off stragglers which had become too embroiled by their resistance to heed even the call of Eclipse.

The old man was all that stood between his twin grandsons and the clawing, hissing thing which had smashed through their front window; even as he beat frantically at it with his walking stick and shouted for them to run to the cellar, he knew they were too paralyzed by fear to go, and knew that the frail remnants of his strength were not up to this task.

He would gladly have spent his life to protect them, but he just didn’t have the strength. Oh Shepherd, anyone, if he could only borrow the strength for just a moment, just enough to protect his family—

With an inhuman roar, he hammered the beast all the way across the front room into the window through which it had come with a single blow, then exhaled a gout of fire right into its face. Hissing in panic, the singed colossus spider turned and fled back down the street.

He slumped to his knees, trembling, and impossibly unharmed, choking on a sob of relief. He could hear his boys crying; tears could be soothed. They were safe. Nothing else mattered.

***

Greg’s apparatus was fully on fire now, but he played on even as his clothes began to smoke.

Lilith now floated directly above the center of the tower at thrice his height, screaming her chant at the heavens.

Spooky had been forced to tighten her circuit, ripping as fast as the wind in a constant flash across the tower top; Riocco and Zhiiji both darted back and forth behind her, their blades slashing segmented legs off the roof, kicking and stabbing when all else failed.

The three dragons spun about the cathedral in a series of pinpoint aerobatics; by now most of its beautiful windows were smashed by spider legs, the greenery of its sod roof charred black by dragonfire, but the great temple still stood strong, and the scions of Atraximos beat back the horde with breath and wing and claw and spell.

In the skies above Boisverd, as Greg entered a chorus of his uncanny song, a thousand unearthly voices joined him as the heavens were rent open and powers from beyond answered the defenders’ call.

***

Absolutely no colossus spiders were involved in the confrontation in one attic room. Her father had reacted to the terror unleashed on the city as he did to everything else which displeased him: by taking it out on her and her mother. He had begun with his belt, but when he tossed it aside and picked up the fireplace poker, something inside her broke.

Something roared.

The slim girl of barely thirteen, her forearms marred by welts, stomped forward, reached up, and grabbed her father by the throat. For a bare second the stupefied man stared down into a familiar little face, snarling with entirely unfamiliar fury—into elongated fangs and golden eyes with vertically slitted pupils.

Then she took three long strides forward and hurled him bodily through the front wall to a five-story drop to the cobblestones below.'

***

As the angelic chorus sang out through the broken skies above Boisverd, the onslaught finally ceased. The spiders could no longer charge forward; they were rising from the ground just as Lilith was from the city’s highest peak. But while she hovered, they spun ever upward, soaring into the whirlwinds marking the point where two atmospheres whirled as they combined across an impossible rent in space.

The three dragons deftly avoided them, soaring away from the locus of the spell to take up a wider patrol outside its radius.

Greg’s uncanny song came to a strident conclusion not an instantly two soon, for only two beats later his musical contraption gave out, exploding from his back in burning fragments with a force that drove him face-first into the stone rooftop.

Above, Lilith tumbled gracelessly from the air; Riocco, dropping their swords, leapt into place to catch the falling mage in both arms as Zhiiji and Spooky finally fell still, the Hiiri panting with exertion. No more colossus spiders were trying to gain the rooftop.

They had all now risen above the level of the cathedral tower. Whirling into the rent sky like specks caught in water that flowed down a drain, they ascended until no detail of them could be seen.

Until they blended with the spiraling clouds, until even those whirled away to nothing.

***

Peace and silence fell upon Boisverd so abruptly that the city seemed to reel from it.

And Kaln’s expanded awareness shrank, snapping back down to his corporeal form with a force that made him stagger. He would surely have toppled, had the goddess not caught him.

“Well done,” Anessima said—softly, but with warmth and with pride. “And welcome, little brother, to our ranks. May you continue to be as noble a presence among us as you have begun.”