Burn The Ashes: An Omen Of Import (Patreon)

[An Omen Of Import]

Though it may have come as some surprise to a few of the other factions and those not in the know, Devilkind did not hold complete dominion over the Underworld. They were the most populous among those who called it home, true, but they did not have it to themselves. Several races and beings called the Underworld their home, including gods belonging to all sorts of different pantheons.

Tanya likened it to a pie that had far too many slices cut out. The Devils plated the majority, leaving a little under half to be split amongst the rest of them however they saw fit.

Mostly, the lands outside of Lilith and other gathered territories was lawless, with pockets of order carved out by gods and what have you. Such as the one Tanya currently found herself in. 

“Your domain is rather… impressive,” Tanya noted as she sipped at the drink offered by Ereshkigal’s servants. It was nothing but plain water and tasted as pure as what she drank in her own castle. Though it wasn’t like she expected to be poisoned by one who invited her along.

Across from her, the goddess smiled in good humor. “Rather opulent, isn’t it? I believe that the dead have no need for overabundance, but there are those within the court that have grown used to such luxuries, and I aim to accommodate all.” She gestured to the spread around them. “Feel free to partake as much as you’d like. Though I beg, stay away from the pomegranates. Persephone is rather temperamental when it comes to her favorite snack and they’re in short supply outside of Hade’s domain.”

“That she’s having a spat with him certainly doesn’t help things,” Arawn chuckled from nearby. He had a plate heaped full sat in front of him and even a smaller plate on the bench for his hounds. They were feasting on a portion of turkey and beef, bones included. The crunch of cartilage made Ereshkigal’s eye twitch.

Tanya shook her head. She wasn’t feeling particularly hungry with matters left unaddressed. “Thank you for the generous offer, but I would rather get to the reason why I was brought here in the first place. I don’t want to offend, but being here is rather unsettling.”

Ereshkigal laughed softly. “Of course it is. Your soul burns with the fires of life. Though death may be known to you, death has never brought you fully into its everlasting embrace. That is making you restless within the realm of the dead. Perhaps even more than others.”

Ereshkigal gave Tanya a knowing look. Tanya stiffened minutely, but relaxed as she took a sip of her drink. “So, you know of my circumstances, then.”

A voice came from behind Tanya just then, “They were what drew us to you in the first place.”

Ereshkigal raised her eyes just over Tanya’s left shoulder and smiled. “Ah, Tiresias, you’ve arrived. I thought we’d be caught waiting for you.”

A barefoot man clad in simple robes approached the table. Tanya was a bit taken with his strange appearance. He held himself plainly compared to the deities around him, and extruded practically no outward power. He clutched a gnarled staff in one hand and seemed to lean on it heavily as he walked forward with laggard footsteps. Blond hair spilled out of his hood, stringy yet clean, and his eyes were completely obscured by a cloth blindfold that had been stretched from his forehead to the bridge of his nose.

Chains seemed to rattle with his every step as he approached the table.

“The Child Of The Loom,” Tiresias said. “The one who has known death as intimately as any of us, yet never fully embraced it. You’re a bit of a legend among our circle. I know I, for one, have been looking forward to meeting you.”

Arawn turned to the man. “Tiresias, you're earlier than usual. I'd expected to fetch you myself.”

Tiresias chuckled as he came to rest at Tanya's side. “Even a blind man can see when something is worth being punctual for.”

Tanya's eye twitched. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, truly. Though I must admit, it's getting quite tiresome to be referred to by a title I was never consulted on, nor had any prior knowledge of.”

The blind man smiled. “Luckily, it is my duty to speak on such a matter. If our host would oblige?”

 Ereshkigal merely waved a hand. 

Tiresias smiled. “Wonderful. Now then, please be warned; this will likely be quite disorienting.”

Tiresias lifted his staff and tapped it once. The sound resounded in the grand hall, hushing every errant whisper into silence. Tanya looked around, finding all the beings milling about had turned to regard the man with their full attention. The world around them inhaled, waiting with bated breath for whatever might come next.

When Tanya turned back to Tiresias, she started with some shock. The man's hand had risen to his blindfold and stripped it away, revealing pits of deepest blue, with no iris to be found. His shoulders rose, his back straightened, and then his mouth opened to reveal his charge with a chilling whisper.

“Listen, child, and listen closely, for the words I am about to impart upon you shall decide the outcome of fate's grand design.” He tapped his staff again. A chill ran down Tanya's spine, as if someone were breathing down her neck. She turned to find nobody.

Nobody at all.

What in the world? Tanya staggered back as the hall seemed to fall into blackness. The grand columns and tables fell away, their inhabitants lost to the void around her. A thin mist grazed her ankles, yet seemed to be the only company in the abyss apart from Tiresias himself.

A chill crept in, biting into Tanya's skin and leaving goosebumps across her entire body. Her inner fire stoked itself to life but it didn't do a thing to drive away the emptiness around her. 

“The Child Of The Loom, born of fire and ash,” Tiresias's voice, layered by a million others, swept through the infinite space. It cast itself upon Tanya and laid across her consciousness like a physical thing, heavy and burdened with something more than thought. “As known to death as she is known to life, she carries the destiny of all things upon her shoulders.”

Whispers crawled through the space around them, memories and voices lunging at them from all angles without a source to be found. Tiresias's eyes were stars, blanketing the darkness around them yet not driving them back. Tanya wasn't sure he was capable of it. That anyone was, really. She wasn't quite sure what she was seeing; it felt real and not at the same time, straddling the line of unreality like a pocket of imagination made solid.

“Upon an hour appointed by fate itself, she shall stand upon the convergence of destiny, and make a choice.” 

The word rattled the world around them. Choice,  the whispers echoed, repeating it like a sonnet. Tiresias lifted his staff and pointed to the right, his movements as rigid as though he were made of stone.

“Upon one path, a balance kept,” a bright light shone in the distance, a pocket of warmth in the shadow. Tiresias turned, pointing in the other direction. “Upon another, ruin unlike any other, as though death itself had woken and brought its terrible gaze to bear upon reality itself.”

The shadows yawned, endless shadows growing even deeper somehow. Looking into them made Tanya’s head hurt, yet there was nowhere else to look.

“This choice is hers and hers alone,” Tiresias continued. “No hand shall take it from her in life, nor in death. Not god, nor man, nor the void between shall wrest this burden from her.”

The whispers swelled into a cacophony, a thousand voices speaking in tongues Tanya couldn't begin to parse. They pressed into her skull like fingers digging into soft clay, molding and prodding at the edges of her consciousness. Tanya staggered, one hand rising to her head.

“Though all shall bear witness to its consequence.”

At the final word, the darkness receded like a sheet had been pulled away. The grand hall reassembled itself around Tanya as if it had never left. The spirits and servants returned to their places, continuing their business as if nothing had happened in the first place.

It took Tanya a moment to realize that her hand was clamped onto the edge of the table. She slowly let go, straightening as she took in her normal surroundings. Her heart was hammering, though she kept a straight face in spite of it all.

Tiresias had replaced his blindfold and was once more leaning on his staff, seeming for all the world as if nothing had happened at all. Was he unaffected by what just happened? She got the feeling it was nothing new to him but for anyone to get used to a place like that…

“Well,” Tanya cleared her throat, trying to calm down. “That was certainly theatrical.”

Tiresias smiled. “Prophecy is a serious matter. I feel it’s due more than a speech or a written note, though it’s not as if I have a choice in the matter.”

“I'd have preferred a well-written letter, frankly.” Tanya straightened her tie, though it was immaculate as usual. She cleared her throat again, her gaze sweeping across the assembled deities as she digested what she’d been told.

“If I may be blunt,” Tanya began, “I can’t say I’m inclined to take divine proclamations at face value, dramatic as they were. I’ve had quite enough experience being the subject of divine whimsy at one point or another; you might say I’m a bit skeptical of things such as fate.”

“Oh?” Arawn raised a brow.

“That being said,” Tanya turned to Tiresias, “It is good to finally shed some light on what’s gotten you all so interested in me. This prophecy is certainly foreboding, I’ll give you that much. Even if it is a little vague for my tastes.”

The man simply shrugged. “As most things are. A prophecy is but a whisper in the ears of man, warning them towards or away from whatever lies down their given path. It will come true, have no doubt about that, though who’s to say in what way? Certainly not me or anyone gathered here today.”

Pretty words from the soothsayer, but they did little to mollify Tanya as she turned the words spoken over and over in her mind.

Fate and destiny…  The greater part of her bristled at the very notion. A grand design of forces beyond her comprehension, laid out before her as though she were a character in someone else's story. Had she not faced this kind of thing before? Rallied against a being who saw her life as nothing but a lesson to be learned through suffering shaped by his very own hands.

She'd escaped, though through no merit of her own, and now she found herself in a situation bearing the same markings brushed differently. She couldn't say she cared for it.

A choice to make, but when?

Devils lived for a long time—thousands of years heaped upon a thousand more. Nothing in the prophecy gave insight to what the choice actually was. Were the terms going to be stated plainly for her? Somehow, she doubted it. For all she knew, choosing to butter her morning toast could spell disaster for reality itself, and she wouldn't even know as it was falling into her stomach.

A dark thought slithered into the back of her mind, coiling around her thoughts like a serpent. Could he have something to do with this grand decision? She hadn't seen hide nor hair of that bastard since she got here, but it would be just her luck for him to show up right when she got things where they needed to be.

Tanya dismissed the thoughts, not giving them any more time to poison her mind. It would be pointless to speculate now. The prophecy was as vague as it was sinister.

“I confess I'm left with more questions than answers,” Tanya said, choosing her words carefully. “though, I suppose I'm better informed than I was before, so thank you for that, and your hospitality.”

“Think nothing of it, child. Our fates our entwined, after all.”

Tanya bowed shortly to Ereshkigal “If there's nothing further, I would like to take my leave. I have much to consider, and I would prefer to do so in my own home.”

The goddess raised hand. “I'll have Arawn return you in just a moment. For now, there is one more matter I'd like to discuss, if you’ll lend me your ear.”

Tanya suppressed a sigh. Of course there was more.

“Very well,” she said, inclining her head. “What is it?”

Ereshkigal leaned forward, just slightly. Her eyes slid to the gods at her table, then to the servants around it.

“The winds of the world are shifting,” she said. “You needn't be a seer to feel it. The old orders are changing, new powers are rising and the old ones are soon to reemerge...” 

She paused, seeming to weigh her words. “The Court has long kept to itself. We tend to the dead, we maintain the balance, and we do not involve ourselves in the politics of the living. That has served us well for millennia.”

“But?”

“But isolation has its limits.” Ereshkigal's eyes slid to hers. “Your fate is entwined with ours, Tanya Phenex. Perhaps you could aid us in this.”

Tanya raised a brow. “I'm no diplomat, and I don't have the time to—”

“I would not ask you to champion us,” the goddess interrupted. “All I ask is that you speak to those who hold the power to negotiate on behalf of your kind so that we might converse. The rest, we can manage ourselves.”

Tanya gave it a moment of thought. It wasn't an unreasonable request, she had to admit. The Court of Death was an entity that she'd known nothing about until Connal had joined her peerage, and even then, her knowledge was secondhand at best. A formal channel of communication between them and Devilkind might be beneficial for everyone involved. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt.

“I'll speak with Lady Leviathan,” Tanya said. “I can make no promises beyond that.”

Ereshkigal inclined her head. “That is all I ask.”

Arawn stood from his seat, wiping his hands on a cloth before setting it aside. His hounds perked up at the motion, abandoning the remnants of their meal to pad at his heels. “I'll see her home,” he said.

The goddess nodded. “Think on what you've heard today, and know that whatever choice you make when the time comes, the Court will not hold it against you. We are, after all, merely spectators in this particular play.”

Arawn snapped his fingers. The familiar swirl of violet and black split the air beside Tanya. Arawn gestured with a smile. “After you.”

Tanya moved to enter, but Ereshkigal's voice stopped her.

“Oh, one more thing, before it slips my mind.”

Tanya paused at the edge of the portal, turning back. The goddess had stood, one arm crossed under her bust while the other covered her smiling mouth.

“Please tell the Quincy girls that we harbor no hatred toward them for what their leader attempted.” Her eyes glinted with amusement. “Yhwach was not the first to try and unmake a fundamental fact of existence and he will not be the last. The survivors of his teachings are welcome in my domain, should they come in peace.”

Tanya blinked, then nodded. “I'll pass it along.”

“Run along now, little Phenex. Until we meet again.”

Connal was waiting for Tanya as she stepped through the portal into the exact space where she'd first entered it. Surprisingly, he wasn't alone. 

“Sup, boss.” Liltotto tilted her head back to look at Tanya from where she was sitting on the grassy knoll. She seemed mildly annoyed. “I heard you went to meet with some death gods. Ever cross your mind that might not be a good idea?”

“Everything ended well enough,” Tanya said as the portal swirled shut behind her. Arawn wasn't following, it seemed. “Though I find myself with considerably more questions than I started with.”

Liltotto made a noise in her throat and climbed to her feet. The Quincy stepped up to Tanya and looked her up and down, before moving to the side to do the same, and then from the back as well.

Tanya bore with the scrutiny, though couldn't resist a snide remark. “Shall I raise my arms as well?”

“No, I'm done.” The blonde Quincy tilted her head as she came to a stop in front of Tanya. “You're not dead so I guess it went better than last time. Don't have to go looking for a new master again, at least.”

Despite her words, Tanya detected a hint of relief in her voice. “Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” she said dryly.

“I had a lot more than confidence in him, too.” Liltotto commented, making Tanya frown.

Connal cleared his throat. “To headquarters, then, Master? I imagine there's much to discuss.”

Tanya considered it, her eyes slowly rising to the sky. The starless grey-blue sky stared back at her. It was getting late and she had a lot on her mind. Maybe, just this once, she could put work off until tomorrow. It had been a while since she slept in her own bed.

“No,” she decided. “Let's go home.”

Connal blinked, and then smiled. “Yes, Master.”

Tanya had a lot of things to think about. Other things could wait until morning.