Madrid, Spain
late evening
It's been an interesting afternoon and evening.
Right after I finished my last entry, I went to look for Jonas Beryl. I found him taking advantage of a patch of sunlight to finish a drawing he was working on. A drawing that bears an almost spooky resemblance to the style of one Jonas Shorl, former Headmaster's Second three centuries ago. And while he was drawing, he had magic swirling around him, mostly concentrated in his hands. Once he finished the drawing, the magic simply vanished.
I was extremely confused. I'm less confused now, knowing what I know, but I had no idea what to make of it at the time. Jonas did give me the drawing he'd done, and I compared the signatures--the "Jonas" is exactly the same for both Shorl and Beryl.
I had True Sight on, and I found something icky in Dream's stall--something called a dream stalker, that feeds on dream energy and prevents anyone it's near from dreaming. After I killed it, he explained why it was a very bad thing that it had shown up in his stall. If dream wraiths cannot dream, they go mad and die. We might not have found out what was happening until it was too late. And the dream stalker showing up in his stall means that someone, probably Lazlo, knows that my dream guide is one and the same as my familiar, which means that Dream's now a target.
Lazlo: still right up at the top of my list of annoyances. However, the more I learn about Lazlo, the more I worry about him. He seems to be either distracted or merely testing me right now, but if he decides to really make a nuisance of himself, there's very little I'm going to be able to do to stop him right now.
I continue to grow in my strength, but am I ever going to be strong enough to be able to defend myself against someone who is so old as to be a legend even among his own kind, who knows almost everything there is to know about being a dream wraith?
I should stop borrowing trouble before it finds me, I think.
I did manage to pull Arnie into the dream realm while I was awake (with his consent!), though, so that little experiment worked. Arnie, I think, was a bit confused, and we accidentally happened upon his parents in a, er, compromising position. *There's* an image I would like to get out of my mind. It confirmed, though, that I can serve for other people the same way that Dream does for me, and being able to do it while I'm awake may be useful. I'll continue to try it with one other person with whoever's willing to try it with me, and then I'll try groups. I want to see who reacts well and badly to the dream realm. I'm sort of worried about what sense Aiden's mind will make of the dream realm--he's the only one that I'm even remotely worried that I won't be able to hold the dream realm steady around him. When you have someone insane somewhere where your mind molds the space around you...well, it'll be interesting if I manage to talk him into it, anyway.
That and I'm not actually sure how far Aiden trusts me, honestly. I think he mostly hangs around with us because he likes Arnie.
Fortunately, for the rest, I should be able to hold the dream realm steady for them. If I can keep my own nightmares from intruding while I'm traveling there, I should be able to guard against anyone else's.
We also chatted with Nik's shade a little bit, and he connected a couple of things for us, the major one being that Jonas Shorl, 3500 years ago, was the cleric who actually created the Servant of the Bones. Duschela and Nikodemus attended, but Jonas was the one who actually created the Servant. He was coerced, somehow, into doing it, but Nik didn't know how. It turns out that both Tamsin and Strawberries knew Jonas way back when, and Strawberries (as Aine, probably called Hathor, since this was Egypt) basically "caught" his soul when Nik killed him after the Servant was created and gave him the ability to basically live on through his descendants. Thus, it was actually Jonas Shorl who I was talking to this afternoon briefly.
And Nik also let us know that the Ankh of Osiris that Tamsin carries is the only thing that can actually return the Servant to life once the spell is undone.
So, in order to restore the Servant, we need to find Jonas Shorl and convince him to help us, and then we need to use the Ankh on him in that instant that he is hovering between life and death. It sounds altogether too simple. I have a feeling it's not going to be quite so straightforward, and I have a feeling that Strawberries isn't telling us all that she knows, or doesn't know everything that we'll need to know.
For the moment, though, we seem to have restored some measure of hope to Tamsin. She was talking to Seraphim when he returned, and I was watching them. For a moment, I could see them almost as they were three and a half millennia ago, her happy smile, his impish grin. There's something there that's lasted all this time, and it may be the thing that pulls Seraphim back into the living.
We can only hope.
One more thing about Jonas: it turns out that one can't count on all of one's descendants to be good people. Evidently, the Jonas who was Aru's second back in 1066 wasn't--and while the ancient Jonas set up Aru with his wife, the contemporary Jonas was the person who let the assassins in to kill her.
Strawberries told me this from the doorway, evidently in case I lost my temper at her. I didn't, but it was a near thing for a couple of seconds. I managed to master my temper and simply said, somewhat mildly, that I understood why she felt the need to be near the door when she told me that. We exchanged a long look, and nothing else really needed to be said.
Matthew came to find me in the common room, and said that someone was here asking to see me. I asked him what their name was, and he said it was unpronounceable, but started with a D. I blinked. The only person I knew of with an unpronounceable name starting with D is the former headmistress of Cernannos, who's called (by people who don't speak drow) Darius. The only things I knew about her were her name and that she hadn't joined the Order of Morrigan when Cernannos was killed by Tennant, so I couldn't guess what she might be doing here. I hadn't contacted her, even.
I had her shown in. Darius is a strikingly pretty drow woman, who immediately noticed that Aiden's eyes are now blue and commented on it. She told her that Cernannos had told her to come talk to me. I expressed confusion, as I was under the impression that Cernannos was dead. Darius shrugged and flicked around a couple of orisons, pretty purple lights, and said, "I don't think so. He's just got a new body now. He told me to come by and help in whatever way I could, since he was going to be too busy dealing with the council to do much himself."
I frowned, confused. "He's got dealings with the council? What body is he wearing now, anyway?"
"He's a drow, long pale hair, you could cut glass with his cheekbones. He's starting to grow a beard."
That description matches only one drow I know of. "Tennant."
Darius shrugged. "If you say so."
It looks like Tennant may have actually have absorbed enough divine power to actually take on the aspect of a god himself. That's...interesting news, certainly. It rather changes my estimation of his chances to survive the next month or so.
I asked Darius to see what trouble she could cause among the high ranks of the Order of Morrigan. The idea is that I know exactly what difficulties I've had with the Sucellus clerics, and I've been actually paying attention to them and trying to get us to adjust to them as much as they're adjusting to us. As far as I know, the Order of Morrigan hasn't been doing any work to integrate the several new Orders--which means there's probably quite a few very unhappy clerics who converted in large part because the thought of *not* being a cleric was too terrible to contemplate.
That's the smoke I'm smelling, there. The right spark in the right place could probably bring that particular fire out of the "smoldering" phase and into the "bonfire" phase--and it could tie up the upper ranks of the Order of Morrigan for a few weeks while they sort everything out.
Which will basically remove them mostly from the game for a while, which is good news for us.
Serves them right for not thinking ahead. You get too hidebound and expect everyone to adjust to you, you get blindsided when a situation comes along that requires flexibility.
Here's to the hope that Morgan will be so busy with the distractions we throw at her that she'll forget to take too close of a look at Aru.
P.S. If the hints that I keep getting from various sources are correct--Hello, Aru. I'm not certain that my thoughts are particularly interesting, and my journal entries aren't fascinating to much of anyone but me, but, well. We should have a long talk, one of these days, if we ever have the chance.
For now, though, goodnight.
_______________________________________________
Callas paused, the pen lifted from her page, her head tilted as if she were listening.
A bass voice tinged around the edges with amusement sounded in her mind. Goodnight to you as well, Callas.
She smiled to herself. Sweet dreams, Aru. Then closed her journal and rose from her desk, blowing out the candles.
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