From Callas de Navarre's journal, 1/8/1348
1/8/1348early afternoon
the domain of Taranis, the goddess of thunder and storms
This is going to have to be quick--we're leaving in a little bit to go try and interrupt something the council's doing. I had to get the events of today out on paper, just in case this afternoon will mean my death--with any luck, the journal will survive whatever happens.
After talking care of the last details of transferring the various Headmaster duties over to Elata and Peter, Gavião called the ArcAngel and we went to go check out the shipwrecks that Sigurd had mentioned yesterday. He told us to look in Donegal, since that seemed to be where most of them washed up, on the west coast of Ireland. When we got there, we did indeed find evidence of a number of shipwrecks, as well as a relatively recent one out on the rocks. We went out to check it out, and it was a ship from the Spanish Armada, fully stocked, no cannon holes and no evidence that it had been looted. It looked, really, like nothing was really wrong with it other than it had been capsized--evidently difficult to do with a boat that size. (Search me. I know almost nothing about boats. Galvin's starting to teach me, but I'm not going to be an expert any time soon.)
We searched the boat and found a few people who were a bit dead, recently enough that I could Raise one of them and talk to him. He told us that they'd been about thirty of forty miles off the coast when something in front of them seemed to implode, and the resulting wave knocked them over, resulting in the shipwreck we saw. There had probably been survivors, but there was no evidence of them around, which was odd.
At that point, Aiden looked up and said, "By the way, there are a couple of artifacts out there." He pointed west, out to sea. "About twenty-five miles away, and about thirty feet above the water. Not moving."
[ed. note: at this point, we started going, 'oil derricks? they didn't have oil derricks in the 14th century!']
Tamsin sent out her pseudodragon out to have a look, and it detected the presence of an invisible island about there the guy we'd talked to said that his ship had been capsized. It was way too interesting not to go look at.
But before we could go, I felt the most peculiar sensation, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, and then the strangest feeling washed over me, the whole world going white. I can't really describe it, it's as if there are things that were closed to me that are now wide open. And then there was a voice, speaking softly and sadly in my mind. It said, "Brigit is dead."
Guess we know what the council's off doing now, don't we? Brigit is--was--the goddess of healing. Epona got her spheres and duties...and the Order of Epona is now the *only* Order charged with healing. We get both sentients and animals now, as well as plants, evidently.
We sent the guy we raised back to Spain, and then boarded the ArcAngel. Gavião directed the ship and Galvin gave me boat lessons, starting from "this is port, that's starboard, that's fore and that's aft" and continuing on to things like the general theory of how a ship is steered and what all of the ropes are for. I can tell this is going to take some time to learn. Boats don't look that complicated...
The ArcAngel is really, really fast. We covered the twenty-five miles in what seemed like less than an hour. When we got to the island, we intended to park the boat (drop anchor, right, the correct term is drop anchor) and Water Walk out to the island, but the ArcAngel told us that the boat was actually designed to go into the island.
So we did. Turns out it was Dushela's lab--or one of them, at least. There were lots of little pestilence demons that she evidently kept around as servants hanging around, but they didn't bother us at all. We made our way up to where Aiden said the artifacts were, Gavião stopping on the way to talk to someone who was kept in one of the cells that we were passing. The rest of the cells were filled with people who were either dead or dying of the plague, but these looked fairly healthy.
The artifacts were guarded by an extremely ugly critter who looked like a huge worm with lots of teeth and a stinger on its tail. An orb to keep it from using its magic and a bit of smacking around later, and we were in possession of Bifrost's Helm and the Golden Fleece, which is a cloak that supposedly makes you wise. I claimed that one for a little bit. Can't hurt, at least.
Riyor was listening at the other door, the one that had a null magic field inside of it, and said, "Hey, there's someone in here...and they're crying."
And then he knocked on the door. Which unlocked and opened. Riyor walked inside. The person he was talking to sounded familiar, as their voices drifted out into the hallway...it was Tarn, the black dragon who had created the ArcAngel and who we'd driven mad.
Tarn seems to be sort of temperamental these days. When Riyor caught us up later, he said that Tarn had mistaken him for his familiar (who we'd killed a few days ago, at Touton), thrown a couple of vials at him (which he caught, thankfully) and then...made Riyor into his familiar.
Is anyone *else* disturbed by this turn of events?
Tarn decided it would be fun to blow up the island, and we skedaddled, pausing to free the people who were in the cell that Gavião had visited before. Evidently, the person he'd seen that he knew was his father. They don't really seem to get along all that well.
Riyor and Tarn went back to blow up the island (Dushela's going to be so pissed. Good.) and we went into Donegal proper to go look for Metis, Dushela's daughter. I had seen her in Dushela's dreams and thought that perhaps she'd be able to help us, since she seemed like a good sort and not at all fond of her mother. Turns out she's a cleric of Aine, living undercover and moving whenever her lack of aging makes her neighbors suspicious. She agreed to help as she could.
Also: the two vials that Tarn threw at Riyor contain a version of the plague that kills dragons, and a cure for the same plague, specific to dragons only. And that's my repayment for Armand, right there.
The others then wanted to go stop the council from killing the other two gods on their list--Shannon, the goddess of the lakes, and Smetrios, the god of war. I looked at our odds of success and realized that they were not good. Seven of them, eight of us, and they're all very scary people. The odds are excellent that at least one of us would die, and pretty good that the council would take the opportunity to kill us all. Presenting ourselves gift-wrapped seems like an unwise decision.
I and Gavião took a walk, though, and he convinced me that everyone here was volunteering to go do this, and that's what we're here to do--to fight and perhaps die in the service of our duty. And this pretty much counts as our duty.
With a heavy heart, I agreed.
When we got back, Riyor said that Strawberries had told him that the only god that the council feared was Teranis, the goddess of thunderstorms, who had been a very strong warrior when she was a mortal. If we could convince her to come along, there was a chance that we could basically scare the council away from the gods that they were hunting. It seemed like our only shot, so we gated to Giza and used the meta-gate to transit into Teranis' realm.
Teranis is a small woman for being such a feared warrior, but you can tell by the way she holds herself that she's very dangerous indeed. She agreed to come along with us, and we've been doing some strategic planning. I'm strictly on defense and healing today, sounds like. We're going to concentrate on Juri and try to take him out; he's the weakest of the ones we'll come up against today.
I asked Teranis about Sorcha, who it turns out is my stepmother. I had a vision of her yesterday, and I have to say it was extremely startling to see her. I'd assumed she was dead, killed by Nara; guess not.
She is ancient and evil; she was Merlin's teacher. And she is cursed by Epona, because she was competing for my father's affections with her. Every so often, she dies and is reborn. For the first thirty to forty years of her life, she knows nothing about being Sorcha. When she wakes and realizes who she is, the first thing she must do is kill all of her children. She does not forget the fact that these are people she loved, her own children, but she kills them anyway, because she wants to live.
The only way to end the curse is to sacrifice herself for one of her children. Or to become a god, so she can end it.
Sorcha is awake. My stepmother, the woman who raised me, is no more.
I stared at Teranis as the implications of what she'd just said sunk in. I asked, "My sisters are dead, aren't they?"
She said, "You're the last of Sorcha's children."
The last part of the family I was raised with is gone. I truly am an orphan, now. I loved my sisters, who tolerated me even though I was a terrible brat. And my mother--stepmother--though we never got along, I loved her, too. Though she kept trying to push me into a mold I wasn't made for, she was still my mother.
And now she is trying to kill me.
And I wonder what Epona was thinking, now. I suppose the good that came of letting me be with my father while I was growing up outweighed the danger I'd be in when my stepmother woke. Fortunately, she woke late this time, when I was no longer anywhere near her, and protected by my companions.
The news that my sisters were dead hit me hard. Every time I think that the last grief has to have been the worst, something new comes along and proves me wrong.
They have taken so much away from me--from us. Everyone I loved before I went into the Order has been killed. They have taken away my faith that my goddess will always be here, the one thing every cleric depends on as the lodestone of their lives. So many things, taken from all of us.
It is time for it to stop.
We're off again. With any luck, I'll survive the next few hours and be able to record whatever happens next.
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