From Callas de Navarre's Journal, 1/9/1348

1/9/1348
St. Petersburg, Russia
early morning

Remember what I said about dying in the line of duty?

Getting killed is starting to become a familiar sensation. Yesterday, for the second time in two days, I was killed in battle. Fortunately, I was separated from my friends at the time, so none of them got caught in the blast, but...well, ow. The skin on my hands, arms, and face where my arms didn't protect it is new and pink and stings in that way that all new healings do.

Starting at the beginning, where I left off last time...

We went to Smetrios' domain and got there just a *tiny* bit too late to prevent the council members who were there from putting Smetrios' powers into an orb and destroying his mortal body. Present were Sorcha, Dushela, Iona, Juri, and a dwarf none of us had seen before who is apparently named Boltof. I was in ferret form and Teranis was disguised as me, in hopes of fooling at least one of them long enough to hit her so she could help in the fight. The fight went very quickly--I was stealing the orbs that they'd planted on the ground around them, and Aiden and Riyor were stealing the ones they were carrying. The general plan was to interrupt them and then try and kill Juri, the Fae'ri cleric.

Riyor managed to get his hands on the orb that had Smetrios in it in about the same moment that Sorcha, my stepmother, pointed at me and said, "Hello, Callas." Evidently, even as a little ferret, she knew exactly who I was. Getting forcibly shifted back to my human form hurt, and as I tried to shake it off, she threw a couple of orbs at me, destroying both of the artifacts I was carrying.

And then both Dushela and Iona breathed on me.

Dushela's breath weapon alone, I could have handled, since I had an orb and my protection spells were running. In fact, I dodged the worst of it....but Aine wasn't glancing my way at the time, because I dodged Dushela's flame directly into the path of Iona's breath weapon--a blast of heat and sand. There is no protection spell proof against a desert dragon's breath weapon, and as I instinctively raised my arm to cover my eyes I could feel it literally ripping the flesh from me. I didn't even have time to scream before everything went black.

Again.

Damnit.

I found myself sort of hovering near my body, looking down at it with an odd detachment. I could see the bones in my arms where the sandblast had torn the skin and muscles away. It was very odd, I could see but I couldn't hear anything. I looked up and saw Teranis grab Juri and sprint towards the gate, yelling something--Gavião scooping up Tamsin's crumpled body and Galvin picking up mine, the look on his face a mixture of terrible anger and absolute grief--Riyor running towards the gate, tripping on something invisible--the rods falling out of his pack and hitting the gate stones in the correct order to activate the gate--

Aine was standing next to Riyor, giggling. I could hear her and nothing else, so I asked her, "What happens next?"

She looked up, somewhat startled. "What are you doing...oh. Damn. The bitch killed you, didn't she. Get going, girl, don't get too far from your body. Whatever happens next depends on your friends. But shoo, you'll complicate things if you stay here."

"Don't I get the option? To stay dead?" I looked over my shoulder. "I can feel a place calling me. My father's there, and Aru. I kind of want to go home, Aine. I'm so tired."

She gave me an uncharacteristically stern look and waved her hand, the images flowing around me stopping cold. "That's not my job to determine, it's your mother's." She shrugged. "Epona's very fond of you, and she very much wants you to stay alive. You've just died too many times too close together. It wears a soul out."

"If I'm dead for good...Sorcha becomes herself again."

"If you stay dead, what happens to Dream and to Galvin? You'll break both of their hearts if you don't return when you're called. Galvin's yours for his whole life, and Dream will waste away and eventually die without you. You know that."

I sighed. Then paused, and narrowed my eyes. "Wait. Go back a bit. Aine, did you do something to Galvin?"

She gave me an innocent look, widening those light green eyes. "Me? Would I do a thing like that?"

"It's bad form to mess with other gods' clerics, isn't it?"

She grinned impishly. "He wasn't Epona's yet, at the time." Then she looked at me and shook her head. "No, he was always destined to find one person to love for his whole life, it's how he is. I just gave him a few little nudges down the path that would lead him eventually to you, because he needed you or someone much like you, and you were going to need him. Call it a repayment of a favor your mother did me long ago."

I thought about this. "Nothing that happened to us was chance. Each of us was guided to this place in our lives, weren't we?"

Aine shrugged. "Believe what you like, Callas. You should be having this conversation with Epona, not me. And now, you should be following your body wherever your friends are taking it." She waved her hand again and images started to flow past me once more, silently surrounding me with motion.

I sighed and turned away from the place that was calling me, towards the bloody mess of my body that Galvin was cradling in his arms. And then the gate fired, I felt myself being pulled somewhere, and for a time everything was darkness and silence.

The next thing I knew, I was coughing my throat raw, Galvin's arm around my shoulders as I fought for breath. I could hear Tamsin doing the same thing a few feet away. Galvin murmured into my ear, "Ma petite, you are absolutely forbidden to do that again this week."

After I caught my breath, I asked, "What? Die? It's not like I meant to have my stepmother try to kill me."

"Still. This is twice in the last two days that my heart's stopped along with yours."

I coughed again, clearing my throat. "I will..." Another cough, drawing a breath finally that seemed to actually get to the bottom of my lungs. "...endeavor not to die again any time soon. I was trying to keep out of Sorcha's sight. What happened?" I looked around and saw Teranis standing over the prone form of what could only be Juri, his wings sprawled out on the ground.

"Teranis grabbed Juri after you and Tamsin died and we ran for it. There was no staying and fighting, we'd all have died. We got five of their ten orbs and they sacrificed two on you, so they have three left. They'll be regrouping and licking their wounds for a while. This battle cost them dearly, almost as much as it cost us."

I got to my feet, rubbing my forearms, remembering the sight of the white bones washed with blood and sand. Riyor grinned and held up an orb, which was flickering with a reddish light. "We got Smetrios. Swiped him right out of that dwarf's hand. Teranis says we can re-corporealize him, no problem. First, though, we need to question Juri."

I spent a bit calming Dream down, who had indeed been frantic while I was dead, and asking questions of Juri. Juri didn't tell us a lot we didn't know already, other than the dwarf's name and the name of one of the two members of the council we don't know of yet. He said that the only person who knows the other one is Sorcha, and she's not telling.

The one behind Sorcha, the one who she answers to. I have my suspicions about who it might be, but I may be mistaken.

We laid the orb on Juri's chest and Smetrios took his body over, fighting a very brief battle with him and then changing the body into his usual form. Smetrios gave us all a gift--a contingency resurrection that will work once, bringing us back fully healed and with all spells the next time each of us dies. He gave Gavião command of his troops, scattered all over Europe.

He also gave us some papers that were in Juri's pockets. One piece was from the notes of Morrigan. I had to puzzle over the date on it a bit before I figured out what calendar she was using, but it turns out that the information in it was about twenty thousand years old.

What was Juri doing with Morrigan's personal notes? We may never know. He was a smart one, that one.

But it appears as though we were replaying history. Knowing now that the gods were mortals once, I had started wondering if they hadn't done the same thing that the council is doing now, and this was our proof that they had indeed. Once, our current gods were mortals like us, who had the bright idea to kill the Ancients (the gods who had come before them) and take their places.

When they became gods, Epona at least evidently seemed to regret what they had done, along with several others, but Morrigan was positively jubilant at the outcome of things. A couple more tidbits in the notes were that Morrigan possesses something she called the source, and she is evidently mostly invulnerable while she has it. And there are rumors of one Ancient who still lives, named Agia, but she dismissed him as something of a fairy tale.

The other note was evidently a note that Juri had written to himself, about a cure for the plague. Arnie was poking at it, and muttered, "He misspelled 'to' as 'two'. Weird. He seemed smarter than that. Hey, wait..."

The note had six numbers embedded in it. A gate coordinate to someplace called Brazil, on the other side of the world from Europe. Where, evidently, a cure for the plague resides.

Do you think we could resist something like that? Of course we're going to go. We're taking a few days to rest in St. Petersburg, though. The council will need to rest and regroup now. We estimate it'll be a few weeks before they're really back in action again, perhaps long enough for us to find and take care of Lazlo, long enough to find out some more of the things that are starting to come to light. They may have the leisure to stop and rest, but we do not. We'll take a few days here to let Gavião and Galvin get some things sorted out--Gavião's putting together a battle squad of white dragons and knights who will ride them. Galvin's going to be one of them, as is Gavião. I'll help Elata and Peter sort out the details of integrating Brigit's Order into ours; they have more physical structures to worry about than Sucellus' Order did, among other things. They're also more straightlaced than we are, which has already caused a few problems and will probably continue to cause them. It's officially not my concern, but since I'm here and we have a few days, I might as well help out.

We're also bringing Gemma here for a few days. She needs to be somewhere where we have healers to work on her, and right now this is one of the two safest places in the world I can think of, surrounded by paladins, white dragons, and soon a legion of Smetrios' troops. I'll be working with her a lot while I'm here, trying to learn from her all I can.

I have so much to think about, so many thoughts swirling in my head, about what we're doing and the history we're repeating and the plans that the council has. There are things here that are important and need my attention, but for now, I simply can't think of them all.

Jainus arrived just now, and Gavião's gone to meet with her. I think he likes her as more than just his second (well, officially, third). I'm glad. He's had far too little of a personal life since he got assigned to me, and I feel a little bit guilty over that. Being saddled with me isn't a lot of fun much of the time. It was weird to find out that he'd had quite the personal life before I met him, but I'm over that now. Well, all right, mostly over it. It's still kind of weird, but it's also a good thing.

I gave him Freya's Necklace, which makes you look more attractive, along with its more useful ability to protect you from the cold. He probably doesn't need the help, but it can't hurt. Besides, it was a good way to tell him that I approve without actually having to say anything about it.

Last night, as well, Gavião introduced me to his father, Pedro Nobre, who was one of the men we rescued from Dushela's lab. They are so alike, though I'm not sure either of them would be willing to admit it. I can see reflections of the things that I love about Gavião in Pedro, somewhat faint but definitely there. I wanted to thank him for bringing into the world one of three people I love above all others, but I couldn't find a way to do so without treading on what seems to be dangerous ground, so I held my tongue.

And, more interesting news--Pedro, and the men he was on the ship with, are all immune to the plague. The cargo of their ship was a plague cure. We need to trace that back to the source. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day...

Today, though, I am working with Gemma. This ought to be interesting. Here's to the hope that my sister is more cooperative than I think she's going to be.

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