[cowritten by Kris and Ben, who isn't a part of the current campaign but thought it might be useful to let our characters meet.]
Ten felt odd. He looked at the shadow of another set of hands, larger ones, overlaying the pair that only existed in this place of Dreaming. He closed his eyes and concentrated, forcing the image of his current half-orcish form to give way to his human face, the face lost to reincarnation. Ellywick's spell gave him a few small benefits, Ten noted with some bittersweet pleasure. He could feel the force of her _Dream_ spell on is mind, pulling him forward with only a name whispered amidst the foglike wisps of this realm. It was a name that echoed and itched the back of his skull, an invisible spirit that danced around the priest with capricious delight. Ten muttered a quick prayer to Pelor for safety and took a few steps into the mist.
A door resolved itself before him. Heavy, wooden, bound with iron, it reminded him of ones he'd seen in a few older buildings. He turned the handle and stepped through the rectangle of sunlight reflected from a snowfield at noon.
It was a tavern common room with a bar across the back wall, the windows black, the fireplace warm with a flickering log on a bed of bronze coals. Ten blinked and looked about, still unused to this realm and its malleable nature. He shrugged and walked behind the bar, taking down two mugs from their hooks and setting them down on the long, darkly stained bar. He tugged off his gauntlets and set them next to the mugs, then touched a bare finger to one of the taps before bringing it to his lips. Ten smiled at the taste of a strong porter and picked up a mug, filling it with a frothy head. The priest took a pull from the cup as he turned and then stopped, lowering the flagon and setting it down to the right of his gauntlets. The two beersteins framed his heavy leather and steel gloves on either side and standing opposite Ten was a man with a slight frame, slate grey hair and intense grey eyes harder than the metal of his plate armor. His face was young, no more than 20, but there was an ancient soul behind those eyes. He stood perhaps two and half feet away, and yet Ten never heard him approach.
"Hello," Ten smiled. "Beer?" He gestured in offering to the empty flagon. "Are you Callas?"
The man remained humorless, unmoving. He shook his head in a silent refusal of the offered drink, and regarded Ten carefully. "Why do you seek Callas?" The youth's head cocked slightly to one side as he asked.
"I...I.." Ten seemed to consider and reconsider his words. "My God told me that maybe I should speak to Callas, that perhaps in talking to Callas I might find some solace."
"Odd that a man seeking solace would come so armored." There was a definite edge to the boy's voice. His face reminded Ten of a few new recruits he'd healed during his last hitch with the Bristol Legions. Ten blinked at the response and glanced at the heavy shoulder paldrons of his mail. He grinned and shrugged.
"I'm afraid in the waking world I seem to spend most of my time in my armor; it must be residual." Ten closed his eyes and concentrated, his breath becoming slow and steady. When he opened his eyes, he wore the simple traveler's clothes of a heavy blue tunic and brown breeches that he often relaxed in when off the road. "I'm sorry. I meant no offense, Callas. Would you be willing to speak with me for a moment?" Ten gestured to a table by the fire. "As I understood it, time flows differently here. I wouldn't keep you long."
The boy still seemed impassive. "I am not Ca...I am not offended, yet." He sniffed, yet judging Ten with those granite eyes. "There is another image over you. This is not your skin, is it?"
Ten was embarrassed now; what had been a bit of hubris now seemed duplicitous. "No. Again, I'm doubly sorry. I...I," Ten seemed to fight with the words again, seeking the most understandable explanation, and then simply resigned himself. "Just a moment." Again, he closed his eyes and focused his concentration. Now, when he looked at his palms again, Ten gave a weak smile and looked back across the bar at the grey questioner. Ten stood a full head taller and broader, his skin ashen, his head shaved bald, a lone fang protruding from the right corner of his lower lip, a slight point to his ears; he was now quite obviously a half orc, though one that favored his human heritage-- heritage that must have been more than casually attractive, even a bit moreso than the form he'd previously held. He looked over at the youth now with sad but resolved eyes.
The boy nodded. "Yes, that is your true form." He sniffed again, almost more of a snort. "Stay here. I will convey your request to Callas. Should Callas want to speak with you, you will be joined."
With that, the youth turned and walked silently across the room. Ten looked down to pick up his mug and take another swallow. When he glanced back across to the door, the steely eyed boy was gone without a sound, and without apparently opening the door. Ten chuckled lightly to himself and drank his flagon empty. With a sigh and a soft smile, he spoke to an empty room. "Damn fine trick. Wish I could do it myself." Turning in a shrug, Ten filled his mug again and leaned on the bar. He traced his finger around the mouth of the cup and stared at the door, waiting.
*******
"What do you mean, you don't think he's from this world?" Callas frowned at Dream, her arms crossed. "What world is he from?"
Dream shrugged. "Not any of the ones I'm familiar with. Somewhere where orcs and humans occasionally breed, it looks like."
"Orcs and...humans? Ick. I don't want to know. Actually, I really, really don't want to know."
"It does sometimes happen, Callas, so I've heard--or at least it used to. Though I'd never actually met a half-orc before tonight. He said his god wanted him to talk to you." They were standing in Callas' dark bedroom, her physical form in bed behind them, entwined with a sleeping Galvin.
"Did he happen to mention who his god was? I'm not exactly eager to meet up with another Morrigan cleric, even if she may go by another name wherever this person's from."
"No, but after he pulled off all the deceptions surrounding him, I got the feeling he wasn't actually there under his own power. He's not a seer by nature, I'm pretty sure, which means I--or you--can toss him back to wherever he came from without a fuss if he proves difficult. No whiff of Lazlo, even." Dream leaned on Tuck's staff, looking at Callas.
"In that case, let's go talk to him. Sounds like it can't do any harm, at least."
Dream held out the staff to her. "Take Tuck. You shouldn't go in unarmed."
Callas accepted the proffered staff, murmuring a few words to it in a low voice. She paused, listening, and then started laughing, saying between giggles, "No, I am *not* going to do that! Honestly, Tuck! For one thing, I'm pretty sure it's anatomically impossible, and for the second thing, um, NO." She looked up at Dream, still giggling. "Damn artifacts. All right, let's go talk to this person." She took Dream's hand, and closed her eyes.
In the tavern, Ten sat waiting to see if the young man would return. Who had he been? Some sort of guard, it looked like. He sipped his beer, thinking over his encounter with the strange young man.
Behind him, he suddenly felt a presence, and turned. There was the young man again, and next to him...Ten blinked. He'd assumed that Callas was a man, but the person next to the silver-haired young man was a tall woman, dressed in a green shirt of an unfamiliar style, rough brown trousers, and a dark cloak. She carried a quarterstaff carved with odd designs, and she regarded him with a steady gaze.
Ten found his tongue. "Callas, I presume?" He gestured at the table, and said, "Please, have a seat, and a drink."
The dark-haired woman and the silver-haired man exchanged a look, and then she nodded. "I will, thank you." She came around the table, sitting down across from him, leaning her staff against the bench. The man took a seat next to her. "You seem to have the advantage of me. You know who I am, but I have no idea who you are."
"My name is Ten. I'm a priest of the god Pelor, who told me to come seek you out. He said there were perhaps some things we had in common, that I might take comfort in speaking with you."
Callas gave him a smile with more than a little ruefulness in it. "That's odd. I'm not exactly a comforting sort of person, honestly." She inclined her head towards the steely-eyed young man who sat next to her. "This is Dream, my guide. Among other things." She picked up the tankard before her and a look of concentration came over her face. The outline of the tankard blurred and shifted, changing in her hand to a goblet made of glass, filled with some sort of pale wine.
He took advantage of her moment of inattention to study the woman sitting across from him. She was definitely young, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, but there were the beginnings of lines between her brows and at the corners of her eyes. She had the look of someone who has spent much time in physical labor--tanned skin, shoulders well-muscled, her hands calloused. Her features were strong and sharp, her hair midnight black and braided back from her face. She was less pretty than striking, truly, and much of that had to do with her eyes. As she looked across the table at him, he could see the strength of will in those dark green eyes.
He could also feel the gaze of Dream, who sat watchful next to Callas. He wondered, suddenly, who this woman actually was, sitting across from him. What about her inspired such intensity? Who was she, to have such a watchful guard?
Callas gestured with her glass towards him. "I like mead much better than beer. And at least here, I don't have to worry about breaking the glass. By the way, I'm a priestess of Epona. I'm not sure what name she goes by where you're from, if she does at all."
Ten asked, curious, "What is she the goddess of?"
"Currently?" She gave a humorless laugh. "Animals, especially horses. Lately, she's also taken on the aspect of the god of plants and growing things."
"Your gods occasionally take on new aspects? It must be a strange place you're from."
She shook her head. "Our gods only take on new aspects when someone kills the god who had those aspects before. Sucellus, the god of the druids, was killed a couple of months ago now, and Epona took on his aspects and those druids who chose to convert to her worship."
Ten stared at her, open-mouthed. "Someone is killing your gods? But how? They're *gods*! They can't die!" The mere thought filled him with horror.
Callas shook her head. "Where I'm from, the gods can die if you can catch them in their physical forms. They're hard to kill, and killing them comes with consequences, but they can die. They began as mortals, and though they will never die of old age, a sword through the heart of their physical forms will kill them just as well as you or I." She stared into her glass of wine. "We've lost three so far to our enemies. We're trying to stop them from killing the rest, but I'm afraid they have us somewhat outnumbered and outmaneuvered, much of the time."
His mind reeled with the consequences of her statement. One of the few things he could count on in the world was his God--eternal, without beginning or ending. To have that certainty taken away... He blurted, "How do you live with that? How can you?"
She looked at him with those green eyes, and answered, "In terror, Ten. In terror. Even more so because the people who are killing the gods wish to take their place--and most of them are people I'll go to hell before ever raising a prayer to." She took a sip of her mead. "But enough about that, really. It's not something I like to dwell on. I and my companions are doing what we can. So what about you, Ten? Why do you think your god told you to come to me, of all people, for solace?"
***
Ten opened his eyes a bit wider for half a moment to absorb the shock of Callas' previous statement, putting it in perspective against his own dilemma. "I can't even...I." He swallowed and considered his words for a breath and then began. "You have my prayers, for what little they might help. I hope it's something. I myself, am a priest of a God of dichotomies--Mercy and Healing, the Sun and Strength. Aspects that are seemingly unconflicting at first, and yet..." He let his sentence trail off and took a gulp of his dream-ale.
"When I began my travels as a field missionary," the half orc gave a lopsided grin split by a fang and punctuated by a snort, "I'm not sure how to explain. In the last thirty nine months of travel, I've seen 21 deaths in our Company. Two were my own, one was where I was forced to kill a founding companion; one I thought I'd led from darkness into the light." Ten drank again from his flagon and seemed to use the pause to think.
"Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself," the cleric gave a sheepish look. "We returned from a long quest to find my homelands at war, my church splintered by an Inquisition stretching back to the last Age.
"My own mentor now finds me a heretic, my family is held, possibly against their will," Ten rubbed his forehead and scratched his temple, his eyes closed, "I dare not contact them for fear that they may give away some detail of my being that might get them tortured or worse. All by an Inquisition who are responsible for so much, including this miserable skin I wear now." Ten looks at his palm, and then the back of his hand.
"It's odd to wake up in the morning and not recognize your own hands." The half orc seems matter of fact with this non sequitur. "Sometimes, if I'm tired, I can startle myself with a mirror."
"I was cut down by an Archon commanded by the Inquisition's order as I tried to flee into exile. And now, now we think these wars, the rise of the Inquisition, the turmoil that threatens our lands, is planned and birthed and nurtured by an ancient race of snake men called Yuan-ti." Ten brushed the side of his nose with his thumb and traced the lip of his mug. "They wait in the shadows, manipulate and plot, infiltrate and fade. Anyone could be their agent in our countries and not even realize it until after the betrayal," he laughed softly through his nose, "That's how well they hide amongst us.
"Not only that, but it seems as if no one opposes them but our group of six," Ten caught himself, laying a hand on his chest. "No, seven, if I can trust the newcomer whose brother was just killed." He shrugs silently and continues, "Of that group, I am left to argue that prisoners need not always be killed once we've finished interrogating them, that our dead need be buried, or that we cannot simply walk into fights with men because we think they might have some useful information tucked away."
Ten took a deep drink and chuckled softly. "I know I sound crazy. By the Light, I sometimes think I might be crazy." He shifted into a falsetto voice, out of place with the black-blooded visage, "'Snakemen in the shadows started all these wars to soften us for their enslaving invasion, your Grace!'" He rolled his eyes once, "'Oh, proof? A plan? A witness to their treachery? Well, we have this body which refuses to talk!'" Ten snorted. "It smells like a pile of dung cleaned out of the stables after a fortnight of neglect." The cleric took a deep breath and continued, "But we keep finding signs. Lackeys. Clues. Hints of plans. All mostly indirect, but enough to prove that they exist in some way, and enough to prove they're up to something if you're willing to draw the lines between the dots.
A thick hand with well-trimmed nails massaged the back of Ten's neck, "I know how to be a soldier. An officer. I did that before I became a priest." He cocked his head to the side, into the meaty palm. "But that was when the enemy was wearing colors and we fought with skirmishes or pickets and on battlefields.
"How...how am I supposed to be true to my faith-- merciful, just, kind, gentle, and fight this war as it must be fought? I know how I could fight-- ruthless, precise, disciplined, bloody. But," Ten's voice took on a scholarly note as it he seemed to quote, "'If I command the use of all weapons such that I win every battle, and know arcana such that I comprehend all mysteries, yet lack compassion, I stand defeated.'" He gave Callas a pained look, "That is my dilemma. I refuse to harden my heart, and yet the Soldier in me knows that if I try to fight a compassionate war I will watch my family buried or in chains.
"The enemies I've made fighting thus far keep me on the run, unwelcome for long even amidst the remnants of my Order and my few allies," Ten rested his forearms like walls around the tower of his stein and stared into the last dregs of dark liquid within. "That's why I asked Pelor for a name in _Divinination,_ for someone who might be able to say something, anything."
He looked up and across the table to the two faces, "You make it sound as if you, too, are at war. That your god is one of Good." Ten seemed pained, "How do you find reconciliation? How do you war without becoming lost to the beast of it? Can I stay true and still fight?" He looked back into the mug, it was a discussion with which he seemed familiar. "And prisoners? Unwitting abettors?" The half orc snorted again, "Mercy calls for one path, war another. Which can I follow and do what's right?" Ten paused and raised his swordhand to his cheek, scratching first, then rubbing his eyes for a moment before sighing and wiping his face.
"I'm sorry. I am.... tired. Tired of seeing companions cut down," he made a chopping motion with the knife's edge of one palm into the other, "Or depart for what will more or less be forever." Ten twiddled his fingers into the air to his right. "I am weary from the schism of my church, and worn from the battles of the last few years." He gave another soft, weak smile to Callas, "I shouldn't have bothered you, it's just that I'm the guidestar by which the rest of my companions heave to. I cannot falter, or else so many may die, and our cause with them. It's ...It's hard sometimes." The cleric rubbed the faint calluses of his swordhand with his left thumb, "While I need to be strong, I needed to share this with someone. I needed to hear something," he gave a dry sniff, "From someone."
Ten paused, taking a shallow breath and laughing softly through his nose. "This will seem so random, ..." he smiled softly at Callas, "I miss brewing mead. An ale I do every once in a while when we stop for two or three days. One of has a magic bag that can hold the casks. But it takes a good year to do a batch right from brew to cask, and the temperature's got to be right. It's been an age since I sat still a year..." The crow's feet at his eyes deepened as Ten's smile became a touch less melancholy, "Wouldn't that be something? A year of good food and good beer with family and friends, and no nights on a bedroll, watching shadows, waking up the others at a smashcracklepop of something charging through the bushes at you or the fact that you suddenly can't hear your fingers against your mail? No scrambling for your mace, calling forth a pillar of fire or mending deathblows on your friends, maybe even warm company for the nights?" Ten almost seemed to squint in his smile at that thought, and then just as quick banished it with another soft snort, letting a sad half smirk replace it. "Not that I think I'll be seeing anysuch a thing anytime soon. But it would be something."
The priest picked up his mug and threw back the last of its contents, bringing it back down to the tabletop quickly. "I'm sorry I've rambled so. Thank you for listening...Like I said. Gets hard, and there's few I've got time, place, or opportunity to talk to...I...Thanks."
********
Callas reached across the table, placing her thin hand on his large one. He was surprised at how cool her fingers were, her nails bitten to the quick. She said, "You're welcome, Ten. You're right, a year of peace would be wonderful. Time to do what I became a priestess to do--heal the animals that come under my care, ride endlessly under the summer sun. A year without being responsible for the ills of an entire continent, a whole world. I might even learn how to sail, go to sea with my love." She sighed. "Unfortunately, even if we do win this war, the plague may yet be the undoing of all of us."
She rested her sharp chin in her hand, leaning her elbow on the table. "But you're welcome. It's good to talk to someone who knows how the decisions we have to make can tear at your heart. I know what it's like to know that you cannot falter, lest the people you lead be lost without you." She closed her eyes briefly, thinking of a young paladin who looked at her as if she could fix all of the problems of the world.
Her voice was slightly blurred by the soft accent of whatever her native tongue was. "I can tell you how I achieve reconciliation between my faith and the war I am fighting, but to understand the answer, you'll have to know something more about where I come from." She took a sip of her mead, composing her thoughts. "Where I am from, all of the gods are essentially neutral. It is men who give their worship whatever tenor it might have--Epona's clerics tend towards good, Morrigan, the god of death, has worshippers who tend towards evil, the others range between them. But in each of our Orders we have people who are of all kinds. About a year ago, I was assigned to a trainee circuit in a city called Lisbon, and I was assigned a paladin from the Knights of our Order, named Gaviao. Four months ago, a lot of very strange things started happening. We picked up some traveling companions, several of whom have since become my closest friends. And we came up against Ulan, who was Headmistress of the entire Order at the time. Gaviao killed her in battle, and then afterwards we interrogated her Second, a girl I'd been a trainee with."
She moved her hands together as if to attempt to rub a memory off of them. "Ulan and Nara had been plotting to destroy the Order of Epona. It was my responsibility to carry out the execution of Nara, ordered by my goddess herself. It was the first time I had ever killed anyone off the battlefield, and my first time killing someone I knew--even if I didn't like her very much. And ever since then, I have been walking through the shadows, making decisions for which there are no right answers."
She tilted her head slightly as she looked at Ten, giving him a look that spoke of long worry and exhaustion. "I have done terrible things, Ten. My mistakes have brought death to innocent people, and decisions I have made will bring death to many more. Good people have died by my hand." A deep sorrow passes over her features and she chokes, a sob attempting to escape from her. Ten waited, not knowing what to say, and she struggled and finally got control over her voice again. "My own father was one of those people." Dream placed a hand on her shoulder and she turned her head to rest her cheek on his hand for a moment. "I'm sorry. That wound is still fresh, I'm afraid."
"It's all right." Ten said, quietly.
She rubbed her forehead briefly, and then spoke again. "But I have to believe that I am doing the best I can do under the circumstances. I'm a seer; I go places and know things that the others cannot, and thus I am our guide through the shadows. And I am not only leading my companions, but the entirety of my Temple. My heart breaks anew with every impossible choice I am given, and with every one of our companions and allies who falls."
Ten frowned, and interrupted, "Wait. Did you say you lead your Temple?"
Callas gave him a wry smile. "Yes. I'm the youngest cleric to ever be in the position of Headmistress, by about fifteen years. When I executed Nara, my goddess elected to meddle a bit and have me declared Headmaster of the Order, the cleric who leads us all. I'm an odd choice for it, since most of our Headmasters are renowned healers, and I'm...well, not. Epona seems to think she knows what she's doing, but I still have my doubts." She laughed quietly. "So does everyone else. But I do the best I can, and I'm learning as I go along. I seem to have a knack for politics I never expected." She took another sip of her mead, gathering her thoughts again.
Ten thought he understood, now, why this cleric inspired such watchfulness on the part of her guard. He wondered, suddenly, what the relationship was between the two. What had she said? Her guide, among other things. And she'd made reference to a lover; he wondered if this silver-eyed person were him. He contemplated it, and decided that he didn't think so. How they moved together wasn't quite right for lovers. Brother and sister, perhaps; but such an odd pair to be so related.
"To make a very, very long story short, Ten, this is the war I am fighting on my world. There is a group of very powerful and very evil people loose in the world, a council that we discovered the existence of about the same time that we killed Ulan and Nara. As far as we know, their ultimate aim is to become gods themselves, and to hold all of the magic in the world under their power. They have created magic-absorbing orbs that suck the magic out of an area, sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily. They are killing the gods, one by one, to create vacancies that they can fill, and to take the gods' powers for themselves. And they have created a plague, one that kills nearly everyone with the slightest portion of magic in them. It's being held at bay now by the cold weather--it's winter now where I'm from--but soon the weather will warm and then the plague will sweep the land. They call it the Black Death, and it will obliterate almost all of the magical races from the world as if they never existed. In a hundred years, I imagine, elves and dwarves and gnomes and the rest will all be mere legends. It will kill most of the magic-users in the world, as well. No wizards, no sorcerers. And no clerics." She sighed deeply. "We have people working on a cure for the plague, but it's a case of too little, too late. I had to make a decision--save one race, doom the rest. I chose humans. Those are the decisions I'm having to make, Ten. These are the shadows I have to make my way through." She noticed that both her glass and his stein were empty and gestured; the goblet filled once again with the pale wine, the mug filled with beer.
Ten blinked, trying to absorb all that she'd just told him. "You know, Yuan-ti and all, I think I prefer my world to yours."
She laughed without humor. "An intelligent preference, Ten. I probably would, as well. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the one I was born into. But, yes, the decisions I have to make are all terrible, and there are never any good options."
He took a pull on his newly filled stein. "So how do you do it? How do you make those choices, Callas? Where do mercy and war balance?"
She traced one of the long scars on her forearms meditatively. He noticed that on her left wrist there was a bracelet, which seemed to be a silver wire wrapped around a core of something--perhaps braided hair. "The major difference between us and our enemies, Ten, is love. They have very little, and what they do have is terribly warped. I and my companions, it seems, were chosen by fate on the basis of the strength of our potential to love and to sacrifice ourselves for that love. I would have been dead many, many times over if not for the love my knight and my friends bear me." She paused, gazing down at her calloused hands, and took a breath. "I temper my decisions with compassion when I can. But the most dangerous place in the world is between a mother and her children. The bear has no compassion for those between her and her cubs, the stallion no mercy for what threatens his herd. At the same time, I try to look for places where love can get in, chances to redeem our enemies instead of killing them."
Callas sighed, and shivered a little. "And every new loss hurts more than the last, every grief is sharper than the one before it. I have seen my lover die and be resurrected. I have seen my mistakes cost the lives of innocents--initiates in our Temple whose only mistake had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, sons and daughters of my mother who I wasn't able to protect when a cavern caved in on them. I killed my father rather than to let loose something on the world that would possibly have ended everything. And most recently, someone I loved traded his life for my sister's. He considered it a fair trade, but I do not. Nothing was worth Aru's death. Not even the chance of victory where there was otherwise nothing but defeat."
Her hand tightened on the bowl of her glass goblet, her knuckles going white. She shook herself and wiped her eyes, which shone with unshed tears. "I'm sorry. It's been..." She choked, obviously fighting back tears, closing her eyes and composing herself. "...a very trying few days. I still haven't come to terms with it yet. I don't have the answers, Ten, just more questions. We do what we have to do, attempt to act like decent beings when we can, and remember to respect the fallen enemy as well as our own dead. We are the gods' instruments, that is what our faith means. We have to trust that, even when we are put in a place where our faith and what is necessary collide."
The young priestess drank deep from her glass, a look of exhaustion crossing her face. In that moment, Ten saw what she had been hiding from him, as she probably hid it reflexively from everyone--that fatigue that went all the way to the bone, that fragility that was paired with her great strength. Talking with her, it was easy to forget how young she was, almost young enough to be his daughter, had he had one.
She gave him a rueful smile. "Listen to me, talking your ear off. You get me talking, and I never know where to stop. The words just spill out of me sometimes. I'm afraid I haven't really answered your question, Ten, and I've probably only made things worse. I do that. Is there anything else you'd like to know? I have to say that you're one of the more interesting people I've met in the dream realm. If nothing else, I'd like to hear about why you don't recognize yourself in the mirror."
*********
Ten smiled softly, the fang protruding from his lower lip out of place comparison to the otherwise gentle look on his face. "I look like this because of my Church's Inquisition." He pauses to run his hand across the stubble of his scalp. "I was born human. I've an older sister, a younger brother and a pair of twin sisters." He chuckles, "Though I haven't seen them in about a year and a half, I wouldn't be surprised if they're married now. Regardless.
"A particular Order of my Church is quite pacifistic, ascetic. The Inquisition declared them heretical about three years ago. They refuse to fight, and if captured, they'll stay imprisoned until rescued or dead, healing anyone injured brought to them and attempting to convert those about them. At first I helped rescue them and brought them to a protective sanctuary...A ghetto, really. When I spoke more and realized what they were doing..." Ten seemed frustrated. "My time as soldier can be infuriating sometimes. I know that their goal is a good one, but that tactically, they can enable terrible creatures to do so much more harm until they convert. On the other hand, if the Inquisition instead spent half the resources they do on rescue missions and Ghettos on protective paladin escorts for these Brothers, their capture could be avoided in the first place." Ten shrugged in resignation.
"Then the Inquisition grew more harsh, placing an edict denying any healing to a village as punishment for the actions of a few townsfolk. After that came the demand of dragonsblood for tithe from a vassal nation that revered dragons. When the dragon priests refused, they placed the same edict on Amherst. Only those born half dragon may be priests in Amherst, and with no Pelorian clerics to help, plague began to run rampant. In the end, my Order sided with the Pacifists and helped to smuggle them out to Amherst.
"I'd been abroad when this happened and learned of it when I returned to our holy city. The Inquisition placed me under a sort of friendly arrest, giving me the option of renouncing my Order and its ways or imprisonment until the situation changed or I chose to renounce. I saw the clouds of war gathering on the horizon; I'd even been on a mission to recover the stolen body of a friend," Ten gave a weak laugh at this, "But none of it mattered to the Inquisition. I fasted and prayed for a day and a night in consideration, and realized that I'd never left a companion dead on the field and I wasn't about to start now. Members of our Company know they can depend on me to get to them and either heal them or recover them. I keep my word." A hard edge of conviction crept into Ten's voice, a deep anger at the conflict.
Ten took a drink of beer, clearing his throat and continuing, "So I gave a _sending_ to Ellywick, asked her to meet me at the Hall of the Radiant Servants with Cal's windrunner horse, Nimbus. The three of us could fly out invisibly once I joined them, and no one need be the wiser." Ten paused, taking another drink. "I didn't want any trouble, I'd asked the Council for exile rather than renounce, and they'd denied it. I had been left with no choice.
"So I _recalled_ to the Hall, to our Alcove of Arrival-- a specially prepared room where we may all teleport to if need be. A trumpet archon was waiting for me." Ten blinked a couple of times and sniffed. "She was glorious, beautiful, everything I'd imagined she would be." Ten smiled weakly again, his eyes shining wet. "I'd prayed before, to be blessed with a visit from such a servant of Pelor's, that I might be brought some message or quest by their hands." The half orc swallowed once and continued. "I knelt before it, told it how it pleased me to be so graced by her presence, how honored I was to simply see her. She told me that she was to take me and any who appeared in the Alcove to the Inquisition as prisoners." He laughed once, sardonically, "I begged her to ignore me, to let me go out and serve Pelor, never to return to the Hall or our City. Pleaded to let me finish my quest and then atone to the Church." Ten took another drink and set down his mug firmly. "When her trumpet became a gleaming twohanded sword I knew my words were useless. I told her I would not harm her and summoned an _obscuring fog_, trying to flee unseen." His eyes were focused purely on the rim of the flagon now, his voice replaying events methodically. "The Archon was not fooled, I knew she wouldn't be. She saw me near the edge of the mist and blocked my path with a _blade barrier_, called for me to stop. I yelled out how I only wanted to go, how I meant no harm. I gave myself a _spell resistance_, braced my shield and dove through the whirling curtain of razors. My steel shield was shattered, I'm sure that's all that kept me from being torn to ribbons, not that it mattered much." Ten's voice grew softer. "As I tried getting up from my leap, the Archon dismissed her barrier and fell upon me with an almost elegant savagery. She gave no quarter. I choked on blood and metal, trying to pull wind with naught but meat and scrap after the first strike, thinking that this felt so wrong. The coup de grace ended any further pain, shortlived and intense as it had been. I remember flying up over my severed corpse, pausing to marvel at the evisceration, noting how odd it seemed that my arm lay a few feet away-- cut off in an instinctual attempt to ward off a blow that shattered my collarbone and rent my lungs. My innards lay spilt across the light blue tile and my blood pooled around me in deep red oval that spiderwebbed along it's edges as it followed the borders of the tile masonry.
"Strange, the things you first notice when you're dead. I can still smell the blood, that metallic smell when I think about it.
"Elysium faded from my memory as fast as I had sped to it...which is to say that in the span of two or three new heartbeats it had become a faint and vague sensation of joy and comfort, surrounded by light and vast blue ocean." Ten paused to take another drink before continuing, his eyes still centered on the cup in his hands. "So funny, actually. I hate ships and the ocean, any one of my companions will tell you that. 'No good can come of ships,' I always say." He sniffed again and continued, "I awoke in a dirt grotto, clawing my out of a cocoon like membrane that stretched over my face and body, dumping me to the ground as it gave way to my new fingers," Ten squinted as he smiled and waggled a hand very like a pancake with five sausages attached. "Let it not be said that Pelor has no sense of poetic justice and dark humor to compliment his infinite mercy.." He flipped over palm and stared at it as he spoke, "In my past life I thought nothing of slaying orcs and goblins." The priest took another pull of his beer and kept going, avoiding Callas and Dream's eyes, "I still tend to think of them as brutal, uncaring savages who'd just as soon split me open and eat me as they would any other of my Company; I'd just as quick crack their skulls and leave them for dead. The problem is, though, that stripped of my weapons and holy vestments, most people will probably think the same thing of me in this body, and that, I have to believe, is the lesson." Ten smiles flatly and looks up at the pair sitting across from him.
"Ellywick had arrived, like we'd planned. She really is a fantastic and stalwart friend. I am blessed to have rescued her when I did. She snuck down, invisibly, when I didn't arrive on the roof. She saw the Archon gathering my corpse and tried to recover the body. Tried to recover some of the things I'd been carrying for the rest of our Company, but the Archon refused." Ten shook his head gently. "Having thought about it since, I'm fairly certain she'd been compelled there, rather than asked," the half orc shrugged, "If you understand the difference in magical terms. I'm sure you do." He drank again from his mug and continued, "My words must have meant something to her, though, because the Archon left my arm behind for Ellywick to take. That was enough for the druids to perform the reincarnation." Ten opened his hands in consigned resolution, "And here I am."
"Still, it's hard...the new face, new name, new hands. I look in a mirror and see a stranger. I look for childhood scars and find none. It is unsettling to not recognize the back of one's hand. And like I said, sometimes I can startle myself with a mirror. Not as often anymore; I have to be pretty tired." He takes another swallow of his beer, neither embarrassed nor angry, merely accepting.
"You said you didn't think you'd helped me, but you have." The half orc rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze still averted. "The path we walk is one that hopes to rescue, to triumph, that loves and regrets the violence it must commit to reach its goal. We are chosen by our gods to serve them, to carry out their will, and our faith is what must keep us to that path. Our faith must buoy us in the tide of terrible things that surround us." He looks up, "We would not have been chosen for such a path if our faith in our gods was not strong enough to maintain us when times become harsh. We are the tools of a greater scheme, and we must trust in the hands that guide us." Ten's eyes gained a fierceness as he spoke, "When we forget the love that springs from and grows out of that faith, that is when we stumble. Sacrifices remind us how wonderful that love is, what we are willing to give for it. Loss reminds us how terrible things could be if we chose not to struggle. Faith and love are what let us reconcile what must be done." It was now Ten's turn to smile ruefully. "Thank you. You've proven to be everything my _divination_ asked for and more." He tilted his bald head in deference, blinking back a wetness in his eyes as he did so. "I'm sorry I have nothing to give you in return. If I did, I would gladly make it yours."
********
Callas smiled gently at Ten, her green eyes seeming almost to glow a little in the light. "Ah, Ten, you've given me much that you do not realize. There are other priests in my group of companions--my love is one, and my friend Riyor is another. But Riyor is not so much a priest as the beloved of his goddess, and Galvin and I haven't actually talked theology since our trainee days. He and I are of different minds on much of this, anyway. There are ways in which I am very alone. It's good to talk to someone who understands as I do that we walk a narrow path through territories for which there are neither charts nor maps." She took a sip of her mead, letting it warm her throat, closing her eyes.
"I would give this all up now, if I could. Resign from the Headmistress position, go east, lose myself among the herds on the steppes. But this fight won't give me up until either we gain victory or I am dead." Her laugh was brief and humorless. "The second's more likely than the first. But you are one more voice, Ten, reminding me that I cannot give this up, that though my heart breaks anew with every loss I suffer, I cannot stop loving, and I cannot stop fighting. Aru told me that the only way he knew I would listen to. Gaviao tells me every time he steps between me and one more danger. My mother tells me that every time I talk to her. And now, you."
She gazed down into her glass for a moment, then lifted her eyes to meet his. "Before I was swept up in these events, before I found out that I am not who I always thought I was, I had dreams. I dreamed of killing Nara long before I did. My dreams were always nightmares, filled with blood and smoke and screams. Now I am finding that those nightmares are my reality. But...there are compensations. Most of them are my friends. I hope, Ten, that even if we never see each other again, I can count you as one of them."
Ten smiled back at her. "I think so, Callas. I do think so."
She opened her mouth to say something more, but Dream interrupted, saying, "Callas, your sister is looking for you."
"Looking for me?"
He coughed. "Well, she's pounding on the door, demanding to know why I won't let her in. She's becoming somewhat insistent."
Callas gave Ten a rueful smile. "I hate to cut this short, but once Gemma gets her mind set on something, there's no stopping her. I swear she inherited the entire portion of our mother's stubbornness that I didn't get. Go ahead and let her in, Dream. I'll let Ten meet her, and then we should probably be away. There are things yet to do tonight."
The door of the tavern banged open and a girl hurtled in, skidding to a stop before them. It was more than obvious that she shared her parents with Callas--the same long, straight black hair, the same pointed chin and green eyes. She was perhaps three years younger than Callas. She put her hands on her hips and said, "Finally! I thought you were never going to let me in. What were you doing in here, anyway? And who's this?"
"Talking theology, Gemma. Not very interesting if you're not a cleric. This is Ten, who's a priest from another world, who came here to meet with me tonight. Ten, this is Gemma, my sister."
One of Gemma's hands stole up to her shoulder and she pulled on a lock of her hair, inspecting Ten from head to toe. "He's got a dreaming spell on him. I could send him home if you want."
"I can take care of it, Gemma, really. I'm not quite the beginner you think I am."
She wrinkled her nose at Callas. "Yes, you are. But, if you want, you can. I've found something interesting. Come with me?"
Callas nodded. "In a moment, Gemma. Why don't you and Dream go on ahead, I'll catch up." Dream caught her eye, and as they looked at each other Ten could swear that they were talking silently between themselves.
Dream nodded. "I'll go, then. Ten, it was an honor to meet you. Perhaps we'll see you again, some day. If you could show me where to go, Gemma?" The girl took his hand, and they both blinked out of sight, yet again not bothering to use the door.
Callas stood. "I'm sorry about her, Ten. She hasn't been with us long, and nobody's ever taught her any manners." Her mouth twisted with disgust. "The people who held her chained her to a bed and tortured her until she did what they wanted her to do. I am consistently surprised at how sane she is, despite the fact that she's been terribly neglected her whole life. And she is so different in the dream realm than she is on the material--I can barely get three words out of her before she's asleep again, escaping her body and the pain it causes her." She sighed, and then shook herself. "I apologize, I'm woolgathering. Come with me, Ten, and I'll see you on your way before I go see what my sister's gotten hold of this time."
Ten took one last pull on his mug and then set it down, somewhat regretfully. He stood and rounded the table, saying, "It's too bad I won't see this place again. I rather like it, actually. It's quiet, and the beer's not half bad."
"Actually, Ten, you can come back as often as you like. Now that you know this place, it's fixed in your mind, and you won't need help to dream of it again. It might be elusive at first, but eventually you'll find it." She glanced around. "It's funny, but this place is almost identical to the tavern that I met most of my current companions in. I wondered why it looked familiar, but without the people with crossbows and the horse kicking all the tables to smithereens, it took me a while to recognize it."
"Will I see you again?" Ten realized that he was hoping beyond hope that he might.
Callas shrugged. "Perhaps? Life is long, and the Dreaming is infinite. Though...hm." She raised one hand, palm up, and concentrated for a moment. In her hand shimmered into being a grey feather, perfect in every detail, appearing to be the primary feather off the wing of a gull or similar bird. It glowed softly with an internal light. "Ah, there. Here, this is for you."
She dropped the feather into his large hand. It still glowed against his skin. "If you have need of me, hold this and call my full name. It might take me a few nights to answer, but I will come. If it stops glowing, then I'm beyond reach of any magic to call me. At that point, a few prayers for my soul probably wouldn't go amiss." Her voice was resigned, yet, somehow, still held a bit of hope.
He asked, curious, "What is your full name, anyway?"
She answered, "Callas de Navarre. And now, Ten..." She took his hand, stepping close to him. "It's time for you to wake." Unexpectedly, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Goodbye."
The spell broke, and Ten woke, the feather that Callas had given him still held in his hand.
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