SFUU
I don’t know what you mean by that
entirely SFW
Hannel’s breath crystallized in the air as they stood in the village square. They shivered and drew their cloak around themself, staring longingly at the fire in the center of the square. The previous night’s snow, the first of the season, had melted, but the chill of winter remained.
“Sietsel, who oversees the plants, commanding them in their growth, we thank you for – for your generous gift,” intoned Pimi, Elder of the town’s temple to Sietsel. “We render unto you our humble offering, and ask that you visit us next year with abundance.” She lit fire to the wooden altar erected over the fire, engulfing it and the plants it carried in flames. One by one, members of the village started to approach it with smaller offerings.
“Generous gift,” muttered Marijne, next to Hannel. “Another harvest as generous at this one and we’ll all be done for.”
Hannel glanced at her. “You ought to hold your tongue, or Sietsel may decide another harvest like this is what this town deserves.”
“Look, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t have to thank him when he’s doing his best to kill us off.”
“We must have simply angered him,” said Hannel. “The harvest will be better next year.”
Winter, spring, summer, and autumn came and went. A few people starved, more than normal; Sietsel’s temple tried to care for them, but it scarcely had enough food for its own acolytes, and allowing the acolytes to die so that others could live was a sure way to anger Sietsel. Their families burned their bodies and begged Sietsel to count them a worthy sacrifice.
The village held extra celebrations in his honor, praying that he would give them a better harvest this year, and individual families sacrificed what they could spare for his sake.
“Well?” said Marijne, at the Festival of the Harvest. “Has it gotten any better?”
Hannel shook their head. “Marijne, taunting me won’t help anything. I know as well as you it hasn’t.”
“It’s gotten worse,” said Marijne. “We’ve been doing everything we can, and it’s gotten worse.”
“Perhaps he is punishing you for your incessant chatter during his ceremony,” said Hannel.
Marijne laughed bitterly. “Punishing me? We Quartet members – we’re not going to be the last to starve, but it’ll be real close.”
“It wouldn’t be such a good punishment if we weren’t going to have to watch our families die first,” said Imkes softly. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she was wearing a red headscarf, the name of her late sister embroidered onto it, in place of her usual ceremonial blue one.
Marijne swallowed. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, Kes.”
“Maybe instead of arguing about whose fault it is, we should all be quiet and listen to the ceremony?” said Lievini. The others nodded and listened as Elder Pimi called on Sietsel, thanking him for the harvest and entreating him to continue his generosity.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” asked Lievini after the ceremony.
Hannel stabbed at their meager portion of food. “I’ve been trying to figure that out, but Nienket’s library is regretfully lacking in this town, and no one wants to let a Quartet member leave just to do research.”
“Have you tried getting someone else to do it?” asked Lievini.
“No one else seems to realize how important this is,” said Hannel. “Even Nienket’s acolytes don’t want to risk making the journey, and no one else wants to take the time to learn how to read.” They sighed. “I’ve been considering becoming an acolyte of Sietsel.”
Marijne raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have any affinity for Sietsel,” she said. “You’d make way more sense as an acolyte of Nienket.”
“I know, but if I’m not going to be able to leave either way, I can’t justify serving Nienket when there are people starving.”
Imkes looked up from the bowl she’d been staring at for the past ten minutes. “Either will make it hard to do Quartet business,” she said.
“If you have any better ideas, I would love to hear them,” said Hannel.
Lievini lowered his voice. “We’re a Quartet, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we be able to do something with that?”
“We should,” said Hannel, “but I haven’t been able to turn that into a workable plan.”
“I just hate how we’re sacrificing crops to a god who doesn’t even care,” said Marijne, leaning on Imkes’s shoulder.
“Would you rather be certain of starvation?” asked Hannel, and the four of them spent the rest of their meal in silence.
“Hannel?” said Imkes. It was the beginning of spring, now, and as members of the town had started to die, Hannel had spent more and more time in the library.
Hannel looked up from their book. “What is it, Imkes?”
“Hannel, everyone is waiting on you to be able to start the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
Imkes furrowed her brow. “How did you avoid hearing about it?” She glanced around the library. In addition to its normal fixtures and Hannel’s pile of books, there was a blanket lying by the fireplace in the corner, the only stone in the room. “Hannel, when was the last time you left?”
“Four days ago. Imkes, I’m working.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I don’t want to damage the books.”
Imkes sighed. “Hannel, if you starve, you won’t be able to do your research or be part of Quartet rituals.”
“As long as I’m not at home, my parents will feed my little brother.”
Imkes swallowed. “Please just come to the meeting, Hannel.”
They nodded and set down their book. “This one has all sorts of fascinating discrepancies,” they said, standing up. “It keeps referring to Nienket as ‘Fennath,’ and it uses ‘he’ for her – not that we know for certain, but it’s convention to use ‘she.’ Whoa–”
They stumbled forward, barely managing to catch their balance on Imkes.
“Please eat some food, Hannel. Now that Zoet is gone, we only have two Quartets left, and you know we can’t trust the other–”
Hannel stopped walking. “Zoet is gone?”
“How little attention have you been paying, Hannel? That’s what this meeting is about.”
Hannel swallowed. “What happened?”
“Disease,” said Imkes. “Alkef’s acolytes don’t think it’s the sort other people need to worry about getting from him. The rest of his Quartet has been looking for a replacement Archer, but, well, if there were anyone else likely to make a good one, we’d already know.”
Hannel looked at the ground. “Alkef is normally so generous. We must have greatly angered the gods.”
The temple Elders, a few scattered acolytes, the seven remaining members of the other Quartets, and a few others who had decided to attend were all gathered in the town square. Hannel blinked at the newly budding trees, as if seeing them for the first time. They sat in one corner, next to the other three members of their Quartet, who stood around them.
One of the other members of Zoet’s Quartet stood up and walked to the center of the square. 'So, Zoet is dead, which means there’s one fewer Quartet who can try to use magic to fix this,” he said. “What do we want to do about that?”
“I say we evacuate,” said one of the members of the other Quartet. “Go someplace else, hope they have more food.”
“Do you know any rituals that could do that?” asked Lievini.
“No,” she said. “We could try scaling up one of the ones that moves a Quartet.”
Imkes shook her head. “That’s too risky,” she said. “Maybe if we can’t come up with anything better, but making up a new ritual, a new ritual that’s supposed to do something on a person…”
The member of Zoet’s Quartet that had spoken earlier winced. “We could send one of the ones we’ve got left to try and track one down,” he said.
“There’s still the matter of finding an appropriate sacrifice,” said Imkes. “Not to mention, moving that many people, there’s a good chance that someone will make a mistake.”
“We might be able to build from that idea, though,” said Hannel. “There might be some other ritual we could search for.”
“If we could just create food–” said Marijne.
“Are you trying to anger Sietsel?” asked Imkes. “Dear, I’d really rather not make things worse.” She squeezed her hand.
“I’d rather risk making him mad then die for sure!”
“We might still make it through the winter,” said Hannel. “At the very least, some of us most likely will, and I’d rather some of us survive than none.”
“I’d rather not worship a god who’d let this happen,” said Marijne.
“We don’t know that Sietsel had a choice,” said Hannel. “The gods may be powerful, but there are some things that lie beyond even them.”
“He’s never had trouble before,” said Marijne. Imkes gave her a pointed look, and she stopped talking.
“We could try appealing to him more directly,” said Imkes.
The woman who had suggested summoning plants earlier raised her eyebrows. “If trying to create plants is too risky, going to the god’s realm definitely is.”
“I’ve never heard stories of someone being made worse off for asking, unless they did it disrespectfully,” said Imkes. “If I present the appeal, it ought to be safe.”
Hannel tilted their head. “If there were people who died trying to make an appeal, we might not have heard about it,” they said. “Besides, if this were a reasonable idea, it would be commonplace.”
“Maybe most people aren’t that desperate?” asked Lievini.
“There are records of whole cities being obliterated by plague,” said Hannel. “To say nothing of those taken in battle because their walls didn’t hold, or dying in droughts, or suffering famines like this one.”
“People have only known about Alkef for about five hundred years – this always surprises people, but it’s true,” said Imkes. “Besides, we’re on the large side for a town, we’re one of the few that lets people as young as us–” she gestured around the Quartet “–even attempt magic, and we’re still shockingly lucky to have ever had three, even if…”
“You can just say we suck!” said one of the members of the other remaining Quartet.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Imkes. She sighed. “If this doesn’t work, we can try another idea later. I really doubt we’ll be worse off.”
Hannel set the manuscript in the middle of the fire pit. There were many ways to sacrifice a book, but fire was the most effective. They took the offered torch from an assistant. “Everything has a price,” they intoned. “The price I offer for the task we seek to accomplish today is this tome of irreplaceable knowledge, unique in the world.” They touched the torch to the manuscript, waiting for it to catch before returning the torch to the assistant. “From this sacrifice, I call forth that power which binds together the fabric of the world. The executioner sacrifices.” They closed their eyes.
Marijne, standing to Hannel’s right, held her left hand in the fire. She bit down on her lip, but her hand didn’t seem to catch fire. “This power in its natural state is wild,” she recited. “We would seek to tame it into a form which we can use.” She paused, adding in another language, “The translator converts.”
To those outside the circle, nothing seemed to change, but for the four in the circle, the fire vanished into Marijne’s left hand and emerged from her right hand as a mass of multicolored dust of unnameable colors. She closed her eyes and took Hannel’s right hand in her left.
“Though this power now burns bright,” said Imkes, wearing a deep purple cloak, “it is lost, wandering without a purpose. Today, we wish to shape it into that which would convey us from this place. The noble guides.” She reached out and took the dust from Marijne, seeming to paint shapes with it in the air, before finally closing her eyes and taking Marijne’s hand, clutching it tightly.
Lievini reached into the spiraling mass of dust, squinting at it until it coalesced into a single beam of light, each speck stacked individually on top of the next. He attached the bottom speck to an arrow, embedding it in the ashes of the book and lodging it in the ground. “The archer focuses,” he finished, closing his eyes and taking Imkes’s hand.
“And thus it concludes,” recited all of them in unison. “Executioner, translator, noble, archer: all together, we work this miracle.” Lievini reached for Hannel’s hand. The instant their fingers touched, the four of them vanished from existence.
They reappeared in a city, surrounded by tall buildings, some as many as three stories high. Hannel glanced around at them, before pointing to a large stone building with ornate sculptures of fish at the entryway and no windows. “That seems to be the library,” they said, starting to walk over to it.
“May Nienket guide over you in your quest for knowledge,” said a person at the door, inclining their head. “What is your business here?” Their accent was more clipped than any of them were used to, and they wore a dark green uniform embroidered with various sea creatures, most of which were unfamiliar to them.
Hannel repeated the blessing back to them and removed the necklace. “We have been sent by members of our temple to conduct research, and we believe your libraries may hold the answer.”
The stranger inspected the necklace. “Very well,” they said. “May Nienket lead you to the information you seek.”
The library was as large as the central square in their home village, with shelves of books stretching up to the ceiling. A musty smell filled the room, and the sole occupants sat hunched over thick manuscripts that looked like they had taken months to copy.
“What do you want us to do?” asked Marijne.
“I’d like Lievini to stay with me,” said Hannel. “Imkes, try to bargain for food at the market. Marijne, you can stay here if you’d prefer, but–”
“I’ll go with Imkes,” she said, smiling. “Good luck.”
This library organized its books differently than the library back home, but it wasn’t too difficult to find the section on Quartet magic. Hannel picked out a few promising-looking books and brought them back to the table. They copied out a few words onto a scrap of parchment and handed Lievini a stack of books. “Could you look for references to these words?”
The pair set about looking through the pile of books, stopping only to ask Marijne and Imkes to rent a room in an inn when they returned. After a couple of hours of searching, Hannel wrote out a new, more targeted set of references, and around sundown they switched from reading about rituals designed to move things to reading about appropriate sacrifices for rituals of the caliber they had found. The acolytes kept the city library open at all hours; by the time they had finished cross-referencing all of the necessary instructions and tracking down every alternative lead, it was well into the night.
“How are you going to find the volunteer?” asked Lievini, as they stepped into the street.
Hannel stared at the ground. “People are dying anyway,” they said. “If we aren’t able to do this, we could lose half the village before the next harvest. I’m sure someone would rather have a rapid death now than a slow death in a few months.”
“You’re sure there’s no other way?” said Lievini.
“The alternatives I found were all worse,” said Hannel. “If the act of motion weren’t so abstract, and motion to another plane even more so, it might be possible to find a sacrifice with some sort of assisting affinity, but as it is…” They let their voice trail off.
“Are you confident that you want to do this?” asked Hannel.
The old woman nodded. “I’d rather die than watch my grandchildren do the same,” she said. “It’s a miracle I’ve even made it this long.”
Hannel nodded. “Everything has a price,” they said, trying not to let their voice waver lest they misspeak and ruin the magic. “The price I offer for the task we seek to accomplish today is the life of this woman, Tychor, former silversmith, daughter of Femket and Silkef.” Their hands shook as they drew the dagger across her throat. They waited for her to stop breathing before letting the dagger fall to the ground and closing their eyes.
The rest recited their lines as usual. The magic this time appeared in the form of a golden liquid that felt like a summer breeze. Imkes guided it into swirls around them and Lievini shaped those swirls into the image of a gate, before finally clasping Hannel’s hand and vanishing.
They appeared on what seemed to be the top of a snow-covered mountain, although the weather felt like a warm summer’s day. Before them stood a being, whose form seemed one moment to be that of a teenage girl with elaborately braided hair, the next a scholar in his twenties wearing ornamental robes, the next an old man with pale pink skin, the last a man with a half-shaved head who seemed to be wearing a dress made of a cloud. As the four of them approached the being, the being’s form coalesced into a man in his early thirties, twice as tall as a normal human and clothed in golden light so bright it was hard to look at them.
The four of them knelt. The being nodded in their direction. “You may rise, humans, and state your appeal,” said the being, though the words resounded in the air and seemed to echo off of the surrounding mountaintops.
Imkes rose and approached the being. She had borrowed an ornamental dress in Siesel’s traditional colors, and paired it with the mourner’s headscarf she had worn after her sister died.
“Mighty Sietsel,” she began. “Your power is known throughout the land, but of late it has seemed to fade away from our village. Our people are starving, and we fear that our village will not survive to the next harvest without your aid, let alone the harvest after. We know that the lives of our village are but a leaf in the forest of humanity, but we entreat you to expend but a fragment of your power to aid us.”
As she spoke, the being seemed to glow slightly brighter. Finally, as she concluded, the being spoke in a voice just slightly louder than before. “I will do what I can, but my power is limited, for I must attend to all the world’s plants–”
There was a sound like crackling lightning, and another being seemed to appear, simultaneously on another mountaintop and within both sight and earshot, taking the forms alternatively of a young woman carrying a satchel of medical equipment, a sickly boy of about ten, an older woman carrying a pile of books, and a middle-aged person intent in thought on some inscrutable problem, before finally settling into the shape of a person slightly shorter than the first being, cloaked in silvery-blue light rather than golden.
“How long will you lie to them, Sietsel?” said the second being in an icy tone.
The first being turned to face the second. “My dealings with these humans are not your concern, Alkef.”
The snow surrounding the second being began to swirl around them. “Whatever you do to life on this world is my concern, and–” the tone shifted slightly, becoming almost threatening “–if you lie, it will become Nienket’s concern as well.”
“Begone, Alkef, and stop trying to meddle.”
Alkef looked past Sietsel and began speaking very quickly. “Sietsel is intentionally starving you so you worship him, which gives him more power. He wants to use that power–”
“–To protect life,” said Sietsel, somehow simultaneously producing a soft murmur of unintelligible words that seemed to continue even once the rest of the words had stopped. Sietsel’s hands seemed to be moving as well, becoming one pair in one moment, four pairs the next, and anywhere in between. “How many are dying of plague because you’ve decided to devote your attention to this, Alkef?”
“To protect plant life,” continued Alkef at the same breakneck pace. “He doesn’t care what happens to humans except that he needs your worship, he’s going to do the same thing to everyone else everywhere, you have to --”
For a moment, Sietsel appeared to take on all four earlier forms simultaneously, and then Hannel, Marijne, Imkes, and Lievini were back in their town’s central square.
“I just want you all to know I was right,” said Marijne, pacing around the library. Hannel had pointed out that Nienket might take offense if Sietsel murdered them on her own territory, and that was the closest any of them had come to thinking of a protection. Hannel’s research had suggested that it would be difficult, though not impossible, to kill someone while in the realm of the gods.
“That’s not helpful,” said Imkes.
“We need to figure out our next course of action,” said Hannel.
Another person entered the library. “All the grain has spoiled – oh.” He fell silent for a moment, before adding, “So you didn’t succeed.”
“We did not,” said Hannel. “Please keep us informed of anything else that seems relevant, and please do not inform anyone who might be serving Sietsel where we are, or even that we’ve returned.” They paused. “When you reach the temple of Alkef, do inform them.”
The other person nodded and departed.
“So he’s definitely trying to kill us,” said Imkes.
“Could we go back to the city?” asked Lievini. “Try to warn them?” His gaze flickered to the bookshelves. Many of the books were copies of others in other towns, but a few were original manuscripts drafted by some acolyte of Nienket and never duplicated.
Hannel bit their lip. “We’d risk bringing down this on all its residents,” they said. “I think the best course of action is to figure out what Alkef was trying to tell us.”
“She seemed to think there was something we could do,” said Imkes. “We just need to figure out what that something is.”
Hannel suddenly stood up and walked over to the shelves, pulling off a few of the books. They tore a page out of one, wincing as they did so, and pointed to a name. “I need the rest of you to help me look for references to this name,” they said. “Marijne, Imkes, try to match up the letters that look the same.” They handed them each a book, and Lievini three.
“What are you doing?” asked Lievini.
“I’m not certain of this in the slightest, but given how desperate our situation is – I think it might be possible to kill a god.”
“What,” said Marijne flatly.
Hannel bent over a book, talking as they skimmed the page. “Alkef thinks it’s possible to do something about the situation, which means there’s some sort of trick that Alkef knows. When I was reading earlier, I found a reference to a god named Fenneth, god of truth.”
“So you mean Nienket?” asked Lievini.
“Not quite,” said Hannel. “Nienket is the god of information, which is almost the same thing but not exactly. Also, discussions of Nienket usually call her a ‘she,’ which might or might not be accurate but is at least consistent. ‘Fenneth’ was, at least in the passage I saw, a he.” They paused. “Found it. The passage I was looking at implies radically different personalities as well. Here, we see Fenneth taking steps to actively conceal information. Nienket doesn’t answer questions unless asked, and even then inconsistently, but I’ve never heard of her promoting a lie.”
“If it’s possible to kill a god, then why doesn’t Alkef just kill Sietsel?” asked Lievini.
“He almost never does something like what he’s doing now,” said Hannel. “Most of his harm is in refusing his aid, not in actively spoiling plants. If he were killed, it might make things worse.”
Imkes looked up from the second page of the book Hannel had given her. “There are no references to Alkef before about five hundred years ago,” she said quietly. “We have references from thousands of years before that to the other six, but none to Alkef.”
“Did anything else important happen around then?” asked Lievini.
“That’s around the time of the last recorded case of deerpox,” said Hannel.
“Do you remember anything else about that?” asked Lievini.
Hannel closed their eyes. “It was cured by a Quartet,” they said. “They invented a ritual for curing it that was cheap enough to be worth using, and another ritual to prevent it that was even cheaper. We don’t know much about that Quartet, but most people think that it wasn’t really a single Quartet that cured every case, but rather that they taught others their method and those people taught still others, and so on.”
“Do you know anything else about that Quartet?” asked Lievini.
Hannel shook their head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Marijne. “That Quartet became Alkef.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lievini.
“Think about it,” said Marijne. “How many forms did both the gods we just met take? Four. What did Sietsel do right before sending us back here? He made a circle, with those same four. The gods are Quartets just like us, and somehow there’s some ritual we can do to become one. Alkef, god of disease, eradicated a disease. The others probably did something like that.”
“But what does that mean for us?” asked Lievini.
“I don’t know,” said Marjine. “We need to figure out something to be god of, probably, and figure out a sacrifice to go along with it. Problem is, it’ll have to be something important, or it won’t work.”
Hannel swallowed. “I have an idea,” they said. “It’s a horrible idea, but – it might be the least horrible alternative.”
“Are you sure?” asked one of the people they had called into the library when the messenger from before returned. “We could still try sending you to another city for food.”
“We only have so many irreplaceable tomes, and we can’t actually carry very much food at once,” said Hannel. “Besides, we probably can’t safely leave the building for very long, given that one of the members of the only other remaining Quartet was somehow killed by the ivy.”
The woman they were talking to swallowed. “I guess if we don’t do this we’re all going to die anyway. It’s not really any different.”
Hannel nodded. “Thank you,” they said. “I’m so sorry.”
They gathered the town into the library and the temple attached, packing them into every corner, and explained to them the plan. “We aren’t going to force anyone to stay,” said Imkes. “If you’d rather try to gather food in the wilderness, you can do that.”
“It’ll be what Sietsel wanted,” said Marijne. “He probably won’t even tell the trees to kill you.”
There were murmurs from the crowd. “He killed my grandson!” shouted someone from the crowd. A passing glance revealed that they wore the clothes of an acolyte of Sietsel.
The four members of the Quartet made their way to the door, Hannel clutching a torch. An acolyte of Nienket met them at the door. “I asked for advice about this plan, and Nienket gave me this,” he said, handing a piece of paper with a few phrases and a drawing on it. “I don’t know what it means.” He paused for a moment. “At the same time as she gave me this, I saw a vision of someone dying of plague while holding a book. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I thought it might be important.”
Hannel took it, reading through the words. “It’s the exact words we need for the ritual,” they said, and repeated the words for the benefit of their friends. “Can you remember that?”
The others nodded, and they lined up on the threshold. “Go!” whispered Marijne, and they raced to take up their places around the temple.
“Everything has a price,” said Hannel, reciting the words as fast as they could. “The price I offer for the task we seek to accomplish today is the life of everyone in this town.” They held the torch to the straw they had had placed around the temple “From this sacrifice, I call forth that power which binds together the fabric of the world. The executioner sacrifices.”
They closed their eyes and swallowed, choking down tears, and, keeping one hand wrapped around the torch, picked up one end of a fine rope that had been looped around the library with their right hand.
The plants sprouting from the ground near them began to grow, extending towards them with leafy tendrils, far thicker and stronger than those plants normally grew. As the temple burned, the fire seemed to glow brighter and hotter than it ought to have.
Marijne thrust her left hand into the fire. “This power in its natural state is wild,” she recited, matching speed with Hannel. “We would seek to tame it into a form which we can use. The translator converts.”
The fire seemed to change colors, sparking silver and purple one moment, blue and black another, green and gold the next. As it did, the library exploded into a pile of ash. Marijne took her hands out of the fire and picked up the rope, which seemed to catch fire in the same colors, though it did not burn.
The undergrowth began to wind its way around their ankles, rooting them to the ground.
“Though this power now burns bright,” said Imkes, “it is lost, wandering without a purpose. Today, we wish to shape it into that which would transform us into another form. The noble guides.”
She took ahold of the fire that sparked in the rope, drawing strange symbols like none they had ever seen before in a ritual, then pushed the fire away from her and grasped onto the rope itself, closing her eyes.
The plants around them continued growing, making their way up their legs.
Lievini reached into the fire, forcing it into four beams that wove together into a single braid, directing one beam to just touch the edge of each of their heads “The archer focuses,” he finished, closing his eyes and taking the rope.
The plants began to wind their way around their arms, holding them in place.
“And thus it concludes,” recited all of them in unison, their voices racing. “Executioner, translator, noble, archer: all together, we work this miracle.”
Hannel strained to reach for the other end of the rope, but the plants holding their arm were unyielding. Gritting their teeth, they managed to force their left arm to make contact with the torch they had used on the library.
Their arm flashed with a searing pain, unlike the sort that was common in this sort of rituals. The plants started to grow back, but not as fast as they were burning away. They forced themself to reach for the the end of the rope. They closed their hand around it and lifted it a centimeter off the ground–
We opened our eyes. We were standing on an island of fine white powder, surrounded by water that seemed to be composed of liquid emeralds. On another island, we could see Sietsel, and on a third Afset. The other gods were nowhere in sight.
Afset held out her hand, and though separated by an ocean, we were able to take it with our hand, which was four and yet one at the same time, Hannel and Mirajne’s dark russet brown next to Imkes and Lievini’s more tan, Hannel’s left arm still smouldering, though none exactly as it had been left. She chanted words in a language long forgotten, and we felt a sensation like the fire from the temple flowing from our hand to hers. She pointed her other hand towards Sietsel and directed it towards him.
He held up his hand to stop it, and it burst into a rainbow of mist. He extended his hands, and the dust under our feet started to turn scarlet. “Had enough, Afset?” asked Sietsel. Our feet rippled, one moment four pairs, the next a single pair, the next mist, the next four pairs again.
We began to mutter the words Afset had used. She glanced at us, then looked at Sietsel. “You may be more powerful than either of us, but we are two and you are one,” she said.
Sietsel laughed, and the sea began to turn to rubies, matching the islands we stood on. “Your new god is scarcely more powerful than a single Quartet,” he said.
We finished reciting the words and drew our palm to our chest. A net of colors we’d never seen before appeared around him. We closed our palm, and it began to constrict.
He moved his hands in intricate gestures, and our whole body began to ripple between red mist and its new form. “Draw a letter Etel,” said Afset, and though in one sense we did not know which letter was Etel, in another sense our hands seemed to move. The net around Sietsel drew tighter and began to glow with the sound of sticks snapping in a forest.
Sietsel brought his hands together, and the vast ocean between us and Afset suddenly became meaningful. We tried copying his gesture, but it did nothing.
We closed our eyes, though the scene remained as crisp as before. There had to have been a reason for Afset to have suggested the Etel.
On the other shore, Afset moved her hands in a careful representation of an Alhe, then a Fali. Though nothing seemed to happen, we recognized the first two letters of her name. We furrowed our brow, trying to remember our name.
Elkem. The answer was obvious, once we asked the right question. We traced a Lira, and the ground under Sietsel turned to shards of opaque ice. We added a Keshet, pausing only for a moment as our hand briefly forgot the motion before adding the final line. Sietsel seemed to become shrouded in the smell of rotting wood, which somehow obscured him from view. He drew his arm in a sharp motion, and the cloud vanished.
We added another Etel, and Sietsel split into four forms at once. Finally, we traced a Mirar, and the island split into four, each with a different member of Sietsel’s Quartet, each contained in their own net. They struggled but could not break out.
We glanced at Afset, who wrote her full name at once in reverse. We mirrored her with our own name, and each member of the Quartet seemed to disappear into ash. As that happened, the ocean disappeared, and we found ourself next to Afset once again.
“Reach out,” she said, and we did.
People were dying. Some were dying quickly, of illness or injury, others slowly of age, but everyone was dying. As we reached out, we felt a life wink out, and a few moments later another come into existence. We moved our hands in a motion as natural as breathing, and those dying from Sietsel’s neglect were filled with life and vigor.
“Do you think …” we started to say, then without finishing tried to restore our village, reaching into our stores of divine magic and groping around for an action that felt just out of reach.
“You’ll get stronger with time,” said Afset.
We nodded. We were Elkem, god of light, and one day we would bring back our village. Perhaps someday, we could save the whole world.
2 Likes
I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a metaphor for penis, even though almost everything is a metaphor for penis
Wallfic?
this is probably really bad because I basically haven’t touched it since December 2018
and also I had started to make edits but not finished them in a way that probably messed up continuity
and also copypasting over to the forum fucked up the formatting
1 Like