CHAPTER 5

Lanri’s mind was a sedated, drowsy mess. An exhausting battleground of her body telling her she didn’t need any more sleep for a while on one side, and the power of a goddess on the other side, demanding that she do. As always, divinity beat mortality, and she slept her shallow sleep, dreaming of breakfast with Faron, a lecture gone bad due to a petty prank from a student, and exploring Ishara’s shrine for the first time.

“Reveillez,” Seeker’s voice came, and the divine power demanding her unconsciousness fell away again. The fuzz of sleep disappeared quickly, replaced by sore muscles and dizziness. A cold wind stung her face, and as she opened her eyes, she saw the bright blue sky, and Seeker looking down at her. She looked slightly strained, Lanri noted as she shifted around. She’d been put in a standing position, but Seeker was still holding her up. The Heartwarden seemed quite ready to be done carrying her, and Lanri shifted to put her weight on her own–

“Are you bleeding?!” Lanri asked as she regained her footing, and looked up at Seeker. She was! She was bleeding, or at least she had bled recently. A shallow cut on her cheek was streaked with red.

“It’s nothing, dearest mortal,” Seeker assured her. “But it does serve as a handy explanation as to why we’re stuck out here for a little while.”

“Stuck out here?” Lanri asked. You take me out into the middle of nowhere and–

“Well, you are, at any rate. This blow was meant for you, and you would not have come away with just a scratch. I can’t safely transport you back the way we came, that's all.” Lanri crossed her arms at Seeker as the angel clarified. Seeker pressed a hand to the cut, and whispered “Guérez,” in the delightful sounds of the divine language. She rubbed her hand on the cut for a while, and when it came away, the cut was gone.

“You’d better not leave me out h–”

“Of course not! I thought of another way to get back while I was moving you. We’ll just hike to your campsite when we’re done here, and use the coach there to take you back to civilization. I have to tie up that loose end, anyways.”

Lanri considered that. She wasn’t particularly eager to go back to that campsite, but she supposed the plan made sense. That would be less invasive than being forcefully subdued by my angel again. She blushed as she caught herself thinking that. My angel. The absurdity of a possessive pronoun when thinking about divinit– wait. Hadn’t she already been doing that with Ishara herself?

“Are you done, my dear mortal?” Seeker asked with a grin, then pointed at the trail leading towards the shrine, and set off. Lanri nodded meekly, and followed Seeker.

“I’m not entirely awake yet,” Lanri lied as they walked. She knew better, and she knew Seeker knew better, too. If anything, all that sleep and wakefulness magic had cleared her head of a lot of the confusing thoughts. But even now, as alert and untainted by magic as she had been since she found the dress, she just loved this piece of divinity. Ishara was just… well… good. Ishara was good, and right, and Seeker was–

“Did your brooch come out or something?” Seeker asked without looking back. The blunt question completely banished her train of thought, and the idea appalled Lanri. Of course her brooch was still in there; Seeker had commanded that she keep it in, and that was all the reason she needed. Hells, it was all the reason she wanted to need.

She checked anyway. She wasn’t arrogant enough to think she was above accidents, and as her hands found it, they pulled back as if on their own. “No!” Lanri said, indignantly. Stupid to even check, she mused. Seeker had put it there; obviously it would stay there until she took it out. “It did not! How could it?”

Seeker gave her a patient sigh. “All the gods, you are a neurotic little thing. It was just a remark on your thoughts, not an accusation of divine disobedience,” the Hearwarden spoke. She twisted and put her back to the wall as they approached a particularly narrow part of the trail to the shrine, and offered her hand to Lanri, who took it eagerly.

“I don’t remember this being so narrow…” Lanri whispered.

“Ah, but you remember it crumbling!” Seeker pointed out. It was true. As she recalled her last trek up here, she remembered it being a foot wider at this point than it was now, and the sound of gravel rolling down the–

“Hey!” Lanri chirped as they shimmied along the ledge. “That’s the memory you took! You did give it back!”

“Told you,” Seeker grunted absently as she helped Lanri back onto the trail proper. “So, next time I tell you to just ignore something, and leave it to me, you know you can leave it in my hands.”

That made sense to Lanri. Seeker was obviously overwhelmingly competent. She’d saved her from Tallah and Mick, had been nothing but gentle with her, and had even kept her safe from something so dangerous it could injure a Heartwarden without even waking Lanri up. Seeker wasn’t a goddess, but she was certainly proving herself worthy of reverence. She shook her head, trying to banish the thoughts. “You haven’t told me what your name means, yet,” she tried as a way to change the subject to something less… heated.

“Oh, you’re right.” Seeker mused. They paused briefly as they reached the chasm that led to the shrine, and Seeker whispered “Allumez” in the divine language. Lanri already knew what it would do before it happened; It would make a flame she could carry around for light, like her wand could do. As the flame appeared, passionately pink and gold in contrast to the sterile white one from her wand, Lanri couldn't help but grin. It made her feel remarkable, and special, that she’d come to understand the divine tongue so quickly.

“Well, Lady Lanri Vattens, Junior Professor of Archeology at the First University of Remere,” Seeker began, “I am Heartwarden Seeker, Divinity Forged, Agent of Ishara.. My name says a lot about me and my purpose. Seeker means, well, Seeker. I am Ishara’s preferred agent to find and correct those very few issues on Eitheris that both involve Ishara’s power, and require divine intervention to correct.”

“So you’re like a goddess’ ranger?” Lanri asked. It was probably a pretty crude – wait, am I an issue she’s correcting? – approximation of the concept.

Seeker briefly paused at that. Lanri knew full well that the Heartwarden was weighing if she should answer her unspoken question, but decided not to push it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “I suppose I am,” Seeker said. “I do the things that Ishara would normally influence one of her devotees to do, but are beyond their abilities. So… if you extend the analogy a little, and consider Ishara’s Touched priests to be ordinary guards, then… Yes, you could consider me to be a ranger.”

That sounded amazing to Lanri. To be so important to Ishara herself, and so trusted to act on her behalf. And she already knew how good Seeker was at it, she’d saved her from such a bad fate. “Do you like it?” She asked. “Being what you are?”

Seeker looked back at her, and nodded at that. “Oh, yes. I would choose serving her in my capacity over anything else. Though… I suppose she made me that way. The old me might have chosen differently, but she wasn’t very bright.”

“Old you?”

“Yes. The mortal that became Seeker. I… It’s very odd.” Seeker stopped moving towards the shrine, and turned towards Lanri, focusing fully on her explanation. “She wanted to be a warrior. She decided to fight until she found someone she couldn’t beat, and then…” She grinned at Lanri.

“And then?” Lanri asked. She wanted to know more about Seeker, needed to know more about her, even.

“Well, I think the end of that short life sums it up pretty well. Her last memory was a confused haze of wanting to bed the priest of Daray she’d foolishly tangled with, and a reflection that maybe there were better ways to find a mate.”

Lanri thought about that for a second. Surely she wasn’t implying that. “You wanted to–”

“She did, yes,” Seeker clarified with a smirk. “Like I said, Not the brightest candle in the chandler’s. Luckily for that mortal, Ishara claimed her soul for herself, to forge into me.”

Lanri wasn’t sure whether to picture Seeker’s end as something horrific, or kind of sweet, in that way only eye-rolling stupidity could manage. “So Ishara made you how you are now,” she concluded.

Seeker nodded at that, and the pair returned to their exploration of the Shrine. Lanri peered around the chasm, and giggled her delight as she noticed a few words of divine language she’d missed the first time she’d been here. She hummed a little tune as she produced her notebook, then copied what she saw for later reference. Despite understanding the divine language far better than she did before, the text still didn’t mean much to her. She understood the words, but they didn’t come together into anything meaningful. A series of adjectives that – when put together with the ones she’d found before – she supposed could describe Ishara. Though, they could just as easily describe a beloved, if slightly difficult pet.

As the pair proceeded, Seeker asked, “so, who does it refer to?”

“Who does what refer to?” Lanri asked, glancing up at Seeker. The heartwarden gave her a blank stare, then nodded at Lanri’s quickly growing list of annotations. Lanri glanced down at the notes, and as an understanding was reached, she said, “ooooh. The painted text! I assume it refers to Ishara. I do have her sigil in here somewhere, after all.”

“You do?” Seeker asked, politely.

“Sure!” Lanri told her, flipping back to the abstract rune she’d copied before, and showing it. She drew her wand to cast the magic flame for extra light, but Seeker gently pushed the hand back to her holster.

“No need for that, dear. I can handle this.” Seeker said, whispering “grandir” at the flame in her hand. It let out a mean fwooosh sound as it grew into a persistent fireball. She held it out in front of her, an increased light to combat the increasing darkness of the chasm. “You needn’t use your wand for something so trivial. You obviously value it.”

“I do.” Lanri told Seeker, “It was a gift from Faron, meant to keep us safe.”

“I see.” Seeker told her. “Ishara would surely approve of how you adore it, then. She teaches that a lover’s gift is a thing to be treasured as a souvenir of passions past.”

“She does?” Lanri asked, eagerly. She’d never heard that particular phrasing before, but it made sense to her. And Seeker surely knew her stuff.

“She does.” Seeker assured her, and held out her flame to illuminate Lanri’s notes, drawing her eye back to Ishara’s sigil.

“It’s not a great symbol for a goddess.” Lanri mused as they walked. “It’s not abstract enough. It’s just a…”

“Vulva?” Seeker asked, shaking her head in disapproval. “You mortals disappoint me sometimes. You see sex in everything. Did you ever even consider the possibility that Ishara’s sigil has some more meaning than just ”– she shifted her voice down in pitch, and did an uncanny impression of a drunken man’s voice as she spoke – “heh. I like me some ladybits.”

Lanri shrank at the beratement. She honestly hadn’t considered that. “N–no?” She quietly asked, as she glanced down at her sketch, desperately trying to see something other than what she’d always assumed it was. If she tilted it, she could kind of see it representing… No, that didn’t work. She glanced up at Seeker, who was grinning sheer mischief at her.

“You’re very gullible,” she told her with no small measure of superiority in her voice. “It’s obviously that; I’m merely teasing, my dear.”

Lanri balled her fist, and punched the taller woman in the shoulder. To her credit, she played along, mock flinching away from the hit. “That’s mean!” Lanri scolded as they turned into the shrine proper. She huddled closer to Seeker, grateful for the warmth and light of the magical flame she carried.

“Perhaps,” Seeker admitted. “But it was very entertaining.”

In the light of Seeker’s spell, a lot more detail of the shrine’s passageways was visible. With the spell cast by her wand, she’d been able to navigate, but little else. Seeker’s flame was bright enough to reveal text carved along the ceiling, in what Lanri recognized as the magical language. “I didn’t notice that the last time,” she whispered.

“No…” Seeker absently said as she looked up at it, seemingly trying in vain to make out what it said. “I don’t expect you did.” She threw the ball of fire she held at the runes, and it seemed to recoil from the text, landing back in her hand. “That’s concerning. Would you do me a favor, dear?” She asked.

“Of course,” Lanri said without hesitation.

Seeker held out her hand. “Let me borrow your wand, please.” Lanri’s hand went to her holster, and rested on the weapon. She hesitated for just the briefest of moments, then handed it to Seeker, who examined it. “Thank you, Lanri,” she quietly said, then aimed the wand at the magical script. “Leudach Lasag.” The wand heard the command, and obeyed, shooting a white flame at the cave’s roof, which the text seemed to absorb as a dried out sponge does water

Seeker handed Lanri the wand back, and after a few seconds, the entire text began to glow an ever-so-faint white. “Woah…” Lanri said, staring at the spreading light as she holstered her wand. “How does that work?”

"Divine magic acts rather differently than arcane magic,” Seeker quietly told her. “My ragira is Ishara's, and its will is bound to hers. I can't bend her will to match what's already there. But your dear Faron’s intent when making this wand for you was far less complicated, and far more flexible; It was to keep you safe, and that, I can make work.”

“What does it do?” Lanri asked, quietly. She stared up at the ruins, and quietly cursed herself for never letting Faron teach her the magic language. At the time, it had seemed entirely useless to learn to understand the spells he cast. Now, though? She regretted it.

“It’s a poem, I think.” Seeker told her, and began to read the text out loud. “Tha diadhachd seasmhach. Tha bàsmhorachd borb. Tha an fheadhainn eile eatarra.” There was a brief pause as they followed the corridor to the next verse. “It says that the divine is static, the mortal is brief – or maybe cruel? And the rest is in between,” Seeker offered in lieu of a proper translation.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a poem,” Lanri remarked.

“I agree. But it hardly sounds like a spell, either. And I can’t think of anything else that would make any sense to carve here,” came Seeker’s response before she returned to reading the poem to Lanri. “Tha diadhachd suidhichte. Tha bàsmhorachd sgaoilte. Tha an còrr an dà chuid. It’s just the same thing again, phrased differently.”

As they walked and Seeker trailed behind to keep reading the verses, Lanri thought about it. The runes being a poem didn’t make a lot of sense to her. Would Seeker’s explanation about different kinds of ragira even apply if it weren’t an enchantment?

“It repeats here,” Seeker commented, pointing up at the ceiling. Lanri looked up, and sure enough, the runes did seem to have started repeating themselves. The pair looked around for a while longer, slowly moving, occasionally pausing to take note of the painted divine words and sigils. “Do you recognize that one?” She asked quite abruptly, pointing at one of the sigils Lanri didn’t recognize.

“No. Should I?” Lanri asked, leaning in closer and examining it. It resembled Ishara’s sigil, but it was different in several ways. It was meaner, somehow. Not in the sense that it was meant to offend, but in the sense that the sigil itself looked like it held a grudge against someone.

“It’s Mischief’s sigil,” Seeker told her. Who the hell is Mischief? Lanri wondered, and before she could even voice the question, Seeker continued, “Mischief is Ishara’s favorite. They’re her most trusted and adored Heartwarden. Far more powerful than even I, they represent a different aspect of desire than Ishara herself.”

“Oh?” Lanri asked. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

“Mischief is the median of human love and lust, where Ishara is the mode.” Seeker said. Lanri nodded, and hoped she would continue. “Ishara is what most people would describe as the most desirable a person can be, right? Well. Mischief is the average of all of that desire. When you take all of the desires and attractions humans have, and put them together, you get Mischief. They’re confident and insecure, meek and assertive, cruel and compassionate, and submissive and dominant. Ishara utterly adores them for it. A demi-god, in a way.”

“Do you have one?” Lanri asked Seeker. “A sigil, I mean.”

“I do. Only a handful of the most devoted priests and dryads would recognize it, though,” Seeker told her, grinning from behind the magic flame she held. “It’s embossed on your brooch, if you want to look at it.”

She did. She really did. Almost immediately, she reached into her hair to pull it out. She gripped it tightly, and– I shouldn’t take it out. The thought barged into her mind unbidden, rudely banishing her plans to examine the brooch. She was not meant to take it out, she knew, and she let her arm drop back to her side.

“I’ll just have to show you it later, then.” Seeker mused, and turned to move deeper into the shrine. “Good job on leaving it in place, though. I would have had to paralyze you again to put it back, I’m sure,” she told Lanri, who quickly followed. The idea of being paralyzed by Seeker again wasn’t nearly as unsettling as she thought it should be, Lanri noted. In fact, it had a faint appeal to it, in a strange, unexplainable way.

“Éteins,” Seeker intoned, and the ball of fire disappeared from her hand, mere meters from the shrine proper. It was still the same immaculate white it was before, save for the magical runes that were now visible in the whitewashed walls and floor of the semi-spherical room. “You never actually determined how old this place is, did you?” She asked as they entered the chamber, and walked around the statue.

“No,” Lanri admitted. “I got distracted, obviously. It looks fairly recent, though. It’s all clean, and the enchantments powering the light still works.”

“You’d think so, but look at the statue. Notice anything about it?” Seeker asked.

Lanri lowered her notebook, and examined it from a few angles. “Uhm… I was wrong about it being enchanted?” She guessed, as she showed her original notes on the topic.

“Oh, no. It definitely was. What I mean is that she hasn’t looked like this in six hundred years,” The Heartwarden told her. “Dark skin and black, curly hair.”

“Ishara changes how she looks regularly,” Lanri challenged, quickly backtracking to qualify her assertion with “or, that’s what the priests taught me.”

“She does,” Seeker conceded. “But this was her preferred form for quite a while; how she saw herself back then. Nowadays she defaults to looking far more like the Astorian ideal. Short hair, pale skin, tall.”

“It could be wishful thinking,” Lanri offered. She was in her comfort zone now, arguing for and against possible explanations about what happened, to see which theories withstood scrutiny, and which were washed away. “Maybe this statue is just what this artist’s idea of the perfect woman is?”

“No, no,” Seeker purred. “This is definitely her. The sculptor was depicting Ishara herself, not their own ideal of her.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Lanri walked around the statue again, inspecting it. She remembered how awe-struck she’d felt by it after her… experience. She knew the brooch was keeping her thoughts mostly free of that kind of thing, but the statue was still gorgeous. Somehow it captured all of Ishara’s imperfections, while also conveying that her form was, simply put, flawless. She couldn’t imagine a feminine figure more attractive than this.

“And you found the dress behind it?” Seeker asked.

“Yes. It was on the floor, crumpled up, on the enchanted glowing stones.”

“I see,” Seeker mused, as she turned around, and began pacing around the statue in the other direction. For a few moments, the angel remained quiet. Lanri moved to the room’s wall, and sat down next to the doorway leading into the space, looking at the statue almost head on. Behind it, the runes faintly glowed. She cocked her head at them. They looked different from the ones in the corridors, didn’t they?

She crawled to the doorway leading back out of the shrine, and examined the repeating… whatever it was. “Aren’t these runes different from the ones out there?” Lanri asked Seeker, and pointed at the ring of magical text surrounding them.

“Tha an diadhachd air a bhacadhm. Geama mortal saor an asgaidh. Sgeama an fheadhainn eile,” Seeker mumbled, reading the text. “You’re right. They are different,” she said, turning back to face Lanri. “These mean something closer to The divine is bound, the mortal is loose, the other schemes. It repeats, like the ones in the corridor.”

“That’s… ominous,” Lanri said, getting back up. “Do you think we should–”

“Leave? Yes, I do,” Seeker finished the thought for her, and she gestured at the doorway out of the shrine. She made it exactly three steps, then froze.

“Seeker?” Lanri asked, cautiously approaching. She seemed fine, but there was something unsettling about the way she stood. A few of the Heartwarden’s muscles were twitching, and her eyes rolled up. Lanri followed them, and saw she was standing directly on top of and under the glowing runes. She hesitated a second, then reached out to grab Seeker’s hand. I fucking knew it wasn’t a poem, she mentally cursed as she tried to pull Seeker free of the perimeter. She didn’t budge.

“Fuck! I… Seeker!” She started, desperately trying to get her new friend’s attention. “Seeker, please! How do I get you out of this?” She put her hands on either of Seeker’s shoulders, and shook. Pulling her closer didn’t work, but she could push, she noticed. She looked up at the circle of runes. Pushing Seeker would put her in the middle of it again. That seemed like a bad thing, but right now she didn’t see many other options, and at least that way she’d be out of the runes’ line of fire.

“I’m going to push you back into the circle, okay?” She said, looking at Seeker. Seeker’s eyes met hers, but she couldn’t tell whether that was good or bad. She braced herself against the much taller woman, then pushed against both of her shoulders, sending her stumbling back against Ishara’s statue.

Seeker slammed into it violently, and she slumped onto the floor. Lanri darted towards her, and picked her up into her lap. “Seeker!?” She cried out, looking down at her pale face. A trickle of blood slowly came down from her nose. Dread filled her very soul at the sight. “C–come on! You’re…” She paused, looking at the angel. She was breathing, and she could feel a heart beating, but beyond that, she was completely limp.

She reached into her bag, and pulled out a handkerchief which she used to wipe away the steady stream of blood. “S–seeker?” She quietly asked. She squeezed the Heartwarden’s hand tightly in one hand, while she tried to shake her awake with the other.

“Seeker!?” She repeated, far more forcefully. “COME ON! WAKE–”

“She’ll wake up, don’t worry,” a soft, masculine voice called from behind her. She let out a startled yelp, and her hand flew to her wand immediately. She had it drawn before she’d even turned around to face him, and immediately brought it up to point at his torso.

He was bizarre. A slim form in a white suit, he had bright red skin that brought to mind the image of a newborn baby greeted not with love, but with a pot of boiling water. He was tall and lean, with white hair, a pair of stubby white horns, and a narrow, whip-like tail that ended in a nasty looking barb in the same white as his hair and horns. He also had a pair of wings that seemed to fan out impossibly far, but his most striking feature by far were his eyes.

His awful, black eyes. They filled her with despair the second she met his gaze. She’d fucked everything up, she suddenly knew. She had failed so completely at everything she’d ever done. Seeker was hurt, and Faron was long dead, and Mick and Tallah would never face justice, and Jolus was gone, and she was alone. So completely, overwhelmingly, totally alone. She gawked at him in her dread, and he loomed as he approached.

She felt so bad. “S–seeker?” She absently murmured as she stared into his knowing, terrible eyes. His eyes spoke of her every failure. Her failures as a wife, and as a teacher, and as a friend, they were all there, plain to see in his gaze. She wanted Seeker to wake up, but deep down, she knew she wouldn’t be able to influence the outcome of things. She was too insignificant and small to do that.

“Is that truly who I’ve caught?” The man – no, the demon – asked. “Ishara’s Seeker finally came looking for the dress?” Lanri shuddered. Another failure. She’d told him Seeker’s name. The weight of it, the sheer dread of letting Seeker down, it was suffocating. Her hand trembled. “You could try to use your wand on me, lost one. But we both know that wouldn’t work, don’t we?”

Lanri nodded, hearing the truth of it. She’d failed at everything. Fighting a demon to protect Seeker would be no different. She’d only make things worse, like she always did. She slowly lowered her wand to her side, and slipped it back into her holster.

“Why are you in there?” The demon asked. He looked at her with a bored sort of interest, like one of her students who’d folded a piece of paper into a little boat, and was playing with it in an effort to ignore her lecture.

Lanri stared at him. “B–because I…” She tried to come up with an answer. She’d tried to help Seeker, but… It hit her again how badly she’d fucked up. He turned blurry in her vision as tears filled her eyes, and her lip started to quiver. She wanted to cry. She’d failed everyone, and she was alone. She was so fucking stupid! She had genuinely been arrogant enough she could be useful to Seeker.

The demon sat down in front of her, just beyond the circle of runes. He crossed his legs, and leaned back onto his arms. He gave her a pitying look that only confirmed she was right to be so mournful.

“C–can you… Can you help her? Please?” Lanri begged. She’d caused this mess, she knew that now. And maybe he could help her. Maybe he could save Seeker, or wake her up, or do anything useful.

“Me?” He asked, pointing at his chest in surprise. “You want me to help your Seeker? But you’re the reason she’s in there, aren’t you?”

Lanri nodded. “I– I… I know. B–but you can help her. I… I need you to help her,” she managed to croak out. He raised his hand towards her, and beckoned her closer with a single finger. She felt so small, helpless, and alone. She crawled closer. As she did, she felt Seeker stir, but she just couldn’t look away from him. He understood her failures; he understood her. She knew that as soon as she looked away, a stronger despair would take hold of her, and consume her. At least with him, someone understood.

“I suppose I could help her, lost one.” he conceded. “Though, I don’t dare get close to her myself. Will you be my instrument to help her? I’ll just cas–”

“YES!” She immediately agreed, scampering closer. “I–I’ll do it. Just help her, please.”

For a second, he looked perplexed, then gave her an understanding smile. “As you wish,” he said. He closed his eyes, and whispered, “ceannas.”

A spell! It would… She felt relief flood over her as the sense of despair fell away. For the briefest of moments, she truly trusted him. She genuinely believed he would help Seeker for her. Then she felt the spell take hold.