Perceiving the Path

Etriyya showing up had certainly helped ease some of the fatigue John’s mind was starting to build up, but it didn’t help his concentration much otherwise. It took John a little while to straighten out his mind once Etriyya had left, and even when he finally returned to his studies, his mind still wandered back to various parts of their conversation.

“Fuck it, maybe if I move to something relevant to what she mentioned, I’ll be able to actually learn something.”

John grabbed one of the bookmarks he’d pilfered from the library’s front desk and marked his place, then shoved the alchemy books aside at last. They were replaced almost immediately when he leaned awkwardly to slide over the pile dedicated to the study of Gaia and the other goddesses. Despite John’s request, quite a few of the titles indicated the books were mostly about the Lady and the Order’s particular style of devotion to her, but there was still plenty to read through. One in particular that caught John’s eye labeled the “Divine Encyclopedia” turned out to be a bit less reliably sourced than its title implied, but perfectly in line with what Etriyya had told him.

Diving into the first few dozen pages sent John on a spiraling descent into life as a scholar in the Abyss. With so many spells and tricks that could make reality itself unreliable at times, most of the book was a collection of historical retellings, widely accepted truths, baseless rumors, and what were little more than myths, each of them followed by footnotes from the author debating and elaborating on the reliability of the claims. The book was divided into sections, with each section being dedicated to a goddess, and the texts relating to them being ordered by the amount of information they provided and how reliable that information might be.

What surprised John was how much variance there was between them. Some of the goddesses only had a name and a few small stories, usually claims of a vision had by one mage or another somewhere in the Abyss. Others had pages upon pages, a level of detail that would’ve been enough for several chapters of a normal textbook. A few had virtually no information at all – not even a name, just a few vague stories told by others that seemed to be enough for the author to believe they existed.

The ones that were most detailed were, unsurprisingly, the Aspects. There was even a little information on Dike, as vague as it was – a few tales of goddesses claiming to be her Shards coming to earth, and even one about another Fragment named Biscellia that had descended onto the bloody battlefield of a war between two Abyssal factions in eastern Europe almost three-hundred years ago.

John had expected the tale to involve bloodshed by the gallon considering his encounters with Dike and Jiina, but Biscellia had only come down after the fighting was already over. The stories about her came from survivors on the losing side who had been too wounded to flee, but had managed to avoid being found and killed during the battle. The author noted that there were enough survivors telling the same tale for it to seem credible – they described a woman in a blue and white dress, one with skin the color of ash and six wings that stretched out to shelter them from the sun while she tended to their wounds.

She had saved nearly a hundred wounded men and women, and though their organization eventually lost the war, many of them survived – a footnote mentioned that a large group of them had formed a company of magehunters that had eventually been a part of the effort to eradicate the mages who had destroyed them, and now claimed to serve as healers and protectors of the innocent, though the author made no comments on how valid that claim was.

“Definitely would’ve preferred to meet that kind of goddess,” John mused, only slightly bitter as he turned the page and browsed the rest of the gathered tales of Dike. It seemed not all of them were devoted primarily to pain and war. “But I’m looking for more than just a nice story.”

There were numerous other goddesses mentioned in that section, most of them with as little relevance to John’s situation as the rest, but rather little information on Dike herself. She was known as the Aspect of Justice, the goddesses that claimed to serve her always seemed to show up where there was some sort of conflict, and they had been seen less and less frequently in the past several centuries… until John that is. Unless there were others like him that were smart enough to keep it from becoming public knowledge. A part of him thought that there had to be – but if that were the case, why would Dike not make more efforts to bring them together?

There was absolutely no mention of Jiina in the book, nor were there any details about Bishamonten. There was only one passage in Dike’s section that might have referred to Bishamonten, and it detailed an armored warrior executing a criminal in the street. The story was only sourced from eyewitnesses some six-hundred years ago that claimed to have heard him call out Dike’s name as he cut the man in half, and followed by a one-sentence footnote that mentioned dubious reports of a man of similar appearance four hundred years ago, very briefly, somewhere in Siberia.

“Even if that is Bishamonten, it’s not useful information. No wonder Moira and Tricia couldn’t find anything helpful when I got this Shard shoved in my chest.”

Looking through the other Aspects and the goddesses that served them, John was entertained and sometimes straight-up amused by countless stories, but only bits and pieces of them were relevant. John learned that Fragments coming down to the mortal realm with avatars was almost universal – there were only two mentions of Fragments possibly descending in their true forms in the last thousand years, and neither from reputable sources, only delirious madmen who stumbled away from battlefields raving about the wrath of Gaia with no evidence to back them up.

Sightings of avatars seemed slightly more frequent, albeit still rare. Biscellia was the only Fragment confirmed to have descended and known to belong to Dike, but even adding in all the Fragments serving the other Aspects and the Fragments who served an unknown goddess, there were less than a dozen sightings in the last century. When they did deign to descend, though, it was almost always for a monumental event.

While a few of the Shards appeared to occasionally venture down simply for the pleasure of strolling among mortals, Fragments seemed to universally send their avatars to accomplish a specific task. Biscellia’s was the most benign and least combative – most of the others involved major battles that the Fragments intervened in, or sometimes started themselves. Sometimes the goddesses seemed to be fighting to save a faction aligned with their beliefs, sometimes they were attempting to destroy one that opposed them, and rarely they actually seemed to target and single out just one mage to slay. Whatever their purpose was, the Fragments were so powerful – even as avatars – that they almost universally succeeded… almost.

The avatars of Fragments were powerful, but not half as much as their true forms were said to be, and some had been killed, albeit rarely, mostly by current or former Deities. Following the page references in those passages led him into the latter parts of the book, where a long listing of all the goddess confirmed or assumed dead were organized in a similar fashion to the first sections. All of them were Shards, every single one of them, with any references to a Fragment being defeated merely being a listing of when their avatar had been destroyed, and when it had reformed and descended once more, if ever.

“That matches with what Jiina told me. But nothing here indicates why she thinks it would be dangerous for me to know that a Fragment had been killed...”

There were multiple stories of Shards being slain, and some sections even had documentation on the Shards that the goddesses became when they died. Killing a Shard seemed to be regarded in different lights by different groups – some saw it as blasphemy against Gaia herself, others saw it as claiming a divine gift from her, and others simply saw it as a fact of the universe, claiming that if it were so horrid or harmed Gaia in some meaningful way, she’d have smited the first person to dare defile her in such a manner. Whatever debate existed over the morality of it all, once brought into existence by a goddess’ ****, most mages seemed to agree that a Shard was morally neutral, largely beneficial to the wielder, and seemed to be completely indestructible, even to the most powerful of mages.

All the stories of people wielding Shards were similar to John’s – with the exception that most of the people who wielded Shards had obtained them on their own and implanted them intentionally, rather than having the gems shoved into their chest unwillingly. In fact, the few stories that did involve experimentation with Shards seemed very likely to end poorly for the one subjected to them. Many died… still more didn’t, but were left in such a ragged state that they likely wished they had. Some lost their magic altogether, some mutated into hideous abominations of flesh, others became strange creatures that seemed otherworldly, almost like Barrier monsters, and were either slain or mysteriously vanished into the void. John’s throat ran dry when he considered how close he might have come to becoming some kind of cosmic horror… or just exploding.

But for those who had slain a Shard by their own hand, or who had obtained it otherwise but were still respectably skilled, the benefits were vast and consistent. They nearly universally obtained immense power relative to how strong they already were, attunement to at least one part of that goddess’ personality, and unique abilities that often had little to do with their innate or trained schools of magic, but were just as powerful once the wielder adapted to using them.

There was theorizing on what would happen if a Fragment was slain, of course. Fragments were markedly more powerful than Shards; even their avatars were powerful enough to frighten away all but the most powerful Deities. It was proposed by the author – and many others, judging by the citations - that a Fragment of Gaia being slain could create a Fragment in an identical manner to the way a Shard formed from the leftover energies of a deceased Shard of Gaia.

That could also imply a similarly magnified increase to the power of whoever was able to control the Fragment and embed it in their body successfully. The differing viewpoints seemed to mostly center around whether that part was true, and if so, how much of an increase it would be. There were theories that controlling one would be a feat of strength so great on its own that it would challenge even the Deities, and that if one ever did manage it, they might well be worthy of their title at last. Others said they wouldn’t require any more power or control, but might take longer to unlock their full potential. Both of those groups seemed to agree that successfully mastering a Fragment would almost certainly make one so powerful they could-

WHAM!

John flinched at the sound of metal slapping against wood, but kept his composure as he looked up from the text, finding a very nonplussed Moira staring down at him. Her bright red hair hung over her face as she leaned across the table, her palms planted firmly against the tabletop. She frowned at his challenging look, huffing a little as she fixed her posture and brushed her hair back behind her shoulders.

“Hmph. Etriyya was right about you becoming a bookworm, but she seems to have oversold how easy you are to frighten,” Moira said indignantly, her voice the closest the Warden ever got to a full pout. She pulled her hands back from the table at last and crossed her arms in irritation.

“I’m so sorry. Maybe next time you should wait a day since the last time someone made me nearly flip a table over – or at least try it without wearing a full suit of armor. Do you sleep in that thing?”

“Only in the field,” Moira responded without missing a beat, breaking her posture and slipping into the seat at John’s left. “Not that I’m not happy to see you’re working on your mind as much as your body, but what brings you on such an extended studying binge, John? The Squire working the desk informed me you’ve been here since the middle of the night.”

“Just… looking for answers. Preparation for the war, about the goddesses and what they really are, about what the Northern Ashes are and why Bella acted like what they were doing wasn’t completely insane…” John sighed, grabbing another bookmark and saving his page before closing the book to give Moira his full attention. “No luck so far.”

“It’s their beliefs.”

“Hm?”

“That is why they can take such **** measures and believe they have not lost themselves to madness. An immovable faith. The unyielding conviction that they are right about the nature of the world, and that they will eventually succeed in turning their vision for the future into a reality.” Moira stared unyieldingly as she spoke, her entire body as still as a statue, but there was less steel in her gaze than usual. “That is what makes them do these things, and that is what makes them dangerous. That is what makes everyone dangerous.”

“Quick response.” John gave a soft whistle. “Very poetic, too.”

“Philosophical and poetic, perhaps, but certainly true. Especially in this particular instance.” Moira slackened her posture a little and adjusted so that she was leaning forward, staring down at her own hands and twiddling her thumbs idly for a bit.

“The Order has often been called self-righteous zealots, but even our devotion sometimes feels like a hollow imitation of those we now face, and those who preceded them. They understand that they are causing pain, suffering, trauma that will be carried for centuries or longer. But they also believe that none of it matters. They think that if they can finally break the natural order, it will all be made right. Any scars they leave in their wake could be mended, no matter how deep – because all of us would have an eternity to nurture and tend them.”

“Yeah, that’s more or less what Bella said when she confronted me. And I do understand that if they truly believe that, it might make sense if they’re truly ****. But these books show a history that just cycles, over and over. This isn’t one **** group, it’s nearing a dozen.” John gestured to the history books he’d read through so far, along with the pile he hadn’t touched. “We’ve never really sat down and talked about the last year, and if I’m being honest, I’d rather keep it that way. I went to some…”

The same uniform. Identical every time. The same face. Sculpted to perfection. Yet all of them failures. Immobile. Unmoving. Soulless.

“...**** places.”

Moira reached out a hand and rested it gingerly upon John’s elbow, as if afraid he’d suddenly lose his Abyssal strength and be crushed under the weight of her gauntlet. John could feel her warmth radiating even through the cold metal, and he did his best to smile back at her reassuringly.

“But even I never turned to things like that. I never…” John paused for a moment, thinking about how to connect his scattered thoughts. “There are things I haven’t brought up with you because of everything going on. Things that don’t really have a bearing on the war, and that we haven’t had time to go over, but still matter. Has the Lady ever spoken to you?”

Moira didn’t respond immediately. Her face was almost confused for a moment, surprised at the sudden and seemingly off-topic question, and then it became deeply contemplative.

“It is difficult to say,” Moira finally said, the words meandering out of her reluctantly. “All Wardens and Warden Lords dream of her. All Wardens and Warden Lords know her will, some more strongly than others, to the point that it can feel as direct and as strong of a guidance as if her very hand descended from the heavens to point the way. But it is rare – almost unheard of – for her to speak to a Warden directly. Aside from when the Blessings were given to the original three Wardens, when they were called to her side to be blessed by her own hand, there have only been-”

“-four times she talked to a Warden, right?”

Moira blinked at the interruption, though her slight surprise didn’t last long when John pointed out the title of the book he’d just closed. A knowing look came over her face – a little too knowing, actually. Her smile softened in a way it rarely did, and her hand gripped his elbow a little more intimately.

“I spoke to one too,” John half-whispered. “Dike. The Aspect of Justice. Not long after the incident with the Albidians, right after the funeral. I had a quest I’d been working on, one that said one of the rewards was ‘answers’, and when I turned it in, she summoned me to an empty realm. She explained a little bit about the goddesses and what they were, but not much more than that. I asked her to bring Seras back, and she said… she said that she couldn’t. She said it was beyond her powers.”

“A conversation with an Aspect…” Moira’s voice was awed, but her expression hardly matched it. “I feel as if I should be shocked, but it’s hard to be surprised by the things that happen to you anymore. I suppose that if your abilities do come from Gaia, it’s hardly unexpected that one of her Aspects would take interest in you.”

“Well, you took that in stride more than Etriyya did. I told her when she was here a little while ago. Think she would’ve done a spit-take if she’d had a drink. Anyway… I told Bella that. Told her that I’d heard from one of the Aspects herself that it was beyond their abilities. She just scoffed at me and said that it was ‘beyond their permission, but not their abilities’. Bella said that Gaia forbade the Aspects from bringing anyone back, but she didn’t forbid mortals from doing it, so it must be possible. She sounded so confident, so completely faithful. Like there was no possibility that they were wrong, even after hundreds of years of people trying and failing.”

“You have abilities that allow you to do things the Aspects cannot,” Moira pointed out, though her face was grave as she spoke. “Though it is impossible to say whether that is because of how much greater Gaia’s power is than theirs, or because she strictly binds them from using what power they have.”

“You think they have a point?” John blinked in surprise at the answer from the Warden of all people.

“I think there is a thread of logic to them, and that is all that they need to think they are right. That is what happens to **** people who grieve, and cannot move on. They take hold of the barest threads of hope and logic, then cling to them with all of their strength, because letting go would be the same as letting go of the ones they have lost.”

“You sound almost sympathetic.” John gave Moira a questioning look, but she only smiled and continued gently stroking his arm. “I thought you hated necromancers. You said even the ‘smell’ of the magic was horrid.”

“It is,” Moira said, grimacing slightly. “It is like the feeling of the world itself rotting around you. And be certain of this much, at least: these necromancers are cruel and evil, and their ambitions foolish. But it is because of what they do, the cruelty they inflict and the dark magics they pursue to advance their goals, not the beliefs that drive them to it. We have all wished to bring back those we have lost. But we do not allow ourselves to lose our humanity in our grief. Yet those ‘**** places’ you mention… I know them well. They became a favorite place of mine when I lost my mother. I felt almost comfortable in them. They were a favorite place for my mind to rest in the lonely dark of night, before sleep would take me.”

“Moira…” John’s mind could conjure nothing to say more important than her name. Moira had spoken of her mother so rarely in any fashion that hearing her speak of her late mother’s passing was like seeing a whole new woman. John moved his free arm over to gently lay atop Moira’s hand, still gripping his elbow tightly, sandwiching it and willing whatever comfort he could through to her. The ghost of a smile played across Moira’s lips, and she allowed one finger to shakingly caress him as she continued.

“After my mother was killed, I would spend many nights studying the tomes of the Lady, not unlike what you are doing in this library. I looked for the answers to a great many things – whether there was a purpose to all this, whether the goddesses truly care for us or not. Even whether a Warden’s magic might reach across the barrier of life and **** if only she was strong enough. I found no answers I did not already know, and I did things I regret, as you seem to have as well, but the process was… cathartic. It kept me from dwelling on what had happened, **** me to consider the future ahead, and it brought me around to facing and accepting what I was most afraid to admit.”

“That’s a very personal and intimate bit of your past to share. But I’m not sure what you’re getting at, here.”

Moira giggled, a soft and broken laugh that echoed of the past. “I am telling you not to let the grief and bitterness that lingers from grief turn you sour on the very idea of hope. There is no shame in seeking hope in impossible places when there is none to be found elsewhere. Even if that hope is but an illusion, the light it brings us in dark times can lift us up until we are strong enough to walk on our own two feet again.”

“Isn’t that what the Northern Ashes are doing, though?” John murmured. “Seeking hope in an impossible place, and believing that their ends are so glorious that they justify any means to get there?”

“That is one interpretation,” Moira admitted, nodding solemnly.

“...What’s yours?”

“In the darkest times, sometimes all that is left is hope.” Moira leaned a little more heavily on the table, on John’s arm, and her fingers tightened as she looked deeply into his eyes. “I never went that far. I had my father, bits and pieces of the Order that came with us, and eventually, you. You hid yourself away, but even then, you had your family, and you have returned to us now. But some people have nothing but hope. And if that isn’t strong enough to carry you out of the darkness, all you can do is cling to it more tightly.”

John remained silent as Moira finished, her gaze still locked with his. She loosened up her fingers enough to resume gently caressing him, somehow managing to make the cold steel feel almost gentle against his skin.

“It was you who taught me not to see things so black and white, you know,” Moira offered with a rueful smile. “I was quite the little zealot myself when we first met, despite how far I’d come from my lowest point. Of course, make no mistake, I intend to fight this war and – Lady willing – win it. I will not hesitate in battle against these necromancers merely because I have some vague understanding of what may have driven them to this point. And their actions have more than earned the retribution that comes to them. I just thought you should be aware of the path that may have led some of them to where they are now.”

“...You didn’t come here just to chat, did you Moira?” John finally said. Moira’s eyes met his with the same tenderness as she held him, as if merely looking at him might cause him to shatter. “You wanted to talk about this. About their path.”

“You cannot avoid a path you are not aware of,” Moira finally whispered, after a long beat of silence. “I told you, John. I know those **** places well. And I know where they can lead. You’ve lost your anger, but not your grief. We never lose that, not completely. I can see it in you sometimes, when you lose yourself for a moment. When I heard you were in our library, I admit, I worried what thoughts might be coursing through your head. When I saw what you were reading, well…”

“I’m not going to join the necromancers,” John said, only half-sarcastically. “I might be sad and ****, but you already said it - we don’t lose ourselves to our grief. I’m no…” He let himself trail off, the words ‘killer’ or ‘murderer’ sounding a bit too accurate after all the lives he had taken.

“I certainly don’t expect that you would!” Moira burst with a hearty snort, before letting her voice return to a more level tone. “You’ve never been the kind to sacrifice others, but as for yourself? Well… I won’t pry too deeply into the answers you’re seeking, John. But I want you to promise me that you won’t do something stupid and wind up dead.”

“Gonna need you to be more specific.” John’s lips curled upward in an almost taunting smirk, a wry look of pride in his own foolishness. “I can’t agree to that – you never know when I’ll need to make another trek across the country.”

Moira groaned and rolled her eyes, pulling her arm away from him at last in exaggerated, mock disgust. “You see why I worry?”

“There was a time I was… I wouldn’t say I was looking for ****, exactly, but I certainly wouldn’t have turned away if she opened her arms for me,” John admitted. His voice was low and ragged. Memories of red hair and white wings drifting away danced at the edges of his mind, threatening to break through so many barriers as if they were tissue paper. “I came very close. Closer than I ever have before. And back then I wasn’t even trying to accomplish anything but taking my anger out on something.”

John took a long, shuddering breath, driving his elbows a little harder into the table to steady himself in body and mind.

“So yes, I see why you worry. I promise not to throw my life away chasing after the impossible. I promise not to throw it away to escape pain. And I even promise not to hide away in my new world again. Would that suffice? I’ve been making a lot of promises lately, you know.”

“Do those promises hold weight? Do you intend to keep them?” Moira mused.

“Ah, well…”

John used the word quite a bit, actually, but he thought he was pretty good about knowing when it really meant something. Then again, how many had he actually kept? He’d promised Lunaya he’d bring her family to her one day, and he felt as if he’d made very little, if any, progress to being able to do that for her.

“I do,” John said after his hesitation.

“Then they will suffice,” Moira said, smiling warmly at him. She reached out and tousled John’s hair before standing up and stretching lightly, turning halfway toward the door. “I’ll leave you to your studies, John. I have other matters that require my attention. You have my permission to take any of those books back to your world, if you so desire. Anything relevant for our preparations have already been set aside. Keep them as long as you like, and return them if you feel like it.”

“Thank you, that would be wonderful.” John nodded gratefully and genuinely at the offer. Just being able to have the alchemical texts on hand alone would be tremendously helpful when he got around to setting up an alchemy workstation. And who knew when the books on the goddesses might be useful...

“Save your thanks. The promises you gave me were far more valuable than a few tomes. I will sleep easier knowing that you’ll be thinking of me before you do anything stupid again.”

“Who says I don’t already think of you when I do something stupid?” John called as Moira turned to walk away. “Maybe I learned by watching you!”