At some point after the group has left king Ilceros’ statue and pillar dedicated the Crimson Calling. The group is walking up the road and Alexis sidles up next to Gustav.
“Care to share about Mrs Eggertson? What’s she like? Good woman?”
Since the thoughts about Ilceros and Eellos, Alexis has clearly been thinking about this same topic. He speaks to Ethelred as they continue north.
Patting his belt pouch “This Tear can make a god. Or complete the ritual to make one. Ilceros and the Dragon had it the whole time.” He glances down at his hands and the rings on them. “And in this timeline Ilceros won. Beat back a power so strong his shadow is still warping reality around us.” He looks back up at the road ahead. “Did Anashar not elevate him for that? Or did he, and humanity of this timeline just forgot, because it scattered after the Great Betrayal and took its memory with it?”
A comfortable silence.
“You Aegierians keep saying Raiden was ascended. Lifted up by Anashar.” He glances sideways at Ethelred. “Was what he did so much greater than what Ilceros did? Than what the Dragon did?” The last question lands with more weight than the others.
“Or did Ilceros get elevated, and then forgotten, and then Raiden came along and channeled whatever was left of that into something new? Is Raiden Ilceros reborn? Same warren? Different warren?”
He shakes his head slowly.
“The second league had artifacts and workings this age has never come close to matching. The hourglass. The Tears. How many of those were made specifically for achieving godhood? How many names do we not know because they succeeded and then faded with the empire? How many ended up like Shasharak, or were simply obliterated when they failed?”
He turns the Spider Ring once, almost without noticing.
“In this timeline I find it hard to imagine Anashar not uplifting Ilceros. The Dragon too, maybe. And if that happened here and not in our timeline.” He looks up briefly at the daytime sky. “Maybe that’s why the stars are different.”
He keeps walking, and his thoughts shift to a slightly different topic.
“What does it mean for a god to be tied to a place? As a Sutheroni, that concept sits uneasily with me. A god spans the world, or at least all humanity. The power is constant, from time immemorial. Anashar. Avv. Hood.” A shrug. “Although some in the Collegium have their doubts about Hood.”
He glances briefly at Gustav and Rask, then back at the road.
“But Raiden is tied to the land. And I think this same land might have been Eellos. And Ilceros was connected to Eellos. And was clearly a great power. Possibly much greater than Raiden.” He pauses. “How many other gods have come and gone? Come and failed?”
He doesn’t say anything else for a while.
Alexis falls into step beside Ethelred and Ca’armine as they leave the statue and pillar.
“The pillar.” He nods back the way they came.
“The Dragon could deal in chronomancy. The Spider was a master of the ring and could see possible futures. Between the two of them they knew the empire was ending.” He glances at the road ahead. “I have a theory they decided where to create a reliquary to best help humanity survive the trials back then and into the future.”
He looks at the landscape around them.
“They picked this corner of the empire. Gave the Tears to the dwarves, because a hundred and sixty years is nothing to a dwarf. They’d still be holding them when humanity found its way back.”
He shrugs once.
“I have a hunch this place didn’t survive by chance. It was chosen.”
They keep walking together.
The group has left the time-vault of Nodden-Torr. A few days have passed. Alexis waits until the camp has settled, then moves closer to Ethelred.
“Something’s been sitting with me since we came through.”
He keeps his voice low, not quite private.
“Raiden Ascended. Fixed point, 687 SL.” he flips through his notebook aimlessly. “Stand before that point and Ca’armine can’t reach him at all. Makes sense. The warren existed, but Raiden wasn’t in it yet. Some in the Collegium would stop right there: you attune to a region, not a person. No region, no attunement.”
He nods a couple times.
“But we came home through a sky full of possibilities. Every point of light another timeline.” He looks at the page, not really seeing it. “Which means somewhere out there there could be a timeline where Shasharak succeeded. That shadow-fiend that came for us in the hourglass room could be Shasharak or a minion of his from that alternate timeline trying to ‘correct’ all the timelines.”
He closes the book.
“If a god begins at a fixed point, does it exist in every timeline after that moment? Seems unlikely. But Raiden said we were looking at it too much like a road, when it’s a tree.” Alexis shrugs “Or it’s an agreement.” Alexis shrugs again. “Is a single Hood collecting souls from every timeline or is there a Hood for every timeline? And if so, do they know about each other? Do they compete?”
He looks at Ethelred.
“Is Shasharak already a god somewhere? And if he is, can the ‘him’ here get help from the god there?”
Alexis sets the crystal ball down into his lap. He’s going to use it again, but he needs a moment.
Alexis closes his eyes and smiles. With his eyes closed “It was good to see the old man again.”
Alexis takes a few breaths, still with his eyes closes. Then he adjusts his hat and prepares for the next viewing.
Alexis sets down the crystal ball and is quiet for a moment.
“Alekeemo.” He says the name and then lets out an uncertain grunt. “Utiog’s holy symbol, but he said ‘the Mother’. Slip of the tongue? I feel like it’s not.”
He looks at the group, not expecting anything, but clearly hopeful.
In the new timeline, as the group walks from the old warrior burial area — that no longer exists — to the grotto where the Monastery of the Eagles stands in another timeline. The group walks and Alexis thinks out loud, turning the Collegium ring on his finger.
“How old are the Tears, actually?”
A few steps.
“The Crone gave them to humanity to save humanity. But they were already in play at the Great Betrayal, at the end of the Second League.” He turns the Collegium ring once. “Which means there was a time before the Great Betrayal when Avv decided humanity needed saving. The Age of Wyrms? The Great Upheaval? Earlier?”
He frowns slightly.
“Humanity needed saving at the Great Betrayal. That’s clear. But if the Tears predate even that, what were we being saved from before?” He looks at the path ahead. “The Age of Wyrms? The time of the crafting of the Sword Chaotic? The time of the Saggi, the Akkil, and the demon-gods?” He shakes his head. “What was so dire, that all the other times pale in comparison?”
He doesn’t seem to expect an answer.
After a few days of working on Gus’s leather armor and before Ca’armine’s ritual, Rask changes the subject from armor design on Ethelred:
“Red, I was wondering… I noticed you pay close attention when other people cast spells and it seems like you can tell what kind of spell they are casting without using magic of your own? Can you teach me how to do that? It seems like our enemies use spells often, it seems like it would be helpful for me to learn some of their tells.”
The night the group makes camp on the platform at the top of the eroded hill, while Gustav has the first watch. Alexis pulls his hat off, sets it beside him, and sits down.
“Those blessings you’ve been losing every morning, Gus. It turns out that was me. Or a new skill out of the Inner Watch, which probably amounts to the same thing.” Alexis turns the Collegium ring once around his finger.
“The trouble with the Inner Watch is that most of it has been lost a very long while, and as far as I can find, nobody left a guide.” He gives a small shrug. “So I learn what a working does by doing it.”
“Before you ‘prayed’ at the grove that morning, I’d already invoked the old working and pointed it at keeping us protected for the day. I held the protective side of… your… our god in my head, and the road ahead of us. In hindsight, the warren of Raiden took my intention and your power, put the two together, and stretched our passing from a quarter of a day to half of one. I’m still not certain how it settled on you to pay for it.”
“That first working ran four days. Your grove may have had a hand in that.”
“Before I tap into that part of the weave I wanted to let you know. It was new to me then. It’s turned out well worth having, but maybe you disagree.” He looks over at Gustav. “I’m sorry for being a part of your crisis of faith.”
Alexis waits to see if Gustav has anything to say.
Rask holds Ca’armine’s shoulder when the priest of Raiden wakes him for his watch on the platform.
Rask looks into Ca’armine’s eyes and speaks queitly, “A moment please.”
After a few minutes Rask nods, his thoughts Gathered.
“Ca’armine, what we have… won’t they come to us?”
Rask shivers a bit, and focuses and quietly prays to Raiden to shield his mind
“If Sassy can sense it he will come for it however he can, right? That probably means Bandy…”
“We are don’t need to target them, they have targeted us right? Didn’t Alexis say he could tell Varisimuss was scrying on him, probably from the Pool near Greyfax? Or at least, in that direction. ” Rask nods East and continues speaking,
“There are others who will seek it also, or will when they learn of it.” He turns towards Ca’armine.
“We need to be ready for them to come to us.” Rask says grimly.
Rask looks North, towards the mountains in the darkness to the North and asks,
“Instead of attacking Bandy on his home turf, perhaps we should set a location that is to our advantage?”