Caelan smiled at me. “He is fine, a little banged up, though. He was sitting with you all day yesterday, I only senthim to get some rest a couple of hours ago.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. “He looked half dead the last time I saw him,” I said quietly, tears stinging behind my eyes.
Caelan put his hand over mine. “It takes more than a little firecracker to kill a God. But your healing made it easier for him to recover, he was up and walking when we took you both home.”
The door to the study opened and Theo walked in.
His gaze dropped to the table, to Cae’s hand covering mine.
He didn’t pause, he only stepped around us and went to the desk.
“I’m glad to see you up,” he said, settling into his chair. “How are you feeling?”
Cae pulled his hand away and folded both in his lap.
“I am fine, still feeling a little woozy, but the medicine helped,” I answered.
He nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Your mother is well, we took her to a city nearby, she is resting and being taken care of. You might go and visit her soon if you wish,” Theo said. He was back to being the scholar again, with his glasses and impenetrable facade.
I nodded and smiled at him gratefully. He didn’t smile back.
“The Abbot and the others will be here any minute to discuss our next steps. We got some intel from one of the Heralds we captured after Ignara left,” he said.
I looked up in surprise. “Is she alive?”
Theo nodded. “We can’t be sure, but it is unlikely that her injuries were grave enough to kill her. She is a Goddess after all. She will be incapacitated for a while. After all, shedoesn’t have a wordsmith healer at her side.”
He finally smiled at me then, his expression a mix of gratitude and maybe… a little pride?
The door opened and Malek and Lythandra strolled in, closely followed by the Abbot. Lythandra came straight over to me, giving me a big hug, asking how I was feeling.
I repeated for the third time now that I was fine and only felt a little groggy.
“Thank the Fates, you were pretty high when we got to you on that field. You kept gushing about—”
Theo got up suddenly, interrupting her mid-sentence. “That’s enough about that Lytha, let’s get to business.”
He looked a little flushed and I winced. Had I embarrassed him again in my magic drunken state? If so, Theo clearly didn’t want to talk about it and I was more than all right with that. It was bad enough that everybody seemed to have witnessed it. I needed to up my tolerance when it came to my heka.
The meeting took more than an hour and Malek revealed to us what his spies had learned from the Heralds chained up in the temple. They were mortals, part of a group that called themselves “The Heralds of the Forsaken,” this much we already knew. The Heralds were a cult that had formed centuries ago. They had stayed devoted to the old Gods even after the Gods left the mortal realm. For a long time, they had existed at the fringes of society, holding secretive meetings and simply practicing their religion far away from the eyes of the mortal governments.
But it seemed like something had changed right around the time Auretheos was born. The Herald didn’t have any details of course, but he said that their cult suddenly grewimmensely and started operating on a new level.
“What is it they want and why was Ignara there?” the Abbot asked.
“It seems like the cult’s plan is to revive the old Gods, or to bring them back into power. They believe that only by returning to the old ways, society can be saved from the chaos and decay that now grips the world. Their true numbers are unknown, but over the past few hundred years we noticed the resurgence of our ancient symbols and rituals all over the mortal world,” Theo finished and we were all silent for a moment.
“How did they hear about the prophecy?” I asked. “The Herald that captured me on my last day at home knew who I was and they intentionally attacked my hometown, trying to draw me out.”
Caelan’s brows furrowed. “That is a good question and there is only one answer. They must be working with the Gods. We kind of already knew this of course, because Ignara was there fighting with them. But the question that remains is who they are working with and in conclusion, who we are fighting against.”
The Abbot huffed. “There certainly are enough Gods stupid enough to engage in such a cult. Many of them never wanted to leave the mortal realm, never wanted to give up their power over the mortals,” he said.
Theo nodded. “I was still very young back then, so I don’t remember much from those days. I will go through the records and see if I can find any hint at who might be behind this.”
Lythandra cleared her throat. “Not a bad idea, but I think it won’t be as easy as that. I know of Gods who left the mortalrealm quite happily, but got bored after a while. Theo, you never had to give up your gift, you can still make yourself useful. But Gods like me, we have no purpose anymore now. So there might be Gods who left willingly but changed their minds after 500 years of boredom.”
I had never considered before how their lives must have changed after leaving the mortal realm, but it made sense. Many Gods had lost their purpose, and while at first it might have been a relief to take a break, some of them might have struggled to carve out a new life for themselves.
