Chapter 13: Tales of a Different God

"I need eight healing potions and five mana potions," Sev said. He hadn't even looked up at the vendor yet, his eyes too busy flicking over the wares they had available — surprisingly high-quality potions of all kinds, actually. The divine mana emanating from them was stable, rather than fluctuating like was common in lower-quality potions. Priests made good potions, but they weren't typically this good. "How much will it cost?"

Then he actually looked up. And... kept looking.

"Wow. He's tall," Vex said. The poor lizardkin, the shortest of the four of them, had to practically crane his head directly upwards to meet the gaze of the stone elemental that stood in charge of the store.

The elemental wasn't just tall, either. He was huge, many of his body parts made of what seemed to be actual boulders — boulders that had been pared down over time, as all stone elementals did as they grew, sculpting themselves into a shape that would allow them to better interact with the world. They were one of the few species that grew smaller over time, eventually stabilizing into intricately carved specimens of rock.

"It will be two gold," the elemental spoke, his voice the rumbling grind of stone against stone. He chuckled quietly. "I must say... In all my time amongst adventurers and priests, I have never once been approached without having been noticed."

"Yeah, uh, sorry about that." Sev handed over the two gold, not bothering to haggle. It was a fair price. Actually, it was probably a little too cheap, given the quality. "I usually pay more attention, but I've had other things on my mind."

"As I have seen," the elemental replied. His amusement sounded like a small avalanche of tiny pebbles rolling down an infinite slope. He took the money and began packing the potions away into a bag for them, enormous hands acting with remarkable precision as they manipulated the glass bottles the potions came in. "It seems you have the gods in quite a stir."

"You have no fucking idea," Sev muttered with a sigh. "I'm surprised you're not trying to convert me, too. No offense."

"I have received no vision from the goddess I follow," the elemental said with a hum. "It seems she does not consider this as important as the other gods do. Or perhaps I simply do not rank highly enough in her esteem, yet."

"I doubt it's the second one."

The elemental smiled in the closest approximation of a smile he could reach, which was mostly a light shrug and slight tilt of the head, and the shifting of some earth that seemed to vaguely hint at a mouth. "Thank you for your kind words, little one. I am Velykos," the priest said, introducing himself. "Priest of Nillea, goddess of Earth."

Sev supposed he should have expected that a stone elemental would follow the goddess of Earth. The rest of the party quickly introduced themselves, and Velykos nodded to each of them in turn.

"You are also a cleric, are you not?" Velykos asked, looking at Sev questioningly. "You have not mentioned the god you follow."

Sev blinked. He was genuinely thrown off guard — not once had a member of a clergy ever asked him who he worshipped. At best, there were attempts at converting him, as they sang praises of their own gods. This priest was actually interested in who he followed?

"I follow Onyx," Sev said after he realized he'd been silent for a little too long. There was a small, subtle twitch from the stone elemental, his movement seeming to stutter for a split second.

Then the priest shook his head, like nothing had happened.

"I am not familiar with that god, I am afraid," he said. He finished packing up their potions and handed the bag to Sev. "Thank you for your purchase. Perhaps I will see you again?"

Sev frowned, confused by what he'd seen. "Are you okay? You kind of twitched when I mentioned Onyx."

There was that stutter-stop movement again, like something in the magic that animated him had halted for a split second. "I... do not know what you mean," Velykos said, but he seemed hesitant, like he understood on some level that something was wrong.

"The god I follow," Sev said, now avoiding the name entirely. He was worried now; it wasn't hard to catch on to the pattern. But this was new; saying Onyx's name had never had this effect before.

Perhaps it was too late, though. Velykos seemed to try to reach for the memory, and that seemed to be enough; there was that briefest halt in his movements again. Vex's eyes were suddenly sharp and faintly glowing, the wizard snapping into focus as he noticed something was off. Derivan and Misa, without that same attunement to magic, went silent and on alert anyway: they could infer well enough that this was serious, and prepared to respond should something happen.

"Something weird's happening with his mana," the lizardkin said quietly. "I can't tell what it is. It doesn't look like a spell."

"Is it something I can block?" Misa asked, wary. Vex shook his head.

"I don't think so." The wizard hesitated. "I haven't seen this kind of magic before, but I'm not sure this qualifies as an attack, from him or against him. It looks like it's built into the magic that's animating him, somehow."

"What do you..." Velykos shook his head, stumbling slightly. Sev saw the divine magic around him flaring briefly, like he was preparing himself to cast a spell, but before he had the chance that stutter-stop happened again.

Vex's eyes went wide. "Catch him! He's going to fall!"

Velykos began to tilt backwards.

Misa rushed forward, trying to stabilize the elemental before he fell; Derivan was only a split second behind her, moving to the stone elemental's other side so he didn't just roll away from her. Vex mouthed something under his breath, waving his dagger forward to create a cushion of force that tried to support the elemental's weight.

Sev wanted to help, too. He tried, even, reaching into himself to call forth a basic [Barrier] skill to support Velykos' weight. But the skill didn't respond, and the entire temple began to tilt.

Sev realized a second later that he, too, was falling.

And then he knew nothing at all.

One of the benefits to fainting in a temple full of priests, Sev quickly discovered, was that it was nearly impossible to actually die.

He'd come alarmingly close to death, apparently, with no warning at all — his health had just dropped all the way down to zero, and then his heart had stopped. If it wasn't for the fact that several nearby priests had immediately jumped in to help, including the one he'd previously borderline-assaulted with his staff, it was quite possible that he would be dead.

Vex's eyes were faintly red, and even Misa's eyes were misty. Derivan's expression was a little harder to read, but the armor stood closer to him, hovering almost protectively.

"What happened?" Vex asked him, gripping his arm with worry. He only let go when Sev grimaced, paling and apologizing; Sev just waved it off. He understood Vex's distress.

"I know you're worried," Sev said. "But I honestly have no idea."

It was kind of terrifying to think that he'd come that close to death — and yet, at the same time, it didn't feel real. He hadn't felt any pain, hadn't felt himself begin to slip away... Sev had always thought he'd go down fighting, when it came to death. Not against monsters or people, necessarily. If he survived long enough, he imagined that he'd battle the shadow of death every second of every day, until he either lost or won.

But there had been nothing to fight. There was no creeping sensation he could rally himself against, no specter with which he could argue and bargain. His body had simply shut down. It didn't feel like he'd come close to dying at all, and he wouldn't have believed it if not for the redness in his friends' eyes.

Sev... decided not to think too much about it. For now, anyway. He'd need time to process this, he recognized in a distant sort of way — but he could do that later, in his own time.

"I know it's not much reassurance," Sev said. "But I know as much as you do, which is just that it happened when I started talking about..."

He paused, then frowned. Would it happen again if he said Onyx's name again? A tendril of fear coiled around his heart. He'd come close to dying before, apparently. But it was better to test it now than when he wasn't surrounded by priests, surely?

Vex seemed to realize what he was thinking, because the lizardkin hissed and moved to press a hand over Sev's mouth. "Don't—"

"—talking about Onyx," Sev finished right before Vex tried to silence him.

"Don't do that! We don't even know what made that happen yet!" The wizard frowned severely at him.

"Sorry," Sev said. "I think I'm okay, though."

Then he started, remembering what else had happened. "Velykos," he said, his eyes wide. "Is he—"

"—He's fine," Misa said. "I kept an eye on him for you. A couple of priests tended to him after we caught him, but he didn't actually suffer any damage, he just... fell."

"The magic that animates elementals is complicated," Vex explained. He still looked a little upset, but seemed to be trying to focus on the issue at hand. "Part of it for stone elementals is an enchantment that makes the stones lighter. I saw that part of the enchantment suddenly fail, and that's how I knew he was going to fall."

Sev frowned. "But I've talked to other priests about Onyx before. I've talked to you about Onyx before. Why would telling Velykos cause this?"

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Derivan spoke, hesitant.

"Perhaps because he is an elemental? They are bound to nature in a different way, and you mentioned there were other followers of Onyx," the armor said. "Other followers that were forced to choose, and made to forget."

"You think he's one of Onyx's ex-followers?" Sev frowned, considering the idea. It wasn't like he knew many of Onyx's other followers, given that he never really engaged with the temple. He'd just treated the man like a friend, and Onyx had seemed to appreciate that. "Maybe?"

"What's Onyx's domain?" Misa asked, raising an eyebrow. "You never said. It's something earth related, I assume, so I can see a stone elemental choosing to follow him."

"Uh..." Sev paused for a moment.

Vex groaned. "Please tell me you didn't forget."

"I didn't talk to him about being a god!" Sev said defensively. "He wanted to know more about the world! Gave up a lot to be able to talk freely with his followers, he said. I told him about the world, we played some chess— oh! He's a god of sculptures. Sculpting. One of the two. He made the chess board."

"Sev..." Misa sighed.

"We will have to speak to Velykos, I think," Derivan said. "Without mentioning Onyx. Perhaps he can enlighten us, if he tells us how he chose to follow Nillea."

"Is he... okay? I could go speak to him now." Sev ignored the protests of his friends and swung himself out of bed. He felt fine. He hadn't had a near-death experience. He hadn't been remotely aware enough for that to count as a near-death experience.

His friends exchanged worried glances.

"I'm fine," Sev insisted. He glanced around for Velykos — the elemental, thankfully, wasn't exactly very hard to find. He was enormous, after all. Then, ignoring their protests, he started off towards the other priest.

"You are here," Velykos rumbled as Sev approached. The elemental was still lying down and facing the ceiling, but he seemed to sense Sev anyway. "Will you give me answers? The priests would not give me any."

"I'm not sure I have any for you," Sev said. "And I don't think I can try to explain what we think happened without causing another incident. But I'm sorry about what happened."

"You were trying to tell me something, and I could not perceive it." Velykos was silent for a moment, the only sound he made the faint churning of rocks deep, deep underground. "If I try to remember... a part of the magic that enchants me falters. I can sense this now, I think."

"I don't understand why." Sev pressed a hand against his temples, rubbing them in frustration. He sounded anguished and worried all at once.

"I have no answers for you," Velykos said.

"Maybe if you told me a little more about you?" Sev tried. "How did you decide to worship Nillea?"

Velykos seemed to smile. "I thought you were trying to avoid being preached at."

"But this is actually important," Sev muttered, sounding petulant, and Velykos chuckled.

"You mortal races. Always impatient, rushing for things." He hummed. "It is not unappealing, I suppose. Very well."

He told his story.

It wasn't a long one, all things considered — with the timescale immortal races operated at, Sev had been half-worried it would be a tale that would take hours. But it wasn't.

Elementals, Velykos explained — and indeed, immortal races as a whole — weren't big on religion. It was rare to find a member of an immortal race that wanted to follow a god. They just didn't really gain anything from it; if they chose a god to follow, it wouldn't be for the same reasons mortals did.

In his case, he'd found Nillea back when he was a young elemental still, as a priest of Earth visited the quarry that he'd spawned in. There had been no preaching, no sermons. The priest was a daemon, though Velykos would not come to know this for a long time. Instead, he simply watched, curious, as the priest sat and began to carve.

The idea of art had been a foreign one to him until then. Stones just were, until they weathered away; for stone elementals, age was the same as erosion. Older elementals were often smaller than they had been in the past, the stuff that made them slowly wearing down over the centuries. They could replenish themselves, but it was often a point of pride.

Never before had he seen the act of erosion take on beauty.

The priest carved, shaving away at the rock he held using the point of his tail; where it touched the stone, it crumbled into dust, years of erosion happening in an instant.

It was awe-inspiring. It was terrifying.

And what was left... was a beautifully formed crystal. He'd carved a rock into another kind of rock! Velykos hadn't understood humor, then, but he had laughed, and the brightness of that feeling had surprised both him and the priest.

A chance meeting turned into a friendship. Velykos had asked to learn, and so he had been taught; it was only meant to last the day... but that day turned into a week, and that week turned into months. The priest visited the quarry nearly every day, and Velykos awaited him with eager anticipation.

He hadn't even learned that the man was a priest until eight months in. Their friendship was firm, by then; they were less mentor and student and more father and child, strange as it was for a mortal to be a father figure to an immortal, ageless being that was technically older than him.

Then the priest had vanished. Velykos had never found out what happened to him — but he decided to start following the same path the priest had taken. He would become a follower of Nillea, for that was what the priest had cared about; he would honor him in that way.

It was a small way for him to hold on to a piece of the man that had made him who he was.

There was a heavy silence, as he finished telling his story. Sev didn't know what he had been expecting, but whatever it was, it hadn't been that. He was hoping for some sort of discontinuity, some oddness of memory that would tell him that the memories were false, created by the system. There was nothing so obvious, except perhaps the empty way the story ended, and the way Velykos told his story.

There was a sadness to the way he spoke, a deep pain that went beyond the loss of someone close to him. Like something more had been taken from him. It was hardly proof of anything, but...

Nillea was a goddess of Earth. Onyx was a god of sculpting. The conclusion seemed reasonable enough.

"Thank you for sharing that with us," Sev said quietly. It felt inadequate, for the story was far more personal than he had expected.

"Did that help you find an answer?" Velykos asked.

"I think it did," Sev said. "Though I can't be sure. It's... We'll come back and explain to you when we can. I promise."

"Thank you for sharing your story," Vex said. The other three nodded in agreement.

"It is an old story." Velykos' voice was briefly wistful, as he pored over old, old memories. "But it is good to remember it, I think. Thank you for indulging me and listening."

Sev nodded. "We'll visit again," he said, hesitating and glancing to his party; none of them seemed against it, so he nodded again. "Yeah. See you soon, Velykos. Take care of yourself and don't uh... well, I guess I'll just be careful not to mention that around you again. We'll try to be back as soon as we know what happened."

"I thought I was too old for mysteries," Velykos said with a low, rumbling chuckle. "But I must admit... This is intriguing, if concerning. Find me again, young one."

"And be careful — you came far closer to death than I, to hear the priests tell it."

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