Chapter 54: Sculpting Stone

Sev found Velykos in the gardens behind the temple again, rather than inside the temple proper. It was quite the sight, really. As old as Velykos was, he was still large, and he towered over the majority of the trees and flowers and herbs that filled the temple garden.

The garden itself was beautiful. Part of it was set out to harvest potion ingredients, that much was clear — there were rows and rows of identical plants, each in various stages of growth and carefully marked accordingly. But the rest of it? The rest of it was beautifully laid out, more haphazard art than anything orderly; clusters of bright, star-petaled flowers grew in broken zigzags around twisting vines, and a variety of trees brightened the atmosphere with various colors.

Really, Sev was never going to get over the fact that this world had trees that came in bright blue.

"Hey, Velykos," Sev called, and the stone elemental turned to him in surprise. He seemed pleased to see Sev, though, and gestured for the cleric to join him, though he also put a stone finger to his not-quite-lips.

"There is a bird here," Velykos said, his voice surprisingly quiet. It sounded like the gentle drift of sand down a dune, instead of the usual gravel and rock. "It injured itself. I have been taking care of it."

"It doesn't have health, huh?" Sev said, peering at the bird that Velykos was talking about. It was sleeping, the little thing, a tiny chest rising and falling with every breath.

...He had no idea what kind of bird it was, though. It had an incredibly long beak, and its feathers were almost prismatic, shimmering in a number of different colors every time the light glanced off it from a different angle.

"It is too insignificant," Velykos answered. "Though perhaps significance is not the marker by which the system identifies an object... It is good to see you again. Your name was Sev, yes?"

"Yeah," Sev said. "I wanted to check in. Make sure everything was going okay after what happened. I'm sorry about that — I didn't know what would happen."

"It is fine," Velykos said with a hum. "Nillea forgives all. Though... do you come here to speak of your god again? The one whose name cannot be spoken?"

"Recent events have led me to believe that I can talk about it now," Sev said. "But it's not something I'm sure about. I made sure to tell some of the priests before I came here, so they're keeping an eye on us, but..."

"Why do you wish to tell me of your god?" Velykos asked calmly. Very, very gently, he placed the bird he was holding back into its nest, the stone he was made of displaying an astonishing flexibility. "Not to preach, I assume."

"Definitely not," Sev said, letting out a slightly uncomfortable laugh. He knew what that felt like. But how was he supposed to explain that he thought that Velykos had lost a piece of himself? That he'd been forced to choose a different god, and to forget about the old one?

Though, in all fairness, there was a lot about the relationship mortals and gods had that made Sev uncomfortable.

"Can you tell me a little more about your mentor?" Sev asked, deciding to switch tacts. "The daemon you said became a friend?"

Velykos nodded. Slowly, he rose to his feet, Sev feeling once again a little overwhelmed by the way the stone elemental just towered over everything around him; it was a wonder that he didn't trample the grass beneath his feet every time he took a step. "Walk with me," the stone elemental said. "I want to tend to the garden."

"Of course," Sev said, surprised.

"His name was Ramos," Velykos explained after a short pause. He was inspecting some strange-looking flowers that grew out of the trunk of a tree rather than out of the ground; each petal shimmered strangely, like they were barely real. "Though he did not tell me his name until I had known him for many years. Their names are important to them, you see."

"Magically?" Sev asked.

"Culturally," Velykos said, glancing at Sev. The human blinked once, feeling a little bit embarrassed. "Their names hold no power over them, no matter what the planeshifted rumors say. But their true names are an intimate thing, given only to people that they trust beyond measure; people they consider family."

"Is it... okay that you're telling me his name, then?"

"He is long gone," Velykos said mildly. "And it is equally important to them that their true name is used, when they are dead. They believe an element of themselves lives in their name; if it is used when they are alive, then their selves are diluted. But if they are gone, it is the only way they live on."

"Ramos, then," Sev said, and Velykos nodded approvingly at the way he said it; quiet and respectful, like a prayer for the lost.

"He was a kind man," the stone elemental said. "Dedicated to the god he chose to worship. Daemons do not ordinarily have a good relationship with gods; they live a life of rejection. By the system, by the gods, and by the world itself."

"But Nillea chose to accept him," Sev said. He was stepping in territory he thought might have be within the realm of the original infolock. If he was right about who Ramos and Velykos had worshipped — if it had been Onyx instead of Nillea...

"Yes," Velykos said, though he took a moment to pause as he more carefully inspected yet another flower. Sev saw a brief flash of divine mana before a gentle mist of water settled over the plant. "It is strange, if I reflect on it. Though Nillea is a goddess of the earth, she is not known for her kindness towards daemons. I suppose she saw in him someone that was trying to do better, and wanted to give him the opportunity..."

Velykos stopped, and this time not to examine any plant or flower. He stopped like he'd been struck by a thought, and he turned a grave look towards Sev. "This is why you come to speak to me, is it not?" the stone elemental said. "I hear the stories. I know a little of what you and yours have been involved with. Gods and angels."

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"How much did you hear?" Sev asked with a small frown. As far as he understood, most of that information wouldn't have been able to propagate — even the Guildmaster had said Max hadn't been able to explain much of what happened with Jerome and what Aurum had been doing. "And how?"

"I hear through Nillea," Velykos said. "Through dreams, occasionally, though sleep for a stone elemental is sporadic. Sometimes through skills. [The Walls Have Ears]."

"That..." Sev paused. Creepy name for a skill. "I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"It is a bypass," Velykos said. "I should have tried it earlier. The skill is less literal and weaker than it sounds; I do not truly understand what I hear. I gain a half-formed instinct about what may have transpired, instead."

"Somehow I don't feel better about it," Sev said a little dryly, and Velykos tipped his head in acknowledgement.

"I do not use it often," the stone elemental said. "Only when I suspect that my perception is being messed with. Which is more often than I had expected, when I first moved here."

"Ah, right. Because of the Guildmaster." Sev gathered his thoughts. "That's how you found out how the skill works?"

"It is, yes," Velykos acknowledged. "I have informed her of the skill and what it does, out of courtesy. She does not contest my use of it."

"That was kind of you," Sev said, surprised. "Kind of her, too, I guess. I'm surprised she let you use it."

"She said it keeps her honest," Velykos said, shrugging his massive shoulders with a rumble. "I am given to understand that her colleagues do something similar, so that she does not simply run unchecked with her abilities."

"I didn't realize that was something she was worried about at all," Sev said. "Huh. Good for her, I guess."

"We were discussing the gods," Velykos reminded him. "You came to me to speak to me of your god, I believe."

"Yeah," Sev said. He hesitated, still, an unnatural trepidation rising up in him. He remembered the last time he'd done this, when he'd woken up on the floor and he'd been told he almost died. He remembered what he'd done for Kestel, and the memories he'd taken on in return — the very sensations he'd been lucky enough to skip the first time around. The thought of his heart seizing and stopping, his blood flow suddenly not enough to keep the rest of his body running —

"—You are panicking," Velykos said gently, over the ringing in his ears, and the stone elemental gently raised a stone chair through the earth. He nudged him backwards to get Sev to sit, and conjured a droplet of water for him to sip from — an actual droplet of water, a tiny sphere of magically animated liquid that stayed solid in his hands.

Sev stared at the droplet for a moment, mesmerized, and then took a small sip from it.

"...Sorry about that," Sev said after a moment. He took a deep breath. "I wanted to tell you about what I think really happened," he added softly. "I don't know if I'm right. But you told me that Ramos liked to sculpt things out of stone..."

"He wanted to leave behind a mark on the world," Velykos agreed. "He acknowledged that even stone would wear down, eventually. But he wanted to leave the world more beautiful than when he found it."

"Does that sound like a follower of Nillea, to you?" Sev asked. His tone wasn't accusatory — it was genuinely curious. He didn't know much about Nillea beyond that she was a goddess of the earth. "What does Nillea represent?"

Velykos took a moment to consider the question. "She represents a respect for the earth and the bounties that come from it," the stone elemental eventually answered. There was a slight frown in his voice. "An appreciation for the natural beauty of the land."

Ah. There was the contradiction he'd failed to spot the first time. Not in the events of the story itself, necessarily, but in the domain of the gods.

...Maybe he needed to pay a little more attention when it came to the gods, Sev thought to himself with a grimace. He was the cleric of the party, and the one that would be expected to know more about the gods...

Sev glanced up at Velykos to see how he was doing. The stone elemental was frowning to himself, little pebbles rolling around in agitation along his form. Subconscious elemental manipulation, maybe?

"It is strange that he was a follower of Nillea, now that my attention has been called to that fact," Velykos said at last. "You believe this has something to do with your own god?"

Sev nodded. "Onyx was a god of change," he said quietly. "Well. A minor god of change, anyway. He was a god of sculpting, of leaving a mark on the land that's all your own.

"It just... it seems to fit a little too well, you know?"

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