The camp woke up to Kire setting up a small pile of stones.
Sal walked over. "Hey, I know you're basically crazy what with your make-believe god, but what the fuck are you doing now?"
"My god is real, and he's given me the answer."
Sal squinted, worry flashing across his face while Levi, his boyfriend, peaked out from their tent in concern.
"Are you cr-" Sal saw Levi give him a look.
"*Cough*-I mean, the answer of what?"
"To what happens after people die."
Anyone who was up at this time shot Kire strange looks.
People die? Isn't that it? You literally just said all that happens when someone dies.
"They're taken somewhere else to be judged for how they lived this life."
"That's ridiculo-*cough*" using a strangely high and suddenly polite tone, "-I mean, why would you think that?"
Kire raised his hand, and a symbol appeared, like an S with an extra curve at the bottom, a blue-green serpent with outstretched wings at the top curve.
"The Nameless One, the Hatchling God, the Serpent of Rebirth, the Guide to the Dead. He is my savior, my god. He is who I have faith in."
Kire looked at Sal, a fanatic faith and light in his eyes. "I know his words. Would you believe?"
Sal shook his head. "No. That sounds nuts."
Levi palmed his own face in the background.
"Listen, be as crazy as you like, this is the 11th battalion, and the random crap we got wrong with us or the things that make us different"-Sal and Levi shared a look-"aren't what we judge here. You can fight, and you have good ideas, like that fog. That's all that matters to me."
Sal patted Kire on the shoulder and walked back to his tent. "Just make sure your worship doesn't interfere with your duties."
Kire nodded. "Of course."
He turned back to his small altar of stones, and froze the image of a dragon he'd created onto the surface of a flat rock on the top.
"Thank you, my god, for the hope you've given me and my brothers and sisters. While not united in race nor mind, you unite us in soul and spirit, just as we are united in death on your path."
~ ~ ~
Bast sighed, staring at the morning light. She'd spent the whole night with Junior thinking after what had been discussed at dusk just before she woke up but when Kire had fallen asleep.
"Do you think his next life would be a good one?"
Junior butted his head against her arm, and she laughed. "You're right. A man like him probably wouldn't get a bad next life at least, even if it's not the best. Father always did his best after all..."
Memories, of darkness and being unable to move with her father right there, unable to see or hear her as she screamed-
"No!" Bast screamed, clutching her head and collapsing to the sand as she shivered.
Junior stood next to her and stared in concern for a moment, before a breath of air pushed the sand around her to clear away a bit, and to let her recover for a moment before he came closer and nudged her with his nose.
"I-I'm okay... I'm okay... I'm okay..." Bast muttered, maybe more to herself than to Junior, as his head almost stroked hers as it swayed against her hair, the gentle warmth of light magic running through her as he used it to help relax her muscles.
After awhile of this...
"Thanks. I'm okay now... really."
Junior snorted, blowing her hair into her face, and lay next to her, preventing her from getting back up for the moment.
"Hey! Get off! We gotta keep going!"
[No.]
Bast raised an eyebrow.
[You. Hurt. Stay.]
Bast slowly opened her mouth as of to speak, only to shut it again and wrap her arms around Juniors neck and bury her face in his fur.
Silent shivers went through her as a trickle of tears could be seen, sliding down her cheeks.
~ ~ ~
Raghen felt that his job kinda fucking sucked.
He did work in a graveyard though, so he had some reason to think so.
His father was the gravedigger, and him?
He was the listener.
He listened to the dead. To see if maybe they weren't dead after all.
Although VERY rare, there had been some times when the dead had turned out to NOT be dead.
Sure, any Mage or even just a priest of the Holy Light could easily tell. But of course they wouldn't waste their time checking if commoners and slum-dwellers were really dead.
If you wanted to check, you had to pay the church. And the chances of them being alive was very, very low.
So the poor got their bells to ring, and Raghen listened.
Yet never once had he heard a chime, and now he felt tired as he stood over the most recent grave, the first he'd had to dig alone.
The grave of his father.
'I suppose... I'm the gravedigger now.'
Middle age had straightened his spine, rather than the hunch his race usually had, making him less agile but also more commanding.
In Liandros culture, the elders no longer fought, but guided.
He'd aged to this state faster than his race ought to, because of his half-blood status.
His father had been outcast, and as such he himself had never been given the blessings of their god's.
He was weaker than a blooded Liandros, but his skin was still scales and harder than wood at least, though he wasn't the match of metal.
He listened for the sound that would never come, the bell of his father who was dead in the ground.
And slowly, he fell asleep, in the silent night.
"Hello?"
His eyes snapped open... to a street full of people, a... market?
He looked across the table he sat at, his tail swaying off the stool he sat on while opposite him reclined a... human?
'No... not human.'
It seemed to be a child, of soft skin and dark, soft hair.
The child looked at him, and he felt like he was being evaluated by something, like this child could see right through his ever thought and dream.
"Do you hate your father for robbing you of the chance to be blooded?"
"No." He answered, looking around.
"H-how... where are we?"
The kid raised an eyebrow before looking around. "Uh... I thought you knew. You brought us here."
"Did I?" Raghen couldn't remember that.
"Not in the traditional sense, or at least the way you're thinking, but yes you did." The kid nodded, as a waitress brought some drinks.
"I... I can't afford this." Raghen looked at the fine food before him.
The kid rolled his eyes. "Eat. You clearly have had it before."
'Have I?'
Raghen could almost remember a time before the city cut his father's pay, when his father could still hunt and had brought him out to see what their race did to survive in the wild.
"This is... venison that I hunted. Decades ago..."
"It's good!" The kid nodded, shoveling food in excitement. "Oh by the Deities I love taste. Best. Sense. Ever."
"I'm sorry, I don't think I understand what's going on here... who are you?"
Raghen stood up, and as he took a step, he felt the lighting change and he looked up...
To see the temple of holy light.
His stool had become one of the rows of pews, the table was an altar father away, and the boy-
Where was that child?
"Call me the Nameless One. It's the name my followers have given me thus far."
He turned to see the one at the entrance to the church.
The outside world past them couldn't be seen, it was just bright white light filling the doorway and lighting up a... ginger, green-eyed little girl standing their in a ratty dress.
"Where'd he..."
Something in her eyes, the slit pupil so like his father's and all the blooded Liandros, made him stop.
Something inhuman slithered in the light behind her, and suddenly it wasn't a her, but a he once more, a boy with blonde hair and sharp ears.
An elf?
"You're name... is Nameless?"
"Quite the paradox huh? Then again, strange contradictions seem to be my reason for being, so it suits me to be honest."
The boy smiled.
"So, Raghen. Do you want to be more than a grave digger or listener?"
"Would you like..."
The boy outstretched a hand.
"To follow me, and become a Speaker?"