-The Gods, 13 Or'Ain, The goddess of Good Times, or the Party Goddess. As a human Or'Ain is believed to have been either a bard or a bartender. Why she ascended is as much myth as fact. What is known is that she never one to turn down a good time. As such in her time as a divine, she is known for a good party. When a host needs to have a successful party, they would pray to Or'Ain. She is known to influence a good party, but she is said to be more active the rowdier or randy a party becomes. She was also known for enjoying a good practical joke. A good prank is often recognized as being gifted from Or'Ain. She's also the only other divine known to spend time on earth, like Linist or Golliad.-
Rennish had run in terror through the caves. It was only through his own stupid luck that he had come upon an exit. The coward in him wanted nothing more than to get away from whatever he had landed upon as fast as possible. He could have easily run back into the mountain, taking him further away from the outside but he managed to make it out.
When he saw sunlight at the end of a tunnel he sighed a little but didn't relax. He climbed up the rocks and edges as fast as he could, ignoring the cuts and scrapes he was getting from not being more careful with his body. He knew he had unusual healing abilities but infection was still an infection. He just didn't care right now.
His eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the light and once his body was fully out of that godforsaken hole he put his arm up over his eyes to block the sunlight. It was a few minutes before he could drop his arm. He took that time to catch his breath and below him for any signs of the path they had come up along the way.
He was a few hundred feet below the place they had stopped at. He wasn't aware of this, all he knew was he could still see snow. The sunlight had not appeared until after he had already been trapped. This was all new to him.
He looked around and found no sign of the trail they took. An older mountain pass was still visible in the rocks and dirt. The pass had been used long ago for mining when the town below was still new. The mountain had held deposits of rare ores and magic rocks. The volcanic tunnels and deposits of granite were a great place to find materials. It was only natural that a mountain like this would have old trails littered around like blood veins.
When he dropped his arm from his eyes and looked up he saw it twist up into the distance towards the peak of the mountain. He rubbed his hands on his trousers and looked at the damage on his arms and hands.
"Damn," he muttered softly to himself.
He grabbed his bag and in desperation spoke, "Instruments of healing?"
The bag didn't move, "Stupid damn bag, Medical instruments?"
The bag shook and when he put his hands in the bag he sliced part of his finger on a scalpel. "Well isn't that just about right..." He shook his finger and then put it in his mouth to bite on it to stop the pain for just a moment.
"Cleaning instruments, god damn it." The bag shook. This time there was a sponge and a bottle inside of some kind of cleaner. "Close enough I guess..."
He put the bag back where it belonged and pulled the cork to the bottle, the fluid inside smelled of lemons when he put it to his nose. He braced himself for the pain. He had had lemon juice on a cut before he knew what to expect.
He poured some on the sponge until it became moist and then rubbed the sponge over his hands. The dirt soaked into the sponge but he nearly dropped it as he winced in pain. He hadn't realized how many cuts he had from the rocks and crystals until just this moment. He held back the urge to scream and waited for the pain in his hands to subside.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" he said shaking his hands. He gave up on cleaning his face. In anger he threw the bottle, hoping to hear it shatter into a thousand pieces. The magic of the bag dissolved when it got about 10 feet from him and robbed him of that simple joy. This made him angry again. "Stupid bag!"
He got himself up on his feet and using hands and feet worked his way to the old forgotten path. He wrapped his arms around his body. His gear had been left in the cave and the wind from before was gone but the air was still uncomfortably cold. He tucked his aching hands into his armpits and started up the path slowly.
The path wasn't easy to cross with both of his hands tucked away so the trip to the top of the path took over 2 hours. In that time he managed to ascend only a few hundred feet. To his surprise the farther up he went the warmer and more pleasant the air around him became.
He started to untuck his hands and use them to help him get over hurdles instead of inching around them slowly.
He kept going for another hour before fatigue started to set in. So far he had been moving nonstop for a long time and the adrenaline of the explosions and fear had worn off long ago. He really wanted to sit down and rest for a while but he was afraid he would fall asleep.
Just as he was getting ready to sit down something tucked at his brain. He instinctively looked up and over his left shoulder. He felt it, divine power, and it was being used over his left shoulder. The sensation wasn't strong enough to tell him he was close, but he felt it none the less.
He couldn't tell if it was Erust or someone else but the fact he felt it was enough to wake him up again. If it was Erust that meant he must have found the rogue god finally. His mind ran with ideas of what could be there and hoped Erust was okay.
Then as if on cue he felt two sources of divine power. That shook his mind out of its fog and daydreams and brought him immediately back to reality. Two sources of divine power meant that Erust was either in trouble or he was outnumbered. Either way, he needed to help.
The little coward that lived inside Rennish was screaming at him to run away. And to be honest he wanted nothing more than to run down the mountain and find an Inn to slink into and barter songs into drinks and women. He hated that he was again doing exactly what the gods wanted, but he knew that Erust was starting to distrust them also. And as much as he was a coward he couldn't leave him to face this on his own.
Rennish mustered his wits and ignored the cold and moved as quickly as his body would take him in the direction he had felt the power. It wasn't directly over his shoulder so he moved that direction and up as quick as he the cold hard rocks and the unforgiving path would let him.
He fought against the slippery terrain with handholds and kept as close to the wall as possible to keep from plunging down the side of the mountain. It wasn't a vertical drop, more like 45 degrees but still a fall at any stage here would send him down the mountain again and he didn't trust his luck to keep him safe a second time.
Just as the power was starting to fade he felt it almost directly in front of him. One power was fading but the other had spread out. "What the hell..." He said to himself. What kind of battle was he having?
The path he was on made a turn away from the direction he needed to go so Rennish put a foot out to test the ground before him. When he was sure the rock wouldn't slide out from under him he started working his way vertically across the mountain.
The trip wasn't very long though. After a short 60 feet, he felt the rock turn to flat stones, and then he saw a large flat open plaza area up ahead of him. The divine power was fading now and he knew he was near to Erust.
He wanted to yell out to him but realized if something was going on he didn't want to pull it onto himself. He was mostly human now, his divine power was mostly used to heal wounds and play music. He walked quietly around the plaza like area until he saw a wall open up to windows and a door shaped hole.
He crept up against the wall and then peered inside. He cursed his luck and nearly burst through the door. Inside Ysennia was kneeling over the body of Erust. Ashra was holding onto him with a concerned look on her face.
"She finally went and double-crossed him." He thought to himself. The gods were all trouble, this one was the most trouble.
Ysennia took her hands off of Erust and Ashra and stood up again. Rennish was close enough to hear the voices as they echoed off the granite walls.
"My job here is done..." She smiled. Rennish tucked back around the corner and hid. He didn't want her to see him. His hiding was as much strategy as it was self-preservation. Ysennia wouldn't hesitate to dropkick Rennish all the way back down the mountain for fun he suspected.
Ashra sighed, "Is he done? He did what you wanted! He killed your rogue god, he came all the way here, he showed good humans could be as your prophet! Isn't that enough for you?"
Ysennia had started walking towards the exit when she stopped. She turned around and looked at the demi-human and smiled, "Axil needed to be captured alive, he needed to proclaim that he was part of the real heavenly host of divine beings. Doing this made things that much more difficult. He will know what he has to do next when he wakes up. I do wish things had gone better, I know he wanted a family more than anything in the world. I hate that he can't have that..." An uncomfortably long pause followed before Ysennia smiled and looked into Ashra's eyes. "Yet." she finished emphasizing that she wasn't done with him.
Rennish cursed under his breath. The damn gods and their plans and plots and schemes. Ed was laying nearly dead in his wife's arms and she is going to flaunt that she owns him to his own wife? What else could these people take from him? They are the whole damn reason he never found happiness.
Lost in his thoughts of hate for the gods he wasn't paying attention as Ysennia walked through the door. She looked to her left and smiled. "Eavesdropping on a god isn't good for your health."
Rennish flinched, she had snuck up on him and he prepped himself for the physical attack he knew would come next.
"Relax Rennish, punishment only comes from failure... you didn't fail me this time." She put her hand out and smiled that same insincere smile she had used earlier.
"You can't just let Ed have some kind of peace," Rennish said ignoring her hand and getting up from his prone position.
"Who said that? Erust in there is a prophet of the gods. HE will find peace eventually. HE will follow the gods' plans just as he is supposed to. Won't he Rennish."
"Which gods plan though?" Rennish said looking over his shoulder into the room as Ashra held Erust body. Rennish still thought of him as Ed at times. He remembered all the times they couldn't hold each other and to see them like this seemed unfair. The kid wasn't even getting a fair shot at life. "This poor kid is doing everything you ask and how is this any better than any of the other times you've tried to help him to achieve this grand plan..."
"Oh, things are going much better this time. Don't worry Rennish, you are also going along with the plan now after our little... talk back in Ganel."
He winced, he still remembered the pain of her attacks. His body healed fast so he felt the bones break in his chest when she kicked him and he felt them heal back up only seconds later. That was more than a human body was supposed to endure.
Ysennia reached out and grabbed Rennish hand before he could pull it back. She patted it softly and looked him in the eyes. "You will continue to guide Erust, right?"
Rennish nodded, he was swearing to protect him from her kind as much as possible. "I will keep him from any harm I can."
Ysennia almost smirked but stopped herself, she was thinking about how futile that was, this 'prophet' was something she made and she could do whatever she wanted to her own toys. "Whatever helps you sleep at night Rennish. Just don't disappoint me again. Make sure he wakes up would you?"
Her sudden change of tone brought back every suspicion he had about her but he stopped himself from thinking on it too long. He felt divine power flowing through him again as she held his hand. She had released some of his old powers to him. Before he could question her about it she had vanished again.
"Damn divine bitch." He whispered, realizing she had disappeared before he turned into the room.
Ashra saw Rennish enter and waved him over frantically. "Help me, that goddess woman did something to us both. He has quit shaking but won't wake up..."
Rennish got down on the ground next to her. He looked over at the corpse lying a short distance away. "I got him, we can swap stories later." He said to Ashra as grabbed Erust arm.
"For now we have to get down the mountain. If she said he will wake up, he will wake up. We need to get him down the mountain as far as we can before nighttime falls."
This far south they had very little actual night this time of year. But the temperatures would drop dramatically during the time that the sun dropped just below the skyline. And with the rogue god dead the weather here would return to normal before too long. Rennish knew there was no wood for the fireplace so camping here overnight was out of the question.
Ashra nodded her understanding. "If you say so. Can you carry him? Are you okay?" She said noticing all the small cuts on Rennishs face and the blood on his clothes.
"We need to get off this damn mountain. If I have to jump all the way to the bottom I will."
Ashra smiled. That was the old Rennish she was used to, he was crass and blunt and not comfortable with the gods. It reassured her to have him here at this moment. Rennish used Erust arm to get his body up onto his shoulders. The climb down would be easier than up once they got Erust past the ledge to the plaza and back on the trail.
He steeled himself internally for the trip and stood up. The extra weight would have made him stumble before but with some of his powers restored he was slightly stronger than your normal human again. He sighed, he almost missed feeling entirely human. His emotions were back and he was controlling them again better. He couldn't understand why he felt sad about having them back now though.