Chapter 167: Avatars

“So this little guy has a direct link to Samleos, huh?”

Jay regarded the demon hatching she’d been carrying around for the majority of her time on Oros. The little tentacled devil hardly seemed like a threat. Sure, it was an alien-looking thing, what with its large single eye and many wriggling arms, but it wasn’t exactly intimidating. In fact, the miniature horror had tried to save Aila’s life during the battle against the Burning Rancor. At least, that was how Jadis interpreted the demonling’s actions, since she couldn’t imagine what else it had been trying to do.

If the demon was in direct communication with Samleos, the god that wanted to destroy all mortal life on Oros, that certainly upped the potential danger of the hatchling. However, if it was the case that the demonling was essentially a being in the same position as her, an avatar that could speak to and hear the guidance of their patron god, then Jadis had to ask: how direct was that communication?

Jadis had yet to speak with a god outside of her time before reincarnation and the single oracle ritual she’d performed with Eir so far. Prayer, meditation, and direct appeal had yielded no result. She had no idea if she was doing something wrong or if Lyssandria and D just weren’t talking to her. Or maybe they had been sending her messages in some way but Jadis was just too ignorant to understand how to interpret those messages. Whatever the reason for the failure, the failure was there all the same.

Did the demon have a better idea of how to communicate with Samleos? Did it have some instinctual knowledge that allowed it to talk with its dark god as easily as Jadis might talk with Eir? Or was it just as clueless as she was, since she’d taken it from its dead mother’s corpse when it was still just an egg. The demonling had never had any direct interaction with another demon in its life. Not once. Did that make a difference?

Would that make a difference for Jadis?

“Do you think this one-eye is talking to Samleos right now?” Jay asked as she idly observed the strange ways the squidling moved inside its jar. “What do you think it’s saying?”

“I’m not sure that it would have much of anything to say at all,” Eir replied. “I know you have some strange ideas on the subject, but demons are known for their ferocity, not their intelligence. I would say that it is a river that flows to the demons, not a pathway messages can be sent along freely from either end.”

“Okay,” Jay said, setting the demon aside while moving a little closer to Eir. “But demons, like Nephilim, are ‘children’ of their respective gods, so it’s the same mechanics as far as listening to the guidance of their deity, right? Same for the other, what, eight races? The ones that were made by their respective gods, I mean.”

Eir nodded in agreement.

“I believe so. I’ve spoken to a few Seraphim in the temples back in Eldingholt, the capital. They always spoke of receiving guidance from Valtar, though I admit they didn’t describe it in the same way as high priests describe asking questions of the gods or your own interactions.”

“How did they describe it?” Syd asked before resting her chin on top of Eir’s head.

“Honestly,” Eir hummed while she thought. “They didn’t go into the details much. Faustus, he was a Seraphim who frequented the temple I worshiped in when I was a child, he would tell me about the warm feelings he would get whenever he would speak to the All Father. He described speaking with Valtar the same way you would a hug from your father. Strong and warm and solid. But I’m afraid I never pursued more information on exactly how he communicated with Valtar. I never hoped to do the same.”

At Jay and Dys’ dual questioning looks, Eir elaborated.

“We priests and priestesses pray to the gods. But we receive no more direct an answer to our prayers than any other person. We’re all mortals, children born of Valtar when he created the many races of the world, but we aren’t his Seraphim. We can talk to him all we want, but we can’t hear from him directly per the Covenant. Only the Children of the Gods can do so.”

“And oracles,” Dys pointed out. “The system lets you potentially learn classes that let you speak with the gods.”

“True,” Eir nodded with a smile. “Very true. The gods did make allowances in the system they created for those who truly pursue communication with them.”

“Well, I can ask D for more info on how to do this whole ‘guidance’ thing with Lyssandria,” Dys sighed. “But I’d rather use the question on something else if possible. Plus, knowing him, he’d probably answer in some purposefully unhelpful way. I think he gets a special joy in messing with me.”

“He’s the god of mischief,” Eir shrugged. “I believe he enjoys ‘messing’ with everyone. It’s sort of his specialty.”

“Right…” Dys trailed off.

“Are there any Seraphim around Weigrun?” Jay asked from Eir’s other side. “Or maybe one of those other avatar races? Like Dryads? Maybe if I talk to one of them, they can explain how they handle talking to their god and it’ll help me figure it out on my end.”

The elf tilted her head in thought, her slender ears twitching. Jadis couldn’t help herself at the sight and Syd clamped her lips down around one of the delicate tips. Eir gasped and giggled at the touch before playfully pushing Syd’s mouth away.

“I know there aren’t any Seraphim in Far Felsen. There might be elsewhere in Weigrun, but if there are they are unknown to me. We can ask High Priest Gerhardt to be sure. He would know.”

“And the other races?” Jay asked.

“What are the other races, anyway?” Syd tacked the question on.

Jadis had heard different names in passing, such as Seraphim and Dryads, but those weren’t all of them, she was sure. Plus, even though those names conjured specific images in her head based on Earth lore, she didn’t know how directly those ideas translated to Oros. A bit more information on the other Children of the Gods seemed like both a good idea, and also a point of genuine curiosity.

“I don’t know if there are any others in Weigrun,” Eir admitted. “Again, High Priest Gerhardt would probably know, so we can ask him. Though there are some races who simply go wherever they please and don’t give much in the way of forewarning.”

“Tell me about them, please,” Jadis requested as she snuggled all three of her selves a little further into the mountain of pillows. “Tell me who the different races are and what they’re like.”

The topic was an easy one for Eir to explain, and she did so with the relish of one who was truly devoted to their task.

The Seraphim were, just as Jadis already knew, Valtar’s avatars. She wasn’t surprised when Eir’s description proved them to be angelic figures, with wings on their backs and everything. No halo, but Jadis guessed that was a bit silly to expect. The other distinguishing feature Eir told her about them were their eyes. They didn’t have round pupils like humans or orcs, nor did they have the cat-like eyes of the therions, or solid color eyes like elves. Seraphim eyes were shaped like crosses, a detail Jadis found odd. It would at least make them easy to identify, she supposed, if the giant bird wings on their backs didn’t do the trick.

Destarious had his Fetch, a race of shape changers, which Jadis thought suited the god well when she thought of his strange indescribable nature. According to Eir, no one knew for certain what a Fetch looked like in its natural state since they never revealed it. When asked, they always lied, either by transforming into something nonsensical and making a joke or by pretending to reveal the truth as a confidence before ultimately taking it back and claiming a different form as the truth. Not even death cleared up the mystery, since when slain a Fetch would simply melt into a formless puddle.

Charos, the god of war as Jadis understood him, had created a race called the Valbjorn. Bulky and bear-like, they were terrors on the battlefield and reveled in anything that had to do with competition. Jadis imagined them looking similar to Noll but without the horns, which Eir agreed was close to the truth, though she herself could only go by artistic depictions since she’d never seen one in person.

The Lares were the avatars of Ulya, goddess of hearth and home, and were perhaps the most commonly seen of the Gods’ Children. Eir had met several of them over the years. They were, in essence, large cats made of fire. Or their hair was made of fire. Eir wasn’t sure which, but in either case the flames only burned those that had provoked the Lares’ scorn. To anyone else, their fire was no different from the warmth of putting one’s hands in front of a fire on a cold winter’s day.

Villthyrial had his Dryads who were tasked with growing the forests and protecting the beasts within. Apparently, out of all the different avatar races, the Dryads were the least concerned with spreading their god’s message among the mortal races and were the most rarely seen as a consequence. They weren’t exactly the same as the dryads of earth mythology from how Eir described them, since they weren’t human-looking woman who lived in trees and were instead men and women with plant-like features, but either way they sounded interesting to Jadis, especially when she thought of how Thea had been captivated by one in her youth.

Golems were the avatars of Metethys. Since she was the goddess of knowledge and learning, Golems could most commonly be found in the great scholarly institutes of the world, though some could be occasionally found wandering the lands, imparting wisdom to any who approached them but otherwise remaining inscrutable as to their goals. Other than being made of inorganic materials like crystals and stone, Golems had no set look to their form and could be either extremely human-like, or utterly inhuman.

“And that is all of them,” Eir said after finishing her description of a Golem she’d seen in the capital once that looked like a giant crystal butterfly. “Other than Nephilim and demons, of course.”

“But that’s only eight,” Syd frowned. “There are ten gods, right? What about the last two?”

Eir smiled sadly up at Syd while patting the arm wrapped around her waist.

“The last two are lost, just as the Nephilim once were before you brought them back with your rebirth. Both Tamar’s and Svaroga’s Children were slain by the demons long, long ago.”

That unfortunately made sense to Jadis. Thinking about it, she remembered being told that the Nephilim weren’t the only race to have been driven to extinction by demonic invasions. If the whole point of Samleos’ never-ending war was to take all the mortal races away from the other gods like Valtar, then it made sense that he’d target the other avatar races whenever possible.

“What were those races like? And when did they… you know,” Jay asked while trying to be respectful about a topic that could be sensitive in nature.

“Tamar’s Children were called the Merrow,” Eir said after a moment of thought. “They were creatures of the water, apparently, half fish and half elf. They were the first race to be destroyed by Samleos and his spawn. This was thousands of years ago, so I’m not well versed on the subject,” Eir said with an apologetic smile, “but as I remember the stories, they were known for being quite beautiful and passionate beings, fickle like the winds but a joy all the same.”

“Damn,” Jay shook her head. “Missed out on meeting mermaids by a few millennia.”

“Mer… maids?”

“Earth thing,” Jay waved Eir’s questioning expression away. “What about Svaroga’s avatars? He’s the god of, what, mountains?”

“The god of crafting and forges, but mountains too,” Eir corrected. “His people were called the Dvergr. Short and stout and with long, braided beards, they’d spend all their time mining the mountains for the gems and ores that Svaroga put there for them to find. Secrets about smithing and enchanting are said to be passed down among families who learned them from Dvergr in ages past—”

Eir’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes went wide in surprise as both Jay and Dys abruptly sat straight up with a shouted exclamation.

“Dwarves!”

“Pardon?” Eir said after a moment, her face twisted in confusion. “Why are you bringing up humans afflicted with dwarfism?”

Jay and Dys stared at Eir.

“You don’t—”

“You’ve got that word but you mean you—”

“You’re messing with me, right?” Syd finally asked as Eir leaned back to meet her eyes.

The priestess tilted her head and put one finger to her pursed lips. After a while, her eyes lit up and a look of comprehension washed over her.

“Oh! Well, yes, I think historically the word ‘dwarf’ comes from the old elvish word ‘dweorg’ which I believe has the same base phonology as ‘Dvergr’ though I’m no expert on linguistics. Is that an interest of yours?”

Jadis just sighed.

“Never mind…”

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