A father-daughter spat sends young necromancer Emilia Mortalis to seek out her real parents, beginning with a summoning in a cemetery, where she encounters a faceless Angel statue. When her foster father is killed while fighting in the Badlands, sh...
Memento Mortalis told him of the day's events. Emilia was in dangerous territory, he'd explained. She and her party were sheltering from a fierce sandstorm. The ghost assured him that she was safe in their company, but He had doubts. Memento would watch over her and come to him immediately if she were in trouble.
The mooncallers' chicks had hatched, and some had already attempted flight. Some of them would be brought back to the nests, slightly injured. Some would have no injuries but would be loudly scolded by their parents. He wondered if Memento saw Emilia as a chick, and if he worried that he could no longer be her father and protector now that he was dead. Well, not exactly dead. And the Angel of Remembrance wondered: "Why are there ghosts, and what purpose do they serve? Or whose?"
He couldn't decide. He felt an odd tingle and looked down at his chair. Occupying it was a faint shimmering, shaped like – Emilia! He phased into the place where dreams are, where he had taken Emilia before. There she was, lying in his chair, only it was not his chair. In her dream-space, she was lying across his arms, her head resting in his elbow, her body supported in his lap. Her legs dangled over the side of his thigh. He was, he noted with amusement, as big as a giant. Strangely enough, she resembled a mooncaller chick resting in its nest.
Am I really that big, he wonders? And why is she here, in the Cemetery with me? It is then that he hears the howling wind, far away in the Badlands. Around him is a swirling wall of dust, or dirt. Emilia squirms on his lap, and fearful cries issue from her mouth. He pushes it away with the force of his will, but it comes closer.
A pair of arms belonging to a young woman emerge from the dust wall, and they reach for Emilia, who screams. With a cold anger He burns the flesh from those arms and watches the bones as they freeze and shatter. He feels the astonishment and fury of the one he knows is behind them. Emilia again is sleeping soundly.
A face appears in the wall, which is quickly dissipating. It is the same face from Memento's memory – the face of Emilia's mother.
"I know who you are, and what you would do." He feels his wings move (!) to cover Emilia.
A girl's voice, pain-wracked, faintly cries: "And who are you, that would stand in our way? What is she to you?"
"I am her Angel, and she is my world."
In the dream-space, He stood watch over her, until she soundlessly vanished from his lap, awakening in the Badlands.
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The Beginning Place
In the center of the Universe, in which floats the planet upon which Beor resides, a small group of Divine Beings sat around an ordinary kitchen table, on which was placed a tray of delicious crackleberry scones and a steaming hot pot of koppee, stolen from The Old Priest & Rat Tavern and brought here by the dark flareys. Seated at this table were Bob, the Eldest God; Virginia, Eldest Goddess of Justice and Keeper of The Balance (aka Granny Ginny, Agent Gin-Anne, Dwarven Mistress Ginevra and a score of other aliases); Tomlynn, Eldest God/Dess of Luck; and the Great Ooze Primeval, Eldest of all, the very stuff of creation.
Tomlynn, being the size of a child, had a booster for their seat. The Ooze had no chair, forever serenely suspended in mid-air inside their glass bubble, burbling like an algal stew on a slow boil. Tomlynn tapped their fingers on the table, with a drum-like staccato. Virginia sighed.
"Do any of you know why I've called this meeting?" she asked them.
"None at all," stated the Ooze, matter-of-factly. He did, in fact. He just couldn't let anyone else know that he knew. That would be...problematic.
Bob drank from his simple clay stein, made for him by one of his demi-god great-grandchildren. "No, my dear. Is the Balance in danger? That's usually it. But why have you called just us? Where are the Second-born?"
Ginny was about to say something she felt she'd regret later when Tomlynn produced a siren bowstring from thin air and began to play the tune that had been on her mind for the past few days. In fact, he played it in its entirety, up until the most recent addition of a frightening furioso movement, followed by a soft romanze.
"What is this?" demanded Bob. "This music – it pulls at me!"
Virginia scowls. "Have you forgotten the Universal Melody? It existed before everything, even the Ooze. There is a new theme, a powerful new theme. I am not surprised that you, Tomlynn, have heard it. And you, Ooze? Surely you must have been the first to notice the new phrases, the new harmonies?"
Ooze turned a paler shade of his usually vivid green. "Me? I'm busy keeping the Second-Born, Third-Born and all their hemi-demi-semi divine by-blows in line! How could I possibly hear the Melody with all the clamor around here? It's probably the planet warming up to introduce a new species or something. It's nothing."
"Oh, right," dead-panned the Goddess, "Like the ear-splitting discord of the Nethergate's first appearance was just a planetwide bass C2 burp climbing to a high-C belch! What are you not telling us?"
"I will not be spoken to like this. Let me know when you're ready to apologize, and be thankful I'm still willing, after all these millennia, to look after you lot!" And with that, the Ooze vanished. Virginia wanted to scream, but the last time she'd done so, it had taken the dark flareys a few centuries to restore the nearest galaxies into some approximation of order.
"I'm certain, my dear," said Bob in his usual condescending manner, "you'll find out what this problem is, and solve it admirably. Now if you'll forgive me, I've a rendezvous with a lovely follower that I'm already late for." And he, too, vanished.
Feeling abandoned, Ginny put her head in her hands. Tomlynn floated behind her and gave her a hug. "Something's happening, friend. I feel as if I have to do something, but I don't know what it is. Do you feel that way?"
Tomlynn shrugged hisser shoulders and lifted her chin. S/he grabbed her by the hand, and a portal opened in front of them, the space beyond shrouded in mist. He beckoned, and she followed them through into what she recognized as dream-space. They walked for a minute or two, until she recognized Tasuil Beor's High Dudgeon neighborhood. A few blocks away, there was a divine light shining. Another few minutes, and the air was filled with the very music that had been playing in her own dreams.
They stood in the dream-space version of the Cemetery of the Forgotten and coruscating around two figures were the auras of Chaos and Order. One figure she recognized: young Emilia. Chaos's shadow was trying to envelop her, but it was prevented by the brilliant light of Order emanating from...the Angel of Remembrance? The God/dess of Luck put hisser mouth to her ear and whispered with a mighty effort: "Help...the...child!"
Virginia shakes her head, and cries out, "Emilia? What, no, who is..." From the dream-ground spring ashen clouds of Chaos, seeking to envelop both Elder Gods. She hears a voice from the past cry from Chaos' midst:
"And who are you, that would stand in our way? What is she to you?"
And from the Light of Order, it is answered by a voice that isn't familiar at all, responding in a way that is all-too familiar:
"I am her Angel, and she is my world."
Tomlynn, in one great final effort, chokes out the words, "Robert's child", before Chaos tosses both of them out of the dream-space.
Granny Ginny lands hard, scattering sand in Badlands Rock Box 18, to find everyone asleep. Everyone, that is, except Emilia, who is conversing with – the Goddess alters her vision to include every spectrum – a ghost?
