>>5887649“This universe is a place of great pain and suffering, and those who would rage against the light and fill the darkness with old enmities and echoes of the evil past… They would worsen that. Even now, their efforts hold back the full potential of this world and its many beautiful souls. They make conflict, and death, a necessity.”
You do not dare look at the sacrificed stag. Not now. Not while the goddess speaks these words.
“You wish to understand this universe?” the goddess asks. “And those of us who exist outside and beyond it?”
“Yes,” you agree.
“You wish to join us in bettering it? In eliminating the malignancy and suffering which thrives in darkness? To make the blackest night clean and clear, safe and nurturing, for all creatures?”
“Yes,” you say again, for such has long been what you believe to be the best use of knowledge and power and right now that conviction is stronger than ever.
“Your majesty, you have heard my prayers, haven’t you?” Priestess Clanirae asks. “This young elfman… He has mastered the old magic, and begun to put it to use.”
“We know,” the Princess of the New Moon acknowledges, her tone rather ambivalent.
“He is young, and new to the ways of things, but his heart is good,” Clanirae says.
“We know,” says the Goddess, more warmly.
“He seeks guidance, and NEEDS guidance, but with it…” Clanirae pauses, takes a breath. “I think he has the potential to begin reversing the course of the rot which has begun to retake this world.”
“I know what you will ask,” says the Goddess.
(That makes one of you)
“He is not a supplicant, though,” Princess Miannie continues. “This young half-elf is a follower of ways which are not ours, with a spirit whose journey of freedom carries him to strange shores, and whose heart is bound in tangled threads of fate and magic.”
“And still,” Clanirae asserts, “I would ask that you give him the guidance he needs, not just for him, or your descendants and faithful, but for our whole world.”
The Goddess looks thoughtful, insofar as you can read her expressions or body language at all.
“Take him to the moon.”
…Wait, ACTUALLY?
“Priestess,” the New Moon Incarnate speaks softly, “there is energy enough in the stone, to allow us this connection and conversation. And, yes, enough to bring one of you back with the connection’s severance. But… Did you not wish to return?”
Clanirae smiles and shakes her head, and looks at you warmly.
“I am feeling somewhat invigorated as of late, and I think I would like to spend a few more seasons here before my next visitation.”
Both goddess and priestess now turn to you. You flinch slightly, the first you have moved since anyone mentioned TRAVELING TO THE MOON.
