>>5895683“The others… They believed that this was misguided. They saw the natives of this world and believed that to mix ourselves with them would make them more potent, more powerful, but not more righteous. They did not follow an organic course of integration and uplift. Rather, they believed in taking the darkness of this universe and sealing it away in the prison which the Dark Ones helped them to create—in the so-called ‘Hellish Realms’. Those who could be redeemed by discipline and faith would be led into the new world. That which could not be redeemed would be purged… And replaced by spirits of their own devising.”
Which one is Man, then? Does your father’s race—YOUR race, in part—number among the redeemed… Or their replacements? You find yourself afraid to ask in that moment, seized with a sort of mortal terror you cannot give name to.
“And what are they to you?” you finally croak out instead. “What's your relationship with the Lawful Good Gods?”
Miannie’s expression, for once, is quite clear to you: this question saddens her.
“We have been many things to each other, over the aeons. But we are joined now, and always will be. Joined in mourning, for what we have lost.”
Before you can ask what THAT means—If even you COULD do so, if even she would answer if you DID—she is gone. You are alone, then, with her attendants. Well, YOUR attendants, now, you suppose.
“To the school?” one asks, smiling demurely.
You shiver slightly, shaking off the wave of holy lamentation and sadness-by-proxy which has overtaken you. You turn it into a shake of the head.
“I… I think I’d like to go somewhere else, first, if you don’t mind.”
They don’t.
