Jackal Among Snakes

They walked through the verdant palace that marked the elven gods’ meeting area, following just behind the red-robed woman. This place was clearly a collaborative effort—the stones were beige and pleasant, the place was overgrown with greenery likely furnished by the god of agriculture, and it was all kept temperate by the pyres of the elven god of flames and war. Servants of Chiteng’s make wandered, tending to various things as they kept this place pristine. Elaborate fountains and streams of water fed the whole of this place, giving ambience and life to the tiered palace gardens.

Towering over all, the same great redwoods of the forest on Berendar shrouded this place in a dim yet pleasant canopy. Argrave felt like he strode through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon reborn in the heartlands of Californian redwoods. Though he followed after Chiteng’s servant, his eyes wandered whenever he caught flashes of purple before adjusting back quickly so as not to draw attention toward what needed to be stolen.

Perhaps ‘stolen’ was the wrong word, Argrave reasoned. If one is led through an orchard and plucks some fruit from the tree, is that stealing? How about thirty fruits? As it so happened, thirty was the number he’d asked Nikoletta to get—an arbitrary yet satisfactory figure. Argrave needed the purple berries growing in the gardens of his would-be allies. And the beautiful part of the thing was that he was near certain they wouldn’t be missed.

With Chiteng’s servants wandering, it’d be difficult. He trusted Nikoletta’s resourcefulness, doubly so when supported by Mina. They hadn’t been explicitly told they couldn’t pick berries, but they hadn’t been invited to partake, either. Argrave hoped he never had cause to try that excuse in the event she was caught. Regardless, they were too important to simply pass by. If he asked to take some, these stingy elven gods and goddesses might say no. Refusal wasn’t an option. Those humble purple berries slightly resembling strawberries were the key to supplying food for all of Blackgard, and perhaps all of Vasquer.

How did the saying go? Argrave thought as he followed the elven recreation. Ask for forgiveness, not for permission.

They came to the center of the elaborate tiered gardens where a giant metal portcullis rested above them, raised for passage. The servant stopped, turning on her heel. Beyond, what appeared to be a colosseum waited with a distant circle of chairs and people.

“My lord advises you enter alone. Not all welcome humankind, and numbers might draw ire,” she said with a plastic politeness betraying that she was not mortal.

Argrave nodded. “Humankind, is it? Then… Ganbaatar?” He reasoned that the divinity might be positively predisposed if he entered with one of their children—a nice token companion to prove he didn’t hate elves.

She turned her gaze towards the elven warrior who looked surprised to be asked to come along. “The lord did not…” she closed her eyes. “I’ve conveyed all the lord has. Unfortunately, He waits within. I cannot ask more of Him. Another thing He intended to disclose… though the gods within will not know of the seed of Erlebnis vested in your being, He suggests it is in your best interest to introduce this fact subtly. Do not draw any attention to it, but do not exclude it.”

Argrave was mighty pleased to hear that both Chiteng could not be reached, and that Erlebnis’ Blessing of Supersession would remain undetected—that meant just as it had been in Heroes of Berendar, this place was free of an active effect called [Omniscience] common in most gods’ realms. That effect prevented all stealth—anywhere one was, one could be found. Sensible people might hazard a guess as to why that would make stealing something difficult.

“Let’s go, then,” Argrave patted Ganbaatar’s shoulder and moved past the raised portcullis. He looked back. “Don’t get eaten by the plants, you three,” he told Orion, Nikoletta, and Mina, though the message was truly meant for two. Orion waved as they walked away but didn’t look happy about being left behind.

He was half-expecting the gate to fall down and some sort of battle to erupt, but nothing of the sort happened. No, they merely walked across the beige stone in even strides, heading for a meeting with the gods every bit as casually as one might a meeting with friends.

Argrave saw Chiteng standing there beside a chair, his arms behind his back and his red robe billowing in a slight breeze. This area was one of few where the sunlight poured past the giant redwood canopy unabated, and it illuminated a large disc in the center of the vast arena majestically. The light looked like beams of golden dew. Other elven figures stood beyond. Argrave counted them… and fell a fair bit short of the figure he had been expecting.

He walked up to Chiteng. “Are we waiting on more?” he asked quietly.

“Some did not feel they should dignify this meeting with their presence,” Chiteng explained. “My younger brother and sisters being the four absent.”

“And I question if they were right,” an elven goddess garbed in gold noted calmly. Though her hair was blonde like all other wood elves, her eyes were blue and vast—she was Dairi, goddess of water. “Not only do you bring a human into our hallowed ground, but you force indignity upon us by having us converse as mortals do?”

“We did not need to meet here, talk here. Times have changed, Chiteng. We cannot do as we used to. We did not need to leave our territory to converse,” an old elven man with long, long blonde hair reaching well past his feet and draping across the floor noted, his whole hair shaking as his head shook. He was Merata, god of agriculture. “Your sister is right. Meeting here is undignified, unsafe.”

Argrave had a response but thought to let Chiteng speak so as not to incense all parties present immediately.

Unexpectedly, Ganbaatar stepped forth, saying, “Dignity? Will dignity kill our enemies? Can you armor yourself in it? No. It’s only something to make the dignified feel better about themselves. Not only do you abandon us, but now you deem it undignified to converse with us?”

Argrave started at the passion in the elf’s voice. The rogue warrior was usually very low-key, speaking only when spoken to… and Argrave couldn’t quite tell where this outburst had come from.

“Woodschild, we speak to the one beside you. You are here before your time, but we know you and think well of you,” a lithe, tall elven man spoke from a cross-legged position on the colosseum floor, a bow on his lap with a light flame burning on its string. He was Gunlik, god of flames and war. “The situation conspired against us.”

“Woodschild?” Ganbaatar repeated. “You affirm something I know—my prayers were not heard. I disavowed all of you, cast aside my worship. And now here I am, following alongside the best hope for my people I have found… and yet you speak of indignity.”

Argrave narrowed his eyes. Ganbaatar had cast aside his worship? He had not known of this.

Even Chiteng warned, “You overstep.”

“Overstep?” Ganbaatar said, voice cold and hard.

“Ganbaatar…” Argrave lightly touched his shoulder.

“If you should slay me, curse me to eternal pain… then so be it,” Ganbaatar shrugged off his touch and stepped forward. “But I will not stand by and listen to this talk of dignity. The tales of old spoke of how each of you fought among us, bleeding just as we did in defense of what was to become our home. And war does not come—it has already taken root. Your dignity will turn to ash when my people burn, as they are even now.”

Good lord, if I’d known… Argrave lamented, but barring physical restraint didn’t see any way to shut Ganbaatar up. He grabbed the man’s arm and squeezed firmly, but this man was a hardened fighter used to pain and Argrave barely got his attention.

“And why should we listen to a lone dissenter’s reprimand?” Dairi patiently indulged even as the others around her had their faces turn black.

“Lone?” Ganbaatar repeated. “The Tumen I served in… it is the last army still following the old ways of worship. And even though it is the last, perhaps half of those within it pray genuinely. The other half care not barring the fact they do their duty to protect and feed our people.”

Truth is a bitter drug. The gods here didn’t seem exempt from that fact.

“Time passes inexorably, and I shan’t spend mine here, being chided by the ignorant,” Merata said, waving his hands so as to bunch his hair together that he might walk. “Even now, the mortals do not know what they want until they have it. We shall deliver salvation to them on our own terms, not at the urging of mortals. Come, Dairi, Gunlik—let us leave.”

Argrave stepped forward in panic and swallowed, then said the first thing that came to mind—well, the first polite thing.

“I know what everyone here wants,” he claimed. “And I can get it.”

Dairi walked with Merata without paying his words mind, but the god of war Gunlik planted his bow upon the ground and leaned on it curiously.

“And what do I want, hmm?” he asked off-handedly, almost a joke.

“You? You want to settle the score with Sarikiz. It kills you that you barely scraped by on the last cycle, and now the Bloodwoods are polluted by centaurs, giants, the Amarok, Mishis… so you want things to be different, this time. You want total domination of this land.”

Gunlik laughed, but his tone seemed fake. “The god of war desires domination. A revolutionary deduction.”

“Dairi wants her people to sail the seas,” Argrave gestured even as she walked away. “She grows green with envy whenever she sees a seafaring vessel while her people remain trapped on the land.”

The elven goddess did stop and look back… but not at Argrave, but at Chiteng. “You told a human of my dreams?” She shook her head in disappointment and walked off quicker.

Argrave sat there, thinking as quickly as he could. Fearing for Nikoletta, he called out, “God damn it all, you want to go back to the days of the old elves, where your empire spanned the whole of Berendar! And don’t deny it, damn you,” he cursed at them, leaving no holds barred.

Merata, the god of agriculture, paused and turned back, his long golden hair dragging along the floor as he stepped back towards them.

“You dare presume?” he demanded, voice cold wrath.

Argrave caught his breath, realizing he might’ve misspoken badly in urgency. Despite the fact he was taller than Merata in this form of his, he felt small as he said, “I regret the words I spoke, but not the message behind them. You’ve just heard one of your Woodschildren voice his thoughts, and they’re not pleasant.”

Merata glared with his red eyes, then looked at Chiteng. The god of flesh and blood defended mildly, “I told him nothing. Not of Dairi, Gunlik, or anyone.”

Merata looked back. “Explain your words,” he ordered. “And know I suffer not tricksters.”

Argrave looked around. Well, he mused, heart beating quickly. They’re definitely listening to me now. And it might be I can turn Ganbaatar’s outburst into my advantage.