Legend of Ransera

This was new.

Over the course of the women's labor, she had spoken some to Bruno Storlock. The young Grymalka knew of her, perhaps via Aurin or Sivan, whom she knew through Torin. There had been that olive branch offered and before she had quit the room where Delia Dornkirk lay resting with her increased family, she had asked him to carry a response back to the Kindred for her. Kala thought of Stefan as a friend, albeit a problematic one given his politics. She thought he was a good man who could grow into a better man, and while that wasn't her responsibility as a woman he was acquainted with, she was also a burgeoning goddess. Perhaps his spiritual growth was her responsibility. Fuck, she had just given him a miracle—his family, yes, but he was her point of contact into that family.

Bruno told her a great many things as he helped her out of that room and elsewhere.

This was new.

She hadn't come via Blue Star but following the thread of prayer—the prayer of a well-known ghost primarily, but she realized that somewhere along the way, it had twined into those of father and mother, another sort of thing that didn't seem to care so much about Time or Space. It had come to her whole: prayer from these people who eschewed gods.

"I will need help getting home," she murmured. Indric could come to her, but he wouldn't. He was too far away for her to reach him via their bond, and he was loyal, obedient; he would not risk a political storm on the chance that she might need a route home. The prayer had changed inside her, she realized. There was something left. Gratitude, perhaps. Not worship. But Delia Dornkirk had called out de profundis, in a moment of primal fear being uncertain how her husband would handle the matter. Her faith in him was restored, she thought, and that was enough.

But the prayer had been answered and she hadn't been pulled home. Whatever tether she normally had when answering prayer had perhaps been dissolved in the expense of so much power. Stefan's half-elven brother-in-law had sensed it even though his only apparent Rune was the Negation of other Runes. She had his word, and she had a sense that he would keep it, both in letter and in spirit, although perhaps not in the same interpretation as she might wish. She was known here. She was known in Solunarium. She suspected that she might be suspect in Sol'Valen. Sahfri had worked effortlessly to keep her wings under wraps and Marda her divinity, but Kala kept doing things.

Love, she thought, is a doing word.

She could still feel Kaus, and she tried to send wordless comfort; she was unharmed, unworried. But she couldn't speak directly into his mind.

"That was Dienerin," Bruno told her quietly. "Angevin has a Dienerin, too. His cousin. They are... well, they have been valets or manservants for the men since well before the Troubles. They are trusted with everything. I hope not your secrets, though."

And then, as luck would have it, she stood before a powerful Railrunner rather than the Kindred with whom she was in careful communication.

Kala gave Bruno's arm a gentle squeeze and then released him, standing on her own two feet, straight-backed though it cost her. Perhaps worship would refill that numinous reservoir within her. Perhaps she needed to bathe in starlight. In any case, she was—temporarily, she hoped—weakened by what she had done.

Akshara, her mother, had said that to lead was to serve. Perhaps that was true of godhead, as well. Time would tell.

She gave a shallow bow to the woman, with whom she felt an instant kinship. Kala was not old, but she looked younger than she was. She too had a quiet gravity that struck people as odd. She seemed young, but saw too much, knew too much. It was disconcerting and, perhaps, threatening even if she didn't mean it so.

"What I did will not leave that room," she said firmly, though not unkindly. She looked to Bruno, who nodded, and seemed unsure as to whether he ought to stand at her side or at Valencia's.

"There was a crisis," he told her, "but with the help of Lady Kala, who is also an accomplished necromancer and surgeon, the twin boys are healthy, the mother is healthy, and the father is exhausted from worry, but will be well." He looked then to the goddess whose miracles were locked in his soul now. She nodded, he nodded, and when his eyes dropped toward the floor, they caught on a small, faintly glowing gem suspended from her wrist. It was terribly familiar somehow, as if from a dream he couldn't quite recall. "But...I was looking for you," he corrected. "Her trip here didn't come with return fare. I..." Again, he glanced at Kala, strikingly deferential for a Zaichaeri witch, though Valencia knew better than most how the Kalzasern lady had done right by Zaichaer. Valencia knew much about her from Aurin, but she knew that he kept some things from her. He had his own sort of ethics.

Kala nodded to him, so still otherwise.

"The Kindred reached out to her, I guess. Last season when she was here and her brother dealt with the hollow dragon up north. They offered her an invitation. I'm bringing her response back. I was going to look for Muin and Farza, I think." There was a faint tilt upward at the end of his sentence, almost making it a question. Perhaps the Kindred had caught wind of her arrival and had contracted with Valencia to ensure her safety. But Valencia wasn't forthcoming.

"Whoever it was," Kala said with quiet, weary strength, "I will go to this safe place with you. I have long desired to make the acquaintance of Zaichaeri witches, though I hope I don't romanticize them the way many Kalzasern citizens do. I hope Jacq and the children are well..." This last was said as she reached out to take Valencia's hand.

Of their physical similarities, Kala said nothing. It occurred to her that she had a few things she ought to give the woman; much of her wardrobe had either been altered to work around her wings or sold to raise money for the effort of feeding and protecting the most vulnerable during the Eclipse. She smiled faintly at the thought of asking this stranger her dress size, but let it go.

She glanced from Valencia to Bruno, who nodded encouragingly. Eshar was an oddball, but he didn't think they intended any harm to a powerful mage who had done nothing but help Zaichaer in its time of need. Kala sighed; in for a penny, in for a pound. She stepped through the portal.

"I should-" Bruno protested after Kala had walked into whatever future awaited her. He glanced back toward their late point of ingress. No, his patients were fine. One was even blessed by a fucking goddess. He wondered if he would be able to tell an Avialae fetus in utero if he managed to develop his meager Sembling power.

"I should pass her message along to Farza," he amended. "Then sleep. Then go back and check on my patients."

He nodded to Valencia and offered her his arm as if they were gentlefolk about to go a-courting. He wondered if the other portal went to the Menagerie as well. He thought Eshar lived there, albeit not in the common room. Eshar was uncommon if nothing else.

Eshar wasn't apparent from the view the portal gave, and even as Kala stepped through it into the comforting warmth, she didn't see them right away. The warmth made her want to curl up by the fire and sleep. This was likely an unwise risk, but she tried to calculate them when she had to take them. These people didn't know she had wings, didn't know she was climbing the mountain called Apotheosis. One of their elders merely wished to make her acquaintance.

If nothing else, Torin's lovers were both involved with the covens in some way, so it was possible she even had support therein, and wouldn't share Talon's fate in Gel'Grandal.

When Valencia didn't accept his arm, Bruno walked through anyway; Kala Leukos was clearly a person of interest to all the covens and so he wanted to discharge her message to the Kindred as soon as possible, and then report to his superiors within the Grymalka. In any case, he hadn't meant to offend the ageless Railrunner, and hoped he hadn't.

From his sister's side, Eitan made a mental note to adjust the wards. He didn't want a witch able to travel directly into his bathroom with nothing but a magically coded key. They could arrive on the porch like decent people and knock. Wards within wards.

The little goddess, however, found herself in a room that seemed to conform to her desires. To her senses, mundane and magical, it was a paradox of simple and complex. It reminded her, more than anything, of the Pantheon, though she had not seen this one there. Then again, she had gone enshrouded, at least from the draegir and moritasi; she did not believe she could hide anything from a Greater God or a Mistlord.

Golden eyes opened like those of a cat, and then the rest of the form appeared, or it had always been there and only then revealed itself to her. More even than to her own, the room conformed to their desires. She took in the person, if not an ascendant, than a mage more powerful than her. That made sense, either way.

Ah, the honeyed words: likely an ascendant then.

She bowed as to an equal, murmuring her thanks as she removed her beguiling cloak and sat carefully so that she could relax without earning a crick in her neck, back, or wing. Kala was so tired, she felt like a crone.

A fine brow furrowed at the question.

"I suppose it depends on your definition of a miracle," she said carefully. "I have been able to translocate, following a line of devout prayer, without the aid of a Rune of Traversion. That was how I came to Zaichaer today, though I don't understand the mechanics. For some reason, perhaps I am so depleted, I was unable to return as I normally had, pulled back almost will I or nil I back to where I was when invoked. By day, I am a government agent. By starlight, I am something else." She paused. "Well, the sun is a star, but..."

She made an articulate gesture. As far as she could surmise, some of her 'Domain' was circumscribed by prevailing thoughts. That the sun was a star mattered little to most people. It was the great Day Star, and her divine mantle glittered like the night sky more than anything else. Perhaps she was being too poetical, as well. The mind that could follow Stefan's engineering blueprints often tried to apply such rigor to the numinous, which would always be a failure, she thought, until her mind caught up with her divinity. She was going through a sort of adolescence, all knobby knees and off balance, hardly as urbane and smooth as the Divine Twins of Atraxia—hardly as urbane as this one, this Eshar.

"The Crystal Lady gave me power and enough rope to hang myself, I suppose, should I not intuit my path correctly."

Apologetically, "I am weary. You know I am Kala; I know you are Eshar. What do you desire?"

Kala's answering smile was wan, but knowing. Naori had blessed her, of course, but sometimes blessings and curses were indistinguishable. The young goddess listened with a critical ear. She had learned a great deal from Aværys and Varvara, but she still took what they said with a grain of salt. It had been so long since they were in her shoes, their previous selves actual children of Akrivar. If she was a child of Naori in any tangible sense, her mother was absentee.

She was giving away too much, most likely, but Eshar was offering some back. A restriction against naming desire, and ambrosia that tasted of it. Well, that was likely one of their domains. And domains were strange. Unity was a mantle Naori had placed upon her newly winged shoulders. Stars had come out of nowhere. It wasn't as though the remains of dead Nazam had awoken within her. The Twins of Atraxia seemed curious as to what her third would be, but then Talon claimed several titles that had nothing to do with his domains—prince of dragons, for instance.

But Arcas had apparently been physically fathered by Eikaen, the Dragon King, and nobody had explained much to her. Thankfully, her senses were expanding and she hoped her wisdom would keep pace.

"I didn't see you in the Pantheon," she noted. "And I was shrouded. I am not ready for my mortal identity and what I will grow into to be equated just yet, so I would appreciate your discretion. I mean no harm to you, your covens, or your city and its population."

Kala took the tisane in her hands mostly because they felt so cold, though she would sample it. After Eshar took a confection, she tried one herself. Normally, she might have one if they were offered, but if they were made of divine energy rather than sugar, she might have more.

"Thank you. I have spent some time in Solunarium with my cousins newly released from prison. I haven't revealed myself to Talon or to Rickter, though. I wasn't ready, and I did not want to fall victim to the sort of machinations that led to Talon's abduction along with his husband, nor whatever curse ripped Rickter out of memory for a time. Also, they are draegir and I am not."

She didn't know what that meant, truly. It had occurred to her that perhaps she was being set up: natural son of Eikaen and adoptive daughter of Naori in the same city. But he seemed content with Aoren for now, and she had a suitor from farther afield. Life was strange. Divinity only set it on fire.

Pale blue eyes cast about for a moment.

"I haven't a place like this. I haven't an emblem to give to my most trusted people, only an Avialae bond. The whole point of me is to rescue the Kathar from enslavement or, at least, offer them an alternative and promote their agency, whatever they choose."

While most people thought her work was all numbers and ledgers, Kala had been on diplomatic missions to other free cities of Karnor, her purported territory in the Kalzasern government, and farther, to Silfanore and Solunarium, exceeding her jurisdiction but sharing the glory with her superior when trade deals were made. As such, she acknowledged the hint without following down the rabbit hole; there was some issue Eshar took with the Pantheon or some of those who spent time there, perhaps.

"That is not a small promise," she acknowledged. And she wondered whether it worked like fairy stories, where a misplaced word bound one to a deal. Perhaps she ought to have demanded Asallon be allowed to accompany her; he was a summoner, and knew contracts well enough to be a lawyer should he desire a side hustle.

Kala nodded carefully. "I am trying to grow accustomed to worship. It's strange, but I can already see how it allows me to do things. Faith and worship." It was more than the power of positive thinking, although the faith people had in her did push her to work harder, be better, though how the weight of anyone's expectations could be more than a drop in the bucket compared to the vast sea of Naori's... well..."

She took another confection, taking a small bite. It did bolster her somehow, though she would need more time to semble it properly.

"I would rather not be depleted if I can help it. This helps. If you would like to teach me something that will require power but not as much as..." She wasn't sure exactly what she had done; inverted the newborn's body. The wings were not physically present, though, but hidden in the aether, translated into more dimensions such that the mortal eye couldn't sense them.

"...as what I've done."

Divine emblems seemed premature. She didn't even know that she wanted a Dawnhold, or needed a place like this. Perhaps she would in the future. But she didn't know what questions she ought to ask.

"I also need to learn draconic."

That was apropos of something, although it might not be immediately apparent.