As I hesitated, even the whispers quieted.
Tekla walked forward, her long white dress wrinkled and dirtied. She held the staff I had gifted her, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the shaft that her knuckles had turned white.
The Velmoryns raised their heads, watching her every movement with hope in their eyes. Yet for the first time, Tekla’s gaze seemed dull.
“What should I do? What should I say?”
The thought passed through her mind as she continued toward the bodies resting on wooden platforms. Several basins had been filled with velmoryn blood, willingly offered by every resident of Eriavel. They waited for her to dip her fingers into it and trace my symbol on the foreheads of the fallen.
Tekla hesitated.
She had tried praying to me only once after Aurelion told her I would not answer and that she did not need to worry. But rather than reassuring her, the angel’s words seemed to have troubled her more. Perhaps knowing that her god, the one she worshiped with all her heart, was in no state to respond had been too heavy a burden for her to bear.
Maybe my decision to be more open with my believers had been wrong. Maybe it was better to keep them in the dark and maintain the image of an almighty god.
Would I not have been the same in Tekla’s place?
How would I have reacted if I had seen a dead god, then learned that the deity I worshiped had weakened so much that he could not even communicate with me?
Even if Tekla was far more compassionate and devoted than I had ever been, it still felt natural for her to be this shaken, for her to struggle beneath the weight of the moment.
Seeing Tekla hesitate, Othrien approached and whispered to her.
“The people are restless. Too many families lost their blood today, too many children were orphaned… They need comfort from their Priestess. They need to hear that the price we paid was worth it.”
Tekla turned her head toward the corpses. Her eyes grew wet as her gaze passed over the pale, lifeless bodies and the grieving velmoryns standing behind them.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I will speak to them.”
Othrien nodded solemnly and retreated, leaving Tekla alone before the crowd.
As if the velmoryns also sensed their priestess was about to speak, even the smallest sounds faded. Crying children, grieving families, the warriors standing in silence, everyone and everything went still in anticipation.
“We… we managed to defeat our enemies,” Tekla began slowly. “Father warned us that greedy and cruel people would come to destroy our homes and take everything we have. And we prepared for it. Every one of us, every one of you, spent days and nights preparing for this battle.”
She raised her head and tapped the end of her staff lightly against the ground.
“And it showed. The fruit of our hard work did not disappear. It showed when our mages overpowered their spells, when our warriors’ blades proved sharper, and when our arrows flew faster. We were stronger than our enemy.”
She paused, noticing a shadow of disapproval pass over a few faces in front of her, and waited until a velmoryn with two swords on his back and his shoulder wrapped in bandages finally spoke.
“We were strong. Far stronger than our enemy,” he said. “But we still died. My friends, the ones I grew up with in the Brown Tribe… they are all gone. Too many have died. Priestess, is this how our life is going to be?”
“For every velmoryn life, a hundred more were taken from them,” Tekla said firmly. “But that does not ease our grief. It is not victory in war that we seek, but a peaceful life. We do not want glory, nor do we wish to trample our enemies beneath our feet. All we want is to be left in peace, here in our forest, in our settlement.”
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Tekla’s words were met with nods and murmurs of approval.
Despite how brutal the velmoryns looked, they were a peaceful race at heart. They preferred quiet and safety over conquest, and only raised their weapons in defense of themselves or against a clear threat.
Perhaps that was also why they had failed to develop further. A lack of ambition. A lack of desire to become true masters of even this forest. Maybe that absence of ambition was the reason they had managed to survive as divided tribes, hostile to one another yet still existing, but had never united before me.
“When we created Eriavel,” Tekla continued, “I warned you that we would need to protect it. That we would have to fight to preserve our freedom and defend ourselves from those who would surely try to take it from us. And I also promised that Father would lead us to the life we deserve. A life where the weak and strong can live peacefully together, where there are no victors and losers among our own people.”
“But Priestess,” the same man said, hesitating. “Why didn’t High Father help us? Why did He let His children die? Why didn’t the divine tree protect us?”
Everyone froze.
The velmoryns around the man took small steps away from him, as though trying to distance themselves from the very idea he had dared to speak aloud.
Even Aurelion, beside me, seemed to grow angry. The grinding of his teeth made it clear how dangerous the doubt toward one’s god could be.
But I was not angry, and neither was Tekla.
“You say our Lord did not help us,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “But is that true? Was it not our Lord’s Emissary who saved us? Was it not Father who blessed Aria during the battle?”
The velmoryn lowered his head.
I could feel his conflict. He truly meant what he had said, and even now, he did not understand what exactly had been wrong about it. Still, some part of him, a part shaped by the world he had grown up in, told him he had crossed a line.
That questioning the divine was wrong. That it was taboo.
“Do not feel regret or guilt. High Father does not punish His children for asking questions,” Tekla said.
She walked to the man and reached for his chin, gently raising his head.
“I will tell you what very few of you know. The creature that killed our brothers and sisters was no mortal. He was no Emissary either.”
She paused.
“He was a god.”
The velmoryns froze again, but this time for a completely different reason. Even the council members looked stunned. Aria and Avenor had kept the truth to themselves, and Aurelion had only told Tekla. Until now, no one else knew the true strength of the enemy they had faced.
“Ask yourselves,” Tekla continued. “Would we have survived if our Lord had not helped us? Would mortals stand any chance against a god?”
Her voice trembled slightly, but she did not lower her gaze.
“Our Father cares for us. He risked…” She stopped herself, frowning, then continued in a quieter voice. “Our Lord loves us more than we know. Perhaps even more than we deserve.”
She turned and walked toward the fallen bodies, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You risked Your life to protect us. If other gods can die…” she whispered to herself, picking up the basin and dipping her fingers into the blood. “Thank You, Father. Thank You for everything.”
She moved from one fallen warrior to another, tracing my symbol on their foreheads. Once she finished, she gripped her staff and lowered her head, her eyes closing.
“I can no longer rely only on Father’s strength.” She thought. “It was wrong of me to assume He was invincible. He also needs us. Even if gods are far more powerful than us, they can still bleed. They can still feel pain, they can still… I must become stronger. I must become a priestess Father can rely on, not someone He has to leave behind in Eriavel. I must become a daughter worthy of His grace.”
Tekla’s star brightened and swelled.
All the stars around it drifted closer and began to pulse. Waves of crimson energy flowed from them into the threads that tethered them to the Crimson Guardian’s projection, and after passing through the tree, that power moved into the thread connected to Tekla’s star.
Crimson pulses flooded her star, making it even more beautiful.
Scarlet like a droplet of blood.
Brilliant like the sun.
And just as something strange was happening in my realm, something equally strange began in the mortal world.
From the velmoryns gathered around her, the thinnest wisps of crimson drifted toward Tekla and sank into her body. She began to shimmer with the same color, but unlike before, when my energy washed over her from the outside, this time it felt as though the power came from within her.
Her arms fell loose at her sides, and her legs went slack as her body slowly rose from the ground, the crimson shimmer covering her entire figure.
She was no longer conscious.
[Congratulations, Verde!]
Your Priestess has reached the requirement for Rank advancement.