[temple of nikali] rattle the chains. (veldrys)

[Caelum]

this is for the bigots, this is for the sexists this is for the killers. this is for the big-house, pen sentenced cats becoming redeemers and for the springtimes that always show up after the winters. this? this is for you. make sure that by the time the fisherman returns you are gone. because just like the days I burn at both ends. every time I open my eyes I am cutting out a part of myself to give to you. - k.b.s. Timestamp: 33 Winter 511 AV It was with one foot still in the sea that the Sunsinger stepped at last into the temple of his latest goddess. Through the rooms he had drifted, wandering like the ghost of a man long dead, shot in the back, right through the heart, a glowing chunk of amber strung about his neck rather than a hanged man's rope. None of the acolytes approached him, allowing him to pass with his eternal invitation writ in wine upon his skin. It formed links of a divine chain, arching across the sharp jut of a hipbone and vanishing into the waistband of weathered, leather riding pants. He was stripped to the waist, boots shucked aside as well, in his obeisance when he stumbled at last into the sunken grotto at the temple's center. Syna's careful distance nonetheless cast the shadow of his horns long across the stone floor, limning the water with daffodil light and causing Rak'keli's winged serpents to glimmer where they were emblazoned on the back of his right hand. It was neither of those holy women whom he contemplated now. Last he had stood within man-made walls of a temple had been in Syliras. He had worn an expression of such grave and bitter challenge that it had incited a squire to ready her hand on her sword hilt. Today he just looked tired. He might have been asleep, laying flat on his back with embers of hair splashed across a crack in the stone. Palms pressed flat to the floor and his breathing was long and steady, matching the rhythm of his sinking heart. Though whatever curse caged the divine powers housed in Denval prevented him from opening the kiss Nikali had used to bind him here, need yet waited beneath, sluggish as giant's blood force fed into his once celestial veins. He was trying to remember, to envision and encapsulate all those lost lives to seek among them the answer that had had Syna breathing his name far from where he could hear it. He was told he was here to save Denval, but nobody seemed to know how. Including him.

[Veldrys]

Nikali had never been Veldrys‘ goddess. Most of the time she had only caused him pain. For his people, for the Symenestra, love was always connected with death. Sometimes even a single night or a handful of nights were enough. Their women almost never survived the birth. It wasn’t safe for any of them, not even here, and yet something always made him come back. Maybe it was the memory of the precious, peaceful moments he had spent with Lucette before the unexpected had happened. Maybe even a man like him couldn’t live entirely without physical contact.

He didn’t bear Nikali’s mark nor would he ever be marked by her if he had a choice, and yet the priests and priestesses, the acolytes let him enter as well. He was known to the followers of Nikali by now. As always when he entered a temple, no matter whether it was the temple of Viratas or another god’s, he was dressed in clothes of fine silk, made by the Symenestra in his native Kalinor. His feet were bare so that he hardly made a single sound as he moved through the temple.

Despite the ambivalent feelings he harbored towards Nikali, something about the temple calmed him down. It distracted him from all the things that had happened in Denval recently, the prophecy, the murder.

As his gaze fell on the Ethaefal – beautiful, as they all were – his eyes widened. „Son of Syna“, he whispered as he looked at Caelum and noticed the mark that he bore. „I’ve never met a fallen one that served her.“

[Caelum]

The corners of Caelum's mouth tightened at the intruding voice, at the arrangement of words, and breath left him emptier. Ghosts of those dead men in memory fled, whisked into the glimmer of day when he opened his eyes. One leg bent at the knee and he pushed up, resting on an elbow and turning in a splash of dark hair. The eyes that settled on the Symenestra could have echoed the color of the Soldovan Stone in which Syna had trapped a puzzle piece of her Her power and he was silent for longer than was necessary or necessarily polite. "Son of Virates," he returned evenly, every word too tight, well kept by the bars of this language's prison. His accent was -- literally -- not of this world. "Nikali makes choices for reasons as multiple and mysterious as any other in our mad pantheon." A hint of bitter buoyed itself up through the surface of holy thrall still spread across him, thin and thinning. The blessing of the goddess still reverberated somewhere between his shadow and his soul and he felt that maybe, just maybe, he could open his mouth and speak it aloud in the celestial language. Scars he should not have, no eth should have, sheeted his back as he sat up to blink at his guest. His, he imagined, as he was sitting in the temple of a god.

[Veldrys]

„So you don’t know why she marked you?“ the Symenestra asked. „What she saw in you?“ He slowly came closer and sat down near the Ethaefal, to be at eye level with him. As he thought about Caelum‘s words, he touched his arm were a red chain was visible. He still didn’t understand completely why Viratas had chosen him, even after all this time. What had the god seen in him? What did the gods see in any of them?

The other man’s eyes reminded him of the stone that had come to him in a dream once, the prophecy he had made in his past life, before he died a painful death. Was there a connection between them? Were they all connected, all those men and women that had found themselves in Denval for some strange reason?

The Symenestra’s gaze lingered on the Ethaefal’s form for a while longer. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the fallen ones‘ beauty, Lysander, , Xelhes, Sitkanis, Nashira and now this one. There was something about them that fascinated him beyond measure, something that he found almost painful to look at. He couldn’t help but feel inadequate in their presence, with his thin, pale body and his fragile bones.

„Are you here because of her?“ Was this man, was Caelum a servant like Lucette? Bound to this temple? He couldn’t imagine that. The fallen ones had never seemed like servants to him, but what did he know about the world?

[Caelum]

"To help heal the hearts of man," he suggested or, perhaps, stated. It was with the flicker of a self deprecating smile, acknowledging the arrogance that lingered within those words. A shift of his spine had him settling with legs folded, shoulders pitching inelegantly forward and elbows coming to prop on the jut of his knees. Long, worn fingers scrubbed at his eyes, leaving him to blink with owlish curiosity at the Symenestra. "I'm a healer," he furthered the explanation, words a bit clogged with moon dust and sleep sand. "Of more than just bodies. Nikali kissed me so as to expand my healing abilities, and she chained me to Denval because, I'm told, Syna asked after me here." He shoved out a hand, the glimmering serpents of Rak'keli stamped clearly upon the back. "Caelum," he introduced himself. "And I'm in Denval because of Syna, but I'm in this temple because of Nikali. If that's what you meant."

[Veldrys]

„Nikali’s touch healed me once“, the Symenestra murmurred thoughtfully. „For a moment the presence of her servant made me whole.“ Lucette’s presence had filled him with peace. It had made him forget the desperate struggle of his people, the fact that they were damned, but that time of peace had been all too short. Still, he treasured the memories, of their first meeting, their first night together, all those things she had said to him.

„I have some experience in healing myself“, he admitted. „Although I’ve never managed to heal more than bodies and sometimes not even that. The hearts of men are complicated things. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to heal something that I cannot touch with my hands.“ He smiled a somewhat embarrassed smile.

„You have been touched by two goddesses then“, he murmurred. „I know very little of Syna and only what Nikali’s servant told me of her goddess. I’ve only ever felt the blood god’s touch. Just as Syna brought you here, I’m in Denval because of him.“ As Caelum extended his hand, he took it, noticing his marks. Caelum could see that the Symenestra bore a mark as well, a red chain on his upper arm.

„Veldrys, of the Vervain Web“, he said. „Although I suppose that the name of my family is of little significance here.“

[Caelum]

"Enchantment," Caelum remarked, an unknowing echo of another healer. "That's what a certain herbalist once told me vervain is. Enchantment. I know of webs, but not of the Symenestras," he went on to confess, maintaining his grip on Veldrys' hand while giving a study to the mark of the blood god emblazoned upon his arm. "Neither do I," he spoke at length, moments collecting like prayer beads between them before he released the man. Fingers folded, rangy shoulders remaining forward-pitched. The curve of his mouth shifted down, weighed by thought. "But words touch, actions embrace as surely as hands can stitch." A cant of his chin, questioning. "You agree? There's much requiring healing on this world, Veldrys of the Vervain Web. Rak'keli professes that without belief of one's ability to heal, then there is no true healing. You have to know it can be done." It was strange, but in this asylum of the goddess who had, quite literally, wrapped him in chains against which (he was certain) he would struggle once the drug of divinity on him had dissipated, he felt a dilution of bitterness. The gruff remained, but the distance and the chill were faded. Maybe, just maybe, it was because his guest needed him not to be; but that would suggest the siege against gods laid upon Denval was not nearly so ham fisted. "You aren't whole?"

[Veldrys]

„Which webs to you know of then?“ the Symenestra wondered. He looked at the Ethaefal’s hand, noticed how different it was from his own. It seemed to him as if Caelum’s skin contained a hint of sunlight, of warmth, while his own skin was white as snow, as death. The first Denvali he had ever met had thought he had suffered from a fatal disease. If he stayed near the fallen one long enough, would the sun touch him as well? Would he feel alive again? „The webs that spiders weave? Those invisible, intangible webs that we all get caught up in every now and then?“

„I agree, of course“, he replied. „Am I lacking belief then? Would things be different if I believed in what I did? Do you think I would be able to save them then?“ He had had so many illusions when he had been younger, so many high ideals. He had thought that he would be able to single handedly accomplish what Hellebore and all his experienced, talented colleagues had tried in vain. He had thought that if he travelled the surface, if he only looked hard enough, he would find the one thing that would change everything. But somewhere along the way he had lost hope. He wasn’t sure if there was a point anymore …

„No, I’m not whole“, he whispered. „Not anymore. I thought that I could have some kind of life here, that I could be happy, but it wasn’t meant to be. What do you know of my people, the Symenestra, Caelum? Are you aware that we are dying, that we are broken, and nothing we do can make us whole again? Are you aware that we only bring death to those that we love?“

„They say that Nikali’s servants know what a person wants. Can you tell what I want?“

[Caelum]

"Webs of magic, webs of man. Those spun of lies that mirror truths, the sort that will reflect back up to the Ukalas; and then?" His eyebrows rose. "They just reflect down again," and what then was he saying of the gods, even those who had spread his skin with their gnosis and opened up his insides to the world? More, maybe, than any one man could stomach. "Even if Rak'keli alone could heal the curse of your race, Veldrys, I would imagine it would too require Virates to forgive you.” It was a cruel thing to utter, but he said because it was truth and he had no appetite for lies. Not anymore. Not in this place. Not even those he told himself and believed so well. Now was not the hour with this jewel eyed stranger staring at him as if hope waited within a whisper, a secret still strung from the tethers Syna had on him. “You bring more than death,” he said and it was adamant, firm. “Don’t do Dira such grave disservice. She is too useful as-is.” A flicker of a smile. It was closer to a smirk. He was joking, or wanted himself to be. A hand thrust out, palm up, fingers slightly curved in calm beckoning. “It isn’t wants we see,” he explained. “It’s needs. There is a difference a continent long, Veldrys. As a man I could guess at what you might want, and if Nikali wishes it, She’ll tell me what you need.” He fell silent, grave eyes steady. He said nothing of the divine siege laid upon Denval.

[Veldrys]

„Lies that mirror truths?“ the Symenestra repeated. He had heard enough of those. He didn’t know what exactly the Ethaefal meant, but at the same time it somehow made sense to him, as strange as it seemed. There was something about it, a meaning that transcended mere words.

„Viratas is our good, our protector“, he argued. „There is no need for him to forgive me, to forgive us. He wouldn’t have marked me if I had done something to anger him. There must be something else …“

A bitter laughter escaped his lips as Caelum told him that he brought more than death. „What? A few nights of pleasure? A few hours of pointless talk? Do you think the few people I’ve managed to heal matter?“

He didn’t know what kind of difference there was between wants and needs. To him it was all the same. As far as he was concerned, what he wanted was also what he needed, but he still asked Caelum, „Tell me what I need then, if your goddess is willing to show you.“