Lament of the Fallen

”Did you get the information?” Hassan-i-Sabbah asked, showing uncharacteristic impatience. Asahim had barely managed to enter the room before the question was asked.

“I did.” Asahim replied calmly, though internally wondering what the big deal was.

“And?” Hassan-i-Sabbah prompted. He had sent Asahim out for two very important pieces of news. He had received information on the fall of the Spider Goddess from friendly priests of a particular patron deity of assassins. Fall of the Spider as the event was already titled due to the dual nature of both the Spider Goddess and the Spider Cult having met their end.

“Yes on both accounts. The target has acquired a twelfth tail and the angel in question has returned to the Five Winds.” Asahim replied. It had been rather easy to hear about Dee’s tails. Few people had actually bothered counting them as she returned from the battle in a hurry, but she wasn’t exactly hiding them either. In fact, the weird aura surrounding her had drawn quite a few curious eyes. It had been much harder to find the whereabouts of the angel named Araqiel.

The leader of Zabaniya finally released a relieved sigh he had been holding in for a while. ‘Information truly is one of the most important things for an assassin.’ He thought to himself. With the current information, they were free to act.

“May I ask…?” Asahim carefully ventured. This whole matter was confusing him to no end. That wasn’t out of the ordinary considering the enigmatic leader of their community often kept all the important plans to himself. Asahim just hadn’t seen reactions like this before, and that made this case much more interesting. It seemed like a weight that had been pressing down on his master had finally been lifted.

“Yes, I imagine you’re curious. Over the years, I have talked about her as a weapon we have helped forge. Now that weapon has finally reached a point where she can start to truly perform her purpose. She has reached a level of strength where extremely few enemies can truly threaten her. That means we can start moving forward with our plans. She no longer needs us watching over her, now we can focus on just carefully prodding her into the direction we desire. Emphasis on the word carefully. Her strength also puts her out of our control.” Hassan-i-Sabbah explained, while still leaving most details hidden.

“And the angel?” Asahim asked after a moment of consideration. He still didn’t truly understand, but he was less confused at least. He didn’t really need to understand, just obey. The master had things under control anyway.

“The angel herself is not important. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if she wound up dead in a ditch somewhere at some point. What’s important is that she will not be caught in our plans. According to our informants, she has a connection of sorts, an alliance I suspect, with our dear weapon. It would be a shame if she got killed by accident.” Hassan replied with a small smile.

Asahim frowned. He was starting to figure out where this was going. The master’s hatred towards the angels was not well known to others, but he knew. He had seen the paintings master created, and all the little ways their community interfered in the efforts of the winged bastards. Many an angel had faced a less than pleasant and very ignoble end due to the blades of the Zabaniya when those angels wandered into the wrong areas. Both on Pantheon and elsewhere. There was a very important detail when considering Araqiel’s current whereabouts. Perhaps even more important than the knowledge of where she was, was the certainty of where she was not.

“Shall I assemble our strongest members?” Asahim asked in a neutral tone. Having spent enough time with his master, the opinions his master held had rubbed off on him. Besides, he never much liked the feathered freaks anyway, but now he despised them. He wasn’t sure what they had done to earn master’s ire, but he was certain it was well earned.

Hassan’s smile widened in appreciation. Asahim could be smart when he put in the effort. And he was loyal beyond a shadow of a doubt, a rarity in the field of work they were in. “Indeed. In three days we strike. Send a word to all of our weaker members as well. After our attack, it’s an open hunting season on angels and all their lower related species like the Archons. Every kill will be rewarded. Let’s give the angels a little taste of their own purge.”

As Asahim left, Hassan turned to look outside the window without really seeing anything. In three days the embassy of the angels would be no more, and in a few weeks, all of their kind would be removed from Pantheon. That should get things moving. ‘Haydee is most likely planning on leaving this world soon.’ He mused and planned on giving her a sending off present. Besides, if he managed to stir up some animosity between Pantheon and Paradisia, then Dee would be able to act more easily as the angels had other things to worry about.

Idly he rubbed a small locket in his hand hidden by his large sleeves. Soon. Soon he would have the revenge he had waited for so long. He didn’t even need to open the locket as the faces of the people inside were seared into his memory. Not that opening the locket would do any good as the pictures inside had faded away long ago.

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Dee gave a relieved sigh as the last of the power she had gained from the Spider Goddess truly became her own. It had taken several days to fully absorb all of it, though the matter was complicated by the fact that her totem had been completed at the same time. Having multiple large events like this stack had a synergistic effect, but it did complicate things on occasion. The changes that had come due to the totem had in fact been larger but had required less input on her part. If she was a normal immortal, she would have to spend years if not centuries learning all the best ways to utilize her totem, but those with a Domain were a little different. Their totem’s made them stronger in most ways imaginable, but in turn, it didn’t come with a wide variety of applications, although her own situation was a little more complicated due to the blessings. Still, she didn’t have to spend much time figuring out that she was indeed physically stronger and that her psionics were more effective.

That wasn’t to say there were no new abilities thanks to her totem being completed. Her ability to suppress the power of others had reached a new level and her aura had a weird effect once her soul inside the soul space sat on the throne atop the pyramid. As she herself didn’t get to feel the effects, she wasn’t entirely clear on what the aura did. She hadn’t had much in the way of visitors to test on either, mainly because Moirai had plunked down in front of her room and shooed away anyone trying to disturb her while she concentrated. She had some guesses, but ultimately she’d have to find out later.

She certainly felt different. More balanced. She had been confident before, but now she had the feeling that confidence was well and truly earned. And it was. Not considering her more weird abilities, she was now a rank twelve psion and a Champion of two major deities. Thanks to the large influx of power from the Spider Goddess, she wasn’t exactly at the level of a fresh rank twelve being either. There were those with more power, of course, Teresa being an obvious example, but she had confidence in dealing with most of them thanks to her other abilities.

The gods were making it a little difficult to evaluate her strength, as usual. The new addition of the Spider Goddess’ symbol on her totem implied that there should be benefits, but she had no idea what those benefits might be. One of the spells Lumen had taught her was the ability usually reserved for High Priestesses, namely the ability to read blessings. The problem was, she didn’t have the Spider Goddess’ blessing. Far from it. It’s wasn’t a curse either, as she was almost certain that the whole thing was at least mostly positive, but it did mean that particular spell was useless.

The benefits of being a Champion were a little foggy as well, although she had gained some insight into that at least. Firstly, the effects of her earlier blessings were enhanced. How much they had enhanced depended on the particular ability, but they were all better. She could easily summon powerful shadow spirits, her speed and reactions were stupendous, and the corruption her attacks could cause was extremely deadly. That was the easy part and was along the lines that she had expected.

The weird part was that she had gained something else. She could apparently utilize the special gifts of the two goddesses to a limited extent. She had entirely by accident utilized Umbra’s ability to influence reality with her words. Umbra had the ability to speak words that anyone listening would know to be true, and where her words were untrue, the reality would bend in a way that the words became true. At a large cost. She had accidentally changed the color of the lights shining from her lamp to a much softer shade, and a large chunk of the holy power within her had just vanished. Even a small change carried a large cost, but the possibility was there at least. She doubted it would be useful in battle as she had a sense that affecting change on an unwilling target would be much harder, but that remained to be seen.

She assumed that she could utilize Lumen's specialty as well, but she didn’t actually know what Lumen’s specialty was. She would have to ask when a suitable opportunity presented itself. That might be sooner than she thought, considering she had already contacted Umbra with a small prayer and was likely to meet the goddess in a few days again, assuming nothing special came up. She was planning on starting her efforts towards gaining the position of the focus that Umbra had talked about. The death of the Spider Goddess had been a major boon to her chances, but she wanted to do what she could before it was time for her to leave Pantheon.

Moirai got up as soon as Dee opened the door to her room. “Are you alright?” She asked worriedly.

“I’m fine. I wasn’t really injured, simply overwhelmed and had to deal with the changes. What’s going on in the rest of the community?” Dee asked in an effort to change the subject.

“Things are going well. The coalition forces have mostly dispersed, though they seem rather eager to follow should we decide any more battles are in order. Easy victories have that effect. Most of the spoils from the Spider Cult have been split, and there’s a share for you if you’re interested. A rather sizeable share considering your contributions I might add, although you most likely dusted a large portion of those spoils when you dealt with the avatar. The Five Winds have officially been recognized as the rank 12 community, though we are staying at our current spot in the second circle. I think that’s in large part because of you and the sway we have over the other coalition members, but no one is contesting that ranking for now at least. Aside from that, there’s nothing requiring your immediate attention I suppose.” Moirai had actually dealt with most of the issues waiting for Dee while guarding the door. She was rather efficient with such things after all.

“Excellent. I think I’ll pay a visit to Vian…I mean Faylen. After that, I will most likely deal with a few targets a naggy goddess is finding for me.” Dee tried to distract Moirai from her small verbal gaffe with a little blasphemy. Not that Moirai could be distracted that easily, as evident by the knowing smirk on her face.

“About that, I’m assuming this won’t be a stealth mission?” Moirai suddenly asked.

“Why?” Dee asked with slight confusion. She had in fact planned on basically assassinating her targets when possible.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re not exactly stealthy at the moment.” Moirai pointed out, as she knew Dee could not feel the same thing she was feeling.

“Again, why?” Dee frowned.

“Let’s see. I think about everyone in a five kilomel radius can feel your presence currently. It’s a combination of the feeling of pressure and a rather grandiose feeling of holiness. It feels much like walking into a majestic temple of enormous size. You’re awed and impressed even against your will. You’re practically radiating the presence of the deities. If I didn’t know better, I would think of you as the saintliest person I’ve ever seen. Except I do know better. Others might not. The only reason everyone can’t immediately tell which goddess you’re leaking all over the place is because both of us know you’re the Champion of two. So you’re going to have to work on that. Also, would you mind reigning in your Domain a bit? It’s a bit disturbing currently.” Moirai explained and gave a mock sigh.

“Gods dammit!” Dee cursed. She had her soul walk down from the throne and turned her attention back to Moirai. “Better?”

“Much. Well, not the holy part, but the Domain pressure has lessened a lot.” Moirai gave an actual sigh of relief.

“I’ll have to ask the gods how to do that. I have a nasty feeling this is on purpose due to my irreverence earlier. They’re taking it out on me now that I can’t do anything about it. I know it doesn’t have to be this way, considering the Champion of the Spider Goddess didn’t radiate all the stuff you talked about.” Dee gave up with a small sigh. She was right of course. The two goddesses were taking a bit of a petty revenge.

“Well, to be fair, the sanctum was flooded with the presence of that particular goddess already, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.” Moirai pointed out, sounding less convinced.

-----

“Auntie Dee!” Viansola squealed in a delighted greeting as they walked into Faylen’s house again. The little girl happily ran to her aunt and started pulling her towards the little game of house she had been playing just moments before. Moirai and Faylen heard the words “I heard you can change how you look. You’ll make a perfect friend for mister Teddy.” as the duo disappeared deeper into the house.

“Mr. Teddy?” Moirai asked with a raised eyebrow.

“A small stuffed animal Taeral brought back from the empire. There’s also Ms. Oliphant and Ms. Dryad in case you were wondering.” Faylen replied with a frown. “How can you deal with that? How is little Vian dealing with that?”

“Dealing with what?” Moirai asked a little confused. She had been about to show her amusement at the thought of a Champion of two deities playing around with Mr. Teddy, but the tone of Faylen’s voice made her serious again.

“What do you mean what? Can’t you feel that pressure?” Faylen asked in shock.

“You mean the fact that she’s leaking holy all over the place? I mean it’s a bit distracting, but you get used to it pretty quick.” Moirai replied, still confused.

“Not that. I mean, yeah that too, but it was almost hard to breathe when she walked past me just now. I’ve rarely been that afraid! It was as if I would be killed if I even considered going against her.” Faylen blurted out. “How can little Vian deal with something like that?”

“Faylen, I don’t think she feels a pressure like that. I don’t. I mean, at first Dee had a very dominating presence, but she reined that in pretty quickly. In fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m pretty sure Dee is almost unconsciously shielding Vian from any such pressure.” Moirai was truly confused as to what was going on.

Suddenly Viansola came tromping back into the room. “Look mommy, a kitty with wings!” She proudly presented the shapeshifted Dee who had taken a very small kitsune form with small wings at her back. Vian was holding Dee with her hands below Dee’s front paws, making her look both quite cute and quite pitiful.

Dee, in turn, felt a combination of pride and a vague sense of something where she should feel shame but really didn’t. The pride was because she had successfully made the little girl happy despite having very little experience in dealing with children in ways that didn’t involve trying to either kill them or beat them close to death. Her experience with kids was mostly limited to those she had met when under the thumb of Zabaniya after all. Apparently, the master plan of turning into something small and cute was successful, although she couldn’t help but correct something in her mind. ‘I’m not really a cat though! I’m more canine than anything.’

The absurdity of the situation was not lost on Moirai and Faylen. Moirai valiantly struggled to keep her face straight, though she had very limited success. Faylen suddenly found that the pressure was gone for now, which she indicated to Moirai with a small gesture. Something weird was going on here. Something they needed to study further.

Suddenly Dee sensed something that made her much more serious. “Would you excuse me for a moment.” She stated and suddenly turned into a streak of light as she flashed outside and chased after two people now running away from the city. Idly she noted that her body now seemed to be made entirely of light, and her speed was staggering as she immediately caught up with her targets.

The two agents of the Celestial Court had come to a halt in their investigation and had decided to take a risk by following Dee from afar. They had hoped that Dee would lead them to something that could be a weakness, and they had been lucky in that sense. Considering the distance they had kept, they could just claim they were simply walking around the city if Dee noticed them. It had indeed taken Dee a moment to separate the two agents from the normal members of the Five Winds thanks to being so distracted. And she wasn’t interested in listening to explanations or excuses. The fact that the two had fled was a clear sign of their guilt.

Dee pointed a finger at the two while channeling a large amount of holy power and the dolorous sound of bells rang in the ears of the duo. They suddenly fell from the sky while bleeding from their ears and eyes. As rather powerful immortals, the quick death spell had not been enough to kill them, as the lost life-force was quickly replaced, but it still had enough of an effect to disable them for a small moment. Dee noted that one of the benefits of being a Champion seemed to be the increased effectiveness of her holy spells.

She knew that killing the agents could be bad, but letting them live and report what they had seen was worse. Thus two large blades of psionic energy plunged into the heads of the two agents from behind, seemingly without resistance. Even Dee was surprised as she noted that the power had actually crystalized into something solid. As usual, the two blades then exploded with predictable results. Dee threw small balls of black fire at the corpses to destroy the evidence after consuming the two souls.

“I’m guessing that will buy some time, but things will eventually get complicated.” Dee muttered with a frown.