Shattered Moonstone

Alagos watched as Cemi fidgeted nervously beside him, the two of them making their way back to his home while Amethyst and Himari went to retrieve the missing two of their party. It… was far from optimal but he had decided that his house would make a better meeting place than the council chambers, at least there they can have a somewhat private conversation.

This is all getting out of hand. He never liked this part of being a chairman, the smoke and mirrors of private meetings, the backstabbing politics. That’s one of the main reasons he included Cemi in all of this, though that is one of the complications now.

He had admired Cemi for some time now, despite the woman’s ability to get on his nerves. If anything, that just made him like her more. Cemi was amazing at her job, and passionate about what she did so of course the two of them butted heads; they were, after all, opposite chairs. It was their job to oppose one another, and he couldn’t think of anyone more worthy of her seat than Cemi.

Looking at her now though… Cemi looked like a nervous wreck, like she was barely holding herself together as they walked. “Cemi…” he whispered and the woman in question jumped as if she forgot he was there.

Her head snapped to him, her wide eyes meeting his for a split second before she blushed and looked away. “This is going to be… difficult.” she finally said, pointedly not looking back at him as she spoke.

“We have a plan.” He said calmly, though he knew she wasn’t talking about the meeting with the twins. “As long as they are cooperative then I see no reason it shouldn’t work.”

She sighed, “I have doubts about that as well.” she said weakly, and he furrowed his brow as she continued. “You want to convince the rest of the council that the disturbance yesterday was… divine intervention; we have no proof of such a thing.” her voice was a low whisper as they both scanned the street for eavesdroppers. 

“It was,” he replied flatly, “And it is the best option we have, or do you want to try and arrest the two of them?”

“No!” Cemi nearly screamed as she whirled on him, her eyes filled with fear as he suggested it. “We absolutely cannot do that.”

Eryl and Hecatolite had broken their laws, there was no way around that. They climbed the Great tree and… well, by law they should be fined for that if not exiled from the city. But worse than that, Hecatolite had… attacked the populace with what could loosely be called an unknown magic. That was grounds for execution, after all it was basically a terrorist attack and there was no way around that.

If they had been open about the possibility of such things happening the council may have been more lenient; but as it stands now, it was technically his job to capture and dispense justice to the disturbance that shook the city the day before and he doubted his ability to quell the council if they learned the truth.

Best case, they tell the entire council what the two are and they believe them; that was… unlikely and Amethyst had made it a point to tell him not to do that.

Worst case… Well, the council demands justice, and an all-out brawl happens. If that came then he was sure he was going to lose his seat. After all, he was not going to fight the twins, no matter what the rest of the council demands of him. He saw no way for that fight to not level the city, nor was he foolish enough to think they could win it; after all, the two of them are divine souls and elves know better than any other race how futile a war against the gods would be.

No, it was best if they kept what the two of them are a secret, but that left the problem of yesterday. It was his job to get to the bottom of it and report it to the council along with counter measures. 

So, he had come up with a… half-truth. Not a lie, just an omission of who exactly caused it. It was uncommon for the divine to interact with the mortal world, but it isn’t unheard of for them to take interest and sometimes they influence the world in strange ways. Sure, most of the time that influence comes in the form of smiting someone, but normally that is handled by the churches and their champions and not the divine themselves.

However, X47 and the Singularity are very new divine so they don’t have champions or a church to do their work for them so… it is believable that one of them may… say blast a city with their power to either try and get more followers or something like that. 

He didn’t really know how the divine worked but it was… reasonable in his mind; and if the deities in question helped then he was certain that they could make it believable. 

It really only needed to hold water for another few days, once the meeting with the Queen of Crown happened then the group would be on their way and no longer his problem. He would never say it to their faces, but he honestly couldn’t wait for the group to be out of his city. Nothing good ever came from the divine meddling with mortals; history has proven that over and over again and the elves knew that all too good.

After all, unlike the shorter-lived races they remembered the last time a divine soul had interfered with their people; it nearly caused them to go extinct. The Devil Resita caused the great divide in their race, the civil war that had nearly wiped the elves out thousands of years ago.

Back then the elves had been divided into sub races, specifically the sun elves, who are known as “high elves” in all the history text from the time, and the moon elves, called “dark elves”. There were other subraces, wood, sea, mountain, ect, but the main two in the war were the high and dark elves who drug everyone around them into the bloody war.

The high elves were… arrogant, if you asked him. They believed themselves better than everyone else and had the magical power to prove it, though they thankfully breed slowly if the text is to be believed. They were nearly immortal with magic that rivaled the gods themselves, it is believed they are the true ancestors to the entire race as they found the great tree and are the ones who settled there. Even the goddess of the elves, mother Siofra, is a high elf herself. 

As opposed to the dark elves that were… not as magically inclined as their counterparts but they had a much higher fertility rate. It is speculated that the ability to have children is what determines a race's lifespan, and the theory has merit if you asked him. After all, elves that have the longest life span of any mortal race are known to have fertility problems, where other races like say goblins only live for 40-50 years but breed like cockroaches; but that is besides the point.

Back then high elves ran the elven lands with an iron fist, they were chosen by the gods to rule the lands and they were not going to let anyone stand in their way. As such the other subraces were treated… less than hospitable to say the least. So one day when a dark elf, with a chip on her shoulder, became fed up with being treated like a lower class citizen, stabbed several high elves in the street it kicked off the civil war that nearly killed their entire race.

There are a lot of theories of what caused Resita to finally snap, some believing that one of her lovers had been executed, or a family member had been accused of something, or she just hated the goddess of the elves, Siofra; in the end it didn’t matter. Resita had killed several high elves and showed no hints of stopping there. She became a mascot for the other subraces as she continued to execute high elves, targeting chairman and priests; those who had up until then believed themselves untouchable by the dregs of their society.

The war was the bloodiest in their history, even the great tree had been lost at the time; burned to the ground by a scorned woman before the end of it all. Only when Resita ascended, becoming the devil she is today, did the war end as her and Siofra came to a… tentative peace and between the two divine they managed to quell the flames of war that raged over ages and the elven people were able to rebuild.

What the mortal historians didn’t know was that it was actually Soter, the god of wisdom at the time, who brokered the piece between his sister and newly ascended lover at the time. It helped that the war was caused by a… misunderstanding, after all Resita believed that Siofra, the goddess of nature only, was the reason behind her people’s misfortune. She was the mother of all elves after all, or that’s what the mortals at the time believed, and despite her attempts to quell that rumor, still believed much to Siofra’s consternation.

It was the end of the war that caused Soter to give up his seat as the god of wisdom, effectively turning both him and his sister into elder gods as he gave her his domain of wisdom after splitting the domain of secrets off of it. But that’s all a story for another time.

The biggest take away from it all right now though, is Elves know not to mess with gods or devils. They are taught from a childhood to respect the divine of this world, to learn from them, pray to them, but never cross them. 

Cemi’s reaction of fear to the mention of trying to imprison the two girls is the right one if you asked him. After all, elves remember; they have the history of their own race to know just how dangerous a scorned divine could be. 

Alagos held his hands up in surrender, “Then what other choice do we have?” He tried to placate Cemi who was still glaring at him, thankfully all her embarrassment seemed to be gone as she chewed her lip. “It is either we go with divine intervention, which isn’t a lie, or we…” He let the words trail off, they had talked about their options at length last night and he could admit… there weren’t a lot of them. This was their best plan and it had to work or they both risked losing their seats.

If it comes out that he knew the cause of the disturbance and did nothing, he would have failed his vow as the chairman of defense. Cemi would be accused of putting a foreign interest above that of the nation’s and… it has to work. They had agreed last night to heed Amethyst’s warning, and neither of them were going to be the one to betray the trust of the small Deity, he had already pushed the bounds by telling Cemi after all and did not want to test his luck any further.   

“I don’t know.” She finally shook her head, “I just don’t know, ok?” Taking a deep breath she stepped back from him, walking back up the street as she tried to focus on just the problem on hand. She will need to deal with Alagos and what had happened… Later, right now they were fighting against the clock, they needed to get ahead of the other council members before they got restless and started looking into the disturbance themselves; if they did that it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out the “delegation” was the cause and risk offending the two… 

Gods, that’s what they are, gods in our city. The thought caused a chill to run down her spine. Today just kept getting worse, and now she needed to have a conversation with two gods, their followers, and Alagos.  If she could stop picturing the man naked, that would be a lot easier. For the first time in her life Cemi thought that she really wasn’t being paid enough; this was all way above her head and she really just needed it all to be… over at this point. 

It didn’t take long for them to reach Alagos’s home, and Cemi still couldn’t get her nerves to subside as they sat silently. They had a plan and no need to talk, after all they had “talked '' enough last night and She couldn’t even look at Alagos right now, she needed to focus on the task.

Talking to Amethyst had been… manageable before, she was at the time just an influential high noble human with ties to the churches; it had been difficult but Cemi could manage by reminding herself that she was just a young woman. But now, now she was so much more, and the fact that she had watched Amethyst just casually teleport Himari and herself away this morning solidified that. Not to mention Hecatolite!

The little creature had been… alarming, since the moment they met and now it made sense to Cemi why. Hecatolite had filled her with fear, a uneasiness that was unexplainable given what she knew of the tiny little glutton. Hecatolite had been odd but she had been… contained, content with just running around and doing whatever she wanted and now Cemi knew why. 

If she could shake an entire city with nothing more than her existence, then her carefree attitude made sense; after all what does a god fear in the mortal world? And she was… unstable. Cemi could tell that much, Amethyst was a well put together but naive girl, Hecatolite however was probably insane if she had to guess; not stupid by any definition but certainly not stable and now Cemi needed to sit here and convince the two of them to just lay low for a few more days before kindly, and promptly, getting the fuck out of their city. 

The faster the two of them moved on the faster everything can get back to normal and they can all just forget about the timebomb they were sitting on. Cemi knew that the two Deities were a point of contention in this war, after all the other gods have been very vocal in their search for the two over the years. It was clear that if they weren’t the cause of the war, they were very close. After all, years ago when Valor started his search for the elusive X47 is around the same time his followers had started to really pressure the surrounding lands.

Sure, the “war” had been going on for years before that; but the moon being shattered and call to any religious follower on the world for information on the deity known as “X47 the mad devour” is when the war really kicked off. Utopia and Algimar both declaring war as if a hole being drilled through the moon was some kind of starting pistol. 

She was willing to accept the truce offered by the twins, and Crown itself would be an invaluable ally… But she had no desire to spend any more time next to them than she needed too. They are going to eventually cause a blood bath, and hopefully it will be far far away from Felnnor. She rubbed her temples as they waited.

“Should we talk about it?” Alagos finally asked and Cemi sighed.

She didn’t know what he meant by “it”, but she did know she did not want to talk about it. “Probably not the best time.” She answered, still refusing to look at him. She had been avoiding it all day, thinking about him, about “them”. After all, she had a perfect excuse to occupy herself, there were two divine in the city and that took precedence!

And now, not under the influence of the actual goddess of lust, her mind was clear and if she thought about him and her… it would not end well, so best to just… ignore it.  

Alagos, in his wisdom, shrugged. “We will need to discuss it eventually.” She ground her teeth as he spoke. “It would be best if we cleared the air before…”

“I can’t.” She snapped, “I just can’t, not right now, Alagos.” Her voice shook as she clenched her fist. “I just can’t do… this, not now, ok? Please, drop it.” She hissed. If he didn’t, she would… she would tell him, tell him the truth, her feelings and now was not the time. They needed to deal with the twins, the meeting with the Queen of Crown, then the war itself! There was too much going on and she didn’t need this affair on top of all of it. 

Because in her mind, that’s what it was. An affair, a fling, a mistake. Cemi was not the type of woman someone fell for, she knew that; time and time again she had been left behind and that was fine! She didn’t need anyone else, she had her daughter and that was enough for her. Was it lonely, yes but she had gotten used to it and she would not get her hopes up again.

Cemi’s life had proven to her that she could not be with someone else. Her very existence caused her parents to be shunned, eventually driving the two of them apart and a young Cemi was left to pick up the pieces of her mother who never looked at her the same again. 

Then she fell in love with an adventure and gave herself to the man only to be left alone to raise her daughter while that bastard ran off and died in a hole somewhere if she was lucky. 

Yes, Alagos would eventually get bored of this fling; hells he already had two wives, what the hell could he want with her…

And now that she could feel the stinging in her eyes, she reminded herself again that she couldn’t deal with this right now. 

“Cemi…” his voice was soft like velvet as he put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to…

“To what!” she snapped again, all but jumping from her seat and whirling on him. “I asked you to drop it, Alagos. There is nothing to talk about, it was a mistake, you know it, and now that it is done, just… drop it, please.” She couldn’t help but whimper as she stood there, shaking as she bowed her head. 

This is for the best. Get it done now, before she becomes attached. Alagos had a family and there just wasn’t room for her and she knew it.  “Cemi,” again with that voice of his. Did this man never get flustered! “Please, tell me what is wrong.” 

She clenched her eyes closed, fighting back the swelling as she shook her head. “Alagos… we really need to focus on the two deities that are running around our city.” She didn’t dare look at him, if she did, she would break. She knew it, if she looked at him, she would fall and all she would find at the bottom was pain. Just like with her parents, just like with her lovers in the past, just like always Cemi would be left alone and she couldn’t let herself fall again.

There was a pregnant pause as the two stood in silence, neither saying a word as the noise of the full house filtered in through the walls. Neither of them dared to speak, both fearing that any noise would break Cemi for different reasons. 

Alagos didn’t know what to say, Cemi was clearly struggling and that was understandable, it had been a stressful day; but he wanted to help her, to be there for her. He knew that sometimes the best thing was to let people sort through everything on their own, yet it felt wrong here. This wasn’t Remi being jealous, or Fey throwing a tantrum… this was Cemi, a woman who he knew shouldered just as much, if not more, of the world as he did, and she needed… help.

And Cemi was scared that she would let her own insecurities slip, that he would affirm her fears and she didn’t know how to deal with them…

Then, as if carried on the wind itself, a whisper filled the room. “Now, kiss.” The voice caused them both to jump, both their heads snapping to the door that was… closed. “Do it… kiss her…. OW!”

“Hecatolite!” Cemi recognized Amethyst’s voice as she scolded her sister.

They both looked only to see the two girls standing by the window to the room, Hecatolite with a wide toothy grin on her face as a blushing Amethyst tried to duck beneath the windowsill. Cemi’s eyes met Hecatolite and she felt a chill run down her spine as she looked into the hazy red eyes of the goddess that had caused all of this! 

“Oop, she looks mad!” Hecatolite joined Amethyst in trying to hide as if she hadn’t been spotted already!

“What are you two doing?” Eryl appeared through the window, the tall woman staring down at the two who were poorly ducking and giggling as they shushed her. “Himari found the door…” Eryl let out a surprised gasp as she was jerked to the side and pulled out of view.

Cemi had a creeping suspicion that her day was about to get much worse.