Chapter 21
The two women who bore striking resemblance to Cassian were his aunts, Elise and Victoria, Moira’s sisters.
The seaside house belonged to them, and it was here that Moira lived with them.
It was a beautiful place, as far as architecture went, designed to be a rest house, and every bit of it was touched with femininity—decorations, curtains, tapestries, shelves lined with books and shelves lined with utensils and crockery.
Lesya had largely stayed out of the way of the people because Derleth and Moira were too busy reconciling with each other.
They did so in a number of ways. Even though they were both of them quite old, they retained aspects of their youth that allowed them to go on long walks along the beach, to retire to the bedroom for long hours, after which she would see them tired and walking around the kitchen, looking for something to replenish themselves with.
They had mourned the first few days the loss of their son, but in the wake of their reconciliation with each other they had also celebrated being together once more.
It was pretty strange for Lesya, who was still trying to understand how people could grieve and be in joy at the same time, for she could not.
She could not bring herself to reckon with the reality that Trisha had died saving her.
That Cassian was dead for so long now that it would be a miracle if she could bring him back to life.
She didn’t even know if he had been raised as Mortandagh’s necromantic thrall or if he was still preserved.
There was no way of her ever finding out, staying here hidden in this seaside cottage.
Elise and Victoria were good caretakers.
They tended to her injuries at first, and they brought her food to her bed every day, and everybody treated her with compassion, and yet it was cautious compassion.
They would talk to her, try to understand what she had been through in her life, and then they would ask her about Cassian’s death.
They would mostly ask her questions about Cassian and how he had been in the years before his death.
After some point she got tired of it, because every time she recalled Cassian, it hurt.
So she began seeking solitude in reclusion. She would take her bag with her, and she would take out the books that she had rescued from the manor.
She had learned several things from the four people in the house of what was happening around the world.
The newspaper would fill in some information, and the rest Derleth would tell her.
He would make a point to sit her down every afternoon and tell her of what was happening at Umbrveyl, what was happening in Aladria in general, and that Mortandagh was still at large.
She appreciated his efforts for conversation and his sincere attempt at connecting with the woman who was the love of his son.
But at the same time, everything that she learned only made her more terrified.
Somehow Elias had survived and Eldric had died.
Somehow Elias had delivered a sermon with the Spear in his hands.
Somehow enough members of the Vanguard had signed up for a battle at Umbrveyl that there was now a small army, and somehow, against all odds, peace and quiet had prevailed this week when it shouldn’t have.
She was more surprised to know that Mortandagh, after his attack on the Doldrum Isles, had not just cowered; he had stayed there, and he had sunk the entire fortress and the tower, along with the island, to the bottom of the ocean.
What a fitting grave for Eldric, Lesya thought, and what a terrible final resting place for Trisha.
She still couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been able to save Trisha.
As for any other matters, Lesya made sure that she kept her mind closed off to any dreams, or visions, or interventions by Aeterna.
She could see that Aeterna had failed her, and she had no desire in interacting with her any longer.
Some Death Shepherd she was, that her own goddess hadn’t helped her when she had needed her most.
There was only so much that she could do at this cottage.
Every day started with a new worry that perhaps today would be the day the war would finally reach its zenith.
She learned that Mortandagh was still going about the country, gathering more supporters and restoring the old temples of Aeterna.
She wondered if there was any larger reason behind it.
Were the temples some kind of beaconing devices that she could use to harness more power, or was it just sentiment?
And so, on the third day of her stay at this cottage, she took out the books from her bag, placed them on the table, and sat there to read them.
Apparently she had time, and apparently nothing else was happening in the wake of the chaos that had ensued at Doldrum.
Her room, the one that had been given to her by the owners of this house, was a nice second-floor bedroom with a broad window overlooking the ocean.
It was in front of this window that her table was where she had placed her books.
She picked up the book called Ars Aeterna and started to read it.
As she read, she realized that much of it was similar to the history of Aladrian magic that she had learned back at Umbrveyl.
But there were enough distinct markers that made this book an alternative source of history, and if she was to understand everything that had happened in the past fifty years, everything that was happening right now, she needed to fill in the gaps of her knowledge.
The first section of the book that caught her attention was called No Gods but Death. She read it.
There has never been a god who could call himself the true God of the universe, for there hasn’t ever existed such a concept in all of history.
Gods are a recent creation. Whether it is the forest god that is worshiped in the north of Aladria, or the biblical God who is worshiped in the rest of the world, gods don’t have the sway over people that people think they do.
All except Death, for Death is not a goddess, and Death should not be confused as a mere celestial entity.
Death is a being. Her name is Aeterna. And when she was there at the start of the universe, witnessing its birth, she knew her role—that she would have to preserve entropy by granting swift death to those who needed it, and by bringing about the end of galaxies, star systems, and universes other than these.
But then something happened that Death did not anticipate.
She noticed that the first humans mourned those who died, and so she granted them a boon, a power.
This power, first witnessed in Aladria, was the power of resurrection.
For Death is kind, and Death is soft-hearted, and she does not want to see the people whom she has been observing since the first day suffer.
And yet, after she granted them the power of resurrection, Aeterna noticed that people were opting out of death almost entirely.
Whenever somebody died, he was resurrected, and so people began to have longer lifespans in the hundreds or thousands of years.
Only when somebody had explored every single possibility of their life did they choose to rest. And for the time being, Aeterna was fine with that, for it was not against the natural order that she foresaw when she witnessed the birth of the world.
For things came back to life even after death.
When a plant died in winter, its old seeds rebirthed it in the next spring.
Out of ashes, phoenixes were born, and the death of every day, in the form of night, was reversed the next day when the sun came up.
Speaking of the sun, there was indeed a local god called Sol, who was venerated by a group of followers in the East. Those followers perpetrated his teachings to the rest of the world: that the sun was benevolent, that crops grew because of the sun, that everything good, including light and warmth, came from the sun.
This mission grew very popular throughout the rest of the world to the point that Aladrians started to see the sun as not just a celestial body, but a god, and yet here a distinction should be made.
For in the pantheon of Aladrian religion, the sun is a lifeless ball of flames and light, hanging suspended in the cosmos.
It does not have a personality. It does not possess reason, and that is why you will see it in the sky every single day.
However, something happened a few centuries ago that changed the perception of the people toward the sun.
For another god entered the stage at long last. Few knew his true name, for his name was Chaos.
He existed outside the realm of order. He prevailed where order ended and chaos began.
When Chaos became interested in the matters of this universe, when he set his eyes upon the sentience of the beings residing on this planet, he wanted to be venerated, for he believed that it was Chaos who had birthed the universe.
For who else could answer this question of the Big Bang, of spontaneous creation, of the universe existing almost instantaneously after not existing forever?
It was Chaos who believed that he had a hand in this sudden appearance of order, and so in order to be venerated by people, Chaos needed to introduce himself.