CHAPTER 1.33 - OVERNIGHT INTERLUDE I - THAE

The sounds of an entire community united in celebration filter through the floorboards.  A community of which Thae, as ever, feels no part.  It feels like a habit, a personal failing.  Always alone.  Alone apart from these endless, painfully intrusive thoughts.  The past couple of days crowd in around a mind already stuffed full of uncertainties.  In a room as empty as Thae’s heart feels.

“I wish them the best, I truly do, but…what are they celebrating, precisely?”  Marek’s survival was hanging in the balance – a crisis into which they had thrown him, however unintentionally.  And Atheran had shared her fears that the village could not possibly last the winter on the supplies they posessed.  “So…celebrating their chance to starve slowly?  To watch the children and elderly succumb first while the healthiest try to prop them up with food they themselves need?” 

This is unbecoming.  Of anyone, never mind a person of faith.  “A person of faith who travels with…whom, precisely?  I could count Rian as a good person, possibly.  But a good person on first name terms with bandits?  Or my dearest friend Hugo, for whom ‘safehouses’ and secret exits from the city are a fact of life?  Unbecoming indeed.”  But those doubts were not why Thae was compelled to retire from the party early.  “Yes, very brave, Thae.  Thank the Goddess SHE was not up here wrestling with HER conscience.”

The frozen moment again appears in front of Thae’s eyes.  The image of Anuk and her freshly wounded, traumatised, helpless victim.  Flanked by two ‘good men’ simply watching.  At least they had the good grace to look up at Thae and Atheran with guilty surprise.  “While I felt proud to have possibly saved a man.  While my naivete told me Atheran was overly pessimistic.  While my moral cowardice took in this horror and fled into ‘torture is ineffective’?”  Thae cannot bear to confront the guilty, sticky thought directly behind that one.  The thought that the village could not possibly afford the manpower nor risk to imprison such an active threat.  Unbecoming.

And elsewhere in the forest, as alone as Thae, Wiln happily digs his own grave.  Again and again in Thae’s imagination.

“I was caught in my own power, or the illusion of it, believing my intentions to be pure.  And while I revelled there, people continued to suffer for my actions.  Or lack thereof.”

Another frozen moment, of Rian at the mercy of monsters thanks to Thae’s weakness.  Of Hugo, paralysed and horrified because Thae had not thought that ‘a pile of dead bodies attracts scavengers’ needed to be taught.  Of Thae’s most recent shame, again putting Rian’s life, and Hugo’s plan, at risk.  Of weakness.

Sofia’s…Mother Sofia’s…voice echoes in Thae’s head.  A message that was so easy to disdain in the Temple, where Thae possessed no power over others.  Nor indeed at all.  The High Priestess’s clarion call that pride could feel like wisdom.  That those who took the most callous, most evil actions slept unburdened by guilt.  Comfortable in the certainty that they were right. 

“The Goddess teaches us to think for ourselves…”  Thae thinks, “…but She is a Goddess.  She at least has a hope to predict the outcomes, the distant consequences of her decisions.”  This is a dangerous line of thought, although Thae wonders if someone with cleaner conscience might entertain the thought fully, push through to an unwelcome conclusion.

Instead, flawed, mortal Thae falls back into an intangible of many years’ standing.  Athena (Thae feels a pang of guilt to so brazenly name Her) is, among her titles, her dominions, a War Goddess.  Likewise, her violent, cruel half-brother Ares.  Somehow, his Lady dodges her sibling’s worst traits: the cruelty, the savagery, the dehumanisation of brutality.  And while strategy, tactical fighting, could be argued to preserve as much life as humanly possible, still it begs a question.  A Goddess of knowledge?  Unarguably good.  But of warfare?  Much less certain.

And, flawed mortals that they were, even the group’s tidiest plans wound up with violence.  Hugo’s plan (Thae’s stomach knots again) saved the innocent.  A clean victory, assuming the mathematics ignores ‘bandits’ as ‘people’.

Thae knows this is all evasion.  Not that the moral ambiguity is without concern, but this particular crisis of confidence?  An unwelcome memory presses in.

-x-

Thae is standing in a pool of shadow at the base of the Hunter’s Hall, fully stressing out.  Hugo’s plan, eagerly embraced by the rest of the group, lacks somewhat in the face of battle orders the Temple would have handed down.  It left a lot of steps defined hazily, if at all.  ‘We all sneak in, try to pincer them.’  As with many amateur planners, his friend blithely assumes it will go fine, makes no space for contingencies.  Oh, and ‘wait for the signal.’  What IS the signal?  Anuk, intractable as always, dismissed this legitimate query with “You’ll know it.”

Thae rarely misses Sof…Mother Sofia, but one benefit of her micro-management (a rebellious part of Thae replaces the term with ‘need for control’) was that plans were made in the understanding that such things never survive contact with the opposing force. And for every unit involved in an action, S…The Mother would have had contingencies and fallback positions mapped out.  Speaking of maps, Thae comes to the chilled realisation that this is the wrong window. 

Thae intended to be entering the dining hall but realises this is one of the windows to the kitchen.  The panic of the half-plan was really throwing things off.  As Thae looks two, maybe three windows down, the quiet of the night splits as every pane of glass in the attic above rattles and shakes.  Thae jumps, suppresses a curse that bubbles up unbidden, tries to get one hand under the rim of the storm shutter and pulls.  Panic flashes as the shutter moves not at all.  “Get in quickly and quietly” indeed.

Thae feels around for a latch, for something of use.  Then realises, feeling foolish, that those mechanisms would be on the inside.  A fact that would occur to Hugo immediately, no doubt.  Thae pushes down nagging concerns about this wonderful friend, swings the hammer at the shutter.  The action is too hasty, backed by rapid, shallow breathing.  The heavy hammerhead is deflected by the wood as sounds of fighting erupt from the upper floor.

Thae exhales long and slow, braces and swings again.  The hammer strikes centrally, buckling and twisting the shutters, and yet the latch stays secure.  Thae can just about reach it, but the blow seems to have twisted the metal mechanism too.  Thae prays for mercy, swings with eyes closed, hears the impact rather than sees it.  Praises the Goddess to find the latch almost detached from the storm shutter.  It still takes precious moments to unfasten completely, moments during which Thae can hear Rian fighting.  Hopefully not for his life but relying on such hope appears to be Thae’s sole recourse now.

The window begins to shunt up, sticks partway open.  A grunt and more pressure and it screeches up further.  Not as far as Thae would like to negotiate with chain mail and a bulky hammer, but needs must as the noise on the ground floor seems to be slowing, dying.  The implications of that thought roll their spikes over Thae’s brain.  Scrambling through the window awkwardly, warhammer dangling outside, Thae really wants to curse when confronted with a heavy iron range set in front of the window.  Thankfully this is not lit, otherwise this ingress would be impossible.

Thae is in an extremely compromised pose (for combat, thankfully nothing beyond) when the kitchen’s broad door slams open, panic-smashes the window trying to pull the hammer through.  Almost collapses with a mix of relief and embarrassment to find Rian, face full of concern, threatening the empty space of the room.  Thae begins a stuttering apology which is cut off as the big man gently assists, huge hand reaching out.  Rian’s deep voice muttering his own apology as his other arm curls around Thae’s waist.

As they stand in awkward silence, trying to find a way to address this unforeseen intimacy, to make certain it is okay, they hear Hugo’s usually quiet feet clattering down the stairs.  Thae thanks someone, the Goddess or the halfling, realising that they may not, after all, have to bridge this tiny social gap.  And then actively begins to consider the big man as a true friend.  Watching with a penitent’s urge to confess their inadequacy as Rian, consciously or not, leads his report of ‘their’ actions as an unbridled success.  As opposed to one of them catching a pair of bandits on the jump while the other fought a (losing) battle against a window.

-x-

And suddenly, in Thae’s hour of need, in the twilight of the supplicant’s supplication, the Goddess is there.  Not physically, that could never occur.  Not even in any way Thae could ever prove was not Sofia’s bugbear of prideful wishing.  Or of florid hallucination.

But the Goddess is there.  Immediately, Thae’s mind is full of questions, and a bifurcating guilt.  “Mother…”  It is probably not the correct appellation for a famously virginal Goddess and is the title Thae struggles so much to attribute to High Priestess Sofia.  That woman never felt like a nurturing presence, unless the maternal relationship in question was based on stress and disapproval.  Then again, parent relationships were not Thae’s strong suit.  But the Goddess?  In her presence Thae felt held, soothed, warmed.  Loved and beloved.

“Mother, am I on a road to disaster?  Am I betraying my purpose, my sacred duty?  My vows to you?  Am I betraying you for the first feelings of friendship, of inclusivity, that I have felt outside your blessed presence?”

Thae balks at the lack of response, thinks of it as approbation.  Panics.  “Should I rid myself of these false friends?”  Feeling like a traitor with each word.  Poor, lost orphan.  Better off locked in the Temple, out of society.  Thae rebels against this, conscious that this instant knee-jerk would be seen by Sofia as confirmation of her theories.  Some of the acolytes, some of the masters in the Temple, acted as though the sacred manuscripts and tablets were to be worshipped.  As though material things held their Goddess’s worth.  And while Thae could neither condone nor justify treating these disrespectfully, was that not missing the point?  That the wisdom of the Goddess, her prophets and oracles, were they not the value?  To be held apart from the world, locked in a box, would deprive the world.  “Just like poor little me.”  Thae hears these words in Mother Sofia’s voice, mocking, cruel.

“But yes”, thinks Thae, “exactly like me.”  No grandiose purpose required, simply a truth:  A tool in a box accomplishes nothing.  Thae’s face burns, partly with anger, partly embarrassment, partly insecurity.  “I’m asleep now, am I not?”  A thought prompted by the feeling of others in the room.  Of wanting to open one’s eyes inside an unwilling body.  And if this is a dream, then what promise that She is here?  What guarantee this is not Thae’s fantasies?  A foundling’s wish to be important?  An acolyte’s wish to be the protagonist in their story?

The difference is incomprehensible, feels unimportant to Thae’s dulled, dream-logic brain.  As if in reward, the Goddess, beloved Athena wraps the sleeping cleric in Her warmth.  In the certainty that this will all make sense in the morning.  A certainty unshakeable under the auspices of the Goddess of knowledge.  Of wisdom. 

In a final twist of the fin under black waters, the devil’s advocate inside Thae offers the warm embrace, the sense of certainty, the assurance that everything will work out fantastically.  Compares it to the certainty of a mark in a rigged game, about to discover that the Lady is a mundane card.  Not even a face.  The rule that if something feels too good to be true, a chance in a million (or a low status orphan acolyte in a thousand) then it IS too good and therefore CANNOT be true.

Triggered by that thought, Thae’s sinking consciousness focuses for a moment on Hugo.  The feeling that he is sneaking, the silence in the room inherent to the sneakiest of actions Thae has seen him enact.  And again, Thae’s first friend feels remote, dangerous.  Untrue.

But then the dissenting voice is gone, and Thae is encapsulated in the hands of…yes, the Mother.  The embrace of an eternal, perfected being.  The beauty and gentle touch of a maiden.  The warming nurture in the bosom of a Mother.  And the uncompromising wisdom, the knowledge of an ancient, a crone.

Glory be.