Books for the Blood God

[Macabre]

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous, given the extent of what’s been reported here and from the ‘Purging.”

Nes’ head cocked to one side. “I was sent to collect accounts from those that were unable to write them themselves, be it from injury or education. A few claim they’ve heard stories from beyond the Unforgiving, over the Suvan Sea and north to the tundra. The pious and the superstitious seem to think it’s the beginning of another end—that the gods are preparing for another war. Of course, there are always folks claiming the end is near.

“So no, Dra-Marvasa Whitevine, I don’t think what you’re saying sounds ridiculous. I’ve heard tales far more exaggerated than yours.”

The woman reached for the slope of Mara’s shoulder to offer comfort in another light squeeze. He was not the child she’d feared—no, hoped—he’d been when their eyes first met, but he held some familiarity in his mottled features. Did he survive the storm, survive childhood?

“I could always show you what those from Avanthal have written of their city, if you’d rather that.” She laughed. It was forced and lukewarm. “It isn’t as if I’m going anywhere.”

[Mara]

It was vacillation that split him. Where was ignorance bliss, and curiosity a murderer? "No." his answer was hurriedly given, too sharp for the petite half-blood, curtained in her bobbing milky cut and hard swallowed courtesies. "Kalinor is my home now." he amended with a softened pitch and a stiffened shrug, his hand ringing the length of his neck. Kalinor was not a true home to him, but it was the closest arrangement he had come across. Still he missed the cold air lapping his skin, the crunch of fresh ice beneath his feet, and the smell of the streets on his long walks to the Skyglow hold. Those walks even in the overcast of storm clouds flinging petals of frozen raindrops to catch between the strands of his hair and how they would slide off each one the moment he entered a living quarters where the reward of shelves covered in assortment of trembling paper lanterns.

"Everything I've ever known is still in Avanthal," his sigh curdled before it could descend into the stuffy air of old parchment and vials of open ink. "If I do not dwell in the past, dig for the answers I know I should try and look for, then I can go on believing that it's safe and that nothing has changed." He knew how it expressed, it was spineless, but it was all he had to clamp to. It was the faith that all that was precious about the ice city, Morwen, Syllke, and all he had run from was safe, and had endured healthily despite his existence. “Then everything I cared for is safe and well in my absence.”

Mara glanced to the book weighting heavily in his arms. "How forgiving is he?" his eyes remained stranded upon the neatly scribed Symenos, more specifically upon a word he could only recognize as what he believed to be the Symenos for "sacrifice" or "ending". His finger hovered under the word, tracing the bend of it, expecting to pick up some of the language with a morsel of conviction and endurance. "Any and all, or must some penance be made?" Murder, destruction, suffering, dishonesty, he had a direct hand in each of them. Was there really any hope? There was time when he believed the only answer was, “No.”

"Are there rules, offers or bargains to be made in order to find his forgiveness and where does he draw the line on immoralities too heinous to be purified of? How much blood is someone allotted to spill in their lifetime without being beyond redemption?"

He had to concede his knowledge of gods beyond his goddess Morwen was nearly non-existent, and the bond was so different. Morwen regarded her people as offspring, beloved and open with their charitable mother. Viratas seemed so very different from this. He had never seen this god, nor heard of a mortal form touch foot in the Symenestra’s city. He assumed he must have, for any to receive their blessing from his hand. Still it was a challenge to envisage.