030.003

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Vacationing

Carpentry

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“So. You think you’re some kind of prophet now?”

Alyssa grimaced at the tone of her mother’s voice. Their relationship had been strained ever since she had arrived. This certainly wasn’t going to help matters. But… “I had to do something.”

“And that something was to pretend to be a messenger from these people’s god?”

“Yes.”

Lisa snapped her head over to Alyssa, directly looking at her for perhaps the first time since the little speech out in front of the villagers. For part of that, it had probably been the light. Alyssa didn’t blame anyone for not wanting to look at her with that going on. It had been beyond bright. But it had been a while since Alyssa had canceled that particular spell.

Miracle?

Either way, the look Alyssa was getting at the moment was just too scrutinizing. “Don’t look so surprised. I told you before that people get infected when they lose faith in Tenebrael. The demons see that as an opportunity to jump in and corrupt them. With the temple destroyed and some of their community already dead? The rest of the villagers would be dead—or worse—within a month. So yes, if pretending to be some disciple of Tenebrael’s saves even half of them, then I would do it again and again.”

“Is it really pretending?”

Blinking, Alyssa glanced over to where Irulon sat at the inn’s counter. “What?”

Irulon set a mug of her own Tyrian wine down on the wood as she looked over. They had been inside for well over an hour, but the glass still looked full. Thinking back, Alyssa couldn’t remember her ever bringing it to her lips. Though, admittedly, she hadn’t been paying all that much attention.

Her thoughts had been elsewhere. Even before her mother had vocalized her opinions on the matter. Every way she figured it, Alyssa felt like she had solved one problem by creating a dozen more. Before arriving, she had actually been looking forward to a visit to Teneville. A chance to see the brothers again.

But now? She was dreading their return.

They had gone off with Brakkt. As the de facto leaders of the village, they had a responsibility to ensure that the mess of the destroyed house was cleaned up and completely devoid of any demonic artifacts. Lazhar had wanted to stay anyway, but Alyssa insisted. He needed to care for his people long before he worried about her. The fact that he had taken that as gospel and hadn’t argued more did not sit well with Alyssa.

More than anything, Alyssa just wanted to slip out the back door, go home, pick up some guns, then head back up to Lyria and pretend none of this vacation had ever happened. But if she did that, the people here might think they were being abandoned again. She would have to stick around at least for a short amount of time. A day. Maybe two at the most. Then she could come up with some excuse. Other places needed her guidance, or some garbage like that.

“Is it really pretending?” Irulon said again after a long silence. She still hadn’t touched her wine. Instead, she shifted on the stool to face fully toward Alyssa. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Pretty much since the desert trip. But I didn’t want to mention anything because I know your personality well enough to know that you wouldn’t like the idea. But… Aren’t you a prophet? Tenebrael brought you here from a whole different world. She has appeared before you and has spoken to you in the past. Your eyes… Casting that spell without your deck of cards… Those are just further proof that she is allowing you to use her power.”

Alyssa… stared. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Lazhar, Tenebrael’s high priest, would say something like that without a hint of irony. She expected that kind of thing from him. But for Irulon to say that with such a straight face… Slowly, Alyssa buried her head in her hands. Maybe she preferred her mother’s disappointment in the situation. At least there was little chance of Lisa getting on her knees in reverence.

“I’m not going to start worshiping the ground you walk on,” Irulon said like she could read minds. “I know you well enough to know how much you would hate that. All I wanted was to make sure you understood your situation fully.” With a casual shrug, Irulon turned away. She picked up her mug again and, this time, brought it to her lips for a small sip. “Incidentally, I don’t suppose you can use Tenebrael’s power to fix her temple, could you?”

“The only thing I’ve ever done with it was that light. And view souls, I suppose. Building a temple out of rubble seems like it might be a daunting task.”

“I only ask because, as noble as your efforts toward preventing infection were, I doubt they will be enough.”

Alyssa slumped. “What do you mean?” she asked, hoping that she was misunderstanding something. If she had just convinced a whole village that she was a messenger from Tenebrael for nothing…

“That light you created was impressive. I certainly hadn’t felt anything like it before. Small towns like this are generally devoid of magic entirely, save perhaps for one or two people who are capable of casting Flame. They’ll have found it even more impressive.” Irulon paused to take another sip of her wine before looking over to Alyssa. “But there is nothing persistent about it. Most of the village wasn’t even around to experience it. Unless you’re planning on staying in this village permanently—”

“Definitely not,” Alyssa said without hesitation. That would be a nightmare. At least she could disappear in a city as large as Lyria if she wanted.

“Then that light will be nothing more than a memory in the minds of a few. And memories fade. Meanwhile, the rubble of the temple will stick around. Even if it gets cleared away, the absence of the temple will stick out prominently. It will be a constant reminder of what has been lost. And constant reminders do not fade with time.

“Not to mention visitors. They won’t have experienced you or Tenebrael’s light at all. All they will have are the second-hand accounts of faded memories. Hearing about something difficult to imagine without experiencing it… and a destroyed temple. One of those things will spread further and faster than the other. I don’t think I need to say which.”

“Great,” Alyssa grumbled. Irulon was right. “Great.” Of course she was right. Irulon wasn’t infallible. She got things wrong all the time. But usually, only when she had incomplete information. That wasn’t the case here. “Maybe I can make an orb of Tenebrael’s light hover above the temple?” she said, looking between Irulon and her mother.

Lisa gave one of those ‘This is your problem, not mine. You figure it out,’ kind of shrugs. Thankfully, Irulon was a bit more helpful.

“Would it be permanent?”

“Uh…”

“Because that would probably work if it was. But if it isn’t, then as soon as it disappears, it will be just another thing that has abandoned them.”

Ugh. Irulon, of course, was right. Why couldn’t things be simple? She couldn’t even blame Tenebrael for this. It was those stupid demons. If not for their plague, it wouldn’t have mattered that the temple was destroyed. Tenebrael probably wouldn’t have been too happy, but at least no one would have to worry about death and damnation.

Alyssa jumped back, almost falling out of her chair as a shard of glass hit the wood table between her and her mother. The wood immediately started breaking apart, falling to the ground in pieces. Lisa looked just as shocked as Alyssa felt. As one, they turned to Irulon.

“Something to practice on,” Irulon said as she went back to her wine.

“Practice! Practice what? You destroyed Yzhemal’s table!”

“That won’t be a problem if you put it back together. I’m sure you can do it. Tenebrael put me back together and I am far more complex than a table.”

“I am not Tenebrael!”

“Yes. I am aware. That is why I destroyed something I don’t care about rather than something you or I own.”

“That just makes it worse!” Alyssa shouted as she stared down at what had once been a table. The spell had finished dicing it apart. Despite being made out of wood, the table now looked like broken shards of glass all piled up.

“Better hurry,” Irulon said like the situation didn’t concern her in the slightest. “The others might be back before long.”

“Ugh.” Alyssa groaned. Hand her a hammer and a table saw and she could put one together. It wouldn’t be the nicest thing around, but she could make something functional. Of course, even the world’s largest hammer wouldn’t put together the shards and sawdust that this table had become. She didn’t know the first thing about fixing tables with magic. It wasn’t like she could just wish the table back together.

Could I?

Alyssa stared at the remains, wishing it were back together with her hand extended toward the pile. She even tried visualizing the whole table. Regular magic functioned off visualization. At least for her. Everyone else had to shout words, but Alyssa just imagined something happening and it happened so long as she had the proper spell card in her deck.

Nothing was happening now. The table shards remained stubbornly separated.

“Weren’t you saying something out there?”

“Out… To all the villagers?”

Irulon nodded slowly.

“Uh. I said something like Tenebrael hadn’t abandoned them and then told—”

“No. No. Before that. You asked Tenebrael to show her faithful a sliver of her light.”

Blinking, Alyssa tried to think back. It had been a hectic few moments. She had been hopped up on adrenaline from the brief fight with the demon. Her plan had been to convince the people that Tenebrael was with them just as much as she had always been with them… Well, rather, she had wanted to convince them that Tenebrael actually cared about them when the reality was almost the exact opposite. But the actual words she had spoken were a blur in her mind.

Irulon wouldn’t just make things up, so Alyssa must have said something… must have asked Tenebrael to help. But… was that something Alyssa would have done? Alyssa didn’t like asking Tenebrael for help. When she did, she asked her questions to the angel’s face. And Tenebrael had complained in the past about answering prayers.

Was that what I did? Said a prayer to Tenebrael?

The thought left a sour taste in Alyssa’s mouth, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, Tenebrael had explained that the Enochian on regular spell cards was effectively a prayer to her asking her to intervene on the caster’s behalf. She had also said that she had granted a broad permission to her entire world just so that she didn’t have to do any work regarding the magic system.

So, lacking the Enochian on a spell card, Alyssa must have substituted in a verbalized prayer. The biggest question was how Alyssa had known to do that. It was much like how Tenebrael announced what she was doing before she actually cast a spell, so perhaps she had taken inspiration from that. But… Tenebrael didn’t phrase her words as a prayer. If Alyssa was taking cues from Tenebrael, would she really have said it as a prayer?

Looking back down at the remains of the table, Alyssa extended a hand and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

Something was different now. The warmth filling her surged. Not quite to the degree that it had back in front of the villagers, but it was more than the neutral level that she had grown accustomed to.

Opening her mouth, the words just flowed. “Tenebrael. By your glory and your grace, all things shall be made whole.”

The tips of Alyssa’s fingernails turned black as Tenebrael’s oddly colored light burst forth. Another mystic circle formed. Spirals of a turbine engine, Enochian detailed beyond that of any examples Alyssa had seen on spell cards, dashed lines and dotted triangles. The geometry of the circle was far more complex than even the worst Fractal or Time spell. To make matters even worse, the circle was moving. The spirals were unwinding and the Enochian changed with every second.

The table moved. It didn’t move in any way that Alyssa expected. She had thought that the shards would all fly off, finding their original position before somehow merging with their neighbors to form a finished structure. Instead, the table just rose straight up from the sawdust, completely whole. A smooth top. A single post down the center. Four smaller legs jutting off the post. When the blackish white lines of the magic circle finally faded, there wasn’t a single speck of sawdust left.

Both Irulon and Lisa were staring. Neither said a word. Alyssa, for that matter, hadn’t said anything either. She was gaping just as much as them. Realizing that triggered a jolt of adrenaline. That was enough to break her out of her shock, at least partially.

Reaching her hand out to brush against the table, she was almost surprised to find it solid. It didn’t look how it used to. Before, the flat tabletop had been made with several cut planks. Each one had been different from the last. Some were smoother. Others were fatter.

Now, it was a perfectly smooth tabletop. Like something out of modern society. It even had a protective varnish, although it didn’t really look like wood anymore. It was just… smooth and uniform.

“All things shall be made whole,” Irulon said softly.

Alyssa snapped her head away from the table to find Irulon staring at it with her eyes all black with white rings. “I… I didn’t mean to say that?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

Alyssa looked down at her hands. Her fingernails, specifically. For a few minutes there, her fingernails had been just as midnight black as Tenebrael’s. They weren’t anymore. All her nails were normal. Even before being torn away from Earth, Alyssa hadn’t been the biggest fan of fingernail polish. Bringing a nail clipper with her from home had been one of her best decisions. People here tended to carve away their nails with sharp knives or big metal shears that looked like they were better suited toward shearing sheep.

Her initial thought had been that Tenebrael’s black nails were a result of paint like any normal person’s. Or rather, she hadn’t thought much of it at all. They were fingernails. Average. Ordinary. Hardly worth mentioning under normal circumstances. But now, she had to wonder if the black look to them wasn’t some aspect of angelic power.

“I meant to say,” Alyssa said slowly. “I meant something like ‘return the table to how it was.’ Or something similar. I didn’t mean to mention Tenebrael at all.”

Irulon’s eyes lit up. Not black and white or violet or any other color. It was a metaphorical lighting. The same look a child got on their birthday when they saw presents or cake. A small bit of motion pulled Alyssa’s attention away from Irulon’s face down to her hands.

She didn’t know when, but Irulon had traded her wine for a notebook and pen. Irulon’s hand moved quickly but perfectly steadily, demonstrating just how she could afford the time to fill her spell book with complex Fractal cards. On the paper in front of her, spirals and lines covered the majority. It was the exact same spell that Alyssa had just cast using Tenebrael’s power, though this version was obviously not moving. The Enochian was missing completely from the circle. In a column along one side, various characters were all lined up with little numbers to their sides. Notes for later? The order in which the characters appeared?

As perfect as the replica on the paper might be, Alyssa had to wonder what Irulon intended to do with it. Was she trying to distill a spell card version of it? Something anyone with the proper capability could cast? Or maybe she wanted to create a separate spell that would draw a moving image in the air to replicate the miracle that Alyssa had cast. Alyssa didn’t think that would work, but she didn’t bother saying so. Irulon had to know already.

And if it did work… That opened up a lot of possibilities.

Lisa finally moved, leaning heavily against the table. She pressed one hand against the side, looking like she was trying to break it again. Alyssa wasn’t sure what wood the normal tables were made from, but she knew it was fairly hard stuff. It had to be to withstand people using it over and over again. But the tables weren’t joined together with metal screws or fasteners the way a modern table would be. They were all pure wood, mostly using pegs to keep parts of the tables from slipping around where they shouldn’t. Although she hadn’t done a thorough inspection, Alyssa doubted that the new table had pegs at all. The entire thing, from surface to feet, was one piece of wood.

And a fairly tough wood at that if the strain on her mother’s face was any indication.

“Before we leave,” Irulon said, ignoring Lisa’s efforts to break the table again, “we should gather up as many of the villagers as possible and herd them around the ruins of the temple. Then you put it back together. Preferably with a big speech.”

Faith in Tenebrael would be restored. The villagers would have a new tale of Tenebrael to relay to visitors and offcomers, further spreading word of her. Most importantly, it would hopefully eliminate the possibility of more plague incidents in this region.

But there was one small problem. “This table looks nothing like the original. What if the temple doesn’t look the same either?”

“Then we simply say that any renovation to the temple is Tenebrael’s will. After all, can you say that such a thing isn’t true? I can’t. Not after hearing that you hadn’t intended to speak the words you said. Tenebrael is clearly acting through you at a time when she can’t be present herself.”

Alyssa sighed, not at all happy that Irulon was probably right. First of all, it meant that Tenebrael was somehow influencing at least a few of her actions. That thought was distinctly uncomfortable. While she didn’t like it, if it was limited to casting spells that she already wanted to cast, she supposed that she could stand it. The second she noticed herself acting strangely any other time, she would have to try cutting off the connection between them.

That was something she would have to ask Kasita to watch out for. As much as she trusted Irulon, Alyssa couldn’t help but feel that Irulon would encourage Tenebrael’s acting through her proxy rather than try to help stop it. Mentioning the fear in front of her mother would have a similar, if exact opposite, effect. As much as she didn’t like it, Alyssa recognized that, at least at the moment, she needed her connection with Tenebrael. Her mother hounding her to break the connection would only irritate matters.

But, aside from the possibility that some of her actions might be influenced, there was another problem with what Irulon had said. Tenebrael can’t be present. Alyssa had thought it before, but hearing it like that, it was almost certainly confirmation that something had happened to Tenebrael.

Alyssa still didn’t have a clue as to how she might help the angel.

The door opened, revealing a slightly less intense problem, though a slightly more immediate one. Half the village, at least, was outside the door. She had heard the noise of the crowd before the door had opened, though it had been faint through the walls. But now, it was silent as people pushed and tried to catch a glimpse of her. Thankfully, they didn’t all try to push inside. Brakkt and Kasita walked in. Trailing after them, Lazhar and Yzhemal. The former had his hat in his hands and looked like he had been trying to wring it dry a hundred times over. The latter kept a far more stoic demeanor, but Alyssa couldn’t help but notice the way he looked at her.

Neither acted in the way she remembered them acting.

Something told her that if she asked for a meal, she would get a feast.

This is going to be a long vacation.

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