The Etra Anthology

112th of Nemulum, 336 EA

Ishikar, Athal

There was a peacefulness to the Aether, a certain finality in the way that it wove together all that it touched. Belmaia steadied herself for what was to come, she walked into that soft bank of mystic fog outside her temple home, and she returned to a prayer.

“Leatrin of all new things, Dokeoh of greatest change, Eleganth of the true zenith. Three most holy of the Stria Intranscendent. Forgive me, for in this world I have neglected my faith and halted against the rightly turning of the world that is your will.”

The words tumbled out, mingling with the aether as only the truth long arrested and at last set free could. They echoed infinitely, through the space that was no space. She could feel the aether fraying at her edges. She was bare of any of the protective magics she typically cloaked herself in. She had chosen to enter that way. She had made herself prostrate. 

“Please,” Tears shuddered from her eyes and wiped away into nothingness as she became disembodied. She began to raise, to yell into the void. “Tell me what to do! Guide me, you who lay out all paths! Guide me!”

There was no response to her plea, no angel nor beacon of divine light to will her forwards. There was only her, fading from this world in the dejected remnants of a blasphemy against development that she had willfully engaged in for far too long. She was not sure how long she stayed, hoping for that sign. Time did not work that way, there. She only knew that at some point her self was no longer, and then it was again. 

She felt herself reconstitute into an exertive corporeality. When she had feet to trod once again, she put one in front of the other. She moved, steadily forwards, and she emerged from the aether into the light of the morning sun.

The two women Belmaia had welcomed into her home were waiting for her, in the copse. Their presence there, remaining to be at her side for this, spoke volumes.

“You were in for hours.” It was a simple statement of fact from Svaljna. “There was no sureness that you would return, or else be swallowed.”

“It needed to be that way.” Belmaia returned with a matched sureness. “It needed to be.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Mepka asked, softened greatly in her attitude towards Belmaia. “Did you find your gods?”

“No. Or at least, I’m not sure.” Belmaia thought a long moment, staring into the veil. “I think that might be the point, though. I am here, I did not die. My gods are the gods of the road and of the aether and of life, and perhaps I will find them out along some path I have not yet tread.”

Mepka nodded in appreciation of the sentiment, as Svaljna smiled knowingly to herself. 

Belmaia turned to give one last long look to the place she thought would save her and had instead had left her to fester and rot. She thought of her time there, of all the joys and eventual heartbreaks. She thought especially of Livia, as that wonderful girl she had been before she had been held in stagnancy. She gathered the packs she had collected, all the things of this world that she truly wished to carry with her into the next and the one after that as well. She took up with these new companions by her side, and with them she began a long pilgrimage to moving on.