The Grifon's Quiver - Chapters 1-6

Chapter 1 - The Grifon’s Quiver

Quid was lost. He’d been on this world only an hour and he was already hopelessly lost.
Everything here seemed so strange. The roads were paved with small rectangular stones, people rode about on tamed animals who pulled heavy loads for them, and someone just offered him something called a b-j for one gold piece.
Meanwhile there were guards armed with scary-looking weapons called rifles at the road intersections. They refused to answer his questions, saying their job was not to give directions but to maintain order in the streets. They were there for public safety, not to help off-worlders find their way around.
He’d travelled here from a planet on the other side of the star Al Nitak, all the way in a distant corner of the galaxy, because he’d heard spectacular tales about the luxury and wonder of the planet Terra orbiting the star the locals called Sol.
On the way through a trans-dimensional wormhole, the slipstream drive on the freighter he’d stowed away on had been damaged by an intoxicated worker, who’d been launched into space as punishment. As a result he’d ended up arriving on Terra over 3,000 years late, and the entire global culture had been altered radically from the established regime of world peace it had held when he left home.
Once renowned as a hub of galactic activity, known widely for beautiful works of art both visual and auditory, the populace seemed to have decayed into something of an interstellar slum with an oppressive regime that rivalled the brutal, war-torn past of the apparently-dominant species who called themselves human.
Exasperated, Quid stumbled into a local pub called the Grifon’s Quiver, one whose customer base seemed to be wonderfully amused by their experience there. He hoped the joviality would promise some helpful instructions on how to set up a living space with the local government.
Behind the bar was a very tall, muscular and angry-looking Dwarf with a shaggy beard. He gave Quid a cautious look, never quite sure how to greet people from other planets. Sometimes it can go terribly wrong just with a friendly hello, local customs often differ dramatically from planet to planet and he had little patience for attempting to communicate with unfamiliar immigrants.
Quid smiled uncomfortably and asked, “excuse me sir, do you know where the nearest Housing Ministry office would be located? I’m new here and I’d like to find a place to live.”
The bartender smiled ironically. “Housing Ministry?” He poured an ale and gave it to the newcomer free of charge, knowing how painful the next sentence would be. “Hasn’t been a Housing Ministry since the Terran National Government collapsed over a thousand years ago.” Quid looked perplexed. “Have a drink on the house, it’ll lighten your spirits.” He’d never once met a foreigner who couldn’t stomach a good ale.
Someone down the bar screamed, “Gnosa! Another mead!”
The bartender, apparently called Gnosa, nodded at the voice and said, “excuse me a moment,” to Quid, grabbing a bottle of mead on his way down to where the voice was still audible, shouting with its friends.
Quid looked around, amazed at the diversity of life on this planet. Two bipedal wolves were having drinks with a beautifully radiant woman whose enormous, white-feathered wings had to be held up to the ceiling to avoid knocking into people and tables.
A mouthless Arcturian humanoid with a lightbulb-shaped head sat on a stool in the corner, watching the crowd for signs of disturbance as she played lively yet soothing musical tones on her acoustic guitar.
Quid met eyes with a massive, black-skinned reptile who hissed at him from across the room. He spun around in his stool and looked at the equally strange collection of intoxicating beverages from across the galaxy. He’d heard legends of the potions created with the body fluids of flying phytofauna on a planet near Vega and their apotheotically consciousness-altering effects.
“Greetings,” said a friendly, toothy smile on his right. “I’m Nils, you feel like you could use a little help.” She was a strange-looking woman with pink and black hair, and a triangle tattooed on her cheek, with sigils in the corners of it and an empty circle in the centre.
Quid was confused. “I feel like I need help?” He laughed uncomfortably, “what do you mean by that?”
Nils shrugged, “Well I’m an empath,” she said it like it explained everything. She could feel the emotions of those around her and she felt the confusion, frustration and scared hopelessness Quid was trying to hide from his facial expression.
Quid had heard tell of empaths but there were none on his world. “So you feel that I need help?”
“Sort of, I guess,” Nils laughed and drained her drink. She jumped behind the bar and began to refill it. “It’s more like being aware of your feelings. Having felt that mixture of emotions myself, I know how much it signals a need for a friendly face. So here we are, what can we do for you?”
Quid was confused. He looked around for Gnosa, who would surely be furious about a customer stealing drinks, but the Dwarf seemed to be away for the moment.
Nils jumped back over onto the stool next to Quid. “You’re not from around here. Your clothes are strange enough but not knowing what an empath is, you must be a long way from home. We can help out.”
Quid was even more confused now. “Who is ‘we’?”
Nils pointed to the Arcturian playing music. “We’re partners, we bonded for life and now we have one mind in two bodies.”
“Must be difficult. How do you distinguish between what one of you is thinking and the other?”
Now Nils was confused, she gave a puzzled look. “We don’t know what that means.” Having been born an empath, she’d sometimes had difficulty as a child distinguishing between her own feelings and those of others. She was raised in a state of unity with her family, and found a lover who could live in the same unity with her. “Why would we have different thoughts from each other?”
Once a mind has become accustomed to life as a collective, individuality becomes a strange anomaly indulged in by the mentally ill. She was tolerant of those who self-identify as individuals, her parents didn’t teach bigotry in any form, but she would never understand why someone would choose such a bizarre and limited lifestyle as individuality.
Quid had no idea where to take the conversation from here, there was clearly a miscommunication but he was stumped as to how to resolve it. Nils knew exactly what the problem was, and only wondered if Quid would ever find his way out of isolation and choose to live in unity with the life around him.
Sometimes everything around us seems to line up perfectly, allowing something that had just been so confounding to be resolved effortlessly. That’s what it means to live in the flow of the universe, to simply find alignment with your surroundings and act according to the energy flowing through you.
Nils was well familiar with this concept, it was the only tolerable way of life for her and it always would be. But she also recognized that many others, especially those stuck in division consciousness, have trouble discerning the will of cosmic energies.
“Tell you what,” she said with a warm smile, “why don’t you come with us and we’ll get you sorted out, okay?”
The music stopped abruptly as the Arcturian stood up and began to move to the bar.
A moment later Gnosa reappeared and came over to eye Quid carefully, searching for signs of a reason to distrust the newcomer. “Well congrats, boy, I hear you’ve been recruited by my weird friend here. She’s a bit of an oddball but she’s an irreplaceable part of the family, and if you mess with her, we’ll mess you up, seen?” He scanned Quid’s face for a moment and then decided the young man was probably alright. “Well, we’ll see what happens.”
The Arcturian was standing silently behind Quid, her eyes smiling warmly at him with no mouth but still managing to make her affection for him visible.
Nils reassured Gnosa, “he’s fine, trust us. We’re glad to have him.” She grabbed Quid’s elbow and pulled him out the door before he could get a good look at her partner.
Quid was feeling disoriented. At once he was both relieved and, yet again, confused and worried but in a totally different way. What had the Dwarf meant by recruited? Was he about to get dragged into some sort of paramilitary organization? Interstellar travel is never without risk, and he’d heard stories of people being forced into all sorts of strange, dangerous situations after getting caught by locals in a foreign world.
Nils rounded the corner and opened a big oak door at the end of the bar, dragging Quid down a dark staircase into a basement dwelling. Quid’s anxiety spiked but Nils laughed, “oh calm down honey, no one’s gonna hurt you.”
They entered a room filled with candles and the silent Arcturian glided in after them, sliding the heavy door shut behind her as silently as a feather landing on a pillow.
Nils let go of Quid’s arm and spread her hands out, circling around to showcase the beauty of the interior. “Welcome home my friend, take a look around and soak in the glory of the Grifon’s Quiver.”
Quid looked around but didn’t see much glory. The room was illuminated by candles, the walls lined with strange stone tiles in various colors. At the other end of the space was a morbid, vicious-looking statue of a griffin hewn entirely from emerald, standing proudly over a massive citrine geode. In the centre was an amethyst table that looked impossible to move.
Nils was disappointed by Quid’s underwhelmed reaction. “Well maybe you don’t think it’s much to look at yet but trust me, once you’ve settled in you’ll see it through a new set of eyes and you’ll love it like nowhere else.” To Nils, it was the only home she’d ever have.
The Arcturian put her hand on Quid’s shoulder and he looked up into her big, jet black eyes. He’d never seen a member of her species before, and was amazed by the extreme differences between himself and this tall, stalky, blue-skinned, bulb-headed, mouthless, hairless alien. Despite all that, he could recognize the look in her face as truly unconditional love and it shamed him a little to think that a complete stranger could possibly hold so much compassion for him, while he was filled with so much mistrust he could only judge her.
He noticed her face had a strange tattoo, similar to the one on Nils’ cheek, except it was a downward pointing triangle. For both of them, there were more sigils in each corner and the same empty circle in the centre.
“They’re our tribal markings,” Nils explained, “the sigils explain what type of magic we work with. Normally we’d have a complete hexagram but we complete each other, so I have one half and she has the other.”
“How do you seem to know what I’m thinking?” Quid asked her, “is that part of being an empath?”
“Nope, I just feel emotions.” Nils sat down at the table and beckoned Quid to join her. “Sheran’s people communicate telepathically, like they can think each other’s thoughts except that they’re all just sharing the same thoughts,” she seemed like she was trying to find a better way to explain it but was clearly distracted, pulling a small bag out of her robes and emptying it on the table.
Arcturians are born in unity consciousness, they have no need to communicate verbally because they simply know what all others are experiencing.
Quid asked, “so you hear her thoughts?”
Nils smiled again, “sort of. We exist as one, so we always know everything the other is experiencing. She has a natural awareness of what’s happening in other people’s minds, so I usually know it all, too.” She knocked on the table and beckoned him over to it again.
Quid looked back at Sheran briefly as he stepped cautiously to the table. The expression on her face hadn’t changed at all. “Does she know personal things about me?”
“She only knows what you show her. She can get deeper into your mind if you allow her to, but most people’s minds have an open front yard and a thick barrier to separate what they are and aren’t ok with others knowing. Most telepaths respect the barrier as a matter of etiquette.”
As Quid sat down he took a long look at Nils. She had wavy, pink and black hair that reached down her cheeks like it was trying to become a beard, but couldn’t get past big, bulgy cheek bones. Her chin stretched out into a point, almost like a snout beneath her mouth. The ears were thin but tall and pointed like arrowheads, and her eyes were a deep purple with traces of gold. He wondered what species she was, he’d never seen anything like her.
She laughed. “I’m a Pleiadian hybrid, my parents were scientists who engineered offspring from their genetic makeup. They were trying to create a tribe that would eventually lead to unity between their worlds. Pleiades star cluster is home to a wide range of species.” She was fingering through a pile of sticks she’d poured out of the bag, and picked one them up and handed it to him.
Quid accepted the stick and looked at it curiously, it had a small stick figure carved into it and then burned for visibility. He didn’t recognize it so he handed it back dismissively.
“It’s a rune,” she explained, “ancient magic the humans made with the elves, a long time ago. That was back when the fertility gods were the most important part of life.” She sounded sad but perked up when she looked back at the stick. “This one is algiz, the elk.”
“What does it do?”
“Well, let’s come back to that.” Nils set it to the side and continued fingering through the pile before her. “Aside from just magic, the runes are also used for divination, or like communicating with spirits. The spirits are telling us you’re a strong, independent being.” She picked up another stick. “There’s a higher purpose to you being here. Something about weaving the tapestry of fate.”
Quid got the impression she wasn’t putting much effort into this divination, just sort of going along with the flow but not trying to get detailed information.
She sighed and put the second one down, then stood up and walked over to the griffin. “This statue is our funding mother, Ozaiah. She was an immigrant to this world just before the collapse of the Terran National Government. This planet was a beautiful utopia for thousands of years when she arrived, but shortly afterward she witnessed the fall from unity consciousness, thanks to humans who thought they should be held above everyone else.”
She went on to explain that Ozaiah formed an order of knights, energy healers and other light workers who eventually brought an end to the conflict. Following the war, humans formed a great republic and the rest of the Terrans formed a federation in which all species were able to remain autonomous within parameters that ensured balance across the planetary biosphere. Meanwhile the humans did their best to return to their status of dominant species, which they’d believed themselves to be before the TNG was formed.
Ever since then, the order formed by Ozaiah had stayed on to maintain balance until the world was restored to its former unity, and peace reigned again. The Grifon’s Quiver was the headquarters of that order, which had slowly diminished into a small group that operated independent of local legal systems and saw themselves as holy emissaries of light, above the regulations of local government.
Quid doubted this so-called order of knights was as holy as they claimed to be, he’d read of countless similar groups slaughtering their way through the history of his own world. But as long as they were willing to give him shelter, he’d tolerate their sense of righteousness.
Nils nodded, clearly being aware of Quid’s feelings on the subject. She didn’t bother trying to justify their self-perceptions but she was curious, “where are you from, my friend?”
As they moved back to their seats at the table, Quid explained that he was from a world on the other side of Al Nitak. He was born under the tyrannical rule of a long-established regime of oligarchs who saw their subjects as slaves who existed to serve. The rulers essentially vampirized their entire empire of conquered worlds scattered across a huge region of space in the Orion constellation.
Nils was familiar with galactic history and knew of the Orion Empire, but she’d never heard of his world before. It was a small planet with meagre technological development until its assimilation into the empire a few centuries before he left in search of the legendary utopia Terra, known across the galaxy as a place of freedom and prosperity.
“I was destitute,” Quid explained, “I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to for help, and no reason to stay there. The empire has a policy of oppressing the poor so they remain locked in a system of indentured servitude, it’s part of how they maintain control. I couldn’t take it anymore, and no one in my community would listen to me when I tried to start a resistance cell, so I left.”
He snuck aboard a cargo freighter headed for Terra, hoping to seek asylum, but when they arrived and armed customs officers boarded the ship to search for contraband, he knew he had to escape before he was executed.
“Yes,” Nils said sadly, “I’m afraid you’re a bit late for the paradise you were looking for. Bright news is, you’ve found your asylum. Orions are always welcome here, no matter when you turn up.”
“But I don’t understand.” After telling his story, Quid had found himself even more exasperated at his predicament. “How did things end up like this?”
Sheran was meditating in the corner next to the griffin statue, but now she stood up and glided into a door in the back.
Nils said, “we’ll give you a book to read, it’ll explain everything you need to know.” As they waited for Sheran to return, she explained, “it’s not exactly unbiased fact but it’s a time-honoured story passed down by the Order, explaining the events that led up to our founding in the way that seemed most relevant to the author.”
Sheran came back and placed an old, leather-bound book in front of Quid.
Nils went on, “the author was a bit of a cynic but I’m sure the story itself will tell you why he couldn’t separate his sarcasm from the fact.” She paused a moment. “Terran history tends to have that effect on people.”
Quid ran a hand over the effects textured onto the cover and felt a chill run up his spine.
Nils stood up. “We’ll go prepare dinner, you feel free to wander around if you like but don’t go downstairs.”
Quid nodded quietly, then opened the volume and began to read.


Chapter 2 - Terran History 101

8,000 years before the recording of this account, Terra was dominated by the rule of the cruel, sadistic and terminally lazy human society that had been built on a denial of the fundamental sanctity of the life they shared the world with.
There was much war, conflict, discord. There was feuding over religious ideology, nationality, skin color, sexual orientation, gender, financial stability, economic principles. There was hatred, division, and endless mountains of fear, anxiety, greed, anger, shame. Guilt was cast on one by another, for any reason that could be made up in the moment.
People declared themselves saviours of their fellow humans, while denouncing anyone who disagreed with their own small-minded opinions. Peace was touted by the judgemental, who were unable to let go of their inborn ancestral trauma leading to a distorted warrior energy that prevented any member of the species from growing beyond their own suffering.
As Kali Yuga the age of strife got worse, the conditions of life deteriorated until a mass extinction seemed imminent. The collective consciousness begged and pleaded for assistance from the Divine and, though it had little understanding of what that meant, its prayers were answered.
The Galactic Federation of Light had long been watching this experiment take place, and remained unattached due to its treaties of non-interference so that the experiment could be taken to its natural conclusion without contaminated results. When the collective was in danger of extinction however the Federation assisted by asking that the forces of Divine Love enter the experiment and ensure that life was protected during the remainder of its course.
Divine Love also has agreements of non-interference, however it recognizes the innate beauty of life and the paramount importance of its preservation. They determined that, in order to ensure all free will accords were adhered to, while still ensuring the preservation of life, it would accept portions of the suffering on the planet, so that it could heal the world from within.
Then there came the children of light, the long-prophesied Rainbow Warriors. The children of the stars incarnated among the humans, as did the Elves and Fae. The Dragons returned after millennia of self-imposed exile in the shadows and golden halls of 6D Terra. Together they joined forces with the Divine Emanations and began to transmute the suffering of the planet into Love.
The children of light were not interested in ideologically-driven conflict or physical combat. They fought the emotional wars that had plagued the mentality of the human species, finding resolution within the self by turning over and over through endless waves of self-imposed falsehood into the truth of the Self. Together they dissolved the walls that held the planet in 3D division consciousness.
As the human conflicts began to abate, the world became much easier to see as a 5D spheroid. Gradually, humanity began to realize that, not only were they not the only sentient beings on the planet, but that all other life was suffering as they were, because of them, and that they had disrupted the sacred cycles of the biosphere. They had torn down the bridges that had once held the entire world in unity consciousness.
As the children of light resolved the conflicting mentality of the human spirit, humans were able to establish a healthy and balanced stance with the rest of Terra. Peace returned, and prosperity. Terra was once again a place of beauty, harmony, abundance and joy.
The wounds left over from ages of conflict were healed, and humanity remembered how to live hand in hand with the rest of the world.
Under guidance from the Dragons, Lemurians reinstated the principles of fallen Atlantis. They built socio-spiritual economic structures that ensured the sanctity of life would remain the driving economic force, thus ensuring the preservation and stability of natural abundance, ensuring the perpetual prosperity of all life on Terra.
The children of light had brought Terra into an age of golden prosperity, an age of creative passion and endless bliss for all the children of Gaia, the great unified collective consciousness of Terra.
It was rarely known at that time that the children of light had always dwelt among the Terrans but as more and more came, as the armies of Divine Love replaced fear and hatred with compassion and gratitude, the collective consciousness began to remember the way things had been long before, in the time of Unity on what is now called Pangaea.
The collective reintegrated itself in wholeness, in self-awareness, in love. And Terra was restored unto a thriving and wonderfully abundant populace.
In its newfound state of universal love, the Galactic Federation of Light (GFL) revised its non-interference accords and opened Terra as a hub for interstellar energy exchange in all forms. Together with the Terran Council of Light they formed the Terran National Government (TNG) and oversaw the establishment of cosmic law in a form that was reachable in 5D and gradually into 6D awareness.

Quid decided he wasn’t interested in hearing about the formation of the utopia he’d missed out on. He knew enough about that already and was bored with the trivialities of the text. The author seemed to have assigned great importance to the spiritual evolution of the planet, which was dreadfully boring to Quid. He skipped a few chapters.

As the immigration rates onto Terra increased, the influence of other worlds became undeniable. There was a rich, thriving and intricate diversity to the fabric of the collective, and the cultural values had soared into the heights of artistic and philosophical attainment. The beauty of Terra was unrivalled by any portion of its history.
However there was a growing concern about the immigration rates. There was such wide diversity that the religio-spiritual principles being practiced were becoming too drastically different to coexist. The Terrans were becoming distraught at the foreign practices being institutionalized on their world.
Meanwhile, the humans seemed to have prevented their evolution beyond distorted warrior energy by settling into the idea that they’d already succeeded at doing so externally, without having to actually do the work of evolving within.
The teachings of the children of light were assumed to have found strong root in the collective consciousness, and humanity seemed to have established peace both inward and outward. There was no need, it seemed, for the collective to evolve its state of mind, to reach further into the heights of spiritual awareness. Prosperity was enough, there should be no need for attainment of lofty psycho-spiritual imperatives, or so it seemed at the time.
As the religions of other worlds grew unavoidable, conflict began to rise. There was disagreement, especially among humans, as to whether the practices of other worlds should be tolerated to an extent that appeared to be damaging their own belief structures.
The TNG sought assistance from the Galactic Federation, whose principles of non-interference still prevented them from getting involved in such affairs as seemed beneath their all-knowing views. They had evolved beyond physical form for such a long time that the troubles of more tangible entities seemed trivial. They assured the TNG that all was well, evolution would take its own course.
To humans, this answer has never been enough. Stuck in their myopic, bottom-up view of spirituality paradoxically combined with a fundamental belief in their own superiority, they insisted their needs were being attacked by excessive immigration.
Thus the TNG appealed their case to the United Collective of Solar Consciousness, an order comprised of all entities in the solar system whose spiritual advancement brought them out of physical form and into energetic unity consciousness. They insisted that, if immigration were allowed in such extreme degrees, then Terrans should have the right to colonize the rest of the solar system. This belief ran contrary to interplanetary laws established under the Solar Accords aeons before.
The Solar Dragon Tribe ruled that Terrans would have to renounce physical form in order to travel to any other planet in the solar system, that they couldn’t establish colonies on other worlds. They wanted to protect the rest of the system from the turmoil of Terran inner conflict, and they were right. The humans were offended and began to revolt against TNG.
Eventually the Elves and Dwarves united against the humans and the Terran National Government dissolved. It couldn’t sustain itself without internal cohesion and the state of unity evaporated.
Immediately, the 6D biosphere of Terran unity consciousness became unreachable yet again. Without being able to physically see their interconnections, humans and elves became mortal enemies again, after over 7000 years of peace.
The Huldufolk Alliance, consisting of the realms of Avalon, Shambha-La, Alfheim and Niðavellir united and, contrary to the transmissions of peace broadcast constantly by the Lemurians, war was waged all across the planet. Even realms who remained neutral began to experience the torrential upheaval of the tragic horrors of war.
The Dragons, infuriated by the loss of the paradise they’d worked so hard to cultivate, retreated again into the sanctum of 6D Terra, departing with the warning that suffering would ensue without their assistance until the warring parties set down their weapons and returned to a state of peace. Only then would their healing powers return to protect the world from its self-inflicted turmoil.
The human republic Murka imposed severe limitations on importation from other worlds, even blockading the rest of the planet from convoys, healing energy broadcasts and other forms of interstellar commerce. While they did not explicitly exile those of off-world origin, bigotry became almost as common as it had been in the age of strife before the formation of TNG.
For over 200 years the wars intensified and for a time it was believed that Terra would be revoked from their place as citizens of the Galactic Federation of Light.
The Huldufolk Alliance, enraged by the Murkan blockade of importations, launched a massive campaign against satellite stations and aerial forces. It was successful and eventually Murka was forced to revert into a purely terrestrial state, renouncing their attempts at controlling space outside their realms.

Quid yawned and skipped a few more pages.

With the signing of the Terrestrial Peace Accords, the war ended and the Huldufolk Alliance disbanded their military occupation of Murkan lands, leaving the humans to do as they wished in their own portions of 5D Terra. The borders established in these accords have remained unchanged to this day.
As part of the Terrestrial Peace Accords, immigration and importation were allowed and, even in the Murkan Republic, interstellar exchange was rekindled.
The Order of the Emerald Grifon remained a presence in all realms, as emissaries of Divine Love and GFL alike, ensuring that free will and galactic interests would be respected, thus protecting the proceeding course of the Terra Experiment established under the Interstellar Earth Alliance before the creation of humanity.
As the chaos settled and post-war sentiments cooled into a prevailing attitude of global peace, the necessity for peacekeeping from groups like the Emerald Grifon diminished, although many such groups retained a reputation as teachers of advanced spiritual attainment and use of magical and martial arts, energy healing and other mystical practises.
However, the essentially unaligned neutrality of the Order’s theoretical ideology has been overshadowed in both Murka and the realms of the former Huldufolk Alliance, by the fact that such groups waged war on both sides. Criticism has been raised that peace cannot be taught through combat and, despite the Order’s concern for the greater good and for protecting those realms who remained unaffiliated during the wars, resentment is still levied against the Order and many similar groups.
Thus, the Order has diminished into a small collection of underground operations scattered loosely across the realms. The former glory of Ozaiah the Emerald Grifon and her warriors of light has all but faded from the Murkan Republic and...

Nils came in holding a platter of food. “Dinner is served, my friend.”


Chapter 3 - The First Thread

As Nils served stew and salad, Quid found himself staring in awe at the emerald statue of Ozaiah. It was several minutes before he noticed she was staring at him with equal curiosity.
“Can I ask, how far can you twist that third eye of yours?” Nils asked with the eagerness of a child asking questions about things they’d never even imagined before.
She was referring to an appendage that reached out from the back of Quid’s head, which he could bend like a tail to get a view of any direction he wanted. Although very flexible it had a more narrow band of visibility.
“I can stretch it pretty much as far as I want,” Quid said dismissively, bending the appendage around in a corkscrew. It had no bones and the muscle structures were complex enough to allow a wide range of shapes and movements.
One of his village elders had lost an arm and learned to use this to supplement for necessary tasks, although it would never replace an actual arm.
“What do you call it?” Nils inquired.
“We call it amfur,” Quid was still displaying its mobility, wrapping it around his torso to give himself a hug. It was almost long enough to reach his knees but it usually felt more comfortable to hold it above his head where it was safe and had a better view.
“Do you sense anything other than sight with it?”
Quid had never really thought about but, “it’s not quite the same as sight with my eyes, more like a sort of thermal night vision. It doesn’t see as well as my eyes but it helps a lot with locating objects and defining shapes beyond the two-dimensional projection eyes can create on their own.”
“Can I see it up close?” she asked eagerly with an enormous toothy grin, adding, “please?”
Quid began to eat his salad while he waited for the stew to cool, and reached his amfur across the table to get near Nils’ face.
She inspected it closely, taking in the vibrant colors of the fisheye-shaped iris that seemed to blink internally like a cat, although it was really adjusting to light levels and focusing.
The door opened and a male Dwarf walked in, even taller than Gnosa, followed by a female Elf a little shorter than Quid. The Dwarf eyed Quid curiously as he sat down and reached for the platter of food. The Elf barely seemed to notice anyone else was there, she was busy weaving some kind of metal fibre into a leather tunic.
Quid smiled uncomfortably at the dwarf’s baffled stare. Nils snapped into sudden awareness of what was happening and waved off Quid’s amfur, saying, “thanks hon,” and turning to the Dwarf. “Rendo, this is Quid. He’s new on Terra so try to help him feel at home.”
Quid tried harder to smile but looked even more uncomfortable.
Rendo laughed heartily as the eerie eye appendage took its position above the rest of them and slapped Quid’s back saying, “pleased to make yer acquaintance, Quid. I’m Rendo, my brother and I operate this establishment when we’re not busy tending to the needs of the realm.”
The Elf looked up casually and said, “Tremplir,” then went back to her weaving.
Nils added, “call her Trem. And don’t worry, she’s nice when she’s not distracted.”
Gnosa came in from the main entrance saying, “well Hakkal seems pleased enough with that artifact we brought back but he’s still not happy with the guards out front.”
The local governor had been tightening public security, especially around establishments that he considered high risk, such as a pub owned by paramilitary organizations. The dark elf Hakkal felt it was an excuse to show force in front of organizations like the Emerald Grifon.
Tremplir looked up. “Well, tell him the lamp’s magic is less effective when the person controlling it is angry.”
The dwarves laughed outrageously and Rendo said, “that’ll piss him off real good.”
The lamp in question was a relic of an ancient order of priests from the golden era, one which revealed the intentions of those who entered its light. Those who have a psychic connection to the lamp will be able to discern the latent subconscious motivations behind a person’s behaviour. While this treasure would not dissuade the government from keeping tabs on the establishment, it would help them control their own customer base and prevent crimes from becoming problematic.
Nils pushed a plate of vegetables toward Quid. “Tell me friend, how do you speak so well in our language?”
Quid smiled awkwardly. “I hacked the computers of the freighter I stowed away in, and made them interface with my biochip to teach me Terran languages.” Fortunately local linguistics hadn’t evolved too much in the thousands of years he’d missed, although he’d made sure to update them with the computers at the customs office as he snuck his way through to safety.
The dwarves were impressed. Gnosa said, “oh you’re a tech guy, huh? I knew I liked you.”
Nils eyed him sarcastically, knowing that wasn’t true. Quid knew it too but he didn’t mention the way Gnosa was suspicious of him when they met.
Rendo added, “we could use a techie around here.”
Tremplir set down her tunic and looked Quid square in the eye, like she was trying to read his soul. Her sharp, violet eyes seemed to be looking for something specific but she didn’t seem to find anything. “Well,” she said after a long moment, “I suppose we could bring you along.”
Rendo spit out his drink in shock. “That’s the fastest you’ve ever trusted anyone.”
Tremplir, shook her head. “Didn’t say I trust him but we’ll need someone who can interface with the ship once we arrive.” She looked back at Quid. “You said you have a biochip?”
Quid nodded. “Yeah the empire inserts them in infants heads to monitor brainwaves and control subversive thought patterns before they can spread into the population.” The empire had a way of thinking through their control measures to such extreme degrees that even the smartest couldn’t circumvent their inborn servitude. “But I hacked it a few years back and made it teach me things instead of stealing data from me.” It was the riskiest thing he’d ever done but it got him off the planet safely.
Sheran came in and sat down next to Nils, they held hands.
Quid eyed Sheran curiously. He found it hard to believe a species could survive without a mouth. “How do you eat?”
Nils laughed. “She doesn’t. Arcturians have very low energy expense, they’re so graceful like everything they do is a dance. All they need they can get from sunlight and air, and they bathe frequently to get enough water.”
“Like plants?”
Sheran’s face seemed to glow so bright she could’ve projected a smile onto the wall. Nils nodded and was about to speak when Tremplir cut her off. “What do you know about Anunnaki?”
Quid shook his head vacantly. “Never heard of it, what is that?”
Tremplir was disappointed. “They’re a species from off world who had a huge influence on early human development. We’ll need to get you information on their tech before we leave.”
Quid looked uneasy. “You keep saying we’ll be going somewhere but I just got here, I don’t even have a place to live yet and I’m not in a hurry to go off on some wild adventure without -”
Rendo slapped his back hard, it was intended to be friendly but it made Quid cough in pain. “Don’t worry about a thing bud, we’ll have a place for you to live when we get back but for now you’ll be working for us, just come do a little -”
Quid glared daggers through the massive dwarf. “I don’t work for anyone, I’m a free man. You can’t just keep me captive and expect me -”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Nils patted his hand gently. “No one is forcing you to do anything.” She knew people who were raised under the empire had sensitivity about personal freedom. “You’re not captive here, we’re just trying to recruit you into our cult,” she was trying to joke gently but the look on Quid’s face was not reassuring, “I’m kidding. Look, you need a place to live, we’re the safest place around. We’ll give you everything you need but we need some help from time to time and right now...” she trailed off, unsure what to say.
Tremplir picked up the slack. “We have a job to do and we need someone with your skill set.” Quid did not look any more enthusiastic. She picked up her tunic and tossed it over to him. “Do you know anything about weaving? Look carefully at the threads. Every stitch has to be perfect to make it strong and durable. Otherwise it’ll get ruined. The first thread is always the most important because if you screw that up, the whole thing has to match and it’ll be garbage.”
Quid knew nothing about sewing but the intricate design was impressive. He threw it back. “So you’re saying you need me, in order to make this tapestry come out properly?” He remembered Nils saying something about that when she drew runes earlier.
Tremplir shook her head. “No, I’m saying we need each other, and you won’t find a better path to follow anywhere else. Humans won’t help you but we can help each other, just like this metal fibre is woven into the leather strings.”
Quid wasn’t sure that made sense, and still felt like he was being forced into something against his will. The empire always tried to act like their subjects needed them for survival, as they tightened nooses around the necks of the helpless.
Nils grabbed his hand. “Come on, let me show you something.” As she led Quid out of the room, Sheran and Tremplir followed.
Gnosa called after them, “yer food’ll get cold if it don't get eaten!” He and Rendo were already reaching for the bowls the rest had left behind.
As they walked down a narrow corridor with rooms on either side, Nils knocked on a door on her way past and said, “we’ve prepared you a bedroom to stay in but we’ll come back to that later.”
At the end of the hall she led them down a stone-hewn spiral staircase that looked like it was carved out of the natural rocks.
Tremplir said, “the dwarves are magnificent builders. Gnosa and Rendo descend from a famous architect who designed all of this and oversaw its construction.”
When they got to the bottom Quid was amazed at the space he walked into. A large room was carved out and a bowl rose out of the centre, filled with perfectly tranquil water. Across the room was an entry into a massive temple space, and four other doors along the wall formed a hexagon with the entrance and the temple precipice. Two lines of red stone formed a hexagram connecting each portal. Torches along the wall gleamed with golden-green flames that illuminated the blue walls with a strange tint, giving the room a surreal appearance that matched that awe-inspiring yet soothing energy of the space.
Tremplir walked straight through the room into the temple. Nils and Sheran stood next to the bowl and beckoned Quid over to it. When he stood next to it he looked in and saw three reflections of himself. One was his normal appearance, one was bright and luminescent, the other was dark like it absorbed the light around it.
Each face seemed to be experiencing different emotions, different drives and impulses. The dark face was struggling, desperate to push his way out and escape. The light face was eager to learn more about his surroundings. The normal face looked vaguely nauseated by the conflicting wills.
Nils said, “look into your eyes, look deeply and search for the truth concealed in each aspect of your being.”
Quid was going to ask which eyes he was supposed to look at but the light and dark faces began looking intently into their respective eyes. When his normal face met its own eyes, something inside him snapped into alignment and the three faces merged.
There was a surge of confusion for a moment and a feeling like an internal scream wanting to roar deafeningly in his own head. Just as suddenly everything went silent and he was filled with a peaceful feeling of endless stillness he’d never experienced before.
As he inhaled steadily he could feel an expansion in parts of his body he’d never been aware of before. When he exhaled, the air was reflected in the water, light and dark swirling around each other trying to blend into one.
What was he supposed to see right now? It all seemed so far away, he had a vague feeling that he was looking for something but reality was fading away and he couldn’t quite grasp who or where he was anymore.
Nils’ voice echoed in the chamber and almost felt like it was inside him while also surrounding him at once. “Where are you going?”
A thousand irrelevant answers tried to surface but he felt they were somehow beneath him, like they’d always wanted him to believe they were important but he’d always somehow known they weren’t. He had no idea where he’d heard these voices before.
Someone moved his mouth to say, “home,” and every other part of him quieted again, accepting that this was the only real answer.
Sheran nodded and placed a small, empty chalice in the waters. As it floated over to him, Nils asked, “what do you see in the vessel?”
“A stone,” someone answered through him. “A violet stone.” His eyes couldn’t see anything there at all but his awareness seemed to be looking down at his body from outside and didn’t care what it saw or heard or felt. It was all so meaningless anyway.
The chalice tapped the side of the stone bowl and its ringing echoed, pulling him back into his body. Nils said, “there is something you want to do.”
He picked up the chalice and drank from it, believing he could see a clear, resonating liquid in it. His mouth tasted the cool air as he inhaled to drink from the empty chalice. When he was done he put the chalice back into the bowl and it floated away.
Everything went dark for a moment and when he awoke he was in the temple, kneeling before an emerald altar. Sheran was holding his shoulders comfortingly, and Nils was standing next to Tremplir saying, “then you swear to uphold the laws of the Emerald Grifon, and respect the sanctity of all life in Terra?”
“Yes,” someone said through his body.
“Rise,” Nils said gently, and Sheran softly supported him as he stood up, feeling disoriented and shaky. “You have chosen beyond individualistic will to enrapt yourself in the worldly order of the Emerald Grifon, to drive Terran consciousness into unity, to remain a beacon of truth and resist all those who instil division and conflict.”
The three of them stood around him with a hand on his rib cage and a hand on their hearts. “Welcome brother, to the legion of light incarnate.”
Quid shook his head, feeling like a drunk who’s trying to realign in the present and reorient into himself. “What just happened?”
Tremplir and Sheran guided him to a seat while Nils moved around behind the altar. “Your soul was given a chance to decide its path, and it chose. You are not here by mere chance, you have travelled here through time and space to join the children of light, the descendants of the Rainbow Warriors, and bring peace and prosperity to the planet, to defend life from those who would destroy it, to ensure the continued evolution of the collective.”
Quid was confused. “You’re saying my soul wants to join your cult?”
Tremplir laughed, “it already did, friend.”
Quid jumped up. “You tricked me! I wasn’t the one controlling my body, you must’ve used some kind of magic to -”
Sheran placed a hand on his shoulder and when they met eyes, all conflicting emotions within him dissipated. He could feel there was some aspect of himself who he’d never been aware of before, who was deeply satisfied with this outcome.
Nils said, “those who travel here from the Orion Empire take many means of arrival, all are different but all are welcome. You have struggled your entire life because the person you’re intended to be, needed these experiences to shape his perspective, his beliefs, his goals.”
Quid struggled and Sheran removed her hand. “My beliefs don’t include some crazy group of elitist warriors killing for peace, I just want to live a simple life and -”
Tremplir interrupted, “please, quiet the fear. Your true self knows what happened and why. The rest is just filler in your psyche, parts of you who want to be in control and feel it’s being taken from them.”
As they led him out of the temple space he tried to remember everything that had happened. There was a major gap in his memories, and the bizarre feeling of having merely watched the rest rather than being part of it. Somewhere inside, he knew he’d done what he wanted but he was afraid of being manipulated into doing something insane.
Experience had taught him that these groups never really tell anyone what they’re truly doing or why, he couldn’t trust someone who tried to convince him to be calm after taking advantage of his helplessness like this.
Every fiber of his being knew this was dangerous, that he had to get out, and yet there was a clarity, a resonance of contentment and peace. Fulfilment washed through him. He paused by the pool again and looked at his three reflections. After a deep inhalation, the light and dark reunited and he calmly followed them through a door on the right.


Chapter 4 - Worlds Apart

Quid followed his new sisters down a strange hallway with an arched rib pattern, the only space he’d seen like it in the building so far. It reinforcing a relatively weak portion of the stone the complex was carved into, but he knew nothing about structural integrity and thought it was decorative.
They entered a room with a slab of lapis lazuli in the centre that had a holoprojector showing a 5D-globe, a map of Terra.
Tremplir opened a holo window and zoomed in. “We’re here, in the Murkan Republic. This realm is where humans developed into the species they are today. They thought it was a 3-dimensional sphere back then, because their consciousness had deteriorated to the point they could barely perceive reality at all.”
Quid pointed to a blurry section. “What are these? They’re all over the place.”
Tremplir nodded. “We call those veils. They’re separations between realms, usually intense rivers or cliffs. They’re very difficult to travel across, and the blurrier they look on the map the more intense the time differential between the realms at that point.”
Quid looked skeptical. “Time differentials?”
Nils brought the window down and spiralled the globe around so Quid could see the whole world. She explained, “basically, each realm experiences time in a slightly different rate and has to perceive the past or future of the others. Navigating between them can be tricky.”
These blurry regions were everywhere, making the planet look like a collection of torn fragments sloppily glued back together. He’d never seen anything like it. “Why is it like that?”
Nils said, “long story short, the Dragons made it like that because the Terra Experiment involves intense stress and conflict within the collective mind of the planet. These differentials make it more difficult for the realms to spill over and influence each other.”
Tremplir hastily interrupted before Nils could go on. “The ley lines were designed by the Dragons as power distribution systems, like an agricultural irrigation system but with raw life force and various higher angelic energies, to hold stability until the collective is ready to unite again in 6D Terra. Because of their functionality, it was easiest to bridge the realms by making connections at the ley line intersection points, where the power is most intense and the Dragons’ influence is easy to maintain.”
There were many aspects of this Quid wasn’t following at all but he didn’t want to seem stupid, so he nodded and kept listening.
Nils laughed gently. “What you need to know is, the realms of 5D Terra are most easily accessed at specific points where there are magically sheltered bridges crossing through the fragmentation regions, the veils.”
Tremplir smiled at him gently. “We’ll be travelling here tomorrow,” she scrolled over to an island off the coast of another continent. “This is Eriu, called Ireland back in the early human days, named after a fertility goddess. There’s a bridge to Avalon there. It’s highly regulated so we’ll need to smuggle you through if you can’t get immigration papers. Humans are highly xenophobic compared to the rest of Terra.” She paused for a moment, thinking of what was worth telling him, trying not to bog him down with useless information. “In Avalon the Aether Networks can be accessed, and we’ll travel to Atlantis from there.”
“The Aether Networks?” Quid didn’t think he’d ever figure out what was happening.
“They’re like streams, light-based mycelia built by the Lemurians and Dwarves, a network of tunnels and portals connecting the realms together in a more streamlined fashion. There aren’t any in this region of Terra, because humans are still distrusted by the rest of the collective. Atlantis can’t be reached from here without going through customs.”
The map made it look like their destination was much closer than Avalon was, but Quid guessed they had to go around to avoid governmental regulations, something he was well familiar with from his own world. He gave a long drawn-out, “okay,” he was pretty sure he followed this but didn’t want to hear more, hoping that was the end of the explanation.
Nils finished it off for him. “From New Atlantis, the Merfolk will take us to the wreck site. That’s where you come in. There’s an Anunnaki ship in the ocean inside Atlantis territory, it’s ancient tech and we don’t know how to get it up and running, we needed a tech specialist and here you are.” She had a huge grin, knowing he’d get the job done perfectly. “We’re hoping your biochip can interface with the computers and you’ll be able to turn it on. Otherwise we’ll have to start it manually.” Starting up an interstellar ship without computer assistance can be a gruelling task, even if you know how.
After a bit more information and then a brief recap, they led him into an armoury where they gave him some light leather armour with similar fabric and markings to those Tremplir was working into the one she showed him earlier, a pair of sturdy boots from from crocodile leather.
Tremplir asked, “Do you have any combat experience?”
In front of three females he was a bit embarrassed to admit he had no experience at all, beyond getting beating by law enforcement a few times.
Nils spared him the humiliation of admitting it out loud. “Let’s just assume he’ll need some practice,” she paused to think. “And a simple weapon that doesn’t take much skill to use.” She and Sheran both disappeared into the aisles of armour, weapons, magical artifacts and other equipment at various levels of technological sophistication.
After a few minutes of trying hard not to meet Tremplir’s eyes, Quid was relieved when Nils reappeared. She handed him an obsidian dagger and held a spear in front of him, checking its length was between his shoulder and head. “This should do you well. Spears are good for beginners, they’re easy to use passably with no experience but the more you practice the more you can become lethal with one.”
Quid was getting worried now. “Are we expecting to need these? I don’t really want to get involved in some kind of war.”
Tremplir turned him around by the shoulders and straightened him out. “We never expect a fight but we’re always ready for one. There are lots of weirdos out there who oppose the order’s principles, and resist then rise of the collective back into unity. They’ll find us every once in a while, so we have to be prepared.”
Sheran came around the corner and held out a violet stone. Nils said, “she’s asking for permission to speak with you.”
Quid was confused, again. “She can’t speak, though.”
Nils took the stone and showed it to his amfur as it lowered to get a better view. It was radiant in that eye, in ways his other eyes couldn’t see. He’d never seen anything like it. The lights formed another stick figure, like the rune she’d showed him earlier.
“This stone has been imbued with energy that will open your inner eye, so she can speak with you if we need to.” Nils noticed Quid looked uncomfortable. “Don’t worry, it won’t give her access to your memories or anything, it just helps communication. We respect your privacy and free will, dear.”
Quid hesitantly accepted and slipped the chain over his head, tucking the stone under his shirt next to his heart. At first nothing happened. Then a soft, almost shy voice said in his native language, “hello my dear. We are grateful you’ve accepted, this will simplify many things.”
Quid nodded and tried to return her kind-looking smile, but could feel again that he could only manage an uncomfortable-looking grimace.
Nils put the spear on a stand near the door. “We’ll come back for this later. The weapons should be kept in the armoury for the most part but the rest is yours now. Keep the dagger, too, you never know when you might need to protect yourself from xenophobes or corrupt city guards.”
They took Quid back to the room Nils had indicated when they passed by it. Tremplir disappeared on the way there, and Sheran was still gliding silently behind.
The room wasn’t much but it had enough space to move around, a table and empty book shelf, and a comfortable bed with a chest at the foot and a shelf at the head.
There was space on the wall above the bed where there had once been family crests or other tribal markings, from many different beings over the course of this building’s lifetime. Quid had no signs, no flags, no other group outside himself to represent. He’d left all that behind and didn’t want to think about them ever again.
Nils sat down at a small but beautiful table made of purpleheart wood and they chatted for a bit. Sheran stood by the door the whole time never saying anything and over the course of conversation it went from strange to quaint to creepy to annoying.
Quid was annoyed by this whole thing. He just got away from an oppressive regime that tried to extort him, force him into military service, take everything from him and expected his loyalty. Now through shear dumb luck he was stuck here with these crazy aliens who expected him to fight with them over their crazy spiritual mission or whatever.
It made him want to get drunk.
And to top it all off, this Arcturian wasn’t even saying anything. It was insulting and crazy to watch her stand there like that.
Nils noticed him growing aggravated and sighed sadly, filled with pity for the intense emotional distress she could feel in Quid.
The naturally heightened psychic abilities left to her by her ancestral splicing made it easy to see what was happening inside him, the way it affected his aura and the way his light and dark bodies were at odds with each other, in too much pain to avoid fighting himself.
Sheran’s body was born in a state of divine consciousness. Her people exist in such highly evolved consciousness that they consciously experience oneness with the entire universal godhead. She’d descended from the etherial realms of pure consciousness to assist in the evolution of Terra.
They’d bred a sister species of genetically engineered psychical bodies to live in for such excursions into lower conscious. These bodies have significantly lower frequencies of quantum resonance resulting in much denser matter, at the expense of awareness.
While Sheran’s otherwise innate abilities were suppressed in these bodies, it afforded her much more powerful psychic abilities than anyone else on Terra, usually.
Because of their unique soul connection, Sheran and Nils shared awareness. The united being they formed could sense through every eye and ear, every psychic ability or magical skill either possessed was shared by their collective awareness.
Together they could experience Quid’s internal crisis from many perspectives and knew exactly how awful he was feeling, and many explanations of why.
“What is it that’s bothering you?” Nils asked cautiously, already knowing the answers but wanting to hear his words on the subject.
In the centre of his chest, Quid could feel a golden light cry out, “I want to go home.” But he had none anymore, and hated the one he’d left behind, and it made him want to smash the table in half. He sank in his chair. “It’s not exactly what I expected, all this. I escaped thinking I’d find freedom. I risked my life for this. And here’s where it got me. Not even able to go back.”
Nils let the words settle for a moment before responding. “It’s not as bad as it seems. You’re distraught and you can’t see, this is a safe haven for you. We will take care of you.”
She’d seen this sort of psychological trauma before, supposedly everyone who escaped the Empire had some form of trauma extending from their soul into the depths of their psyche. It’s part of how they maintained control, perpetuating their victim’s trauma by forcing the soul into cycles of it through karmic torture devices and other unspeakably terrible spiritual technology.
“You Orions are always so miserable. I know you’re hurt, and you’re scared but you’re among friends now. And you will find the freedom you seek, just not the way you expected.”
Quid had heard her use that word before, Orion, but he had no idea what it meant. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
Sheran shook a little with her own form of laughter along with Nils, who stood up and said, “wanna see?”
They grabbed a bottle of wine on the way to the roof and Quid got his first look at the starry night sky of another world.
“This is the galaxy from Terra’s perspective,” Nils giggled gleefully, watching the beauty of the night which just never got old. “We have one big moon, which you can’t see right now because it’s too close to the sun, and up to seven visible planets depending on how good your eyes are. Every major object in the solar system rotates across the same line around the globe, which passes through 13 constellations, as we map the stars right now.”
She pointed to Orion’s Belt. “Yours isn’t one of those 13 but it’s visible right now. You see those three stars? Your home is behind the one on the left. Orion is what we call that constellation, so that’s what we call the Empire because it takes up a large portion of that region. I forget what they call themselves, though.”
Quid sneered and opened the wine. “I don’t want to say their name out loud.” He chugged as much as he could. “Are they still as bad as they were when I left?”
Nils knew exactly what he meant. The Empire had been around for thousands of years before Quid was born, it had a long-standing reputation for overly strategic spiritual sadism. “It hasn’t changed but they haven’t managed to expand for a long time.”
The Orion wars had gotten more intense after the collapse of the Terran National Government, a testament to how important Terra had once been as a centre for interstellar cultural exchange. The decline of peace had rippled out across the galaxy.
Sheran remembered from her previous lifetimes that she’d once known how all these issues would be sorted out over the next several aeons but for now she only knew that rescuing Terra from conflict was of paramount importance to the Galactic Federation, and the children of light had much to accomplish before then.
Quid knew the Empire was still holding hundreds of worlds as slaves to vampirically syphon life force from like cattle. It made him want to explode. He drank more wine, not even offering it to the ladies.
He had to change the subject. “She doesn’t say much, does she?”
Nils knew he meant Sheran. “Thinking and saying as little as possible saves energy. Awareness is all you really need most of the time.”
Quid was puzzled by the idea that thought is a waste of energy. “What’s the point of being alive if you’re just being aware and that’s it?”
Nils laughed. She knew exactly what he meant but couldn’t begin to answer the library of opinions there were to offer. “Arcturians would say the only point in taking physical form is to touch the universe where and when you want to, if that’s what you mean by being alive. But when you achieve true liberation, you won’t see your body as part of being alive anymore. You’ll always just be alive, even when you’re just floating around being stardust for a few aeons. Awareness is all there really is, everything else is an illusion you’re distracting your awareness with.”
Quid laughed scornfully. “Distracting yourself from what?”
Nils shrugged and turned back to the stars. “You’ll see.”
“So why’d she give me the stone, then? If there’s nothing to say.”
“Because if there’s something to say it’s important, and you’ll be able to hear it instantly.”
Quid pulled the stone out of his shirt and looked at the stick figure. “So what’s the range on this thing?”
He heard Sheran’s feet shift as she laugh-shook again. Her gentle voice whispered in his head, “distance is an illusion in the quantum realms, as is time.”
Nils finished for her. “Magic doesn’t really have range, it just works. They don’t teach magic on your world?”
Quid was still looking at the figure. “It’s forbidden. As a kid I always thought it must be seriously powerful if they banned it, but then I decided it must be stupid as I grew up, cause I’d never seen it.”
Nils turned to him. “They can’t ban magic, that’s not how it works. They’re just punishing people who talk about it. What they’re doing is atrocious, I know, but they can’t stop you from willing. You’ll remember that as their influence fades.”
When Quid saw the stick figure glowing he’d finally believed magic was real. What could be making this strange aura around it like that? He’d never seen anything like it. “So, is this another rune?”
“Yep, it’s oss. It harnesses the strength of your divine self, especially for willing something into reality through speech. It also helps with communication.”
“So this will turn me into a god?” Quid drank more wine.
“You already are a god, you just forgot that a long time ago.”


Chapter 5 - First Steps

Quid woke up feeling groggy from too much wine. He had a vague memory of flirting with an amphibian in the bar last night, but he couldn’t remember anything else at all. He didn’t even know enough about the species he’d been talking with to know what gender it was, it didn’t seem relevant compared to being a different species.
He made his way to the table, feeling numb and stiff. As he sat down he noticed a pitcher of water and a note.
“Please drink it all, it will help your hangover. There’s food in the kitchen, follow the signs. - Nils”
He gulped down as much water as he could stomach, then stumbled his way into the hall. A piece of parchment on the opposite door pointed him to the left. At the spiral staircase, another pointed him right, down an adjacent hallway.
When he opened the door he couldn’t believe his eyes. There was food everywhere: bread, cheese, fruits and vegetables, barrels of liquid. He’d never seen so much food in one place his whole life. He didn’t recognize any of it as something he liked or disliked, so he sampled everything that smelled appealing.
He opened a metallic door and to his surprise the space inside was freezing cold. Hesitating momentarily, he grabbed a large tub and closed the door. Inside was a swirl of white and dark brown semi-solid mass, studded with black chunks. He used his fingers to scoop some out and it tasted delicious. He took more.
After a few more samples of a wide variety of foods, he felt full and decided to lay down for a nap as his hangover abated.
Over an hour later the door burst open and Rendo erupted in laughter. “Sleepin’ in a bit, eh? Well don’t let me disturb your rest!” He grabbed the tub of ice cream and put it back in the freezer before it melted any further.
Quid got up slowly, feeling much better now after giving his stomach time to digest. “Sorry, I was just feeling a little tired.”
Rendo laughed even harder. “I’ll bet you were, last night you drank three bottles of wine.” He was hoping to find some joviality in Quid’s eyes but the squishy-looking alien seemed hard to cheer. He smirked and patted his back. “Well, I hope you ate well. Come on, we’re all set up for you.”
Quid looked around at the kitchen one last time, in case he never saw it all again, then followed Rendo out the door and down the staircase. From the room that entered into the temple, they followed a pathway past the armoury and into a room with a series of stalls in front of a long firing range.
Rendo picked up a rifle from a table and asked, “have you ever handled an energy weapon before?”
Quid shook his head, no.
Rendo nodded. “Any firearms? Anything like this at all?” Still, no. “Ok, well this one is very simple so it’s a perfect starter for you.” Handing it over, he added, “don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to kill something.”
As they walked to the firing range, Rendo explained, “this is called a disruptor. I designed it myself, based on some old-school human tech from the TNG days, except I modded it to Dwarf standards ‘cause humans don’t know how to do anything right.” Humans seemed to prefer brutally excessive weapons over skill and real design talent. Dwarves do not find that an acceptable trade-off. “Basically, it fires a single pulse of anti-protons, you know what that means?”
Quid never had a mind for physics, he had no idea what any of this meant. He was more interested in computers than hardware.
Rendo shrugged, “well basically it means that whatever you hit with it, the atoms will have their protons dissolved back into radiation and the electrons will surge out looking for a stabilizing charge. So, replace the matter with an electric shock and a minor explosion. Typical human brutality, except this is much more safe, efficient and less sadistic, it’s designed to injure people instead of disintegrating them.”
Quid looked at Rendo with a concerned expression, thinking, ‘are you serious?’ That sounded anything but safe.
Rendo nodded, “I know, it’s a bit repulsive but that’s what weapons are for. Trust me, this is what you need if you’re gonna protect yourself. You didn’t think we’d let you walk out of here with a spear, did you?”
Rendo pressed a button and a wooden humanoid-shaped target moved into the middle of the firing range. “Alright now, just put the back-end on your shoulder and point down range. You can hold your head over the rifle if you want to line it up, but when you’re in combat you won’t want to mess around like that, you’ll want to know how to aim it naturally. So, try to point it at the target there and when you’re ready, gently squeeze that trigger.”
Quid aimed carefully and fired. The walls behind the target glowed light blue and an electric shock ran through it, finding its way to a series of collector points studding the walls.
Rendo’s voice mirrored his feeling of anti-climax, “well, ya missed. Don’t worry, that’s why we’re here, so you can practice a bit. And don’t worry about the wall either, it’s designed to absorb energy so we don’t ruin the space.”
Over the next hour, Quid stood there practicing while Rendo offered a combination of advice and jokes. Slowly he got accustomed to holding the rifle in ways that made it easier to fire, without having to aim down the barrel. Fortunately, it had no recoil whatsoever, making it very easy to fire successive bursts without losing precision.
Rendo seemed eager to prove what a marvellous weapon it was, and how well he’d designed it for ease and effectiveness while balancing out excessive aggression. Quid didn’t have enough experience to know the difference but he’d take the Dwarf’s word for it.
As time went on and his aim improved, he began making larger bursts and gradually the wood statue was worn down, leaving little puffs of smoke to slowly fill the room as the radiation charred the surface with embers. He felt much better about himself, watching his own abilities improve so rapidly and knowing he was learning a valuable self-defence skill.
Eventually Rendo decided he’d given Quid enough practice and put the disruptor in a charging port, these weapons required immense energy reserves. He put another on the table and left it there until it was time to leave. Weapons like that were typically left here unless they were being used, as they endangered any other space that wasn’t designed to withstand their effects.
They went back to the room with the map of Terra, where Tremplir was talking to various contacts in preparation for their journey.
Nils and Sheran arrived shortly afterward and they all sat, listening to Tremplir negotiate with customs agents for a reliable route through security that wouldn’t endanger their new immigrant partner. They’d secured fake documents for Quid but they couldn’t guarantee the papers would hold up to scrutiny.
When Tremplir was finally satisfied, they led Quid back to the main entrance. As they passed through the room with the emerald griffin statue, Quid noticed it was emitting a soft, gold-green flame like in the temple space. He didn’t mention it but as he passed by, he could faintly hear an intense voice quietly whispering in a language he’d never heard.
Sheran noticed Quid looking curiously at the statue. “It’s the spirit of Ozaiah,” she whispered gently in his mind.
He’d forgotten all about the stone he was given for telepathic communication. He took it out again and got another look at it, the glow emanating from the rune was more visible than it was the night before, and seemed to mirror the colors of the flame rising around the statue of the Emerald Grifon. He asked out loud, “you mean it’s a ghost?”
Tremplir and the Dwarves laughed. “Not exactly,” she said, “more like an etherial record of her consciousness that still lives on through the statue.”
Quid shrugged, thinking, ‘so it’s a ghost.’ He didn’t notice Sheran shake gently with laughter behind him. She found it amusing and didn’t bother to explain, she knew he’d see when he was ready.
They went through a different doorway that led into another hallway connected to the Grifon’s Quiver. As they passed by the door to the bar’s storage room, Quid asked, “what’s with the bar’s name? It’s a little weird, right?” He doubted a being like that could properly use a bow, much less a quiver.
Nils answered, “Ozaiah practiced an ancient magic called seiðr, which involves harvesting sexual energy to discern the strings of fate, and alter timelines at will.”
Quid sort of understood but didn’t want to ask for clarification.
Nils continued, “because it involves sexual pleasure being performed in a specific way, her vulva was seen as a sacred altar to the divine nature of her lineage. Quiver is a slang word for vulva - by the way, the word volva originally meant a priestess who performed seiðr.”
They walked through a series of quick turns and up a few short staircases to a courtyard behind the building, where Gnosa was holding up a bush for an enormous bull to devour it in one bite.
“What’s that?” Quid asked. It seemed ominous, a blue- and red-furred quadruped twice his height and three times that long, with pronged horns that looked like they could pierce the heavy oak doors they’d just walked through, and a tail three meters long with a barb on the end.
“That’s Ur, he’s an auroch,” Nils said, “one of the many ancient creatures humans were killing off that had to be rescued and brought to Elven realms for their protection.”
Aurochs were once believe to be untameable. In reality, they were far too intelligent to live cooperatively with beings who didn’t respect it appropriately. Humans have figured out how to domesticate the much friendlier species of horses, and more docile species of cow, but never managed to tame the auroch, so they hunted and killed what they couldn’t work with.
In the safety of healthier realms, the species had evolved rapidly, growing larger and stronger than they had been in the human world of ancient Terra. Once humans became less dangerous to other animals, aurochs were reintroduced to their native realm and prospered as primarily wild animals but were sometimes tamed, mostly by non-humans.
Rendo and Gnosa loaded chests full of gear into the wagon that would be attached to Ur’s harness. The wagon was also quite large, enough for the six of them to walk around freely.
After feeding Ur several different types of bushes, they harnessed it and chained the wagon with aluminum alloy that was strong enough to endure the strains but resistant to corrosion.
As they pulled into the street and made their way through streams of people, Quid asked Gnosa, “where do you get enough food to feed this guy?” They must have to feed it regularly, that added up to a lot of bushes.
Gnosa said, “we have several farms and gardens outside the city. We can grow any plant on Terra, and some from other planets. We supply our operatives all over the world, and sell what’s left to whoever needs it.” That was also how they maintained such a full kitchen.
Nils curled up on Sheran’s lap and they snuggled together, she would sleep like that for most of the voyage while Sheran meditated. Tremplir wove more metal fibre into the same tunic from the night before.
Quid sat at the back of the wagon and watched the crowds as they passed by. A circle of pixies danced around the cart, tiny balls of spectral lights with insect-like wings and Elven bodies.
The crowds were predominantly human, interspersed with Dwarves and several species of Elves from different realms, but also filled with species from all over the galaxy. Quid could recognize centaurs from the star Menkent and the partially bipedal lions who had colonized the entire galaxy from their home in Vega. The rest were bizarre creatures he’d never even heard of before, hailing from various regions both on and off Terra.
There were stopped several times by guards on their way out of the city. Gnosa was grumpier with every stop and insisted they should be able to roam the area without being needlessly harassed by guards. To Quid this was essentially the same as on his own world, except less dangerous, but to the rest it was exactly the kind of unacceptable authoritarianism they were here to abolish. Terra could never be a place of freedom and prosperity until such practices were ancient history once again.
Gradually the larger, six-storey buildings diminished as they moved into fringe areas of the city with smaller houses and community centres, and open-air market places where interstellar merchants traded with the locals.
It was fascinating to watch the cultural exchange of past millennia shape buildings and neighborhoods, sometimes showing up as extra-terrestrial tiling patterns on building faces, or Elven-Celtic knot patterns woven into the street, architecture designed with sacred geometry, honeycomb hexagonal patterns or classic paintings reproduced on the sides of peoples homes.
Music from spectacular arrays of instruments could be heard from temples as they passed, and children played games in the streets or in tree-shaded parks.
Terra was a beautiful world, with freedom unparalleled in Quid’s home, but to the Dwarves it was a place where cultural exchange was the only apparent antidote to centuries of war and mistrust culminating in oppressive hierarchical structures that simply must be undone. Quid wondered what the other realms would be like, if this was tyrannical to their perspective.
Suddenly, even the suburban areas faded away and they wandered past a thick layer of farmland into a vast field of flowers and shrubs where gardeners tended the local wildlife. From there they turned onto a road that led into the forest-covered mountains.
As soon as the city was out of sight, Gnosa took Quid’s spear out of a long chest and drew a sword. They practiced together, making sure Quid was familiar with basic stances and hand positions, and the most effective ways to move a spear that would keep shorter weapons out of range.
As night fell, they opened another chest and lit lanterns, then gave everyone a good meal. Then Rendo took Quid back into spear practice. They said he was doing well and learning quickly but they didn’t want him getting distracted from training, he had a lot to learn in very little time.
Meanwhile Nils and Sheran continued cuddling together and Tremplir went to sleep. Quid had gotten up late in the day so he wasn’t as tired as the rest, and the Dwarves were accustomed to going long periods without sleep.
Eventually, Quid’s reaction time began to drop as he grew tired. His arms and back hurt, and he’d been bruised several times to help important lessons sink in. The self-defence aspects of combat were the majority of what they taught him, rather than trying to make him take aggressive positions in combat, and nothing enforces self-protective tactics more than a healthy dose of pain.
Quid said he needed to rest and the Dwarves fed him again. They apologized several times for hurting him, making sure he understood they were really only interested in ensuring his survival. Then they all spent the rest of their time telling stories and anecdotes.
The Dwarves were really quite amusing and well-mannered once Quid was accustomed to their gruff exterior and strange behaviour, and had forgiven them for his many bruises. He’d had much worse beatings, and at least these were intended to teach him self-defence.
Then Rendo and Gnosa went to sleep, and Quid watched the fireflies and moths hover around them in the lantern light as the auroch followed the road on its own.


Chapter 6 - Morikami

Quid woke at dawn to the birds singing. Tremplir was already up, drinking coffee and listening to the wildlife make their daily transitions, as nocturnal creatures went to sleep and diurnals began their day.
Quid laid still for a moment and watched her sitting there. She was quite beautiful, with long purple hair and a teensy nose. He was enjoying the subtle curves of her body when a string of glowing orbs flew past her and danced through the wagon toward Ur the auroch.
She smiled gleefully watching the happy pixies playing in the wind, and for a moment Quid saw her glow faintly with his amfur. It was the same kind of aura he’d seen around the statue and the runestone, except this time it was a blue and orange mixture that seemed to perfectly compliment her attitude, and she looked even more beautiful arrayed in in this radiance.
She noticed him watching and said, “good morning,” with a cheery voice.
He sat up. “Good morning, Trem.”
Their soft voices woke Nils, who stirred in Sheran’s lap. Quid looked over at the two of them and saw they were surrounded in a purifying white light that cast itself across the space to warmly embrace everything and everyone, even spilling out into the forest.
Sheran noticed Quid’s look of amazement and whispered, “you’re beginning to see auras.” Quid had no idea what that meant. “Every soul casts an aura, an electromagnetic energy field centred on the heart and reflecting the energetic dynamics they experience within, casting that energy into the world. The colors of the aura show what they’re feeling,, willing, what they’re choosing to be in that moment.”
Quid asked, “why is this happening now? Me seeing this?”
Nils groaned softly as she stood up, stretching her back and legs. “When you went through our initiation rite a large amount of energetic blockage was cleared from your body, freeing up open space for growth. That means your innate psychic abilities, which were suppressed by the Empire, will begin to manifest themselves in your reality. You’ll begin to notice things change inside you, and your experience of the world around you will reflect that.”
Nils began a series of dance-like stretches, contorting her body in ways that looked painful to Quid but she seemed to find them pleasant.
Rendo jumped into the front of the wagon, having been sitting on Ur’s back to keep him company. “Who’s makin’ breakfast?”
Sheran stood up slowly and climbed up the auroch’s tail, laying down on his back to absorb sunlight for a few hours.
As they ate, Quid looked outside at the forest. He watched a herd of deer cross the road behind them, birds soaring across the sky, pixies playing in puddles. In his world, even the animals seemed depressed and afraid but here the wildlife seemed so free, so happy and content with the state of their world.
Occasionally he thought he saw a formless blur of brown fog moving through the trees but he decided it must be his imagination.
After breakfast, Nils began doing an intriguing, dance-like form of calisthenics that she’d designed to stretch every muscle and joint in her body, and exercise muscles that otherwise went unused on a day-to-day basis. “Come try it out, Quid,” she smiled warmly to him as he watched her contort her body in increasingly uncomfortable-looking ways, “it’s good for your spiritual health to keep your physical body from stagnating. Gotta keep limber.”
Rendo agreed. “It’d help your fighting stances, too. Your body’s too stiff, you gotta stay loose and fluid. Staying rigid like that, you’ll hurt yourself quick.”
Quid tried it out for a while, watching Nils’ movements and attempting to do the same, but he became increasingly self-conscious and every time he failed to come anywhere near her elegance and poise his shame rose more and more.
Nils began to slow down and make easier poses. She didn’t want to say out loud what was bothering him but she could see that he’d been raised to feel immense shame for his body, and that moving like this, exposing the form and painful aches of his rigid, pent up body was triggering his learned self-inhibition.
“Try to go easier on yourself,” she said gently, “just allow yourself to really feel it all. There’s no judgement here, nothing you do is shameful or wrong. We just want to see you get healthier, that’s all.” She stopped her dancing and stood near him, giving him advice on how to move in ways that would stretch him out without hurting or exposing his more sensitive areas to the scrutiny he expected to receive.
Suddenly the auroch stopped and the heavy wagon ground to a halt. Rendo jumped swiftly out the back and was on the ground before it stopped fully. Tremplir jumped onto Ur’s back and Nils quietly opened the weapons chest.
Quid stood still for a moment, feeling a little dumb and useless, not sure what to do but also not wanting to get in the way. Maybe he should just stay out of sight. After a few seconds nothing happened and he decided to climb carefully out of the wagon to take a look around.
The lush forest was a beautiful green canopy above and below the ground, with rich biodiversity. He felt like something was wrong and for a moment he couldn’t determine what, but eventually realized the birds had gone silent and no movement could be seen or heard inside the woods.
He walked around to the front where Rendo was staring down the road. The strange brown fog was sitting in the centre. Rendo said, “just stay still and try not to think anything hostile. It’ll move on if it sees we mean no harm.”
“What is it?” Quid had been so quick to dismiss his sightings, telling himself it couldn’t be real. He wasn’t used to detecting things with him amfur that his eyes couldn’t see, it felt unreal somehow, like looking at a transparent hologram.
“It’s a kami,” Rendo said, “the spirit of the forest.”
Ur grunted impatiently. As Quid’s amfur moved to look at it, the kami’s image slid away from his vision, no longer superposed into his eyesight. Instead he noticed the auroch’s skull was emitting a purple energy from a rune that seemed to be inside his head.
The kami shifted forward slightly and the rune’s energy became a dark blue overshadowing the purple. The kami stopped and eventually slid out of the road and back into the forest.
“What just happened?” Quid asked, wondering what kind of bizarre nonsense these people would say now.
“Ur saved our butts, that’s what happened,” Rendo laughed, “he likes to summon the rune of the auroch to protect himself, that’s why we call him Ur. It’s a powerful energy, and the kami doesn’t want to fight something as sacred as an auroch.”
“But why would it attack us?” Quid felt the forest was such a peaceful space, he couldn’t understand why it would be aggressive to travellers.
Sheran’s voice whispered, “we’re carrying something it doesn’t like.”
Nils appeared behind Quid and tugged his arm gently. “We’ve been assuring it we mean no harm but it doesn’t perceive reality the same way we do, the presence of something it doesn’t like is already harmful. Come on, let’s go.”
As they climbed back into the wagon, Quid suddenly realized, “where did Gnosa go?”
“We had some visitors in the night,” Nils answered. She’d been asleep but Sheran was aware of everything that happened. She looked at Tremplir’s concerned expression and said, “Urmah,” but preferred not to say more.
The Urmah were a tribe of lions, like the ones Quid had seen in the city. They were aligned with the same goals as the Order but typically preferred to operate on their own. Their tribe distrusted humanoids and kept to themselves mostly, although they still felt a deep love for all the natives of Terra and genuinely wanted to help, in their own way and their own time.
They’d been visited by a small group of Urmah in the night, who requested assistance from the Dwaves without specifying what they needed or why.
Tremplir nodded and screamed in her best auroch dialect, and Ur began moving again.
Soon they came to a river, where three male Elves were bathing naked in the shimmering waters.
Tremplir spoke to them from Ur’s back, calling out in her own language, “you’re in the road, will you let us pass, please?”
They spoke a slightly different dialect but chose to be friendly about it, one of them said, “we will let you pass but the landvaettir is angry at you, you should be careful.”
Rendo jumped out and yelled, “we’re just passing through, we don’t want to anger the kami.” He recognized landvaettir as their native word for the kami.
One of them glared at him, “your technology is unnatural. We can feel it from here, it disturbs the tranquility of the prana,” the airborne life-force transmitted the disruption caused by the disruptor charge and the containment field surrounding it. “The landvaettir doesn’t like the feeling.”
Rendo nodded. “We know, but it’s totally contained and harmless, we’ll just pass through and be on our way.”
The same Elf responded, “we know you say it’s harmless but its presence is harm enough. That technology is dangerous, it could explode and cause extreme damage to the environment.”
Rendo growled briefly. “Don’t question my craft, boy!” He took the comment as a personal insult to his expertise. He knew perfectly well how dangerous it felt to the kami but also felt assured that it was safe and solid, there was no way the antiprotons could break away from their containment field. “It couldn’t possibly explode, I don’t do shoddy work.”
“It’s not us you have to convince,” the third Elf said as they all gathered their belongings and moved out of the road. “The landvaettir is the one who wants the weapons out of its land. The forest is old and wise, it doesn’t want your technology endangering it.”
A kami is indistinguishable from the lifeforms it gives birth to. The spirit of the forest was the forest itself, and this forest did not want such unnatural energies moving through it or disrupting its children.
As the Elves cleared the road, Ur began to move again. As Rendo waited for it to pass him by, he still shouted at the Elves, “well maybe you can tell it, the sooner we get through the sooner we’ll have our tech out of its hair. If it doesn’t block our path again we’ll be gone soon enough.”
The back of the wagon reached him and he jumped into it without listening to their Elves’ dismissive response. They weren’t concerned with the technology themselves, they simply respected the kami and its will to protect the land it called home.
Rendo, Nils and the others also respected the kami, and while they knew their technology often disrupts some spirits, they also wanted to ensure their mission was successful. Sometimes that meant carrying unnatural energies through the forest.
Rendo was still grumbling about having his craft insulted for the next hour, as the kami circled the wagon angrily.
Finally they came to a cliff overlooking a wide valley nestled between the mountains. Canyons led off in many directions, and a gliding metallic ferry offered transport through each canyon.
After negotiating price for transport to a city called Lilie on the coast, Rendo ushered Ur onto the ferry.
Meanwhile, Tremplir and Nils were holding hands with a large piece of emerald between them. Quid watched a stream of green energy being sent to graciously feed the kami, who was situated behind the wagon to ensure they didn’t turn around and head back the way they’d come.
The kami accepted the offering and used the energy to heal the damage caused by the disruption of the containment field, but was still enraged at the trespassers who’d passed through so rudely. As Ur entered the ferry’s cargo area, the kami kept the same distance to ensure the travellers would stay gone.
As the ferry floated away, the kami disappeared, dissolving back into the forest to continue its life of abundant oneness with the life it had worked so long to cultivate.
Nils breathed deeply in relief, sighing as the cloud evaporated. “That was unpleasant.” She didn’t like having to feel its anger for so long and while she understood why it felt that way, she was just as eager to be rid of the kami’s emotions as it was to be rid of them.
“Does that happen often?” Quid was surprised they carried around technology that was so destructive, if they claimed to be protecting the peace.
“Not often,” she said. “We’re usually on good terms with kami, including that one, but it can’t be helped. Sometimes we need to do things that we or others don’t like. That’s the nature of life on Terra.”
Tremplir added, “Nature spirits are so involved in moment-by-moment living that they don’t hold friendship as a long-term concept. If we’re angering it right now, it doesn’t see us as friends right now. We gave it healing energy to assuage its fury but it won’t be concerned with that next time, it will base our future interactions on their own merits.”
The sun was setting behind the mountains and the entire valley was covered in a gorgeous array of spectral colors. Quid’s amfur could see little twinkles of faery dust and other gentle emanations rising gratefully, adding to the spectacular sight of another departing day.
They stood outside and watched the sky turn from a wide color palette, slowly through twilight and into a black, star-studded sky.
Quid was looking at all the constellations and the wide diversity of size and color offered by the firmament, looking anywhere except Orion. He’d had enough of that place to last the rest of his life and on the single time he glanced in that region he swore he could feel a twinge of their oppression reaching out to engulf him yet again, so he simply avoided it.
Nils wanted to change the subject of his internal monologue. “This ferry will glide us slowly downward, so we should stay above the ground until just before we reach Lilie. That will be on the coast, so we’ll transfer almost directly onto another ferry that will take us to Eriu, and we can travel to Avalon from the port fairly easily.”
“How long will that take?”
“We’ll get to Lilie around dawn, then the next ferry will take a few hours. Won’t be long.”
They stayed out a long time, sharing folk tales and discussing Elven traditions Quid would have to be aware of before reaching Avalon.