Chapter 54: Sculpting Stone

Chapter 54: Sculpting Stone

Sev found Velykos in the gardens behind the temple again, rather than inside the temple proper. It was quite the sight, really. As old as Velykos was, he was still large, and he towered over the majority of the trees and flowers and herbs that filled the temple garden.

The garden itself was beautiful. Part of it was set out to harvest potion ingredients, that much was clear there were rows and rows of identical plants, each in various stages of growth and carefully marked accordingly. But the rest of it? The rest of it was beautifully laid out, more haphazard art than anything orderly; clusters of bright, star-petaled flowers grew in broken zigzags around twisting vines, and a variety of trees brightened the atmosphere with various colors.

Really, Sev was never going to get over the fact that this world had trees that came in bright blue.

"Hey, Velykos," Sev called, and the stone elemental turned to him in surprise. He seemed pleased to see Sev, though, and gestured for the cleric to join him, though he also put a stone finger to his not-quite-lips.

"There is a bird here," Velykos said, his voice surprisingly quiet. It sounded like the gentle drift of sand down a dune, instead of the usual gravel and rock. "It injured itself. I have been taking care of it."

"It doesn't have health, huh?" Sev said, peering at the bird that Velykos was talking about. It was sleeping, the little thing, a tiny chest rising and falling with every breath.

...He had no idea what kind of bird it was, though. It had an incredibly long beak, and its feathers were almost prismatic, shimmering in a number of different colors every time the light glanced off it from a different angle. nove(l)bi(n.)com

"It is too insignificant," Velykos answered. "Though perhaps significance is not the marker by which the system identifies an object... It is good to see you again. Your name was Sev, yes?"

"Yeah," Sev said. "I wanted to check in. Make sure everything was going okay after what happened. I'm sorry about that I didn't know what would happen."

"It is fine," Velykos said with a hum. "Nillea forgives all. Though... do you come here to speak of your god again? The one whose name cannot be spoken?"

"Recent events have led me to believe that I can talk about it now," Sev said. "But it's not something I'm sure about. I made sure to tell some of the priests before I came here, so they're keeping an eye on us, but..."

"Why do you wish to tell me of your god?" Velykos asked calmly. Very, very gently, he placed the bird he was holding back into its nest, the stone he was made of displaying an astonishing flexibility. "Not to preach, I assume."

"Definitely not," Sev said, letting out a slightly uncomfortable laugh. He knew what that felt like. But how was he supposed to explain that he thought that Velykos had lost a piece of himself? That he'd been forced to choose a different god, and to forget about the old one?

Though, in all fairness, there was a lot about the relationship mortals and gods had that made Sev uncomfortable.

"Can you tell me a little more about your mentor?" Sev asked, deciding to switch tacts. "The daemon you said became a friend?"

Velykos nodded. Slowly, he rose to his feet, Sev feeling once again a little overwhelmed by the way the stone elemental just towered over everything around him; it was a wonder that he didn't trample the grass beneath his feet every time he took a step. "Walk with me," the stone elemental said. "I want to tend to the garden."

"Of course," Sev said, surprised.

"That was kind of you," Sev said, surprised. "Kind of her, too, I guess. I'm surprised she let you use it."

"She said it keeps her honest," Velykos said, shrugging his massive shoulders with a rumble. "I am given to understand that her colleagues do something similar, so that she does not simply run unchecked with her abilities."

"I didn't realize that was something she was worried about at all," Sev said. "Huh. Good for her, I guess."

"We were discussing the gods," Velykos reminded him. "You came to me to speak to me of your god, I believe."

"Yeah," Sev said. He hesitated, still, an unnatural trepidation rising up in him. He remembered the last time he'd done this, when he'd woken up on the floor and he'd been told he almost died. He remembered what he'd done for Kestel, and the memories he'd taken on in return the very sensations he'd been lucky enough to skip the first time around. The thought of his heart seizing and stopping, his blood flow suddenly not enough to keep the rest of his body running

"You are panicking," Velykos said gently, over the ringing in his ears, and the stone elemental gently raised a stone chair through the earth. He nudged him backwards to get Sev to sit, and conjured a droplet of water for him to sip from an actual droplet of water, a tiny sphere of magically animated liquid that stayed solid in his hands.

Sev stared at the droplet for a moment, mesmerized, and then took a small sip from it.

"...Sorry about that," Sev said after a moment. He took a deep breath. "I wanted to tell you about what I think really happened," he added softly. "I don't know if I'm right. But you told me that Ramos liked to sculpt things out of stone..."

"He wanted to leave behind a mark on the world," Velykos agreed. "He acknowledged that even stone would wear down, eventually. But he wanted to leave the world more beautiful than when he found it."

"Does that sound like a follower of Nillea, to you?" Sev asked. His tone wasn't accusatory it was genuinely curious. He didn't know much about Nillea beyond that she was a goddess of the earth. "What does Nillea represent?"

Velykos took a moment to consider the question. "She represents a respect for the earth and the bounties that come from it," the stone elemental eventually answered. There was a slight frown in his voice. "An appreciation for the natural beauty of the land."

Ah. There was the contradiction he'd failed to spot the first time. Not in the events of the story itself, necessarily, but in the domain of the gods.

...Maybe he needed to pay a little more attention when it came to the gods, Sev thought to himself with a grimace. He was the cleric of the party, and the one that would be expected to know more about the gods...

Sev glanced up at Velykos to see how he was doing. The stone elemental was frowning to himself, little pebbles rolling around in agitation along his form. Subconscious elemental manipulation, maybe?

"It is strange that he was a follower of Nillea, now that my attention has been called to that fact," Velykos said at last. "You believe this has something to do with your own god?"

Sev nodded. "Onyx was a god of change," he said quietly. "Well. A minor god of change, anyway. He was a god of sculpting, of leaving a mark on the land that's all your own.

"It just... it seems to fit a little too well, you know?"