“I don’t know if it would work,” Atres shrugs, “I asked her to dance and maybe join me in a drinking game. That didn’t seem to get much of a reaction from her, so I told her that I know what she is and I don’t care if she’s a paladin, since it means I can trust her. That made her blush and caused her to look down at her toes. I stepped toward her, and it got her to look up at me instead of staring at her toes. It wasn’t much, just a quick peek, but I knew she was at least intrigued, even though she was blushing. I told her to be careful because she was so damnably adorable, I might feel compelled to see just how far that blush went. That set off another round of blushing, and she rather primly informed her toes that she is three winters away from being old enough to be courted, but said it loud enough that I could overhear. I offered to wait and abide by her rules. She was so adorably entrancing, I knew I was done. When she checked my motives, I knew she was interested. When that made her blush again, my gift finally started to quiet down.”
“The boy plaguing her, as you put it, is Valgar,” Benger grins, “He’s the one she Marked for being an absolute ass not only to her but all the girls in his home village.”
“She put a paladin’s Mark on someone?” Oso asks, “She doesn’t look old enough to have been consecrated that long.”
“She did,” Atres grins, “Korek and I held him down for her. She said that a lot of her abilities have returned once she took up service again with Morrighu.”
“Her flash of truth started working during the induction ceremony,” Benger says, “She was able to start healing herself right after it was over. She did say after our fight with the bandits that not everything was as strong as she remembered, but that many of them have come back.”
“We’re clearly missing quite a lot of the story here,” Rilgi says, “Why don’t you fill us in on what’s been going on?”
Sometime later, Oso shakes his head, “Let me see if I got this. You’re here because your Goddess brought you here from somewhere else, probably another world entirely. You have a bunch of stuff already lined up, but the duke dumped this Divaros thing on you. You met Atres at the fair, and before the fair was even over, he was already having premonitions about this. So far, the premonitions have moved into survivable, but they’ve also been pretty dire a couple of times. I’ve never had one that was worse than dead. I don’t think I want to. I don’t even want to know what that means.”
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Usurg shrugs, “We’ll do our best to keep Atres calm no matter what and see if we catch any premonitions of our own. Other than that, we get to know our new sister and her family. We wait for everyone to get to Harito and let ei lleidr bach recover.”
Rilgi takes Emlyn’s hand, “We know you lost your family, but Atres comes with a huge family, and we’d be pleased to welcome you into ours.”
Emlyn looks at Rilgi and tears up, “That is… so incredibly sweet.”
Henga comes around the table and hugs Emlyn. “I know it’s a lot to take in. You’ve gone from having just your grandfather and that pickle-brained bag of guts who sired you stuck in swords as your only family to having all of us, and a few more besides. I know that you’re upset about your mama and your younger siblings, but I think we’re an upgrade to your sire and older brothers.”
Emlyn, still teary, laughs, “That you are.”
“Not that being nicer than that is a high bar to cross or anything,” Henga laughs and nudges Emlyn, “Bask in it and be happy. Know that we love you. Once they get to know you, they’ll love you, too. Maybe that helps close up a bit of the hole in your heart, eh?”
Emlyn nods and leans into Henga.
“What do we know about this Divaros?” Usurg asks.
Swallowing Emlyn nods, returning to the business at hand, “It takes the shape of a blue dragon. It asks for unsullied girls. It’s terrorizing a village. It’s demanded twice the weight in gold of a girl if it can’t have a girl. It takes the girls or the gold and flies away with them. It’s not brought one back as yet. I don’t know if the village elders have asked it to, though. That’s really about it. I can add a few things to this that are less certain but highly probable. When I drew up my plans, Atres’s premonitions didn’t get any better until I flipped everything on its head and assumed that all my plans were wrong. If I assume that it’s not any of the things I planned for, it’s not a dragon, not a shapeshifter, not a mage of some kind, not an infernal, and not an elemental.”
Nodding, Henga grins, “Let’s make a list of everything that’s not those things and see where that takes us. That would be a deity, a celestial, a Fey, a construct, undead, some other creature, and… I can’t think of anything else.”
Emlyn grimaces, “I don’t want to face another angry god. Trust me, there’s no planning for that. I can’t see any celestial demanding unsullied girls. I think we can cross that one off the list. A construct is possible, but it would be controlled by something else. Anything undead would have to be cloaked in an illusion, so it would also likely be controlled by something else.”
Arching a brow at Atres, Oso shakes his head, “Another angry god? You do have your work cut out for you, keeping her alive.”
Crossing his arms, Oso looks at Emlyn, “How many angry gods have you faced?”
“Two… It wasn’t pretty, either time,” Emlyn replies.
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