The significance of faith

Felfar. Now that was something Alexis hadn’t heard about in quite a while. From what she knew, that drug had been much to blame for the rise of the Creed.
It let the consumer fall into a deep sleep and sometimes experience visions of supposed divinity. Was highly addictive, too.

Not even Nicolaus had so far been able to deduce how exactly that stuff worked. It was perfectly possible that it simply caused hallucinations, fed by one’s thoughts and beliefs, both conscious and subconscious.
By now it wasn’t too strange a thought for her anymore that the substance might be capable to make a person’s mind susceptible to the whisperings of external influences. Maybe human. Maybe not.

Was it strange that even when she accepted that it might enable the communion with the gods she still felt no temptation to taste it herself? The thought alone woke a strong feeling of repulsion within her, to just let her guard down like that and offer up her inner most being to whatever force happened to come along and choose to take advantage.
Such access, in her mind, was to be very carefully chosen to grant.

If she was perfectly honest, she couldn’t even say who she would hope to meet in a Felfar induced dream. Prior to coming to Arcadia she might have named Vastad, but… even he did not really represent what drove her. War was nothing to be coveted. At its core, it was nothing more than the clashing of desires, be it for riches and resources or to prove superiority, of one’s own capabilities or the gods one happened to worship. Justice was a fickle thing. And a quite subjective one at that. And in the end, given the choice, she’d rather raise her shield to defend a life than her sword to end one.

Among the things she had been learning about herself during her stay here was that she may acknowledge the Pillars, belief in them, pay them due respects, but she didn’t venerate them. Not truly. To believe in them had always been a given. A habit, if she were to put it particularly blasphemous. Aside from church attendance and certain rituals or festivities however, their impact in her everyday life had been very little. Her decisions had always been more driven by circumstances, personal values and significant people. She would be hard pressed to name an occasion where she would have kneeled down, prayed and hoped for divine guidance to move forward.

Coming to the end of her musings, she realized Tar hadn’t answered her question, at least not completely.

“That would explain why you would come to the Fang, but not how you got involved with a nearly forgotten deity. One would think that it would have brought you into contact with… Noraura? Was that the name?… before anything else. So why Fosia? It sounded like your dream was more about Fang in general.”