Burdens

It wasn’t just the existence of the Twin Gods and their followers that had Voah fired up since their arrival in Gra’akast. The symbols had just served as a constant reminder of the compounded pressure on her from her foreign extremist faith, her past trauma that defined her, recent feelings of inadequacy, the perpetual state of survival, the language barrier, and the fact that this city was so uninviting.

She thought back to the temple of the Muros and how different the experience had been. How she had expected to be pushed away from them at the time. Were they enemies of her faith? She hadn’t seen them use any magik. And nothing they had done had offended her Gods. That was before Vastad’s appearance, erasing all doubts of the existence of the Pillars. If Gods could be stricken from the worship of the Pillars, were new Gods allowed to join the the pantheon?

She regretted the way she spoke to Gonyaul and the comments she had made about kindness. She was hurt and drunk and she wanted to hurt back when normally she wouldn’t have said those things. After all, she definitely didn’t mean it, at least not to that extent.

Kindness could do so much. The Odsier had treated her kindly. And the children she had met here in the Holy City showed her unexpected kindness. But Voah knew that the kindness and innocence of children didn’t always survive the transitions of maturity and she believed it was naive to think kindness was a cure all. Sometimes people needed discipline, tough love, re-education, and punishment.

She was learning more about humility and getting to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of hatred. Shunned by society. But she knew her situation was not nearly as bad as it would have been in the old world, at least it hadn’t yet proved to be so.

If she had been a witch or had she worshiped a pagan God in Mizar, there was only one answer from the church; execution. Well… maybe torture first.

Where did magik come from? It couldn’t be that all magik came from devils and demons? The Odsier Bonecasters seemed to be born with the innate abilities. Was it forced on them? Cursed to them? Was it through family lineage? Or could magik just develop in someone, happening at any time? She had no experience with those circumstances.

Voah was curious to understand more about magik and more about these Twin Gods now that she knew their followers weren’t soul sucking sorcerers. It was her tendency to investigate first anyway before striking. Would she be striking? Vastad would have her destroy this entire city. But what good was a destroyed city for her survival? She recalled Gonyaul mentioning how the Pillars didn’t appreciate her. It did feel like that.

These burdens weighed heavy on her heart. Now she was seeing these people in dark robes being feared and hardly tolerated by the citizens as well. Her very nature demanded that she find out more about it so she followed them longer trying to get an understanding of who they were.