Whisper's Folly

Whisper was so close. The undergrowth, dense with years of vines and dirt was slowly giving way to her relentless determination. She knew that beneath this unremarkable place would be a chamber and inside, her prize. For the first time in as long as Whisper could remember, she let herself reflect on the difficult, unpleasant road that had led her to this moment. Her mind drifted as she worked her way towards her salvation.

It had all started the day she had found her grandmother's journal, hidden beneath an unassuming loose stone within the little house she shared with her mother. The journal which Whisper had long since deciphered, detailed her grandmother's life in service to the Goddess Eda and her quest to see Eda returned to this world. It was filled with strange rituals and unknown symbols. Throughout were stories of Old Gods and the Young Ones. An event known as The Uprising was clearly of paramount importance to Grandmother for how often it was referenced, as was the name Eda. At the time, age fourteen, it had all made so little sense to young Whisper and yet it had provided insight into the grandmother she had never known. She was utterly ensorcelled.

She had showed her mother the journal and asked what it all meant. Whisper's mother had waved it away as the rantings of a mad old woman. Her mother had never spoken favourably of Grandmother. Even at such as early age, Whisper had begun to see the truth. Grandmother had clearly been a woman of great importance. Whisper had always felt disdain for her mother's lack of ambition and talent. Content in her unremarkable life, in this unremarkable place. Whisper wasn't content at all.

Front to back, she had scoured the journal multiple times, memorising all it contained. Whisper had searched the house for anything of grandmother's that might shed light on she was and what it all meant. She found nothing. Whisper's village had no school, library or place of knowledge. The few folk of learning she found, usually travellers simply passing through, knew nothing. It became clear to her the world no longer remembered the Old Gods that Grandmother had wrote of. The term Young Ones meant nothing. There was only the Gods. She had long since come to discover that they were one and the same.

The years following the discovery of the journal were that of frustration. No answers to her questions, or even hints at where to look for such answers, were to be found. She knew her grandmother wrote the truth and that her work was important. She felt it deep inside. She knew she was the one to continue on her grandmother's path. Whisper was meant for great things. Unlike Mother.

Frustration had turned to hope and the promise of answers the day a travelling priest visited her village. From the priest Whisper learned of a great library inside the city of Forkstall that was said to possess the world's foremost knowledge of the Gods. With vague directions from the priest, she had set off almost immediately upon learning of its existence. She departed without any word of farewell to her mother.

The journey to the city was a coalescing blur of people, places, sights, and sounds. On the road she had joined travelling merchants, bands of soldiers, carnival folk, priests and wanderers plenty. Where possible, she kept to herself and did what she could to earn her keep to survive. Oftentimes she would be forced to scavenge or steal when there was no other choice. Hunger was her only constant companion. Unpleasant things happened on that journey she didn't care to think about. She grew to truly hate on that journey.

As difficult as that journey was, she had made it to Forkstall. The library was easy enough to find and as expected, they refused “the little beggar” entry. Those first few months in the city was much the same as the journey there. Rough, bouncing from group to group, living on the streets doing what she could to survive while she worked on a way to gain entry to the library.

In time Whisper had squirrelled away enough money to purchase fine clothes and pay the admission fee. Cleaned up, and wearing the preposterous outfits the scholars wore, she had gained entry. Whisper remembered liking the library, absent was the cacophony of sounds and smells of the city which housed it. Months were spent there pouring over the dusty tomes. She had begun her search amongst the most favoured of the pious works. She found no mention of Old Gods, Young Ones or Eda. Tome after tome she read but was treated to much of the same. Stories of what people thought of as the Gods, the current ones, and nothing more.

Whisper now knew it was Eda's hand that intervened to save her from endless frustration. One morning a distracted library cataloguer unknowingly dropped something off his cart when shuffling past. Nothing more than a feeling led her to pick up and investigate the dropped volume. She knew, by where the absent-minded cataloguer had taken the other works on his cart, this particular work was considered junk. This work was clearly very old and though she could only make out a few pages, it was there she found mention of a divine war.

No great discovery on its own but it gave her a thread to follow. She turned away from the so-called pious tomes that littered multiple sections and levels of the main chambers and towards the small, out of the way alcove devoted to works the priests spurned. In this section both apathy and time had taken its toil as many were damaged and illegible. Slowly, she found more and more references to the Young Ones and Old Gods. It was here that the symbols in grandmother's journal were given meaning. She learned of the seven Old Gods. At the head of the seven she had found Eda, Goddess of Life, The Mother, represented by a hawk taking flight.

Amongst these volumes she had discovered an account by a servant to some long-forgotten lord. It detailed how they took part in The Uprising. He wrote of how the many Young Gods rose up to challenge the fewer, more primal Old Gods. It had begun with the systematic slaughter of the Old Gods' priests and priestesses. The divine war had raged for months yet with their mortal arm removed, the Old Gods were weakened enough to eventually be imprisoned.

The Young Ones and their servants couldn't destroy the Old Gods. There only option was to imprison them within separate tombs that the Young Ones had built. They did so by imbuing their powers within a set of unique gemstones. Seven lords had been tasked with each safeguarding one of the gemstones, ensuring they stay far removed from the imprisoned Gods tombs as within each tombs chamber was the only place they could be destroyed. If a gemstone was destroyed the Old God would be released. Scribbled underneath the account was a further notation stating each gemstone could only be broken by a person who espoused similar traits to the God they sought to release. Therefore, knowledge of the gemstones and the potential they held must remain a tightly guarded secret. It had been in this moment that Whisper was certain she was destined to release Eda.

Whisper remembered laughing so hard she had cried. One of the merchants she had met on her travels carried a gemstone he called the Unbreakable Divine that fit the description of the gems used to entomb the Old Gods perfectly. An heirloom that had been in his family for generations. An emerald that couldn't be destroyed, “blessed by the Gods“ he would say. At each town and village he would call for any and all to try and break the gem with whatever means they could think of and yet none could do so. He used it to cause a stir and generate a crowd that he could ply his wares to. Whisper knew he visited the city each year, it would just be a matter of time.

That evening Eda visited her dreams. Whisper was shown the events of The Uprising. She felt Eda's pain and sadness at being betrayed. She felt Eda's pride for Whisper and the hope of rebirth. In that dream Eda had revealed the location of her tomb. Now nothing more than an overgrown hill and sense of direction to travel. It was enough.

Months passed waiting for the merchant to arrive back in the city. One morning, the merchant found her in her back alley-dive before she even knew he had returned. A vision had come to him in his dreams that had demanded he find her. The instructions were clear, he was to give her the gemstone in return for a blessing of endless fortune. The merchant thought one of the Gods had reached out to bless him, and Whisper knew he was right, in a way. Just not in the way, or by the God, he suspected.

Whisper had set out to find the tomb. She had no location, just divine knowledge of a direction to travel. The journey took her years, though how many she could not say. She had visited towns, villages and traversed all kinds of wilderness. Mostly uneventful, interspersed with moments of intense action. In the end she had made it to this place, and that was all that mattered.

Whisper's reminiscing faded. She returned focus to her task, hands occasionally palming the emerald stone tied around her neck. The afternoon sun waned as the final layers of dirt and debris parted to reveal splintered stone. She felt a cold gust of air rise from somewhere beneath her, followed by sounds of cracking. Stone began to shift and give way under her weight. She plummeted as the ceiling collapsed.

A raised stone platform slowed her descent enough to survive the fall to the chamber's floor. Barely conscious, she lay face down, choking on both blood and dust. Through blurred vision she could see shards of green lay scattered on the stone around her. The emerald had been shattered by the fall. It was hardly the heroic entry she had envisioned and yet the emerald had shattered. She was who she thought she was. Pride enveloped her.

Vision clearing and dust settling, Whisper collected herself, struggling to stand while ignoring the pain from what she suspected was several broken ribs. She knew from the visions what she would see. A hawk statuette resting atop a stone dais. She didn't know what to expect as Eda was freed but she had done it. Whisper, a nothing girl from a nothing village had brought Eda back to this world. Whisper's focus whipped to the dais.

She froze.

Time seemed to stop.

No hawk sat resplendent in the centre of the dais. In its place stood a jet black statuette of a raging bull. Whisper had memorised all seven of the Olds Gods. She knew immediately that the bull represented Orn, Old God of malice and ambition. In that instant Whisper's memories returned to engulf her. Events of her life suddenly shifted and took new meaning. The journal, the dropped book by the cataloguer, her and the merchant's visions, all the experiences that had shaped her to become who she was. All had been orchestrated by him. She had been moulded by him. All to bring her here, to this moment. Whisper wasn't who she thought she was at all. Pride turned to shame.

“I'm sorry mother”, Whisper managed to voice softly in the instant before Orn broke his ethereal chains and claimed her completely. Whether that was to her mother whom she had disdained and abandoned, or Eda, the mother she sought so hard to find in order to prove her worth, was left for Whisper alone to know.