Irmina smiled. Bodo was one of few she ever heard speak of her master in anything close to affection. Most others simply cowered. “He doesn’t know yet. That’s to be part of my message. I fear the rest isn’t so pleasing.”
“Well, considering if your wearing a Raijin uniform when you haven’t graduated yet is to be considered ‘pleasing’, I cannot imagine what other ill tidings you bear.”
She told Bodo about the little she discovered about Ryne, before she gave him the news of the attack on Ranoda by the shadeling army and Amuni’s Children. Herald Bodo handled it well, nodding and grunting while stroking his forked beard. When she relayed her rescue by Tae and the message the old woman wanted her to deliver to their master, Herald Bodo’s face paled. He paced back and forth across his message map, his robes swishing through the replicas in colorful swirls as if they didn’t exist.
“May Ilumni help us all,” he uttered when she finished.
“I understand shadeling creation shouldn’t be possible in Denestia, and the chance of one among them being as strong as a High Ashishin is daunting for sure. But we should be able to handle this if we act now,” Irmina insisted.
Herald Bodo paused for a moment, listened, shook his head then continued pacing and muttering to himself.
“Bodo?”
“You don’t understand just how dire our situation is, do you?” He stopped pacing for a moment before he began again.
“Actually, I think I do, after all she told me. Why else would she have risked Materialization to get me here so fast?”
The Herald paused again at the mention of Tae’s Materialization Forge. His mutterings grew more pronounced. “You’re the closest we have to this situation. I would risk telling you, but not without our master’s permission. A moment, if you will.” He stepped onto the path built around the map.
Irmina embraced her Matersense. As if a fog lifted before her eyes, all around her came alive with new clarity. The walls of the Bastion thrummed with essences so bright she squinted. On the message map itself, essences matching those that made up the actual cities filled their ethereal counterparts. Mater flowed from point to point like blood running through veins. And Herald Bodo manipulated them all.
The Forging he made was so complex she lost track of the strings of essences in their intricacy. As usual, her own power surged within her, begging for release. Already within the Eye, she ignored it. Control was hers, and she wouldn’t relinquish her hold. The scale of Bodo’s Forging built to incomprehensible proportions. Irmina felt her bonds begin to weaken, and her resolve grew tenuous. Before she could lose control, she cut off her Matersense. Everything faded to a pale, washed out version of what she’d witnessed, and the essences vanished.
Bodo’s ragged gasps made Irmina look toward the man. “What was that all about? Do you need to use that much power for a message?”
“No,” Bodo said, still breathing heavily. “But in order to hide this particular message, it had to be done. No one can see what I sent except Jerem.”
“What now?”
“We wait. His answer-” Bodo paused, his eyes trained on the map. “Ah, permission has been granted.”
Irmina frowned. What could be so important all of this needed to be done?
Bodo paced back and forth again.“Where to start? Where to start?” he said to himself.
Irmina swallowed. “He wants me to get rid of the Raijin uniform doesn't he?”
“Actually, no. He didn't bother with that.”
“He didn't?” Irmina gave a slight shake of her head. Her work entailed the use of many a disguise, but anything above a Devout's garb, from Raijin to Exalted, was expressly forbidden and punishable by a pain penance at the very least.
Bodo stopped pacing. “Ah. What do you know of the Eztezians?”
“History was never my area of expertise, Bodo.”
“Still what do you remember from your schooling.”
Irmina shrugged. “They were the appointed Guardians of Denestia responsible for sealing the gods in the Nether. The very same gods that appointed them. Later, driven insane by their own power, they fought against each other and brought about the Great Divide in which they almost destroyed the world. What do they have to do with anything? They’re long dead.”
Bodo’s eyes twinkled, and he gave her a knowing smile. “Therein is your first mistake. Not all the Eztezians are dead. And they weren’t just the Guardians of Denestia. They were the direct descendants of our so called gods and also their Battleguards.”
Irmina tried to grasp the concept of humans being the gods’ Battleguards. “So you’re telling me every scholar, every book, every school, every story about the Eztezians’ existence are all wrong?”
“Not wrong, but purposefully misguiding. Do you know how the Eztezians sealed the gods?”
“They used some kind of powerful divyas. There are no real records of the divyas’ creation or their names. At least not that I’ve seen.”
“Well yes, but the divya were people. The Eztezians themselves were the divya.”
Irmina stared in disbelief. “How’s that possible?”
“By use of Etchings. Our gods were created in the Nether, out of the bodies of netherlings by the One God. The netherlings-”
“The same netherlings which were later used to help create the first shadelings?”
“Precisely so. And they never forgave the gods for such misuse, for the destruction of millions of their kind to create the armies of the shade. The gods warred among each other using these forces. Until the netherlings decided to rebel. They used their control over Mater in its most primal state to bestow power comparable to the gods unto the Eztezians. Many of the Eztezians themselves had grown weary of the constant war and the destruction of all they’d grown to love about the worlds. So, they allowed the netherlings to Etch this power into their core. On the very strongest of the Eztezians, the Etchings also included the seals. With surprise on their side, they betrayed their forefathers and trapped the gods in the Nether.”
“How do the Etchings work?”
“No one really knows. There’s no record to be found of exactly what they looked like or what they did. All we know are some of the results. Of course, they were those among the netherlings who didn’t agree because they too reaped benefits from the constant death and destruction of the wars.”
“What could one gain from all that death?”
Bodo raised his brows. “Why sela of course. Forged the right way, sela can be a source of near immortality. I know you’re thinking no one can Forge sela. The truth is, it can be done. But in order to reap the rewards, a living being has to die. The more death, the more sela gained. So for the sake of eternal youth, we became fodder. Bred and raised to die.”
Irmina cringed at the idea of being bred like cattle. “Is that what the Tribunal does and others like yourself to live as long as you do?” Maybe Bodo would give her the answer Taeria wouldn’t.
“The Tribunal, yes. Me, no. There are other, safer ways now.”
“Yes. I stumbled upon one,” Irmina admitted, now convinced of what the Eldanhill Council and Setian’s old leaders did. “Using kinai products to feed the masses then leeching Mater from them to halt aging.” She ached to tell someone, anyone, how she knew. The revelation and the side effects of the process had been her parents’ work. They’d died because they believed it was unjust and wished to expose the Tribunal. The Dorns had issued the execution order. Irmina took a deep breath, forcing the sudden wave of heat deep inside the Eye.
“…simple way to put a complex process, but yes, in short that is how it works,” Bodo finished.
Irmina needed to change the subject. “If the Eztezians aren’t dead, what happened to them?”