“Daughter,” the Goddess begins, “They wanted to speak to you. To be sure that it was you who sent me. I’m so sorry, child. I didn’t mean to cause you more pain.”
“You didn’t,” Emlyn replies flatly, “He did. You’ve been everything that he should have been. Everything we were told that he was.”
“We will keep searching for the others,” the Goddess promises her, “All of the others. We won’t give up. Lugh checked his ledger, and their names are not in it. There is still hope in that.”
“There is,” Emlyn agrees, and tosses the book aside, “I’m sorry. I’m having trouble memorizing anything right now. Thank you for finding them. I wasn’t sure what would happen to them since we were technically godless at the time.”
“Surely you were approached by other deities,” the Goddess asks, “Could they have converted?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Emlyn shrugs, “but we never did manage to agree on any of the offers any of them made us. Too many of them were dark gods of vengeance and retribution, and it might have helped us in the short term, but they all wanted binding oaths that would have tied us to them, even after death. There were a couple of war gods that we seriously considered, but none of us really wanted an afterlife of constant battle.”
“Do you remember any of their names?”
“I can tell you the ones I can remember, but there were so many… Alecto, Seth, Sotar, Vali, Geenta, Brika, Edmus, Tades, Ehsu, Fenrir, Ardon, Ophon, Bellona, Idros, Ares, Agen, Junga, Zouros, Bast, and Odin all came to see us. There were many others, though. Many from pantheons we’d never even heard of. If a god of something besides murder, vengeance, or war had come to see us, we might have accepted them, but none ever did. In some ways, the war gods were the creepiest of the lot. They all said or did something that made us suspect that they were going to try to arrange for us to die in battle so that we’d be trapped in their afterlife.”
“No wonder you have such a dim view of deities,” the Goddess replies, “Look at how you’ve been dealt with by the ones you’ve encountered. I begin to understand the truth of your statement to Lugh about your hair braid. We must seem like a bunch of inbred lunatics to you.”
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“I suppose he told you about the first time I met him,” Emlyn sighs, “In my defense, I was having a particularly rough day that day.”
“Tell me about it,” the Goddess encourages her.
“Rigan had just ranted at us. Then we made a pact with a necromancer who was afraid of Rigan. He put us on the Soul’s Path, but that’s where his help ended. He didn’t want to have to face Lugh any more than he wanted to face Rigan. I had to bury two of my childhood friends on the Path. Then we get there and he’s yelling at the Guardians, wanting to know why living people are in his Hall of Judgement. I’m afraid I'd rather lost control of myself after all that.”
“Oh, child,” the Goddess sighs, “I can see why. Tough day indeed., But you said the first time you met him? Have you run into him since then?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Emlyn says, “but I could have sworn I ran into him here in the temple, walking in the hallway. I think… I think he blessed me again.”
“I know that you have found favor with him,” the Goddess says, “You seem to have amused him greatly. He’s taken to calling your former patron 'that nutter' or 'that jackass' and flatly refuses to use his name because he says naming him gives him power. I don’t think he means any harm to you, but he shouldn’t be coming into my Temple, even to bless you, without my knowledge. We have rules around that sort of thing.”
“It might only have been a priest that looked like him,” Emlyn shrugs, “I thought it was odd to see another god in your Temple.”
“Tell me everything,” the Goddess directs.
“There isn’t really much to tell,” Emlyn says, “I was moping a bit because I’ve been having so much trouble with everything – walking, tying my shoes, that sort of thing. I was leaning against the wall to try to regain my strength and balance, not really paying attention to the people passing by in the hallway. He was walking along, chatting with someone else, and broke off. He came up to me and smiled. Called me a poor thing and blessed me. I didn’t see the color of it, so I couldn’t say for sure if it was him or not. Then he went back to chatting with the other fellow that was with him, and they both wandered off before I could even thank him.”
“Did you see what this other person looked like?” the Goddess asks.
“Yes, I saw him plain enough,” Emlyn says, “I didn’t recognize him, though. He was tall and a bit on the thin side, but wiry, suggesting he was strong despite his slender build. His hair was dark and curly and quite long. His eyes were dark too, and he was dressed in leather like he’d been fighting a lot or travelling hard. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t seem… unfriendly. He said something strange, though. The dark-haired man said that he couldn’t bless me more than I already had been.”
“Hold still,” the Goddess says, “I need to see what you saw.” Placing her hands on either side of Emlyn’s head, the Goddess directs her memories back to the hallway. “Neit and Lugh,” the Goddess growls, “If they weren’t my friends, I’d have their hides for this. Sneaking into my temple…”
"They didn’t hurt me,” Emlyn protests, attempting to placate the Goddess.
“You’ve already been through enough at the hands of the gods. And I can’t allow them to go romping around my temples whenever the mood strikes them, either.” Sensing Emlyn’s distress, “You have done nothing wrong, daughter. It seems that the two of them favor you enough to come here in person. Still, I must go ask them what in the name of Nuada that they think they’re doing.”