Page 38 of Compass Points
“Tough love, Arie.”
“Just…”He sighed.“Maybe listen to the boy on this one. He seems to keep an eye on you.”
“Hmph,” Rose grunted. “Anything else?”
Arie looked out over the lake.“It seems so peaceful, doesn’t it? Even with all the magic here?”
Rose wasn’t sure what Arie was getting at, but she nodded. The lake was peaceful.
“Compass Lake is where the Covenant was made. It’s where the Flood waters receded, and the gods created the fae.”
“That’s just legend, Arie,” Rose said. “It’s convenient so that things like the Refilling Ceremony make sense.”
“I assure you, it’s quite true,”Arie said.“By setting up the Compass Points here, at the origin point, the gods promised no further acts of destruction as long as the Compass Points helped preserve the balance. It seems we might be teetering away from that promise.”He flapped a wing out toward the water.“Makes it seem a little more deadly and a little less beautiful, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head at the topic change. “It makes you wonder how long we have before the gods decide that we’ve failed at keeping the balance and have to enact more destruction.”
“Is he talking about the Lake?” Luc asked.
Rose nodded. “The Covenant. The promise it represents, the balance it seeks to keep.”
“I’m not sure about the balance if the Osten god, Zrak, had to sacrifice himself,” Luc commented.
“That’s debatable,”Arie answered, even though he wouldn’t speak to Luc directly.
“Arie, if you’re going to respond to Luc, you should make sure he can hear you.”
Arie ruffled his feathers.
“Fine. He says that’s debatable,” Rose translated.
“Many believe that the gods had driven the continent so far off balance with their greed that it wasn’t enough for them to give part of their power to create the fae courts. They also had to make a sacrifice, one of themselves,”Arie said to Rose.
Luc considered this as Rose repeated it to him.
“If that were the case, I’d be angry if I were Zrak now.” Luc looked around. “He sacrificed himself, and yet we still end up back in the same situation.”
Rose couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of the story her parents used to tell her as a child. “You know, Luc, you’ve got a point.” She started pacing the lake shore as a thread twisted in her head. Trying to organize her thoughts, she began. “Everyone wants to blame you for the current plague of mists.” Rose gestured to Luc. “The natural one to blame, though, would be the Osten.”
Luc raised an eyebrow and asked, “Why do you say that?”
“The mist moves and feels like the Osten’s wind magic.”
His eyes narrowed like he didn’t quite know what to make of this.
“It’s also particularly focused on calling out the Suden Point.” Rose was on dangerous territory now, but she knew there was something here, and she needed to try and think it through out loud. Trusting Luc had to start somewhere, maybe she could test this theory and see how much he pressed.
“Didn’t Zrak hate Aterra?” Rose asked no one in particular.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The resounding affirmative came from both Luc and Arie.
“Is your theory that the mist is somehow related to the Osten power?”
Rose shrugged. “Related to the Osten power, possibly is the Osten power?” She returned her gaze to Luc’s as she spoke the words she hadn’t entirely known how to say. “What’s to say that the lost god isn’t quite as lost as we think?”
