Teller of Fate
Second Movement: The Last Templar
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
The Templar detected a Portal much closer than the one he had arrived through. On his way, he updated Abram on his progress. The Archivist wasn’t surprised at his lack of success but did question the Telling.
He wanted to know what their timeline was like. The Templar confessed he hadn’t asked.
They discussed the deaths of worlds. The news there was a bit better. The deaths of worlds in the last decade had been grim, but only three worlds had died in the last year. After four centuries of ever accelerating mega-genocides, the slaughter had been all but stopped. Abram and the Templar speculated as to why and came away more worried than before.
Fatalidad’s claim as to the overall number, Abram confirmed. At the time, the Hermetists had thought an unknown Syrat might have had something to do with it, but the Teller’s clues and their own musings confirmed the truth in their minds.
The Wanderer in the Wastes was indeed behind the plan to free the White God. It had been feeding the monster caged in the Mother Lodge.
If the Syrat was a bandage, that meant the cure had to be something of the same kind but more potent.
Abram signed off on their mental chat by chuckling at the Templar’s predicament—finding on which of the infinite number of Oerth analogues the Incunabulum was.
The Templar had a notion that he could shorten his search for the Incunabulum if he used a Syrat to prune the possibilities down. That also might give him the identity of the Thirteenth Teller. So, he decided to continue visiting Tellers.
Apart from Abram, all the rest of the known Tellers were elves living or currently visiting Elven Convocation Aions. In theory, those artificial continua could only be accessed by elves. That didn’t present a practical problem for the Templar but might cause a diplomatic one.
Again, the last free Templar had run up against a problem he’d never had to consider in the days of his power.
In the end, there was nothing else for it. He’d never be able to disguise his nature from one of the Æs Sidhe, so there was no point trying.
The Templar would do things by the front door and hope the urgency of his quest would sway at least one Teller.
* * *
The Aions of the Elven Convocation were as diverse as the forms of the Elves themselves.
One was dominated by coloured fire, blowing in variable rivers through a sky that had no end. The elves lived in cities floating along the currents.
Another was liquid water that was somehow an infinite glowing web in an iridescent blue sky. Houses like cradles hung from the stiff yet warm flows of the water strands.
There was a dark, dark world that was mostly rock, and the elves lived in tunnels and caves. These elves were black as night with glowing eyes and silver hair.
One world was entirely a flat, grey plain under a white sky. The homes were simple shapes: cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders. It seemed to have no colour. Its very austerity was beautiful.
In almost two years UT, Nameless visited just seven Convocation Aions.
It was difficult to get into some of them, but most of his delay was due to the curiosity of his hosts.
The elves lived exceptionally long lives and kept much better records of the times of the Shining Empire than anyone other than the Hermetists, who owed much of their knowledge to their Elven cousins.
They were anxious to add as much to their firsthand knowledge as they could. He was invited to any number of gatherings, social and otherwise, and politely plied with questions in return for every sort of pleasure and diversion they could devise.
So skillful were they that they managed to keep him from his object—for months in some cases.
One by one, though, he did get his meeting. One by one he was met with polite refusal. They knew the danger. They were concerned for the peoples of the Thirty Aions. They were not directly threatened, though. In the end, that weighed most for the Tellers he met.
The Templar was beginning to think his quest was hopeless when he finally found a Teller interested in the worlds beyond her own.
That Teller was his daughter, the Seanduine now fully Fæ and living in the Aion Ælfen. Nameless informed Abram that he’d found the thirteenth Syrat and its Teller, again omitting the crucial detail about her identity. By his tone, the Archivist seemed to know more than he should about her but didn’t comment on it. He just wished the Templar luck.
* * *
It was in the year her youngest child was born that Dævara first met her father formally.
The day was mild, as all the days in Ælfen were. She sat in the study so beloved of her: that of her adoptive father Tathar. Her daughter, Gillaeril, not quite six months old, was cradled in her arms, mouth sucking on her left breast.
Her eyes, scarlet like her mother’s though without the flecks of gold, were closed. Gil’s skin was a pale shimmery blue, an inheritance of her father.
The infant’s hand curled and uncurled on the upper slope of Dæv’s breast, tiny nails tickling.
The powerful sucking of the infant on her nipple made her vulva tingle; she became slightly wet. This happened often and she always enjoyed it. One of her lovers was in for a treat this even. She’d decide whom later; that was part of the fun.
Dævara’s blouse, a silk of pale violet, was billowy and loose at the collar and upper arms. A single tie, now undone, supplied easy access to her little one whenever she hungered. Her skirt matched the blouse in colour and in material; its pleats ending just above her ankles. Her bare feet were curled under her on the couch.
The old man himself was absent from his usual seat. One of his mates had called him away with a story of a stranger arrived in Ælfen.
He had seemed troubled, though not overly. Dævara hadn’t concerned herself.
When his absence had stretched to half an hour though, she began to wonder. After Gillaeril was sated and burped, she went to place her in the small room off the hall deeper in the dwelling, under the care of a nurse.
She decided to seek out this new stranger.
She re-entered the study, blouse still open, to see that the stranger had come to her.
An unaccustomed modesty overcame her. She tied the silk blouse closed before engaging the stranger.
Tathar was with him just within the entranceway, standing to one side.
At first glance, Dævara took him for an elf as none but elves could come to any Convocation world. However, she saw in him something Other. Not an elf, then. Another type of Fæ, perhaps.
He was her height and slender. His eyes were black-on-black; the dark ringlets of his hair just brushed the collar of his white shirt. His trousers were also black and tucked into knee-length boots of worn black leather.
There was something about his face. The lower part protruded a bit farther than his nose and his mouth seemed too wide.
Tathar spoke first. “Dævara Tatharsdottir, Teller of Fate, this is our guest, a Magus of the Golden Temple.”
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved
