Small Gods Bring Big Problems... Maybe?

[ladyhawkca]

At Kerin's admission Lady Vivien frowned as a small scowl crossed her features. She didn't know how she felt about gods playing with people's destinies like that. Yes, she, herself, was an enchantress, and yes, she had used magic against others, but she had never bound anyone before .. at least not to the same degree that this young girl had been bound.

"The gods took your brother's soul so you could live, no?" she asked, guessing that there was some form of trickery involved.

[Sarang]

Kerin's eyes squinted at the last comment. She didn't like how it made her brother look. She quickly placed her goblet down. "Not the way it sounds." she said and leaned back, crossing her arms in front of her, closing herself off a bit, getting more guarded. But she still wanted to clear this up.

"I died, and he begged the gods to take his life to give me mine back." She paused. "The gods granted it. I died while protecting villagers and they found it a fair exchange to put me to work." The tone in her voice might have been a bit too obvious that she did not find it too fair. Even though she didn't say that.

[ladyhawkca]

"You mean they made you an eternal slave at the beck and whim of every villager within fifty miles," Lady Vivien pointed out.

"If they had really given you back your life back like your brother wanted, you'd be living it, not sitting in some shrine somewhere," she said, incensed with what happened to the girl. 

"Gods like to play with us humans, toy with us, see if we can kill or subjugate each other," she ranted, her pacing becoming faster, her skirts swishing along the hardwood as she moved.

Kerin's story had only added to Vivien's distaste of the clergy... she knew that logically her gods had nothing to do with what was happening in Connloath, that her gods were not the same assholes that were trying to stamp out magic users here, but somehow it all intertwined in Vivien's mind - gods and religion were the cause of both their plights.

[Sarang]

Kerin leaned back and for a long silent moment, she simply watched the other moment. She didn't read minds or anything, but she could bet there was quite a story behind that rant.

"More than fifty miles." she said dryly and canted her head. "You have quite a strong reaction to a story that isn't your own."

With a fluid motion, she rose from her seat halfway floating in the air and gently placed herself back on her feet. As Vivien paced back towards her she stepped into the way, interrupting the woman and maybe the spiral her mind went down, without touching her. "Why don't you breathe, and tell me what happened that got you so worked up?" Then she put on a smile. "It's my turn, so that's my question."

[ladyhawkca]

Vivien stopped her furious pacing when Kerin unexpectedly appeared in front of her and asked her to calm down. She stared at then at the god, very unsure whether she wanted to tell her story or not. But when Kerin insisted, pointing out that it was her question, Vivien relented, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

"Fine, I will answer your question," she stated as she sat down in her oak and leather highbacked chair and summonsed herself a new glass of wine.

"I honestly don't even know where to begin," she confessed with a tiny frown as she took a sip from her goblet and took a moment to herself.

"Connloath has become a hellscape for mages and magic users. A huge hypocritical hellscape run by a bunch  of power-hungry clergy that use magic to find magic users to "deal" them," she explained as she gripped her goblet.

"The clergy have ripped children away from their parents if the child is suspected of being a mage, forbidden mages to have children, forced mages to wear the symbol of the church of their clothes... marked them even," she told Kerin, disgust in her voice.

"And it has gotten worse over the years too, so much so that The House of DelaWyntr has had
to actively denounce magic users to save own kind," she grimaced.

[Sarang]

Kerin let go of Vivien's arms, dropping her hands at the sides of her body as she looked up to the woman, waiting for that story that put so much rage into her. When Vivien sat down, Kerin took a step back to her seat and climbed up, sitting on the top of the backrest, her feet on the armrests.

Well, for not knowing where to start Vivien had no idea getting really into it. The deity listened, partly fascinated that something like that even happened anywhere in the world, the other part disgusted that anything like that happened anywhere in the world.

"That is horrible." she said after a while of silence. "And you can't leave because you have to defend your family?" she tried to recall what Vivien had said at a moment when Kerin hadn't cared at all.