Elske was the second of Orikka’s acolytes, originally an unaffiliated monk, a young holy man intending to meditate his way into the soul realm, resonate his soul along the ley lines of time itself. He constructed many prayer papers, thin white paper talismans covered in sacred arcane glyphs he had uncovered in his divine research. Though many gods boasted powers analogous, none provided what he seeked - a solution to death besides the immortality offered to gods and their associates. He was understandably resistant to becoming an acolyte, it was tantamount to renouncing his goal, his life work. However, Iseult deemed his work a viable line of research into creating an opening to the soul world, a possibility for opening a gate. And he was possibly the only living being that could perceive her. So Orikka reached out, breathing life into a passion that had stalled, revealing themselves and offering their support. Moribund was already a gate, and one that Elske hadn’t considered, having all this time been resistant to any sort of possibility of death. But to stay on the cusp. Upon his appointment, Orikka animated his work, Elske’s prayer papers assembling to form a magnificent set of wings, giving them meaning where before there had been none, to his delight.
Before Orikka had been only investigating the conception of gods, but at the prompting of Iseult and the ever haughty Elske, decided to investigate the moribund of every being. To do so they created a host of vultures, filling their deceased bodies with their own ghosts, caught in the moribund themselves, half way between life and death, looping eternally, as long as the calling persisted, to Iseult’s delight. She was ever fan of zombies, no matter the form. Not to be outdone, Elske insisted that he paint the feathers white with his time glyphs, reimaging their plumage in his image, emblazoning their feathers with hydrogen fire, crystal blue, almost clear flames consuming the prayer incense of the glyph drawings as they flew, leaving the smoky smell in their wake. They were a fearsome sight as they patrolled the skies, messengers of the gods.
Elske and Iseult had a brief power play, when Elske was first brought on. Adults were frequently off put when they found a teenager to be what was effectively their manager, in Iseult’s experience. And Elske was even more high minded than what Iseult privately thought was normal for an adult, especially given how close they were in age, him being only a few years older than herself mortal self. His snotty stipulations for the angels, what she had taken to calling their vulture flock, was one such example of his attempts to insert himself whenever he thought Iseult’s contributions to the project were going too well. ‘Orikka is a god, it’s only appropriate that their acolytes have the same marks as they personally blessed me with.’ She had to physically bite down on her tongue to keep from replying. Someone had to be an adult. So arrogant.
The alterations offered nothing as far as Iseult could tell, but seemed to make him happy and keep him from working against the overarching goal, so she let him have his smug addition, rolling her eyes behind his back, her mouth moving in silent, sarcastic mockery of his words, her nose wrinkled. She would persist, she reminded herself, taking a deep steadying breath as Orikka asked once again about the utility of the white painted wings, having previously been unable to communicate the subtlety that was human interactions, as it required far too much human emotion for the god to comprehend. But Orikka trusted her judgment, and that confidence alone was enough for Iseult to bear the needling ‘help’ of Elske several times over.
Recently their research into the moribund had led them to discover a very striking uptick in rabbit deaths, their souls somehow not even making it to the moribund. ‘A rabbit god?’ Iseult had asked the angel, when she had been brought the news. The angel had not replied, the clever bird understanding the rhetorical nature of the question. She had made such a good decision, in their selection, she thought, proudly, stroking its feathered back, the heat of the clear flames at its wing tips warming her hand in the cool dawn of a new day. She had considered several different types of animals, but wings were a requirement for speed and visibility. The crow was obviously very clever, and roosters crowed at the moribund of day and night, owls could see well at night, but it was the vulture that spoke to her. A bird able to anticipate when death was close, half the job already built into the species. Elske had predictably argued with her choice, finally insisting on selecting only the most deserving of each species when his petitions for red crowned cranes were overruled, prompting them to host an extensive interview process headed by himself, of course.
A rabbit god would explain the consumption of the souls. And they had been seeing fewer and fewer rabbit souls. That was the part that surprised her and had her questioning the involvement of a god. They weren’t supposed to be able to perceive the soul world, and for the souls to perish while in the soulscape, independent of their previous mortal coil, seemed suspiciously like soul perception. A targeted attack on rabbit soulflesh. It was enough of an anomaly to call on Orikka’s expertise, she decided. She tidied her work space, staching censuses and population plots in their respective filing cabinets. Her quill, a gift from her most talented acolyte sisters, a magnificent king vulture called Shaia, made of one of her own flight feathers plucked prior to the white paint, was carefully tucked away, inside its custom bejazzled sheath. She would never tire of her preference for conventionally girly paraphernalia. She stacked it in the cover of her journal, a personal notebook filled with her own research notes, hypotheses and statistics alike filling its pink pages.
When they had begun this work as a more organized endeavor, her internship at the city planner being an invaluable experience in the benefits of administrative processes, she had strongly encouraged Orikka to find them a centralized location. Of course the god would take the most literal interpretation of her request, and promptly assembled a grand cloud palace. A large lenticular cloud, stitched together by the god from beautiful iridescent nacreous clouds, wrapping them in eddies around the largest mountain the god could find on the planet, to form a structure now several stacked stories high, each dealing with a different tier of godhood, books upon books dedicated to the moribund of each godly phylogeny. A great library in the sky.
The entire structure was organized around a grand spiraling staircase made of upward swept water in the center, each step alit with refractory brilliance, allowing a being to ascend all the way to a beautiful open air promenade on the top, easy access for the angels. The biome of the cloud was a mysterious thing, an entire lake's worth of icy water, filled with creatures made of water and light flitting in and out of the fluffy cloud walls.
The angels tended to lounge up on top of the cloud palace when off duty, their aviary filled with soothing lullabies played on enchanted harps gifted by Orikka. Apparently the angels had become music snobs in their off time. Everyone needs hobbies. Shaia however, was leading a small but growing counter culture favoring harp punk, to Iseult’s amusement, causing some discord amongst the ranks. She was such a rebel, Iseult thought fondly.
Iseult found Orikka visiting one of their eversleeping children, a mycelium god that had only recently succumbed to the allures of the everslumber. ‘Such a beautiful child,’ they murmured, as Iseult approached, stroking the trailing mycelium tresses of the god, a faint fluorescing of the strands following in the wake of their hands. The god had found rest deep in the loam of an ancient forest, a huge sprawling woods with massive trees, filled with mist, one that was favored by many gods, who often visited it as a sort of vacation destination. The god was cradled in the roots of a giant sequoia, a giant among the giants of the forest, possibly the largest tree Iseult had ever seen, its crown among the clouds. Iseult stood a respectful distance away, her feelings complicated. It was hard to feel too compassionate for gods, given the requirements for their birth, and the boundless power that came after, but at the same time, she could empathize with the exhaustion leading a being to choose forever sleep.
Her fathers younger sister had chosen to end her life. She had crumpled under the pressures of her mother’s demands for perfection. Her father, in comparison, had risen to the challenge. Mother and son had processed their grief very differently. Grandmother had succumb to grief, the knowledge that she had been the main factor in her daughter’s choice leading her to shut herself off from the world, whereas Gual had fallen into work, refusing to talk about his sister, not just to the press, which hounded him after the event, nor his family. If Iseult had been younger when it happened, she might have mistaken her father’s actions as disregard, but he had been so fond of his sister, so supportive of her as she kept on in politics, resilient in her efforts in a field that she clearly had no talent in. She wondered now, with time and distance from her own death, if the reason for his disdain had been his interpretation of her disinterest as giving in, throwing in the towel for the family profession without even making an effort. It wasn’t enough for her to forgive him for what followed after, but it did give some perspective.
‘Nobi,’ Iseult called out, when the god gave no indication they would be leaving any time soon. She had taken on the parental endearment with Orikka’s adoption of her as an acolyte, choosing a non-binary endearment rather than Mother, and the taste of the word Father still left a bitter feeling on her tongue. Elske still called the god Orikka, a subtle attempt to establish some sort of equality in their relationship, Iseult speculated. She might have called Orikka by their name as well, though not with the one-up-manship, but the option to finally have a caring parent was too much to not take advantage of. She felt a swell of warmth through her each time she used the word.
‘Nobi, we’ve found an oddity in the moribund ratios,’ she continued as the god turned to face her. Their face had become more refined, with more articulated features than the simple broadstroke human face they had originally taken, ‘have you ever heard of a rabbit hunting god?’ ‘A god hunter’ Orikka mused, ‘another besides the godeater?’ They had a dossier for each god they were aware of, including their abilities, haunts, affiliates, and known intergod relationships. They had previously had a roundtable discussion on Novem, the soul eater, debating the benefits of bringing him on as a consultant. Ultimately they had decided to table the issue, postponing it unless it was deemed more necessary. Orikka was loath to raise any alarm, and despite what might have been helpful information, gods were notorious gossips. But it seemed the issue might have to be revisited, if he was their only lead on the new soul killer.
