Welcome to Gaia! ::

For the longest time, the Guides of Avalon had known their God's face and voice. There had been no doubt in their hearts that when they pleaded for his intercession, Gwyn ap Nudd would answer, and acknowledge their long and faithful service. The Warrior with the Blackened Face for whom they collected souls would come, and the Guides would know they had done well. That they had fulfilled their roles as His helpers, and that one day their service might be rewarded. But this time, where Gwyn ap Nudd was a true and real force in the lives of His servants, had ended before the current Guide was even a mote in her mother's cellular structure, before she was even conceived of on the level of beauty quarks and atomic aberrations. Ravenna, the forty-fifth Guide of Avalon, had never had more from the escort of the grave than stony silence and a statue so black with ash that cleaning it only made it a slightly more respectable gray.

Still, she attended the rites. It was Duty, and there was nothing she understood better than Duty and Justice and Honor; all three demanded her presence in the altar room where the Guides honored their long-absent Lord. She lit votives and knelt and said prayers over folded hands. She heaped marigolds at the feet of his statue and cleaned it when she had time, which was rarely, for Avalon was overflowing with souls and her skills at intercession were needed more and more urgently with every passing hour. Where once her ancestors set aside entire days to honor Gwyn ap Nudd, she now could spare only hours, and even that might have been interrupted. The in-between place's faith was fading, and Ravenna held herself as the last bastion, and a poor one indeed. Her faith was no stronger than any other's, but for that she still honored the old ways and the ancient rites.

So on her appointed day, the woman whose power had held the island together when it had tried to sunder itself left the Court of the Good King and knelt at the foot of the soot-black statue. The altar room had been swept clean, the marigolds in their water laid out, and she held a match in her hands to light the proper candles. When it was done, she settled herself on her knees and clasped her hands together in her lap. Her sword hung heavy at her side, she shrugged to settle her tunic better about her shoulders, and she said, "My lord..."

For the first time in a very long time, she hesitated, and looked up to the face of the statue above her.

"Gwyn ap Nudd," she said, "Please. Our need is very dire. We are overflowing with souls, we are positively glutted, and my skills are sore tested." It was not her place to test the God of the Grave, but she had been faithful for so long. She asked only for that which had been promised, so long ago, that he take the souls of her world and that she know that her job had been done well and justly. And so in anger, for the first time since she was small and standing over her mother's shroud, she demanded, "Why do you never answer? How have we displeased you? Only tell me, and I will see it set arights, but please. We serve, my Lord, and you have been gone for so long!"

She expected no answer but the silence of the room, and for a time, that was all she had.

The altar room had once been public, but was now sacred only to the Good King and his helpmeet the Guide; she did not expect to hear another's voice, for the Good King but rarely left the castle fortress that looked over the slate-gray waves. It had never happened in Ravenna's memory, and that was quite a long thing. So when the voice sounded out behind her, calling her by name, she startled to her feet and spun, backing towards the statue of the God her family had sworn so long ago to serve. She stared at the man who had interrupted her prayers, not recognizing him for who he was until her gaze rested on the spear. It was a matter of legend to the Guides, and Ravenna didn't even need to consult the statue behind her to see that it was the same spear as that wielded by Gwyn ap Nudd. It was a matter of deep personal familiarity, and upon seeing it, she dropped the sword she hadn't realized she'd been holding and fell to her knees once more.

"My Lord," she said, the words a painful exaltation. It would be improper to look, but she couldn't help herself; she stared up at his face, at the gold-within-gold eyes, with childlike wonder that she hadn't felt since the first time she had entered the altar room. It had been centuries, the Guides of Avalon were not quite human and did not age like them. "I…"

She could see the dead as they flocked to him. The constant awareness in her mind and heart of every soul that she'd brought through to Avalon lessened some small amount, and if she had not known before, she would have known the God for who He was now. There was no experience she knew that could echo what she felt at the sight of the God she'd been sworn to since birth as the souls of her world flocked to him. "I and those before me have done the best we could, Lord," she said, bowing her head again. She repeated the simple, ages-old oath of the Guides: "We serve."

When no punishment, or even rancor, came her way, Ravenna lifted her head and sat back on her heels, staring up at the somewhat diminutive figure of Gwyn ap Nudd in what could be best described as awe. She only looked away when tears prickled at her eyes; her mother and then her mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother, they all had waited for the black-faced warrior to tell them that they had done well. It was she who heard it at last, and that meant more than she could say.

The feather-light not-even-touch of the legendary spear arrested Ravenna's breath in her lungs, and she lifted her head slowly. All the legends spoke of when the God had first chosen her bloodline to do His work among the people of Avalon, and to have such a thing echoed on her own person would probably make her name more than holding Avalon together through the Dark Time ever had. She rose when he allowed her to, bowing deeper than she had bowed to anyone in her life. "Certainly, my Lord," she said, and she put one hand over her heart in the ritual way. "My heart is too full for words."

She looked to the statue, and flushed a dull, embarrassed red. "I'm sorry, my Lord," she said. "We have not had the time to tend Your altar as we should have." But that was besides the point, wasn't it? It was time for the souls to finally move on from the land where Merlin's magic still burned bright. She had only been given cursory education in it, as the true face of the God was needed for it, and that had not happened for generations. "I've never done this before," she said honestly. "I look to you, my Lord, if that's… if that's alright."

She really couldn't help worrying, but she wouldn't bring the subject up again when Gwyn ap Nudd had told her it was of no consequence. Apparently he felt the call of duty as strongly as she did, for it wasn't even a moment after that command that they were leaving. She followed him: it was the use of the word we that made her certain it was alright, and as they progressed through the winding halls of the old Chapterhouse she had to repeatedly quell an excited smile. The servants who cared for the other Gods' altars stopped and stared; one of them who tended the altar of the Healing God out-and-out dropped a vase of flowers. Ravenna winced at that, but couldn't stop to help--her position as the Guide meant she was to do whatever her God asked of her.

They stepped outside the doors, into the fog-filtered sunlight, and Ravenna took a deep breath of the green-scented air. "Do you need the Standing Stones, my Lord," she asked, "I can show the way, if you would like."

Ravenna took the lead, then, uncertain as to whether she should actually turn her back on the God. It seemed very rude, but at the same time, they'd be going through the forest, and she didn't really know it so well she could avoid every root. Her desire to appear competent before Gwyn ap Nudd overcame her worry over proprieties; He didn't seem too focused on them, and she could probably risk this. She hopped over gnarled roots, half her mind preoccupied with the slow progression of spirits that the escort-to-the-grave was amassing behind her. While there was always a slight clustering of the dead around the Guide and the Good King, it was never anything like what Ankou was gathering behind her.

Here in the forest, there were few other living mortals; she still didn't talk, self-conscious of it. What could she tell Gwyn ap Nudd without sounding like a braggart? He knew of their centuries of faithful service and he knew about their dire need and she really needed nothing more than that to justify everything. "It's here," she said, squeezing between a forked tree's stumps and into an open clearing. Here, the fog gathered thickest, and a ring of tall stones reached towards the skies. Legend said that they'd been placed there at the command of the first Guide, so that no one could ever forget where their God had first appeared as if by magic.

She stopped near the middle of the ring, tugged self-consciously at the hem of her emerald-green tunic. "Is this what you needed? My Lord?"

At Gwyn ap Nudd's order, she vacated the circle. She stood uncertainly just outside it, bracketed by two stones twice taller than her own six feet; carved into the stone pillars were faces of old Kings and Guides, their hands in mudra poses--peace, acceptance, inner strength, the things that they'd all wished for. One day perhaps Ravenna would be added to the standing stones, but that was a long way off. She was young yet, with many centuries of service left within her.

It was her youth that gave her the energy to call every spirit to her, and the vigor that came with it kept her on her feet when she felt them all answer at once. Only a few times had she ever needed to call a small amount of spirits to her, and it wasn't a skill that she had truly needed to refine. It was lucky that she could call to them at all, she thought sourly--but once she was sure they had all heard, and that they were coming, she turned around to watch the God at His work. She hadn't ever even heard stories of what it was like to see the Escort of the Grave actually escort the souls they gathered. Izar, the last Guide to see him, was her eight times great grandmother. In the life spans of Guides, that meant many generations of humans, and many generations of souls.

"It is done, my Lord," she said, uncertainly, though she was sure he knew.

Ravenna couldn't help but watch, dark eyes widening when she saw the world within the Standing Stones shiver and split. Perhaps she should have turned away, or else averted her eyes, but she was the first Guide to see this in years and years--she wouldn't let it pass by without note or comment. Gwyn ap Nudd seemed unperturbed, and she supposed that was what made Him a God, and her nothing but a mortal--she barely noted the physical change to a being as tall as the stones, being distracted by the six wings spreading from the God's back.

That had never been part of the statue. She couldn't understand why they would have left such an important detail out, until the blue light overwhelmed everything and turned it all to shades of cerulean and aquamarine.

She slowly sank to her knees, fingernails digging into the curves of the carvings. Sometimes, when she truly despaired of her role, she had wondered why on earth her ancestors had accepted the championing of the Warrior of the Blackened Face. Seeing this, she could understand it more truly: the still figure, the spirits flowing to him... anyone would want to serve such a man. No one would dare reject a God with such traits.

Kneeling on the ground, leaning against one of the Standing Stones, she waited. She would wait as long as it took.

Ravenna knew the names of the souls that passed her, near the end. Some of them she had befriended; some of them she had guided from the world of the mortal men to this in-between place of mist and paths. When the ghosts of her mortal foster parents passed her, she reached out her hands to them in a final goodbye, and she had to look away for just a moment as the fisherman and his wife moved into the great beyond.

No Guide passed her on the way to the afterlife. She did not expect them to, for some reason; she hadn't had to bring her mother's soul here. Ravenna didn't pretend to know where any of them went, but assumed that there was a reason that she could find out... later, perhaps. The time passed in what seemed like a blink of an eye to her, and before too long she was waving goodbye to the final soul.

"Stay safe, sweet child," she said, because she was thinking of the ancient song. How long had it been, even, since Izar's demise and the disappearance of the God of the Grave?

When Gwyn ap Nudd emerged from the circle, Ravenna clambered to her feet. At some point her legs had fallen asleep, and the pins and needles were truly excruciating; but she'd done worse to herself before, especially when kneeling before the Good King. Court could take ages. "That was amazing," she breathed, and for the first time in her life she felt that she truly could breathe. There was no pressure in her mind from an overabundance of the dead. There was just the emptiness. It felt strange, like wearing shoes that were a few sizes too large, but not unwelcome.

"Thank you, my Lord," she said earnestly, "for coming, and for letting me observe."