…We what?
"Wait, slow down," I said, blinking. "What do you mean a latent Innishaean god?! What's a latent god, even? Are you making stuff up?"
"Why would I make stuff up," Gilded huffed. "I came all the way here! You can believe me or not; I don't care. I should have you pay a consultancy fee in crystals."
"We can get you crystals," Llewellyn said. "Now explain properly. How do you know all this?"
"My mother," Gilded said, "specializes in pre-System Innishaean Magic and magical… miscellanea. The gods and whatnot. She's got this whole controversial thesis—" He rubbed his face. "Look, I'm not an expert. However, I've absorbed some."
"Specializes how?" Llewellyn asked, picking up Lumos who'd been roaming around whining for attention, and hugging him close. Lumos wagged his tail and licked the tip of his nose.
"She's an academic," Tiernan said. "Dr. Ranleigh. You might have heard of her? She's the biggest, most controversial scholar alive focusing on Innishaean gods. Not to mention, the author of all these texts." He gestured at the table.
I blinked. "Wait, seriously?"
I took one of the books, skimming her biography.
"Can we skip the part where you're impressed by my mother and get to the part about why I'm here?" Gilded said.
"I thought you were an aristocrat or something," I said.
"Me?" Gilded said, scandalized. "Why would I— Wait, is it the clothes?"
Llewellyn's face was impassive. Even feverish, and with Lumos now curled up in his lap, he was quite a sight.
"What do you think?" he said.
"Well, I'm not," Gilded said. "How many nobles do you know who go about bringing people back from the dead?"
"Not a noble at all?" I asked. I really thought he was one. "What about your father?"
"He's a carpenter."
"…"
"…was that a double Jesus joke?" Llewellyn asked.
Tiernan and I both snorted.
"I hate you people," Gilded groaned, dropping his face on the table. "No, he really is a carpenter! Of luxury furniture, mostly, so I doubt Jesus would be impressed. I hate you all." Penguin chirped, patting Gilded's head with one of his flippers. "Except for Penguin."
Penguin chirped again, happily.
I reached out for the book we'd been looking at and turned it around to see the cover. It said, The Unbuilt Gods of Innishae, by Yuna Ranleigh.
"Unbuilt?" I asked, flipping through it.
"I really am too hungover for this," Gilded said, rubbing his face. "Can I have more coffee?"
***
"Let me step in and give you the basics," Tiernan said, when I came back with more coffee for everyone. "Gilded can correct me if I get something wrong."
Gilded waved his hand in agreement, burying his nose in his mug.
"Right," Tiernan said. "So. Dr. Ranleigh is brilliant, but very controversial. Her central thesis is that Innishaean gods are not characters the way other cultures' gods are. They have no biographies or genealogy. They're Magic. They coalesce and dissolve. Some commentators call this The Dissolving Pantheon, but I think Dr. Ranleigh's position is that she doesn't like the phrase—she thinks it defeats the purpose. Anyway, that's why Gilded used the word latent. There are no gods exactly… until they coalesce. Then they dissolve again."
He took a sip.
"When they coalesce, they often coalesce a full magical domain, too. I suspect this is what you walked into yesterday. That's why I suggested to call Gilded. In any case, this is a recent theory. The established scholarly tradition maps Innishaean deities onto Irish and Celtic ones, similarly to how Roman gods map to Greek gods. However, Dr. Ranleigh argues that that's ridiculous. Her—very controversial idea—is that, if anything, Innishaean gods map more closely to Tibetan Buddhist deity practice."
Well... That meant nothing to me.
"How is that different?" I asked.
"In Tibetan Buddhism, deities are not solid beings sitting somewhere. They are more like qualities that are real and alive when you work with them. People gave them names and iconography, and developed practices around them to be able to evoke or embody them. You want to cultivate compassion? You work with Avalokiteshvara. Clarity and truth? Manjushri. Enlightened rage? Vajrakilaya. And so on."
Through the bond, I could feel that Llewellyn seemed intrigued by this.
"Apparently, the old Innishaeans did the same thing independently. To be clear, Dr. Ranleigh's argument is not that Innishaean gods and Tibetan gods are the same gods in different hats. The mapping is loose. Her thesis is more that Magic tends toward certain shapes. And those shapes hold power."
I suddenly remembered what Gilded said while we were fighting against the bull artifact: "It doesn't matter if it's real. It matters what form it's based on."
"Exactly," Gilded said. "That is correct. That artifact was shaped like a bull and so it acted like a bull. You coalesce a god of the oceans, it will act like a god of the oceans. You coalesce a god of the deserts and it will act like a god of the deserts. And so on, and so forth. In fact, even your Living Magic. Same thing. If it's a shard, it acts like a shard—or whatever. If it's a pool of water, it acts like a pool of water."
"Alright," Llewellyn said. "I get your point. But why is this relevant here?"
"Because," Gilded said, taking the book again and finding the right page, before turning it back to us, "you coalesced Éisne. Or! Even more intriguing, actually. The System actively piloted you to a location where you could coalesce a latent god's domain."
I frowned.
"What's that, practically speaking?" Llewellyn asked.
"Who knows. It depends on the god. It's generally just a space affected by them."
I scanned the page briefly.
Éisne (from Old Irish éist, to hear/listen)—"the one who hears".
Hearing, compassion, welcome… Perceives suffering...
Speaks in Fourfold repetition…
Associated with Sacred waters…
Tibetan mapping: Maps very cleanly to Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin, Chenrezig)—the quality of perceiving/hearing the cries of the world. Often depicted as blue in oldest traditions, which suggests it might also map onto Bhaiṣajyaguru, or Medicine Buddha.
Well.
"Fine," Llewellyn said, impatient. "So what?"
Gilded shrugged. "It's a good blessing. I see they aren't lying when they say you're the System's favorite. You should probably do what Éisne said."
"That would be to drink the water," I pointed out.
"Then he should drink the water."
…Honestly. Was he serious?!
"You literally yelled at me for doing that only five minutes ago!"
"Because you didn't know what you were doing or whether it was dangerous! Fine, take that water out. Let me sense it."
I was starting to feel the same instinct to gnash my teeth I often got when moderating Llewellyn's forums.
I took one of the vials out of my inventory and placed it on the table.
Gilded scanned it quickly.
"Yeah, it's good," he said, sliding it toward Llewellyn. "You should drink it."
"…"
Well, at least I hadn't messed up so spectacularly that I'd made Llewellyn worse.
I rubbed my eyes. For a moment, the relief was so intense it made my muscles weak.
Llewellyn must have sensed something through the bond because he glanced over. Then he uncorked the bottle and drank it.
"That's it," Gilded said with a yawn. "Mystery solved. Can I go back to sleep?"
What did he mean, mystery solved. I wanted to know why Llewellyn was unstable in the first place and what that actually meant! What kind of instability were we talking about here? When had it started? Was it fine for him to keep fighting Distorted Realms?
Gilded might not know about any of that, but he could at least explain what this Éisne had to do with anything!
I was gearing up for an argument when through the bond Llewellyn's voice suddenly went—
"Ryo."
I looked up.
Penguin had been going through the book, flipping the pages by running over it, and he had now spotted something and was chirping excitedly.
Llewellyn was staring at it too. He looked up and his gaze caught mine.
I frowned.
I pulled the book closer and turned it around so I could read it. My eyes fell on the image of a man with a long beard, smiling, surrounded by flying baby dragons. The page read, "Caerwyn. From Caer (fortress/stronghold), and gwyn (white/blessed/fair). His name means 'Blessed shelter' or 'Sacred stronghold.' Caerwyn was the God of Flying. Later Christianized into St. Caerwyn."
Whoa. Wait. Holy shit.
Was this the guy of Gléonwon's temple?!