Chapter 479 – Blessing

Sophia shook her head. “Not if everything we’ve been told is right. I’m not even sure how much of an effect it will have, really; you didn’t have any more trouble with the broken conduits than I did.”

“Maybe a little more trouble,” Dav said with a frown. “The conduits do help, even when they’re broken, because they give me a safe place to look.”

“A Blessing is shaped by both parties,” the Prelate added. “The largest caution is that it is shaped by who you are today, and we all change. It is possible but difficult to remove a Blessing, but even if you do, you may not be the person you were before. If you wish, I can guide you through the process; it is usually performed with the assistance of another in any case, and that is a role I would be happy to fulfill for you.”

Sophia turned towards Dav. It felt a little intimidating, almost like she was getting married, yet she’d started this almost as a whim. They hadn’t really talked about marriage, either, so she didn’t actually know what he expected. “Are you ... I mean, I’m not pushing you into this, am I?”

“I don’t mind.” Dav set a hand on Sophia’s shoulder and gave her a soft smile. “And it’s not just because this will help me get home. I care for you. I want to spend my life with you.”

He paused, clearly thinking about how to say what he wanted to say. “That’s enough of a reason, I think. I know … I know things are going to change when we get home, when we make our new home, wherever it is, and I’m looking forward to that. That is, assuming you want to?”

Sophia winced at the lack of certainty in Dav’s voice. She couldn’t think of anything she’d done to make him wonder if she wanted him or not, but maybe that was the problem; she’d never said anything either way, the same way as he’d just talked around the simplest way to say what he meant. “I do. I love you, Dav. I didn’t mean to make you doubt that.”

She leaned into him and relaxed a little as his arm moved from her shoulder across her back and down to her side. “I don’t know why I haven’t said that. I just … It just never seemed like the right time. I wanted to be careful and then I think I just thought you knew.”

“I thought so,” Dav admitted. “I was pretty sure, even. But you never said and I didn’t want to push you and it’s not like we could really do anything about it anyway. I … we really shouldn’t do anything permanent until we’re home. I want my family there for anything and I want to know that we’re still good together when we’re not always traveling. I mean, I’m sure we will be, it’s just…”

Sophia chuckled. “Dav, did you just ask me to marry you?”

“Uh, maybe? I mean, uh, will you marry me? When we’re back home and, well, everything?” Dav stammered as he spoke. He sounded far less composed than he usually did.

Sophia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Of course I will.”

Dav’s other arm moved around Sophia and enveloped her in a real hug. She hugged him back and tried to keep herself in the moment. She could worry about what a disaster the wedding would probably be later.

They stayed like that for at least a minute, until a cough from the Prelate reminded them that they weren’t in private. Sophia blushed and pulled back as Dav dropped his hug and turned towards the lightning ibis. Sophia couldn’t see a blush on Dav’s face, but the sheer blankness of his expression said that he was hiding some sort of reaction.

“Ah, so, a Blessing,” Sophia stammered. “What do I need to do? It sounded like it was easy, but I’m not sure where to begin.” Did she kiss him first or did she try to trigger the blessing and then kiss him? Surely there had to be more to it; if there wasn’t, she didn’t know how she hadn’t already handed out a Blessing and she had no idea how it would have been lost to the Suras.

“It is easy,” Prelate Varthas agreed, “Though it is not as straightforward as most say; you have to follow the forms if you want it to work properly. That is why most who give a Blessing come to one of the Temples; we can guide you through the process. Are you ready now or do you wish to wait? A Blessing does not take long, and I’ll be happy to guide you through it whenever you like as long as you want the simple form. There are longer versions, but they are usually combined with other rites, such as joining a Clan.”

Sophia blinked as she translated the Prelate’s words into her own vernacular: the Blessing was a ritual! That made all sorts of sense; it explained why it didn’t happen when it wasn’t meant to and how the Suras could lose the knowledge. It was entirely possible, even likely, that the Suras hadn’t completely lost it; simply because something was forbidden didn’t mean it wasn’t practiced. Having it be forbidden would explain why she didn’t know about it, because anyone who did still practice it would hide it.

Almost anything could be a ritual if it was formulaic enough. If Sophia was right about Blessings being an innate part of the Asuryan peoples, both Archon and Suras, then the Blessing ritual probably started as a way to formalize the Blessing and make it more reliable. 

Many spells worked that way; they could be empowered or simplified by adding ritual elements. It was the reason so many mages gestured or chanted as they cast; the ritual elements made it easier to cast the desired spell. It also made it far harder to figure out what the important pieces were, because the mage wasn’t consciously performing the spell, simply the ritual. Sophia wasn’t trained in that sort of spellcasting; she was trained to actually build the spellform instead, with just enough knowledge of rituals to be competent if they came up.

“I don’t see any reason to wait,” Sophia answered before the silence stretched too long. “Dav?”

Dav grinned and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

“Very good.” The Prelate tapped Sophia’s side with a wing made of lightning. “You. Sophia. Stand behind Dav. This is not an exchange of Blessings, where the two participants face each other. You will be granting the Blessing, so you need to be behind him. Hm. I do not have an appropriate perch for you; you will need to stand, and given your heights, that means Dav needs to sit. That chair should work.”

Sophia followed the movement of Prelate Varthas’s wing towards a comfortable-looking but armless padded chair. She walked over to it, then turned it so that Dav could sit in it facing Varthas before she moved behind him.

“Set your hands on his shoulders,” the Prelate directed. “Good. Now, both of you have talked about the Blessing, yes?”

He paused. When neither of them answered his apparently rhetorical question, he clarified. “You’re supposed to answer.”

“Yes,” Sophia answered obediently. Dav echoed her agreement a second behind her.

“Good. Now, Sophia, think of what you have offered. Dav, think of what you will gain. Both of you, consider what this means for you and your relationship. You are becoming family, tied together by bonds of Blessing.” The Prelate paused. This time, he allowed them to stay silent for a long moment, clearly intending the pause to give them time to consider the Blessing itself and what it was going to mean for them.

Sophia had to wrangle her thoughts back where they belonged. She didn’t need to be analyzing the ritual; she needed to perform it, which meant she needed to think about the Blessing she was giving. She’d called it “protection from the Origin,” but it was far more than that. 

Yes, she wanted Dav to be able to walk safely in the Origin, the same way she could, without risk to his sanity or his physical form. That was the effect she wanted, but it wasn’t the method. The method had to be granting him the same resistance she had as the child of an Arcane Dragon. For all that her father was an Asuryan Arcane Dragon, it wasn’t her Suras heritage she was trying to grant but that other piece, the one that helped her with her magic and sprang from the primordial chaos-turned-order that was the Origin. 

There were a lot of different definitions of the Origin. It was the source of many summoned creatures, eldritch or otherwise, and a dangerous pathway, but neither of those were its most important features as far as Sophia was concerned. To her, the Origin was magic in all forms, both the energy that was mana and the matter that was essence; entire universes touched on the Origin at all times. Many spells used that fact and reached into the Origin for one reason or another; Sophia was fairly confident that her Hoard was stored in the Origin, even though there was no way to be certain. 

It was its own place with its own rules and those rules were not the same as the normal universe. It was beautiful and impressive, as long as you accepted it for what it was and did not try to comprehend it using the normal universe’s rules. It was also necessary to be yourself if you stepped into the Origin; if you let it grab your attention, that was when it could twist you in mind and body. 

For Sophia, that was easy; every bit of herself was who and what she was because she was quite literally made of magic, aligned with her Affinity the same way a dragon was.

That was the gift she wanted to Bless Dav with. Arcane was the best Affinity, obviously, but that didn’t have to be the one he aligned with as long as it was something that worked with the Origin. The Eldritch Affinity that was the root of his Sphere was also a reasonable choice, though she didn’t know what aligning with it would do to him. It might be nothing; he’d taken control of it with his Grand Talent in a way she hadn’t expected. 

He’d also pushed it away from the center of his Sphere with that choice. Maybe she could help him push it farther. “Dav? What do you want your Eldritch Affinity to turn into? It will be something aligned with the Origin but it doesn’t have to be what it is now.”

“You think this could let me use something else?” Dav sounded startled.

“It might, if you want it to,” Sophia offered. “If you don’t want it to, it won’t. I know you don’t like it as it is, so this seems like a way to try to shift it.”

“I like some of what it lets me do,” Dav admitted. “It doesn’t follow physics or any sort of proper cause and effect, which makes it truly magical. It … I don’t like the way it wants me to move away from reality.”

Prelate Varthas waited for a long moment after Dav stopped talking to continue his instructions. “Concentrate on that; know what you want from the Blessing and what you do not. Are both of you ready?”

“Yes,” Dav answered clearly.

Sophia gave her assent as well. She knew what she was going to offer; it was up to Dav to take what he wanted and leave the rest behind.

The ibis nodded his head. “Then by Wings and Web, Gifts and Secrets, Blessings bring us together. Sophia, kiss Dav. You will know when the Blessing is granted.”

Sophia leaned forward and kissed Dav on the top of his head. Nothing happened immediately, but she remembered what Ekkiba said; fluid was needed. She widened her kiss and pushed her tongue out between her lips. The moment it touched Dav’s head, magic flowed across her and bled from her aura into his. The Blessing was granted.