I wrote this to get inside the head of my firbolg circle of dreams druid Halvard after a particularly rough story arc.
Halvard was having a crisis of faith, but not the one he had expected to have when he first learned of the gems and the gods from Lord Joshua. The man had claimed to be immortal and every bit of evidence pointed to that being true.
The lumbering, awkward giant-folk had trained under some of the most esoteric druidic teachers that Melas had to offer due to Terpan’s influential druid circle. He had learned much about what lay beyond the veil, and had even peered through it himself in brief moments. He was not exactly shocked to learn of the existence of The Great Forgetting and all that supposedly came before, of elemental underlords and gods and immortals.
But the druids had said that life was sacred, and this was perhaps the more important lesson. Visions and messages from beyond, power over nature, all of it was nothing compared to the responsibility you held to everyone who shared the world with you. Simply by learning to draw magic out of the aether around you meant you were a servant of all sapient species who struggled for their daily bread.
When Halvard received Hecate’s staff, he had misgivings precisely because of his druidic studies. Embedding one’s personality and consciousness in an object, for one. Enabling one to live on past a natural death. Imbuing it with power. Speaking into another person’s consciousness whether they wanted it or not. These things would’ve been seen an unnatural use of magic for one’s own glory and convenience.
His mentors would have told him this was all spiritually corrosive, and he would have believed it.
But when he saw Hecate’s friends trapped in ice, something changed. He felt her pain firsthand, and in that moment questions about the proper use of magic became a pointless academic debate. In this moment he rested in that deeper truth he had been taught–that life and pain and grief and nature were all interconnected and sacred. People had been killed by an even more horrifying misuse of magic. Defying death by imbuing an object with one’s will paled in comparison to that.
In Kryla, Halvard had seen the gross misuse of one of these elemental gems in a quest for immortality, and how it had led to a human toll–kidnappings, territorial conflicts, people driven from their homes.
When he traveled north, he had expected similar evil.
When he saw the icy forest he was sure of it–sure that something had intentionally killed the people of this land as they stood and destroyed their home.
But the Gem of the Deep had been unintentionally absorbed by a beast of the lake. Without the wherewithal to understand this magic, it was corrupted into something confused and brutish. But there had been no great evil that he had united with Hecate in opposing, just dumb luck and an innocent aquatic victim.
His companions had freed the gem and counteracted the icy spell that had been cast upon the northlands–the spell that had killed so many of Hecate’s companions.
And just as the tide was turning, just as they were freeing the forest, Hecate went mad with power.
Before that moment, Halvard had finally begun to trust her. Not because she was worthy of trust, necessarily. But because the greater good had intertwined with her pain. Because he thought she, too, was horrified by this destructive manipulation of nature they had witnessed.
The old esoterics turned out to be right about where the misuse of magic led.
But it seemed as if they were wrong about the greater truths–that there is good at the heart of all things, that understanding grief and pain might be something deeper than all the mystical lore.
Just as Halvard had decided he was being insultingly paranoid to the old elf’s spirit, it turned out everything he feared had been right. Hecate had taken control of his body, had turned his hands against a companion, had been driven by a need for even more power to an end that made no sense in light of any greater good.
Halvard feared there was no bottom to this jealousy for more power.
Something gnawed at him, something peeking out between the cracks in this strange quest they had been given.
It was not that he didn’t trust his companions to wield the gems wisely; that he had no fear of. But the fear suddenly dawned on him–what if these gods were much like Hecate? What if they were outwardly handing out important-sounding commands, but inwardly were driven by a lust for more power?
What if this was simply the way of things everywhere?
Hecate was an apostate from the elves’ faith, but the gods were something else entirely.
Water, the domain of Each-Uisge, was used to irrigate fields, to turn mills, to provide nourishment for the people.
Fire, the domain of Phoenix, was used to shape metal, to cook food, and to provide warmth for people.
Air, the domain of Mantidae, filled people’s lungs with breath.
If all of that–the foundation in which sapient life lived and moved and had is being–was simply another power game, then what hope was there? If this was all another trick, what was left to hope in?
Halvard didn’t like that line of thought. For now, he had decided to continue pretending there was good in all things, whether or not it turned out to be true. Because it was necessary even if it turned out to be false.
Perhaps it was necessary especially if it turned out to be false.