Chapter Text
The hot evening sun of early June beat down on the mismatched collection of lawn chairs and card tables set up on the lawn behind the manor, and Buddy could see Max starting to steal furtive glances at the garden hose coiled up on the side of the shed with a mischievous glint in his eye.
“I know you’re lookin’ at that hose, Maxwell Durden,” he said under his breath, sticking his elbow into Max’s side. “Don’t you dare get my burger wet.”
“But it’s hot ,” Max whined. “And it would be funny .”
“Alright, yes, it would be funny,” Buddy sighed.
The moment the words left his mouth, Max grinned and vanished into thin air. An invisible hand ruffled Buddy’s hair, and only because Buddy was looking for them did he notice the faint trail of footsteps flying across the grass towards the hose.
“You’re a menace to polite society, darlin’,” Buddy called after the footsteps.
The squeak of the spigot on the side of the house was the only warning anyone got before chaos was unleashed.
[]
Panting, grinning, and more than a little damp, Max flopped onto the grass next to Buddy’s lawn chair. Ragh, Zayne, and the Bad Kids all followed suit, collapsing around Buddy until he felt like the king of a very, very strange kingdom, sitting in his foldable canvas camp chair of a throne, presiding sagely over his damp, unruly subjects. He decided he didn’t like being above them all, and slid out of his chair to join them. He’d only gotten sprayed across the shoulder once or twice, but he figured it was good enough.
“Buddy!” Ragh piped up from the other side of Gorgug, still sounding as excited to talk to Buddy as he had all day. Apparently Mrs. Barkrock – or Lydia, as she’d asked him to call her – apparently Lydia had told Ragh all about Buddy. He’d been very excited to hear about another gay Aguefort student. Buddy was still getting used to people being happy to learn someone was gay. Even though he knew it was fine, knew no one here would get in any trouble for it, any mention of homosexuality still triggered a little twist of anxiety and fear in his gut. He supposed it was something he just needed time to get used to. Max had assured him that it would go away eventually. Looking around him, he realized that most of the people here were gay. Well, some of them weren’t entirely gay, but… queer? A lot of them called themselves queer. He was still getting used to that one, too. He had only ever heard the word used cruelly, spat out like it tasted foul – but there was a kindness to the way these people used it. Something welcoming and familial.
“Yeah?” he called back. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the sky, where the edges of the clouds had just barely begun to glow pink.
“Mom said you’re lookin’ for a new class! What’re you thinkin’?” Ragh said.
“Oh yeah!” Fig sat up. “You should do warlock and come to Zara’s night classes with me and Max! Or paladin, you could definitely be a paladin, the teacher is kinda boring but the vibe kicks ass , or if you really wanna kick ass you could be a barbarian now that Porter’s in the fuckin’ ground -” She slammed a fist into the palm of her hand with a satisfying thwack .
“Well, Max and I already talked about warlock and I’m not real sure I want to make a binding pact with a god right now-” Buddy started.
“Which is totally fair,” Max nodded.
“-but I think I’m going to keep at least a little bit of my cleric training. I don’t think I have the brainpower to start my adventuring education over from scratch. Or the time .”
“Tell me about it,” Gorgug groaned.
“But I was actually thinking about… now, I’m not set on it for sure, so don’t- I’m still open to suggestions if anybody has them, but I was thinkin’ about maybe talkin’ to Ankarna about working something out? She’s the one who brought me back from the dead after the gym, and I just… I think I felt something with her. Like she’s on my side. Maybe it’s arrogant to assume, but… I think she likes me.”
Kristen sat up and pointed at Buddy decisively. “You. We’re going up to my room later tonight and communing with Ankarna.” She turned to Fig. “You too, probably, since she’s your goddess. Cassandra’s probably gonna wanna hang out too, so I’ll commune with them at the same time, like a big ol’ mortal-deity party. Afterparty. Oh fuck, this afterparty’s gonna be great.”
“I- sure?” Buddy blinked. He’d expected that managing to contact and establish a connection with Ankarna strong enough to allow him to be her cleric would require a fair while of fervent prayer and meditation, but apparently his expectations were mistaken. The way Kristen phrased it, it sounded no more complicated than some sort of spiritual crystal call.
Fig shrugged. “Cool. My only plans for tonight involved avoiding my manager, so that works out great. And hey, Buddy, only keeping some cleric levels means you get to multiclass! Explore your options, man!”
Adaine, whom Buddy now knew was an absolute terror when given the opportunity to do harmless, water-related violence to her friends, spoke up from wherever she’d landed in the grass. “You know, we could help you if you want. Give you little mini-lessons on our classes so you can find one you like.”
Max nodded. “Jawbone had the same idea.”
“Are y’all sure?” Buddy asked. He still wasn’t even sure that everyone here liked him, let alone wanted to give up time out of their precious summer break to tutor him. Heaven knew how desperate for a break the Bad Kids must be after having saved the world for the umpteenth time.
“Yeah, dude,” Fig said.
“You should get to try new classes before you pick one,” Adaine added. “So you don’t just pick one blindly and end up hating it.”
“Between the… six, seven, eight, nine of us, we have…” Riz sat up and pointed around the circle, counting under his breath, “...nine classes? Minus cleric and warlock makes seven new classes you can get a shot at before school even starts. You can get a crazy head start, dude.”
“I… I really appreciate that,” Buddy said. “You really don't have to, y'all, you know that, right? I can figure it out on my own. Promise. Please don't stress yourselves on my account.”
“Buddy, we want to help you. We are literally offering to help you. It was our idea ,” Fabian groaned dramatically. “Have you considered that perhaps it's fun to have people do things for you? It's a life-changing experience, let me tell you.”
“Take the help, dude. It'll be fun. It'll be great.” Max slid his hand into Buddy's.
“Okay,” Buddy said. “Alright. We’ll do summer lessons.”
Fig cheered before promptly being hit in the face with a bag of marshmallows.
[]
Buddy was rather confident in declaring that this was the strangest little prayer circle he'd ever been a part of. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in Kristen's dimly lit room, fighting the urge to pick at the pilled-up fibers on the rug. Kristen sat to his left, failing to fight the same urge and amassing a small mountain of fuzz on her knee as she explained how the meditation would work. Fig sat to his right, trying with minimal success to shoot a flame from her fingertip to light the barest stub of a candle.
“It's not- fucking- ugh! Kristen, pinch me.”
Kristen reached over and pinched Fig hard on the thigh. Fig swore loudly, fire shot out of her whole hand, and she managed to catch most of it with the candle. Definitely an unconventional way to light a candle, but he supposed if it worked, it worked.
With the candles lit and the lights dimmed to a dusky glow, Kristen directed them to close their eyes and hold hands. As the girls’ hands found his, the cadence of his grandfather’s sermon voice echoed faintly in the back of his mind, lecturing him about sinful desire and inappropriate relations between unmarried men and women. He’d never held a girl’s hand before, he realized, and suddenly couldn’t for the life of him understand what was supposed to be such a big deal about it. Fig’s pale red hand was soft and hot; Kristen’s freckled one was cool, strong, and calloused. It felt reassuring, bolstering, like they’d have his back without hesitation in any fight that found them. It was a casual yet unconditional support like he’d never felt from the Rat Grinders. But sinfully tempting? Not even close.
Kristen’s voice lulled to a quiet, soothing rhythm as she walked them through different parts of their minds, asking them to create scenery from emotions, to find their questions, doubts, and fears, and allow them to sit peacefully in the open. Kristen passed along control of the meditation so smoothly that Buddy barely noticed as Fig took over, guiding them past their doubts and into their convictions, drawing out their stubbornness, their survival instinct, their sense of justice. Kristen’s meditation on doubt and uncertainty was about as uncomfortable as he had expected it to be, but Fig’s was uncomfortable in an entirely new and different way. The more he dwelled on injustice, on control and domination and powerlessness , the more it felt impossible to sit still. It felt like there was a fire kindling to life inside of him, beginning to smolder somewhere deep inside his gut. Sitting here placidly with his eyes closed felt wrong in the face of the fire demanding that he get up and fight . The restless heat simmered and spread, up into his head and out into his limbs, growing hotter and hotter until he wanted to tear and claw and bite at everything that was wrong with the world until no one was smothered or hurting anymore.
“Hello again, little Dawn,” came a voice from somewhere to his left. Buddy’s eyes flew open to see a woman sitting beside Fig, half-translucent but for the flames burning in her eyes. Her skin was the deep, hot orange of the burning sky in late afternoon, and her long, wild hair floated in a cloud around her shoulders, fluttering and flickering like it was made of the same fire that burned in her eyes.
“Hello, ma’am,” Buddy replied, surprising himself with his confidence. Something about her presence felt bolstering. Despite the fact that he didn’t recognize this form, he knew her voice, and something about her presence told him that if he was to take a stand on something – anything at all – he’d have her power at his back.
“Ankarna.”
“Ankarna,” he amended.
“She doesn’t like titles all that much,” came a softer voice from beside Kristen. Though he’d never seen this person either, something about the swirling violet stars that made up their semi-translucent skin was familiar. He couldn’t for the life of him remember where or how he’d seen that pattern before, but the person’s kindly demeanor eased his mind enough that the gap in his memory didn’t bother him. They were familiar, and that fact was comforting, and that was all that he needed to worry about. “She did think ‘Bakarath’ was pretty funny, though,” they added.
“Cassandra,” Ankarna told Buddy, gesturing to the person made of starlight. A small band of the same swirling purple and midnight blue glittered on one of her fingers as she did so, and everything made sense. This was what the flaming deity he’d met in that strange afterlife waiting room was supposed to look like.
“I do know you,” he said.
Ankarna’s eyes glinted. “You do. Not like this, though. My domain had been corrupted when you met me. If my memory serves me, my physical form was not much more than flame at that point. I did not remember who I was. All I knew was that I was angry, and that I wanted every world in every dimension to feel it with me. I do recall our meetings, though. Two of them, yes?”
Once in that strange, formless limbo after he was killed at the Last Stand, and once in the destroyed gymnasium in the aftermath of Porter’s defeat. A thought occurred to him.
“I’m not dead again, am I?”
“Far from it, little Dawn. Your life has just begun,” Ankarna said. “Although, yes, that was close to becoming a rather unpleasant pattern. But I would prefer you alive. You have the potential to do great things, and I would like to help you.”
Was she offering what he thought she was offering? Buddy looked over at Fig uncertainly. Ankarna’s immediate offer of the thing he hadn’t even asked for yet had offput him. Fig grinned and raised her eyebrows in a go on sort of glance. He took a breath.
“I would like that, I think,” he began. “But… I reckon I should be honest about some things first. In case anything’s a dealbreaker.”
Ankarna merely looked at him.
“You’ve met Helio, you were there the first time I- I died, you know I used to be one of his clerics. And obviously that didn’t… end so well.”
“You can say that again,” Kristen muttered. It almost made him want to laugh a little bit at the absurdity of it all. Never in his life would he have come even close to predicting that a situation like this was what his future held.
He continued, “I’d like to be your cleric, but I’m a little uneasy about handing you my entire life like I did Helio, considering when that fell apart I was left with… truly nothing. And I understand if you only want to take me if I’m going to be one hundred percent devoted to you, and that’s alright, I can find something else and I won’t press myself on you-”
“Breathe, little Dawn,” Ankarna interrupted, then turned to Cassandra. “Dear one?”
Cassandra nodded, got up, and settled back down on the other side of Kristen, closer to Buddy. The way they moved was a little bit mesmerizing – like a mortal creature, they used their limbs to move their body through the physical space, but there was an ethereal grace, like a sort of weightlessness drawn from some other plane, that propelled their movement as though gravity only held sway over them because they allowed it to.
“That’s exactly where I come in,” Cassandra said with a kind smile. “We come as a pair, you know. A lot of people don’t like that. Dawn and twilight are two sides of the same coin. Justice needs doubt. Questions drive people to find the truth. I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job of letting your doubt help you find your own sense of justice.” They laid a reassuring hand on Buddy’s shoulder, and he felt a sense of acceptance and peace wash over him that he had never known from a god before. “Ask me your questions whenever you wish. I can’t promise that I’ll have every answer, but I can promise that I will never shame you for asking questions. Existence is a beautiful mystery, and more people should learn to embrace it.”
“Thank you,” Buddy said, and the stars in Cassandra’s eyes sparkled with approval. He turned back to Ankarna with renewed confidence. “I’d like to be your cleric, if you’ll have me. I’m not sure of much yet, but your help would be a real blessing.”
“Then you shall have it, little Dawn.” Ankarna stepped into the center of the prayer circle with the same ethereal grace as her counterpart and crouched down in front of Buddy, pressing her thumb to his forehead. It was as hot as fire could be, yet somehow didn’t seem to burn. “Contact me whenever you need me. I am on your side when you fight. Justice has seen a new dawn in Spyre, and you will help me keep it alive.”
As Ankarna returned to her position near Fig, Cassandra leaned in to whisper into Buddy’s ear. “She likes to make a dramatic impression, don’t worry. She’s really very sweet.” There was a twinkle in their eye as they returned to Kristen’s side, and both goddesses seemed to fade away into the flickering candlelight and shadowy corners of the room.