Chapter Text
Crown Prince Elias lay prostrate, as he had for several hours now, before the vessel of Pendrago's guardian seraph. "Though all may forget you, never shall I forget you!" he prayed from the bottom of his heart. "I beg you never forget your mercy to the people of Pendrago as I kneel before you to ask forgiveness of our wrongdoings, and the good we have failed to do. I ask this as the heir to the Rolance Empire." Elias made the prayers as he did at least once a week, and would converse with the guardian Seraphim, seeking guidance or sometimes just chatting.
His mother ridiculed him for this, and the Emperor ignored him for the most part, but Elias persisted. At the end of his prayers, he exited to the main part of the Shrinechurch and meditated upon the actions of the Seraphim and the Shepherd Sorey in securing the peace that had lasted almost a full century now. Elias wished he could meet the Seraphim, at least; he figured Sorey and his Squires had to be long-since dead by now. He shook his head and stood to leave. Such wishes were a waste of time and he had royal duties to attend.
***
"Tobias has been gone for a while now and the levels of malevolence have remained more static than we'd hoped," Lailah frowned overlooking the Medow of Triumph. "Sorey's doing all he can, but if the malevolance gets even a slight upper hand, there could be trouble. None of Tobias' Squires have the resonance to be a Shepherd, even if they weren't all quite old by human standards."
Mikleo paced idle, but at the suggestion of malevolence gaining the advantage his steps became noticeably more agitated. Edna watched him, but her face remained as that of a statue. Zaveid twirled his hat on a finger, "What we gotta do next is obvious, yeah?"
Lailah nodded, "Indeed, but where to find a human with that level of resonance..." She placed a fist on her heart as her voice trailed off; her eyes looked to nothing at all, concerned.
"Ask the guardian seraphim; maybe one of them has seen someone," Edna suggested flatly as if it was the no-duh suggestion.
"Little lady's got a good idea there," Zaveid nodded at Edna, ducking the umbrella she sent his way. How was he ducking when she was shorter than him to begin with? She was like a demon with that umbrella!
It was decided. Another Shepherd would have to be found; they couldn't wait for another one to happen to show up due to blind luck like Sorey and Tobias had. Sorey had been fortunate, in that his Squire had the resonance to be a Shepherd herself after he was sealed away, but that hadn't happened since.
***
For quite some time, the search proved fruitless. Humans with some minimal amount of resonance were increasing quite a bit, due to Sorey's actions, but "vaguely aware there might actually be a Seraphim in the sanctuary after all" wasn't enough. They had arrived to Pendrago, dejected, frustrated. They had visted Sergei's grave and that had brought back many fond memories, but now Lailah was cheeks-puffed pouting at the city's guardian Seraphim, "No one has the resonance? Really???!"
Edna tapped Lailah's shoulder with the umbrella and her face said "Calm down, please." Edna's face was still unmovable, and just as blankly she said, "You're hiding something from us. Someone."
"Why would I do that?" the guardian said, evasive. The seraph's face turned dejected when the door opened and Elias wandered in. He stopped, seeing so many Seraphim in one place!
Elias knelt down and bowed his head to the ground right then and there. "So many of you! Forgive me for intruding. I'm not worthy to meddle in the affairs of the Seraphim--" but his apologies were cut short by Mikleo.
"Wait, you can see us?!" he blurted out.
"Lord Seraphim, I can. I've been able to see the Seraphim for as long as I can remember. I don't think anyone else believes me, though."
Mikleo barked at the guardian, never taking his eyes off of Elias, "Who is this? Why didn't you tell us about him?"
Elias didn't allow the guardian to answer. "He was no doubt concerned for my position." Elias blushed, "You see, I'm next in line to be the Emperor of all Rolance, when my father either dies or passes along the rule to me." Elias stood and looked Mikleo in the eye, "Though I've questioned for a few years now whether or not that is the best way for me to serve the Rolance Empire." He straightened his shoulders with the practiced gestures of nobility. "To what does our gracious guardian owe the visit of so many?" His speech and mannerisms towards the Seraphim were so polite one would have thought they were the Emperor, instead.
Lailah ran up to Elias and grabbed his hands without asking, "Tell me, what do you know of the Shepherds???" What she saw of his heart was a level of purity she'd not seen since Sorey, though Elias was obviously world-wise. His face carried more of the seriousness she saw in Mikleo. As she held the hands of the prince, she felt wave after wave of sincerity from him.
"Ahem," he cleared his throat, "I have read the Celestial Record, and I know the stories of the gentle Shepherd Sorey. There is less known of Rose, let alone of the later Shepherd Tobias, but I do hear rumors from the Seraphim who chance through here. I know the most about Sorey, and I greatly admire everything he did, especially for the peace between Hyland and Rolance. I would give anything to meet the Seraphim who traveled with him, but since all accounts are written by humans, there is no mention of them." Edna and Zaveid rolled their eyes.
Lailah looked as excited as a child receiving birthday presents, "You are defensively worth getting to know, Prince Elias!" Elias attempted to prostrate himself once more, but Lailah pulled him back up, "No, if you are the one we need, you shouldn't grovel."
"He's the one who comes here every day to pray and honor the Seraphim," the guardian seraph offered. "I'd say he's done as much as he can to keep malevolence at bay here, short of becoming a Shepherd." Elias blushed as red as a tomato. His shows of humility were as genine as he himself was.
***
Over the next few weeks, Elias got to know the Seraphim better, and he they. He knew he was going to have to make a decision, and as he agonized, his prayers became less focused. One day, as he walked to the Shrinechurch, Elias heard a sound that didn't sound anywhere close to natural. He walked around the side of the building and there were the four Seraphim, trying in vain to stop a hellionized human from devouring his prey. It was too late, but they struggled all the same. The blood drained from Elias' face as he recognized who the hellion and his victim were: two of his instructors from the Shrinechurch. "Fathers!" he ran forward and tried to pull the hellion away from his meal. "You're supposed to be friends! What happened to you?" he cried out in sorrow.
The hellionized priest snickered darkly. "Foolish boy; your mother sensed something was wrong, so she came here this morning to upbraid us for telling you the legends of the Shepherds, and thanks to you, both of us just lost our jobs!"
"That's no excuse!" Elias cried. He took out his wooden practice sword and took a stance facing the hellion, "If you want to attack someone, attack me! I can actually fight back!" The look on his face was steel resolution.
The next thing Elias knew, time had frozen. Only he and Lailah still moved. She looked at him with a rare expression of seriousness. "Now is the time to decide, Prince Elias. If you want to purify this hellion and save him, you need my purifying power. Neither of us can save him alone." She held out a hand to him, "What is your decision, Elias?"
Elias felt like hours passed, though it was likely barely over a minute. He gulped, looked down, then looked in Lailah's eyes, and without any further hesitiation in his gestures or his eyes, Elias took her hand, "I will be your vessel. Your burdens are my burdens. Where you go, I shall go. Our fates will be intertwined until the last breath of life leaves me. I want every human to be able to experience the Seraphim, like in the legends of old, and sitting in a throne will only fulfil the dreams of others. That is their answer. This is mine." He felt that he had never been as convicted of anything before as he was in that moment.
Lailah recited the ritual to turn the Prince into the Shepherd and gave him her True Name. He raised his sword to the sky and called out "Fethmus Mioma!" as the Sacred Blade replaced his sword and time resumed once more.
The other three Seraphim gasped as they suddenly saw Elias armatized and realized what had happened, but they quickly regained their composure. The same could not be said of the hellion, though, and as Lailah's flaming sword in Elias' hands burned his flesh he howled, "Prince Elias! What have you done?!"
Elias stood and stared the hellion in the eye, fire in his eyes figuratively and literally. In a voice of determination, he said, "I am Elias no longer. I am not Elias, I am not the Prince of Pendrago or Rolance." He held the sword in front of him and, as he made his next attack, he grunted out, "From today onward, I am only Shepherd!" The attack was as firm as the words, and a purified human lay unconscious at Elias' feet. He barely registered it, however, as he immediately blacked out.
***
A week later, Elias, or Shepherd rather, awoke in the forest outside of Pendrago. "What in the world... My head," he groaned as he sat up. He startled as he saw the Seraphim around him. Then he remembered. "How long have I been asleep???" he stammered in a panic. His mother was going to KILL him! The fact that he was in his 20s hardly mattered to the Queen.
"It's been a week. Every Shepherd's struggled when they first take Lailah's power. It'd be the same if you contracted any Seraphim sub-lords besides us," Mikleo explained matter-of-factly. He had been reading the Celestial Record again, it looked like.
"You're awake!" Lailah clapped! She ran to hug Shepherd, but he immediately started running towards Pendrago.
"I need to check on Father! And there's something else I need to do," Elias said with characteristic conviction. He was running at a good pace, but he barely even seemed winded. Lailah was glad that Elias, no, Shepherd, seemed as physically capable as he was in terms of resonance.
Shepherd burst into the Shrinechurch and made his way to the guardian Seraphim as usual, but his worst fear was concerned. His mother was stomping all over this innermost sacred area, yelling as loudly as she pleased, "SERAPHIM! ELIAS! Someone here WILL answer me, or I'm not the Queen of the Rolance Empire!"
Seeing the area treated so irrelevantly pained Shepherd to his core. "Mother!" he interrupted her tirade, "Behaving in such a way in the presence of the Seraphim! Are you trying to invite hellions into the city??"
"ELIAS! THERE YOU ARE!" The Queen ran over to her son and, for just a moment, hugged him as would have any mother worried about her son. It didn't take too long, though, for her to shake him by his shoulders, "You've been missing for a week! Where have you been??! And while you're at it, why was Father Walker found passed out outside of here last week? Do you have anything to do with that, too?"
Shepherd replied dryly, "I'm not sure if you'll believe me if I tell you." He jumped just a teeny bit when Edna poked him in the back with her umbrella. He sighed, getting the gist of what the poke meant. "If you refused to believe that I can see and communicate with Seraphim, then I wouldn't have any hope of you believing me now." Shepherd took a large breath before continuing. "As I came here a little over a week ago, there were several Seraphim conversing with our town's guardian, and...I guess cutting to the chase, they were the Seraphim who go unnamed in the legend of Shepherd Sorey. Do you remember the legends my teachers here taught of him?"
His mother nodded, though her face was skeptical. Shepherd continued, "The Seraphim I saw were the Seraphim who aided Sorey on his journey. They--" Shepherd's throat dried out and closed in on itself, but he was going to get the words across if it killed him. "They were looking for a new Shepherd, as the land is still not purified of malevolence. The defeat of the Lord of Calamity prevented more from being generated, but Glenwood was already deeply infected by then. That's where Father Walker comes into it. He was corrupted, becoming a hellion, and killed Father Robert. We were able to purify him, but I passed out right there. The Seraphim carried me outside the city, since there wasn't any other option, and that's where I woke up this morning and came right here to look for the city guardian. The other matter...I have something else I have to do first."
Without allowing time for a reply, Shepherd stood up and began to walk out. His mother began to protest, but for now her son ignored her. Lailah pouted, "Aren't you being a bit rude to your mother?"
As soon as they were out of the Queen's hearing, Shepherd said to the group, "There's one more thing I have to do. She won't think I'm serious until I do it." Without waiting for a reply, he walked off. The Seraphim de-materialized into him, as Lailah had warned him they may do. The walk back to Pendrago that morning had been a crash-course in "Shepherdness," to put it mildly. There were four synchronized utterances of "Huh???" in his head when he stopped at his destination. A barber shop???
The man who was formerly Prince Elias walked in and said to the proprietor, "I am aware of the meaning and significance of my request. I want you to shave my head, except for the small amount at the base of my neck that remains after disinheriting myself."
The poor cutter of hair bowed deeply at his Prince, "Your Highness! I...I am not worthy to touch the Prince! Even if he tells me to throw away his bloodline by shaving him bald!"
Shepherd walked closer to the man and placed his hands on the poor guy's shoulders, "I am continuing the legacy of Sorey. What good is it for me to sit on a throne if the entire land is never freed from malevolence?" Sincere blue eyes seemed to stare into the man's soul. Eventually, he lowered his head in resignation and gesture to where Shepherd could sit.
Less than an hour later, all that remained of the luxurious long, black hair Shepherd had woken up with that morning was a braided ponytail. He paid the man for his time and made his way to the castle. Gossiping, pointing, whispers were already beginning. Arriving at the castle, Shepherd called out as would one who had no stature or renown. "I wish to speak to the Queen!" The guards should have ignored him and treated him as a commoner, but they had a healthy fear of the queen's wrath.
A few minutes later, the queen stormed out, her face red with fury. "ELIAS!!! What have you done?!" The former Prince didn't even flinch. He seemed to have naturally slide into the dignity of this office far quicker than he ever had done so as royalty.
"You and I both know what this gesture means, Mother, though if I wanted to be a perfectionist about it I should not even be calling you my mother anymore." The Seraphim materialized out of Shepherd's body, wanting him to feel some moral support in numbers.
Zaveid pulled his hat down to cover his eyes. "Wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now," he muttered. Everyone else was silent.
"So you're just going to throw away your birthright over STORIES? FABLES?" The Queen was hysterical.
"They are the truth, Mother, and far more true and enduring than my reign ever could have been. I've been searching in prayer for a long time now how to best serve the people of Rolance. As the Shepherd, I can serve Roland, Hyland, and those who don't feel themselves as part of either kingdom. Glenwood is more than our two monarchies, and I want to help all of them. I want to see a world where you can see the Seraphim as much as I can."
The Queen's face turned even darker, "Fine! Chase your childhood stories! See if your father or I care!" She turned on her heel and stormed off.
Shepherd let out a sigh, "That went better than I thought it would," and the Seraphim just looked stunned that he had expected worse!
Lailah cleared her throat to get his attention, "There is one more matter we have to deal with. A Shepherd works best with a Squire, another human that can interact with and be seen by other humans. We couldn't take you to the inn when you blacked out because there was no one to pay the innkeeper, or distract him from seeing your body floating in the air."
Mikleo added bluntly, "It's also helpful so you don't look like you're talking to yourself."
Shepherd nodded. "Understood. So...where do I find someone like that? I don't think there's enough resonance in anyone else in this town that you'd be able to smell a Seraphim if you lumped it all together."
Lailah clapped once, "We do what we were doing before! We were going to go to Marlind next, in Hyland, if we didn't find anyone here. We'll just go to Marlind with you instead!"
Shepherd started walking towards the exit from Pendrago without a word. The Seraphim exchanged glances before dwelling in their vessel. Shepherd's mind wandered here and there. Marlind, huh? He hoped that no one there would recognize the former Prince. What would he do if they did? Shepherd didn't know, but he wasn't going to worry about it. He'd deal with whatever came; that was the other promise he made to himself when he became a Shepherd.
His journey began now.