The first patron and mother of soulbinding, Ixchel the Bountiful, came to trust her subject deeply. In her benevolence, she normalised the single most important clause of any contract: honesty, so that mortals and gods would never lie to each other. It is sad, however, that inspired by man's treachery, the gods also learned to play on words.
***
Horatio took Alba's departure as he did much of anything that happened in his village, which is to say he welcomed it and encouraged it.
In the central temple, past Lire's stone statue, a grateful honorary monk knelt, his forehead hitting the cold floor.
"I beg of you," Horatio said, "stand, friend. There's no need for such ceremony."
"Perhaps," Alba replied, "yet I am no monk, scholar nor maraj. What you've done is, as far as mankind goes, beyond any reasonable ask."
When Alba stood, he witnessed Horatio's earnest, wrinkled smile.
He also wondered how old the Maraj priest was.
Did they even develop wrinkles before a hundred and fifty? Surely, asking that would be improper, so he refrained.
The priest trusted him with his own set of prayer beads, a precious souvenir he would hold on to, thinking of the dull but reflective time he had spent in Little Argiscio.
He also thanked Alba for his aid in Cartha's "research" which, apparently, was useful.
At least I didn't suffer for naught, he thought.
"Speaking of her," he added as Alba turned his back to him. "I'm sure you're aware of how she is; she might follow you even outside of our Little Argiscio… Do consider her company on your travels. She doesn't look it, sometimes, but she's a very bright fish."
Alba cringed and simply answered, "I'll consider it."
Back in the hut, there wasn't much to pack.
He came with a tattered grey hood and cape that he kept crumpled in the corner of his room, a pointy gourd that resembled a northerner's cup without its lid on, and an empty sheath in which his father's sword rested no more.
His bag would be mostly filled with dried fish and flatbread, and Cartha would annoy him every step of the way as he packed.
She barraged him with questions he didn't care for, or couldn't answer.
"What was the encounter like?", "Were you scared?", "What can you do now? Crush mountains? Breath fire? I'm sure you can at least do that. Show me!", "Are you immortal now? Can I stab—"
"Listen…"
"Touché!" she interrupted before he could even speak another word. "That was immortality, right?"
"I don't feel anything different. Frankly, all I've gained is a weird brand on my neck that I'll need to hide now."
Cartha fell silent for a time, which could have been a bad sign.
She shoved him on the shoulder, getting him to drop the pointy gourd.
"You're joking…right?" she said.
Alba's deadpan expression must have convinced him he wasn't, because she then rushed outside and came back holding a bucket of clear water.
"Look," she said as she placed the bucket before him, "I guess you don't look at yourself too often but maybe you'll notice something."
He, too, had taken on the strange habit of only using water to see his reflection.
There wasn't much to see usually.
Wasting away slowly, the little beauty he had wilted as hunger and insomnia gnawed at the features of his face.
Today, however, it had drastically changed.
His hollow cheeks had puffed; colour finally chased away the paleness of his skin and by the size of his neck… He checked out his body further down, and saw that he regained all the weight and muscle he held on to before he came to be secluded in the monastery.
Most awkward of all was the lack of his neck's brand in the reflection.
Something magical, perhaps? He should have expected as much coming from a "God".
"I…See," he said as he turned his face left and right.
Yesterday's encounter already felt like an old memory, as did his past, actually.
A flashing memory of pain, fear, and a disturbingly large maw rushing for his head came to mind. He shook his head.
"I don't have much time, Cartha, go bother someone else."
"That's how you thank your saviour?" she said, pouting. Of course, he was thankful. Despite the many hiccups on the road, she did manage to make him a soulbound in the end. There were just more urgent matters than to glaze her for her job. "Way to go buddy," she continued, and, surprisingly, she left.
The maraj monks of the monastery gave him quick side-eyes as he took the forest path down to the exit.
It wasn't anything negative per se, no disgust or fear or anything of the sort.
They looked at him with small eyes filled with pity as they nodded, almost to say: We don't know what happened, but you're on a rough path, kid.
He was used to this look from Horatio, but from the ever-stoic monks? Maybe they understood the reason for his transformation—and departure.
Then again, he tended not to like getting so clearly eyed.
***
Once he breached the borders of Little Argiscio, frosty grass slowly gave way to the dry, hot earth of Aethercrust.
Only after descending that far into the crater, and having his soles scorching with each steps, did he remember he had been walking barefoot for almost nine years.
When he heard footsteps rushing in from behind him, he also remembered he had left without taking back his sword.
Heart racing, he quickly spun and gripped his pointy gourd, only to find himself staring into Cartha's eyes again.
"Ho-ly, you would really stab someone with a gourd?" She shouted. The good news was that she at least brought him back the sword, while the bad news was her presence at all.
"Careful," he said as he slowly relaxed his posture, "I might not have changed my mind yet."
She let out a chuckle and approached anyway.
"Since you look so tough now, I figured you could escort me to the Steps." She took his arm in hers and started dragging him forward. "What good are those new menacing muscles if you don't use em, uh?"
Managing a smile out of him—and being somewhat indebted to her—he didn't even resist.
***
The real reason she sought him out came up in between their usual banter, though.
He knew she had never needed him for anything, least of all to go out and about inside of Aethercrust.
The many scars on her arms told him half a story, and having the other half would have been nice.
She laughed off the serious matter that she had raided a village near the Steps yesterday, in the process of obtaining the 'Defrutum'.
Home to a cult to some old god, the village of Irshya held the wine he had imbibed with great regard.
She stole from them in the night, and when they tried getting it back from the nocturnal thief, she indiscriminately swung her sword.
Who knows how many she had injured, or killed?
"I didn't care to check, really," she said.
"So you thought it cool to drag me into your bullshit one last time, I suppose," he said as a sigh escaped his mouth. "At least you seem to know your way around a sword, we might need that if we can't outrun your religious wackos."
"Weell, are they really 'wackos' now?" she replied. "You've seen their god for yourself, I reckon. Give them some credit."
God… He wasn't ready to call her that yet.
This malicious creature, Ixchel, calm and elegant as she seemed on that fateful night, fought tooth and nail for scraps in the context of their soulbinding contract, going as far as effectively demanding Cartha's soul on top of his own.
Yet he kept those thoughts to himself.
Better for her to think that we stumbled into the divine than to be plagued with my pathological doubts.
Since he travelled with what would essentially be considered a war criminal for at least one village out there, he grew very wary of travellers on the road (especially since wanderers in Aethercrust had the nasty habit of travelling fully cloaked).
They stayed on the edge of the crater, skirting around the beaten paths until the night fell.
Hills and rock formations protruding from the ground and walls of the crater made for an uneven field that hid very well those who knew how to use the terrain to their advantage.
There were many villages on the way to the Steps, and he decided to steer clear of every single one of them, just in case she had annoyed someone else in the vicinity.
The road would be a solid ten hours at least, easy to judge by their distance from the always visible Steps on the horizon.
In a way, he regarded the Steps fondly as the first trial he had faced after his destitution.
A younger Cartha (It was hard to notice) had seen him bruised and famished on the side of the road that day, and offered to help.
Her conventical robe was still as revealing as it was today, but he was too tired to glare at the side of her breasts this time.
Marajs being seen as a wise people by the nobility, he gladly took her hand as she helped him up.
What a rat.
He couldn't prove it, but he knew she was only looking for a good chuckle that day.
He mumbled nonsense about goddesses and fate to her, and she nodded as she guided him to the Steps.
"Lire's monastery welcomes all," she had said in a voice he now knows was completely faked out.
"Walk to the foot of this mount and climb up the Steps. My lady Lire may yet grant you audience."
What she left out was that what she called "the Steps" were a collection of sharp and rough protrusions in the mountain, hard to climb even for a Marine trainee like him—especially on an empty stomach.
On the way up, the rocky handles pierced and scraped the skin of his hand, his wrists and back almost gave out, and he narrowly avoided a fatal fall multiple times.
The red splatters on each of the rocks in the Steps made plenty of sense to those who attempted the climb and survived.
That's one stupid memory he thought he'd eventually feed to Ixchel.
Behind! Said a voice in Alba's mind, and he trusted it without thinking.
Mid-spin, in the edges of his vision, he saw the glint of a spearhead rushing into Cartha's back.
He took out the blade from the sheath on her waist and swung.
Blades clashed and slid against each other as Alba parried the thrust upward.
He sent the spear's holder reeling a short but noticeable distance, and while his new body had more punch than his older one ever had, it seemed a bit much.
No wonder, though, as the bare-chested assailant was but a child.