Heavenly Mortals-Act One

III-Calum ( III )

Shush, child

He nearly fell off his bed. It was the voice from the duel.

Your escort has arrived. Follow him. No one else must see him.

What are you? Calum demanded in his mind. He was going cooky.

You will know in time. Now, go on. Don't keep him waiting. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep your friends from hearing him? Hurry up! The voice was feminine. It spoke with a Granoan accent and sounded... peculiar, like several of the same people were speaking at once.

I'm not going anywhere, Calum countered. Get out of my head!

The voice sighed. Calum's vision suddenly turned into a multicoloured tunnel of light.

He was standing in the middle of what could only be described as the cosmos. The sky was dotted with stars. He could see the galaxy. He realised he was standing on a hard, smooth floor that seemed to reflect the sky.

"Over here,"

Calum whirled around and gasped. In front of him stood a woman wearing a glittering dress that shifted colours, like she was wearing liquefied cosmos. Her skin was made of galaxies. Her hair was dark and dotted with stars, and floated and wisped as if she were submerged in water. Her eyes glowed like they were supernovae.

Her left hand was missing, the lower part of her lower hand. It ended in a wisp of cosmic vapour. Strange as it was, Calum could look at her easily, and not get spots dancing in his eyes.

"Who are you?" Calum asked. He couldn't help but stare in awe.

"I am the one who saved your hide when you were a little child! How could you not remember? Oh, but to be fair, you never really met me the first time," she replied. The mysterious voice that spoke in his head belonged to her.

"What are you—" Calum recalled his encounter with the pack of wolves. He had tried to summon a falling star to save himself, "That was you?"

The woman nodded, "Indeed. I hate to burst your bubble, but you were nowhere close to using your powers."

More memories surged through him. All the memories of magic and monsters that he'd pushed away when he began his training at Katari monastery.

"So it's all real?" Calum asked, "All the myths and magic and the Gods, it's all real?"

"Of course," The woman said it like it was obvious. "Young man, are you telling me that even when you grew up in a kingdom that used magic left and right... you did not believe in it?"

"Maybe if I told you where I was for the past decade—" Before Calum could finish, she put her hand on her hips and shook her head, "No, no, no! That will not do!" light started to swirl around her arms, multicoloured and fluid. It manifested into a leather-bound book with golden letters etched into it. Calum recognised the old Granoan glyphs.

"This is a very precious book. It contains all the general knowledge of magic. This is my other gift to you. Make sure to read it. I expect you to be a believer in magic when your time comes!" She gave it to Calum, who found it quite heavy.

Calum had trouble processing the last few seconds. A strange, cosmic being was talking to him like a mother fussing over her child's studies. That hit a little too close to home. "H-hold on, I never actually got the answers to my questions,"

The cosmic woman raised her starry eyebrows, "Oh, it seems so. Well, that's the cosmos for you. Infinite wonder, always wandering off! Let us start from the top now, shall we? I am Usoara, Goddess of the Heavens. Sky-healer. And your patron."