One Eyed Ascension

When the mages of the Witangemot sensed the presence of a Heretic god in Britain they had immediately sent men and women to investigate. The mages hadn’t known what to expect. They knew that gods could have a wide variety of influences on the general area of their appearance, from draught to storms or riots in the street. They however didn’t expect to find the people of the town lying on the floor suffering paralysis.

Healers where quickly dispatched, and agents were charged with interrogating the populace and using hypnosis to cover up what happened.

It was however soon determined that the centre of the paralysis was a small local inn that was currently on fire. Luckily the Inn was mostly empty when the populace suffered paralysis. The only ones inside had been the proprietor, a 47-year old woman named Marry Johnson. As well as a yet unidentified 6-year-old youth found lying face-first on a table, snoring quietly and apparently unbothered by both the paralysis that had struck the townspeople. As well as the smoke that had already claimed the proprietor’s life. The boy was quickly retrieved from the burning building and brought field hospital hastily set up to tend to the townspeople.

Usually in these events, it would be the investigator’s who’d identify what happened with the help of the Miko brought along. This time however was an exception, as the mage in charge of the field hospital, who noticed that none of their diagnostic spells seemed to affect the boy.

It appeared a new King had been born.

The first thing Harry noticed as he woke up was the fact that he was in a tent, the second thing he noticed where the various people lying in beds and the people running around attending them. Rising up and stretching himself awake, he noticed a doctor’s attention turn towards him. Before the doctor ran leaving his patients behind. Harry considered this quite irresponsible. Weren’t doctors supposed to take care of the sick? Surely no good doctor would just abandon his patients on a whim? What if the something  went wrong with the patient now that the doctor left? Not knowing what to do Harry just sat there on his bed, wondering to himself what had happened since he’d fallen asleep. After a little while the doctor returned, bringing with him a woman and two men accompanying her.

The woman’s face gave Harry the impression of a calm and collected person, stoic and rational and unswayed by whatever weirdness may occur around her, or at least it would’ve if it weren’t for a brief twitch of her eyebrow. Which gave the impression of a woman in a high-stress environment merely doing all they could to keep her sanity as the storm of chaos around her eroded her defences slowly. All in all it gave Harry the impression that she’d rather be anywhere else then here, but was somehow forced to be here for reasons unknown to the little boy.

‘Good morning little one, how are you’, she said in a tone that impressed the notion that she was desperately trying to figure out how to talk to a child, but was very much out of her comfort zone doing so.

‘I-I’m fine miss.’ Harry stuttered out shyly.

An awkward silence followed, as Harry was unused to talking about himself, and the woman seemed unwilling to speak, before eventually one of the men who accompanied her inside faked a cough into his fist, as if to try and break the silence.

‘Oh, uhm… do you know what happened before you fainted?’ the woman asked, desperately looking for something to get the conversation going, to try to figure out what happened and figure out if their suspicions regarding this boy’s resistance to the healer’s magic were correct.

A Godslayer might’ve just been born in their country. Not only that, but it was a 6-year old. So she’d come here as fast as she wanted, and had been told the presumed youngest Godslayer, for what else would explain his immunity to magic, was still asleep.

So she’d been sent to a waiting room where she’d spent 15 minutes in agonising silence, her partners just as unwilling to break the silence as she was. And in the silence she thought of what may happen if their suspicions where confirmed. Her mind had dreamt up images of a tiny child going to preschool and burning down the building with divine flames because the teacher had ordered him to stand in the corner, of storms summoned because the child wouldn’t eat their vegetables.

The notion that a child, at an age still prone to tantrums had attained god-like power was terrifying to her, So by the time the healer told her the child had woken up, her stoic façade was starting to fail. So she shored up what was left off her resolve, and walked towards the improvised hospital.

 ‘Good morning little one, how are you’ she said, doing her best to find a balance between a caring voice of a person genuinely worried about a sick child, while trying her hardest not to sound like she pitied him or considered him weak.

‘I-I’m fine miss.’ The boy muttered beneath his breath.

And silence returned to the room again, interrupted only by the sound of the various machines in the makeshift hospital room. At least until her companions reminded her that she needed to figure out what had happened in the town

So she asked, and the boy’s face turned pale, she didn’t know much of children. But she knew that couldn’t be good.

Harry realised he was trapped, there was no way out for him. He’d have to tell these people what happened with the strange lady. Then they’d want to know how he met her. And little Harry knew they’d follow that up with asking why he was so hungry, and why his clothes were filthy enough for the woman to comment on.

And then… then they’d take him back to his Aunt and Uncle. They wouldn’t care how his relatives treated him, and even if they cared they sure wouldn’t believe him, no one in Surrey ever had.

So Harry panicked, faced with the memory of almost dying, and the threat of returning to his abuser’s Harry did what any six-year old would do in that situation. He cried, he bawled, and sobbed. And in the process told them everything, begging and pleading for them to believe him.

And when the tears stopped coming, little Harry looked up at the woman wishing to all the world that she’d believe him.

Speaker Ericson wasn’t entirely certain what it was that the youngest king had tried to tell her, bawling children are rarely coherent enough to form complete sentences. But she was fairly certain she understood two basic and important things.

Firstly: The child had been drinking with a strange woman with supernatural blue eyes, when he realised she’d poisoned him somehow and in a panic threw his cup in her face. Presumably killing the goddess in the process.

And secondly: The child was a runaway, and was deathly afraid they’d take him back to the relatives he’d ran away from.

And from that second fact she could deduce that the child didn’t know of his newfound standing in the world. If he did he’d know they would never risk to go against him like that.

So she told him, hoping it would calm down the panicked Godslayer, and it worked. To a degree, yes her explanation of the world of gods, and how no-one would be able to so much as try to force him to do anything he wouldn’t want him calmed him down. But then he’d asked what a campione was, and she told him of Pandora, and her other adopted children.

And the child’s face lit up, when she mentioned his siblings. And he’d asked if he could meet them.

That’s how Patricia Ericson found herself in an airport, one hand holding a hyperactive child, and the other holding onto a first class Ticket to China.