Foundlings and False Gods

On the wind-swept tor of Traum, Aisling Cathedral stands as a beacon of faith and mystery. Here, foundling girls are brought to serve as Diviners, their identities erased, their eyes shrouded, and their names replaced by numbers. The abbess, a distant and enigmatic figure, rules with cold affection, teaching the girls to read the signs of the Omens—six gods who supposedly rule Traum through their magical stone objects. The Diviners' lives are a cycle of obedience, ritual, and dreaming, their only family each other and the peculiar, sentient gargoyles who haunt the cathedral's shadows. Yet beneath the surface, the cathedral's sanctity is a carefully maintained illusion, and the Diviners' purpose is more sinister than they know.

The Spring's Dark Secret

The heart of Aisling is its ancient spring, a pool of dark, oily water said to connect dreamers to the Omens. When the new boy-king, Benedict Castor, arrives for a Divination, Six (the protagonist) draws the short straw and is chosen to dream. The ritual is brutal: the king's blood is given, Six is drowned in the spring, and her visions—of coins, ink, oars, chimes, and loom stones—are interpreted as portents for the king's reign. The process is physically and psychologically harrowing, leaving Six sick and shaken. The Diviners' dreams are not just visions but nightmares, and the spring's magic is both a blessing and a curse, binding the girls to Aisling and its secrets.

Diviners Draw the Short Straw

The Diviners, known only by their numbers, form a tight-knit, if secretive, sisterhood. Their lives are governed by rules: no names, no eyes, no leaving the tor. They play games to decide who will bear the burden of dreaming, each dreading the ordeal. Their camaraderie is laced with longing for freedom and fear of the outside world. The abbess's love is conditional, and the girls' only solace is in each other and the stories they tell of the lives they might lead once their ten years of service are over. Yet, the threat of vanishing—of being replaced or forgotten—haunts them all.

Blood, Dream, and Drowning

Six's Divination for King Castor yields five bad portents, casting a shadow over his reign. The ritual exposes the power dynamic between the Diviners, the abbess, and the king: the girls are both revered and expendable, their suffering masked by the cathedral's grandeur. The act of drowning in the spring is both literal and metaphorical, a repeated trauma that erases memory and selfhood. The Diviners' dreams are shaped by the abbess's narrative, reinforcing the Omens' authority and the girls' subjugation. The spring's magic is revealed to be a tool of control, not enlightenment.

The King's Ill Portents

King Castor's five bad portents unsettle the hamlets of Traum, where faith in the Omens underpins social order. The king, young and uncertain, is both a pawn and a potential disruptor. The knighthood, sworn to uphold the Omens' will, is divided between loyalty and skepticism. The Diviners, meanwhile, are caught between their duty to the abbess and their growing awareness of the system's cruelty. The arrival of the king and his knights brings new tensions, as secrets are traded, alliances are tested, and the boundaries of obedience are pushed.

The Foulest Knight

Six's encounter with Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious, a knight with a disdain for Aisling's rituals, sparks both animosity and intrigue. Rory's skepticism and biting wit challenge Six's faith and self-perception, while his own past as a foundling and thief complicates his role as a knight. Their relationship is a dance of hostility and attraction, each pushing the other to question the stories they've been told. Rory's irreverence is both a threat and a lifeline, offering Six a glimpse of a world beyond obedience and martyrdom.

Blackmail and Bargains

Desperate for a taste of life beyond the tor, Six blackmails Rory and the king into escorting the Diviners to Coulson Faire, using their theft of spring water as leverage. The girls, cloaked and shrouded, sneak away for a night of revelry, encountering sprites, merchants, and the complexities of desire and agency. The escapade is both liberating and sobering, exposing the Diviners to the dangers and disappointments of the outside world. The experience deepens the bonds between the girls but also foreshadows the unraveling of their sisterhood.

Escaping the Tor

After their night of freedom, the Diviners begin to vanish one by one. The abbess responds by locking down the cottage, assigning gargoyles as guards, and gaslighting Six about the disappearances. The remaining girls are trapped, their fear mounting as they realize the abbess's love is a mask for something far more sinister. Six's attempts to seek help from the king and knights are thwarted, and the sense of isolation and impending doom grows. The vanishing of her sisters becomes a catalyst for Six's rebellion.

Sprites in the Glen

The journey through Traum's hamlets exposes the Diviners and knights to the land's true nature: sprites, both beautiful and monstrous, roam the glens and woods, embodying the kingdom's untamed magic. The knights' violence toward sprites is mirrored by the abbess's violence toward the Diviners, blurring the line between protector and predator. Six's encounters with sprites and the people of Traum challenge her understanding of faith, power, and what it means to be special or expendable.

Omens Unmasked

As Six, Rory, Maude, and Benji travel through the hamlets, they confront the Omens—once thought to be gods, now revealed as mortals transformed by the spring's magic and the abbess's machinations. Each Omen wields a magical stone object, but their divinity is a carefully maintained illusion. The group defeats the Omens one by one, claiming their objects and unraveling the truth behind Traum's faith. The abbess's role as the architect of the Omens' power—and the Diviners' suffering—becomes increasingly clear.

Taking Up the Mantle

With each Omen defeated, the group grows closer to the heart of Aisling's power. Six, now armored and unshrouded, claims her name—Sybil Delling—and her agency. The journey is one of vengeance for her lost sisters, but also of self-discovery and love, as she and Rory become each other's anchor. The king's ambition to "take up the mantle" and rule Traum without gods is revealed to be as fraught as the abbess's own quest for control. The lines between faith, power, and exploitation blur.

The Ardent Oarsman's Challenge

The confrontation with the Ardent Oarsman, Omen of strength, is a brutal test. Sybil must face him in a deadly duel on a platform above water, despite not knowing how to swim. The fight is both physical and symbolic—a battle for survival, for the right to define her own story, and for the memory of the Diviners who came before. With the help of her friends and her own unyielding will, Sybil defeats the Oarsman, but the cost is high: the truth that the Omens have been feeding on Diviners' blood and bodies is laid bare.

The Chime's Discord

In the Chiming Wood, the group seeks the Faithful Forester's chime, a magical object that manipulates memory and perception. The ceremony to honor the king devolves into chaos as the chime's power and the smoke of idleweed send the knights and villagers into a stupor. Sprites attack, and Maude is gravely injured. The chime's magic exposes the fragility of memory and the ease with which stories—true or false—can be imposed on a people. The cost of magic is madness, and the cost of faith is often violence.

The Weaver's Lament

In the Cliffs of Bellidine, Sybil confronts the Heartsore Weaver, the last Omen, who reveals the tragic origins of the gargoyles: they are former Diviners, transformed by the abbess's magic and cruelty. The Weaver, longing for death and release from her monstrous form, asks Sybil to end her life. In doing so, Sybil learns that the first gargoyle, Bartholomew, was the original Diviner—a foundling boy who became the abbess's tool and victim. The cycle of love, heartbreak, and exploitation is laid bare, and Sybil's quest becomes one of liberation, not just vengeance.

The Last Diviner

Armed with the truth and the Omens' objects, Sybil and her companions return to Aisling to confront the abbess. The final battle is both physical and existential: the abbess, revealed as the sixth Omen and the architect of Traum's faith, is slain with her own tools. The cathedral is destroyed, the spring buried, and the cycle of Diviners' suffering is ended. But the victory is bittersweet—Rory is gravely wounded, the gargoyle is shattered, and Benji betrays them, seeking to claim the power of faith for himself.

The Fall of Aisling

The destruction of Aisling Cathedral is both a literal and symbolic act—the end of an era, the shattering of false gods, and the burial of the spring that gave life and death. The survivors are left to reckon with their losses: the Diviners are gone, the gargoyle is dying, and the bonds of love and loyalty are tested by betrayal. The cost of freedom is high, and the future is uncertain.

Betrayal and Bargains

Benji, once the boy-king, reveals his ambition to use Sybil as a new symbol of faith, trading one system of exploitation for another. He wounds Rory, shatters the gargoyle, and forces Sybil to choose between her own freedom and the lives of those she loves. The cycle of bargains and betrayals continues, and Sybil is left alone, the last Diviner, facing a future where the only certainty is that the stories she tells—and the ones told about her—will shape the world to come.

Beyond the Wall

In the aftermath, Sybil stands on the cliffs, shroudless, looking out over the sea. She mourns her lost sisters, her lost home, and the innocence that was taken from her. Yet, in the company of Rory, Maude, and the gargoyle, she finds the strength to let go of the past and imagine a new future. The story ends not with certainty, but with hope—the hope that, beyond the wall of Aisling, new stories can be written, and that love, heartbreak, and freedom are worth the risk of living.

Characters

Sybil Delling (Six)

Sybil, known for most of the story as Six, is a foundling girl raised in Aisling Cathedral to be a Diviner. Her identity is erased, her eyes shrouded, and her life defined by obedience, ritual, and the burden of dreaming for others. Sybil is fiercely loyal to her fellow Diviners, yet haunted by a longing for freedom and selfhood. Her journey is one of painful awakening: from obedient tool to avenger, from martyr to agent of her own fate. Sybil's psychological arc is marked by trauma, grief, and the slow reclamation of her name, her desires, and her agency. Her relationship with Rory is both a source of challenge and healing, and her bond with the gargoyle, Bartholomew, is a thread of love and loss that runs through the entire narrative.

Rodrick "Rory" Myndacious

Rory is a knight with a foundling's past, a thief's cunning, and a heretic's tongue. Scarred by his upbringing under the Artful Brigand and shaped by Maude's mentorship, Rory is both fiercely independent and deeply loyal to those he loves. His skepticism of Aisling's faith and the Omens' divinity makes him an outsider among the knights, but also a catalyst for Sybil's transformation. Rory's relationship with Sybil is a dance of antagonism and attraction, each pushing the other to confront uncomfortable truths. Beneath his bravado lies vulnerability, a longing for belonging, and a capacity for tenderness that is revealed in his care for Sybil and his willingness to risk everything for her.

The Gargoyle (Bartholomew)

The batlike gargoyle is both comic relief and tragic figure—a sentient sprite with a child's innocence and a deep well of sadness. Once the first Diviner, Bartholomew was remade by the abbess into a gargoyle, condemned to serve as Aisling's eternal guardian. His loyalty to Sybil is unwavering, and his peculiar wisdom often cuts through the story's darkness. The revelation of his true identity and his role in the creation of the Omens is a devastating twist, reframing the entire narrative as a cycle of exploitation and loss. Bartholomew's longing for love, home, and recognition is the emotional heart of the story.

The Abbess (Aisling, the Moth)

The abbess is the story's central antagonist—a figure of cold affection, manipulative love, and unyielding control. As the sixth Omen, the moth, she is both creator and destroyer, shaping Traum's faith through the suffering of foundlings and the manufacture of gods. Her psychological complexity lies in her conviction that cruelty is justified by the greater good, and her ability to inspire both devotion and terror. The abbess's relationship with Sybil and [Bartholom

Last updated: May 20, 2025