This business with the soul-stream was unsettling at best for her. She didn’t let the uncertainty of this realm bother her too much. It shook her foundation but what it did not do was bring her down. Angela was strong and she had been in many fights over the years of her immortality. There had been more during her short time as a mortal. She remembered being scared on the battlefield. She remembered being terrified that she would die. She had been a healer in a squad of healers out in the desert fighting back those that dare try to attack Arri. She remembered all of her friends that she had made at the academy. She remembered their pale faces as they laid in the sands staining it red. Arri’s desert… that was how you knew you were getting close to Sularia. Blood had stained that sand red.

She frowned a bit at the memory but knew that now she was protecting Arri. No one would have to lose their friends or family should she have a choice. Though it was always there in her mind that Toya had told her to let Arri do what it had always done. Toya was the protector of Arri. She was the leader of the armies or at least she gave direction. In the past, the people who had done Toya’s job had been slobs about it. It made Rosenites seem savage. Toya ruled her decisions with an iron fist. Even though her sister was rather hard to deal with Toya had the best interests at heart.

Angela sat in a special place of Prapasite de Renastere. It was almost like the heart of Gradina de Suflet. If one knew what to look for there was a portal hidden away near where her loyal servant sent the small crying bundles to the new life. On the inside, it was more like a nursery of sorts. There were hundreds if not thousands of cradles. The floor was littered with arcane runes. Each rune had a group of cradles associated with it. Upon closer inspection, the floor doubled as something much more it was a map of the world.

The room was so expansive but in the very center was a rocking chair. That was where Angela sat she was hushing a tiny soul in her arms as she rocked it back and forth. She was singing softly in the language of Mamlak. The very tiny soul was beginning to simmer down. She leaned down and kissed its forehead softly. “Mamlak is a good place for you little one. You had the soul of a lion when you were alive. So the place of lions should be where you go.” She got up and moved her way over the map. She found a cradle that was empty and placed the tiny soul down in it. Not far from the rocking chair was the river and many different cradles were floating in with many different voices.

Most of the time she let their souls sort themselves but this room was special to her. Here she spent time with many people she had known over the course of her long life. Here was where she gifted them with their next lives. She went over to the river and scooped another being up. “I know you.” She soothed the crying soul. “You were a great scholar from Bohar. You worked your way up and loved what you did. You were humble. I think Wyllmochvar is the perfect place for you my friend. The scholar society could always use someone like you… and I would have liked to see what that mind of yours could have done with magic. Maybe this time I’ll get to see that.” She kissed the forehead of the child as she sat back down in her chair. These children had no genders yet. They weren’t reborn just yet but they were ready to be. She spent time with this friend one last time just like she had the other before it.

“I will miss our tea conversations. You were losing it the last time we spoke. I think you forgot who I was. It is a pity really that mortals are so fragile… humans especially… Maybe this time I shall gift you to the house of some elvish scholars. They are not all so bad. I could make sure that your life would be good with them." She mused softly. "I think you've earned that. You led a successful but hard life. I think you are dire need of rest and relaxation. I did tell you that a lot over the course of our friendship." She gently ran her finger down the babe's face. The baby was staring up at her and cooing softly. "Maybe this time you will listen and have a family that I can look over. Would be nice."

While the strange happening regarding the soul-stream in the Sundering Gardens may not have directly affected Dalanesca, she certainly knew it was happening.  The Sundering Gardens and Porta Inferi were connected to one another via the soul-stream, and she could see the odd effects taking place in her own realm.   Nothing had changed, but she could sense that there was something different about the stream, and it was this something different that put her ill at ease.  She had gone to the Sundering Gardens seeking out Angela Rose.  The two had gotten over their previous altercation but they had not spent much time together since then, though Dalanesca knew that she had been forgiven for her transgressions.  It seemed that Angela was of the forgiving nature, at least when it came to those that she loved.  The staff of the goddess had informed her when she had arrived in Angela’s realm that she was not there, but that she had gone to Prapasite de Renastere.  Dalanesca chastised herself for not thinking of that sooner, now that she knew what was going on.  For a moment, she contemplated returning to her own realm, but then realized that she would not need to.  

She had already heard whisperings of how people were getting themselves transported to this new place, and instructed one of the staff of Angela’s realm to let her into a room with a mirror.  They looked at her rather quizzically, to which she gave them a dark look and reminded them that she was not an idiot, and that she was well aware of what was taking place in the soul-stream, and she needed to find Angela as it was beginning to affect her realm as well.  

It hadn’t taken the Reaper long to figure out how to transfer herself through the mirror - while she could have easily gone back to Porta Inferi, she figured that getting the full experience would be worth her while and decided she wanted to get there in the ‘au naturale’ manner.  It was an odd feeling, as she stepped through the mirror - but the second she found herself in Prapasite de Renastere, she could sense Angela’s presence and headed towards it.

Dalanesca was able to sense something else along with Angela’s resonance - new life, but in a strange way that was not the normal way an infant resonated.  There was something otherworldly about the life signatures, and she could not quite place her finger on it.  After a bit of searching, she found herself standing in a very large room, with a rocking chair in the middle.  She could see Angela’s fiery hair where she sat, and it was clear that she was rocking an infant - but she got up to place the child in a cradle.  Dalanesca found this interesting, even though she felt rather uncomfortable with the amount of babies around her - stirring up memories of sadness at the loss of her own Katja.  She stood in the doorway and watched her for quite some time, realizing that what Angela was doing was reincarnating souls to take on their next lives.  She found herself wondering if Katja had passed through that place… or perhaps even Marth, if he were dead.

She cleared her throat, to get Angela’s attention.  ”Well, I’ve made my way down here, Ang.  What’s next?” she asked, a smile spreading across her lips for the Life Goddess to see when she turned to look.  ”Weird things are happening on my end of the soul-stream, and I’m ready for it to be done… so let me be of assistance.”

Angela was the motherly sort and it made sense if one were to watch her enough that she was reincarnating souls like this. She hadn’t the heart to see her dear friends with their memories. It wasn’t a cowardly thing but maybe it was because she knew that this place would destroy them and remake them into someone else. Her heart broke at the thought but that was why she put such thought into where special souls like theirs would go.

When Dalanesca cleared her throat Angela shifted her eyes up enough to look at Dalanesca. She offered a smile to her sister goddess and held the child in her arms as if it had always been there. “Honestly, I was wondering when you would make your way here. I was shocked it took this long.” She got up and moved across the map. Her feet seemed to make the areas of the map glow whenever she touched them. Getting to where she was sending the soul she stopped and lowered her hand down as if picking the best spot. “Let’s see… this family has desperately been trying for a child… good standing… good morals too. I think that is a good place.” She knew that Parvpora and Wyllmochvar especially did not believe in the gods but that hardly mattered to her. She wasn’t doing this to get more friends or followers. This was a gift to good friends to have a new better life. Things rarely changed with souls when they were reincarnated. 

“This will do.” She bent over and put the infant into the cradle. “It doesn’t shock me in the slightest that your end is having some side effects to this. I imagine you wish to know everything about what is going on before we venture too far in?” She tilted her head and made her way towards the Triune Goddess. “When I took the mantle of life I didn’t give birth to this place. This place had already existed in some state. The only thing it did was change color, add foliage, and add new guardians. However, life has a way of dragging its feet and sometimes things that were with the living haunt the damned and dead. Such is the problem here that we are experiencing. My piper who guides the souls for rebirth is corrupted. She needs to be purified. The best way to do that to a dead person is to kill them again.”

She was waiting for someone to say but you can’t kill the dead. Instead, she knew that Dalanesca probably wouldn’t and continued on. “You can, in fact, kill the dead if you are in the world of the dead or in this case the realm of rebirth. It purifies the soul but doesn’t destroy the memories. I need her but I need her whole. The best way for me to do that is to kill her but I need to get that far in. I would have done it by myself but I figured I could collapse the entire realm if I tried all by myself. I am the support beams of this place and I know not what would happen should I be the one to cause the damage. Call it… being prepared for the worst-case scenario.”

Finally with business aside Angela hugged the Triune goddess close to her. "I know this place must hurt you some. It is a good place though Dalanesca. You do look well though and for that I am happy."

”I don’t think I took too long,” she said, glad that Angela greeted her with a smile.  Dalanesca’s eyes drifted to the infant that Angela held, and watched her with raised interest as she traverse the glowing runed amp, and it became rather clear that she was trying to decide the best destination to send the infant to.  It was a bit disconcerting, to say the least, to know that this was at least how some children ended up existing in the mortal plane - but she imagined the child that she lost had been created in another matter, and was not necessarily the reincarnation of another person.  

”A little back story would be nice,” she answered, sighing inadvertently.  ”I’ve heard mutterings, here and there, you know, but you know mortals… Town folk have never been a reliable source of information,” she said.  As Angela approached her and continued speaking, she listened very carefully.  Some of what Angela was saying seemed a bit odd to her, but she knew that the goddess was elder to her and knew exactly what she was talking about, even if it did sound farfetched.  ”It took on a persona related to you,” she said, in understanding, with a soft smile - but that smile faded as she began to speak of the piper, and the corruption.  ”Corruption needs cleansing to bring about purification, and purification is the only way to bring that about.”  A one time, she would have wondered how one would be able to kill the dead, so to speak, but she knew better now.  

She could tell that Angela was waiting for someone to ask that very question, but realized that she already knew better.  ”We need to kill her body but not her mind, but we need to cure her mind,” she repeated, essentially simplifying what Angela had already said but in a way that she could understand it a bit more.  ”My assistance is probably a bit more helpful than the average mortal,” she said.  ”And I owe you one… so here I am.” 

She returned Angela’s hug tightly.  ”It’s difficult, I can say that… but I’m past it now.  I am accepting what has happened and moving forward with my life.  There are distractions that help, of course,” she said, narrowing her eyes and giving Angela a knowing smile - she knew that the goddess knew exactly what she meant and that she did not need to elaborate further.  ”So tell me.  What do we need to do?”

Angela thought about it and shook her head. “No, sometimes souls take an extra long time to become reincarnated depending on how long they lived. Kira is actually Kira but she is still plagued. I thought death would solve her but it grips her harder now than when she was alive.” 

Nodding Angela gently tapped her red curls up by her head showing Dalanesca that she had the right idea. “Exactly.” She smiled a bit at her Triune sister and nodded. “You have been helping my niece so I don’t know if you owe me anything right now. Do you like her by the way?” Angela was curious how the meeting had gone.

The tightness in the hug was reassuring that the two were still close despite Dalanesca having killed her. “It will always be difficult Love. When I lost Lyre… well, I was eighteen. I still think about it and it does still hurt.” There was a pain in her eyes. “And in my case, it was me that killed her.” Power could do such terrible things when not in control. “I am glad you have distractions. It does help a lot with the pain.”

Angela beckoned the goddess to follow her and soon they were out in the garden of souls. She looked at all the souls transforming and looked back at Dalanesca. “We often don’t think about what happens after death. You are death and you have to think about it. Same thing applies here.” She picked up a piece of broken soul that had come up. “I am glad that you are there to help with that. I trust you to do it.”

She dropped it and watched as it became a cloud of dust. “We have to go through the soul stream like everyone else. Missing the points could cause unnecessary damage. I suppose from here we head out and go to the Silver Palace. We might find more answers there. Even I don’t know completely about the whys. Though the people of the Silver Palace might.”

Dalanesca nodded in understanding of what Angela told her.  "I see," she responded, giving an indication that she grasped the concept of what the elder goddess explained to her.  When the conversation shifted to the time that Dalanesca had recently been spending with Kirika, Angela's niece, the goddess could not help but to smile.  "If that is a good enough repayment for you, I am quite lucky to have been in your debt," she quipped.  "She's an absolute darling, she is," she responded as Angela asked if she liked her.  "She is not yet world-worn enough, but I am sure that will come with time.  Her husband will be helpful in getting her through the tribulations of rebuilding that Black Court," she continued.  "They have done wonderful work on the manor… it seems that.. Bryar, his name is?  It seems that he is rather good with stonework," she said, and the admiration of the work she spoke of was apparent in her voice.  "I think that Kirika and I need to spend some time together, but I can help her find the true power in the darkness that seeks her," she said, glad that she would be able to assist the girl in learning the way of her Court.

As the two separated from their hug, she felt a wave of relief surge through her body.  "I think I will eventually be okay… there are plenty of… other things, to distract me from my sadness," she said, and she knew that Angela would know to whom she was referring.  "Seeing how you function now gives me hope that the calm I have found will remain and not come back to bite me in the ass," she said, with a bit of a smile.  

She followed Angela when she motioned for it, walking out to the garden of souls.  She watched the amazing transformations taking place around them, before focusing her attention back on Angela.  "You are correct," she agreed.  "You and I have to think about these things much more than anyone else does… it would be hard being the only one who focused on it," she concluded.  She eyed the piece of soul that Angela retrieved from the ground, her eyes widening a bit as it disintegrated when she dropped it.  "At least the Soul Stream isn't as dangerous of a place for us as it is for some," she said, sounding rather grateful for that.  

"The Silver Palace?  I am afraid I am rather unfamiliar with this, so you will have to lead the way," she said to Angela, gesturing for her to continue her explanation and lead the way for Dalanesca to follow her as they went on their journey.  The goddess still had many questions, but they would come at another time.