Page 71 of The Devouring Time

She picks up her cup and lazily swirls the whiskey around in it. “Would you like the short version or the long version?”

The more information we have, the better. “Let’s go with the long version.”

Helen sighs loudly and sits back, presumably having heard all of this before. I ignore her theatrics and focus on Mary.

Mary shoots a smirk in Helen’s direction, before turning her attention to Adrian and me. “Firstly, I prefer the term ‘church’ to ‘cult’—a bit less prejudicial, don’t you think?”

“I suppose that depends on one’s experience with churches.”

“Touché.” She lifts her glass and drinks. “Do you know what an egregore is?”

Adrian looks as baffled as I am. “Not in the slightest,” I tell her.

“You can think of them as entities sustained by unified thought and emotion. They require love, worship, and sacrifice, to give them life and power.”

“In other words, they’re gods, at least according to their devout followers.” Helen folds her arms over her chest.

“What is a god, but something that gives our lives purpose and direction, strength and power, in return for our worship?” Mary counters.

This is all getting a bit esoteric for me—but I had asked for the long version. At least Mary’s explaining her motives, which gives me a better idea of her character and how far we might be able to trust her. “And you found that purpose in this…Waking God, was it?”

She nods earnestly. “I did. It was in college when I first uncovered references to them. They had flourished for centuries, uplifting humanity, giving those among their followers such gifts…but fools never can see beyond their immediate, petty needs. Their followers were hunted to extinction, their sacred places burned, their holy name struck from the records.”

I could guess how this had played out. “But not all the records.”

“Things always get missed. I was intrigued by the scant references I found, so I followed every clue, every whisper, every trace in my hunger to learn more.” An expression of fond memory softens Mary’s face unexpectedly. “And on the way…I suppose you could say I fell in love with them.”

She trails off for a moment, lost in memory. “My devotion was the first step toward resurrecting the god. A sort of spiritual necromancy, if you will. As the god began to wake, they sent me dreams. Cloaked in symbols, as all dreams are, but I spent all of my time and effort decoding their messages.”

Helen sniffs. “Which is why you got kicked out of school.”

“What could such an education offer me?” The question sounds honest, as if Mary can’t imagine anything more important than the mission she’s embarked on. It makes me uneasy—she’s a true fanatic, and fanatics can never be trusted, even among one another. “My dreams led me to other like-minded folk, and we founded the Church of the Waking God. At the moment we’re a small, carefully selected group. The proper rituals must be observed, the correct thoughts held, the right mindset obtained, in order to resurrect the god as they were. Otherwise, they’ll be contaminated, become something different.”

I’ve spent too much of my life being told what to think and do, so it’s a struggle to keep my reaction off my face. But I need to know more, and if Mary believes me sympathetic, she’ll be more likely to answer truthfully. “How does the Swarm come into this?”

“We’ve been calling them the Host, but I like Swarm better now that I’ve heard it.” Mary tips her glass at me. “The Waking God’s been trying to warn us through our dreams. They set us on the trail of people who seem human, but have something else inside, possessing them. Like a host of demons, if demons were real. We were instructed to kill such people on sight. I didn’t even realize before I saw you that the person could revert to an un-possessed state.”

It explained why the cult had been so determined to murder me—they were acting on divine orders. “Why, though? What interest does your egregore have in the Swarm?”

Mary shrugs. “Don’t know. Dreams are tricky things to interpret, and if we’ve been sent any that explain it, we haven’t gotten the message. But maybe you can change that.”

“If you’re asking me to join your cult⁠—”

“Hell no!” Mary seems offended I’d even made the suggestion. “Maybe someday, after the Waking God has become the Awakened God, and there are enough devoted minds that variations in belief won’t change them into something else. But right now, we have to be exclusive.”

Helen cocked a brow. “You tried to convert me.”

“Because I wanted to share the joy, the wonder, with you.” Mary’s expression slumps briefly into one of sadness, before she shakes it off. “But that ship has sailed.”

At least we aren’t about to be proselytized. “Then what do you want from me?”

Mary finishes off her whiskey. “Tell me everything about the Swarm.”

“I don’t know much.” I take a fortifying swig of my own drink; its rawness burns my throat. “My memory’s been suppressed. But I’ll tell you what we’ve learned so far.”

I glance at Adrian for approval; he gives me a subtle nod. Between the two of us and Helen, we lay out what we’ve found out about the Swarm, Chrysalis, Mithras and Aion, and all the rest. By the time we’re done, the last sunlight has vanished, leaving us only candle- and firelight.

“So hypnosis worked on you, but imperfectly.” Mary fixes her gaze on me. “I think I have a solution. Or rather, a member of our group does.” Her body tilts toward me, and there’s something avid about the motion. She’s desperate to know what her god wants from her. “Let us restore your memories.”