Goddess by Liv Savell (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

of power, ensconced in a throne made of Va'al’s lap. “So we need some other plan,” Esha said, reaching towards the fire with a man’s large hands.

“We have to find a Vassal. Without one, there is no other plan.” Va’al’s hand rested on Enyo’s thigh, where it lay exposed by the fall of her sarong.

“Should we stop fleeing and stay to fight? Or distract him? Just long enough to get someone for Aryus?” Meirin watched Va’al’s hand as his thumb stroked the inside of Enyo’s thigh. Comfortable, tender even.

Enyo scoffed. She lifted her pitiful stone hand in example. “You fight him. I’m certain you’ll be ample distraction.”

Etienne looked up from his journal. He’d been sitting between Meirin and Delyth, scribbling away for the last several minutes, and he still seemed half-absorbed in his work. “Why do you need five Gods anyway? Why aren’t four enough? Even that many seems a prodigious amount. How much difference in power can one God make?”

Esha spoke up, cutting off Enyo. It was likely for the best. Enyo was in the habit of acting as if Etienne was the slowest creature she had ever met and tended towards cruelty when addressing him. “Our old bodies, before the banishment, were comprised entirely of magic. From the original source. To access that source again, we will need a great deal of power.”

Having no idea where “the source” was, Meirin kept her mouth shut.

✶

Etienne did not know precisely how much power it would take to summon enough magic to form the bodies of Gods, but he well understood the principle that the more magic one required for a spell, the more energy it took to pull that magic from its source. The exact nature of that source had puzzled Moxous scholars for years; some postulated that magic laced the very air of Illygad, others that it came from an entirely different plane. It would be interesting to report what the Gods believed if he ever made it back to Moxous.

“What is the source?” he asked, raising his pen to write.

“The Cursed Realms, where we originally came from,” Esha murmured, eyes steady on Etienne’s face. “This world didn’t have magic when we came. The people were struggling, so we brought magic with us.”

“That’s right.” Enyo snarled. “You have us to thank for your precious magic, mage. Aside from taking the chaotic humans and teaching them things like music and dance and warfare, we also brought the one thing you hold dear above all else. You’re welcome.”

“You mean that you weren’t divine beings, but trespassers from another world who decided that you would like to play as Gods,” Delyth said.

Etienne shifted uncomfortably. That sounded like another fight, another barrage of poison-arrow jabs. He cleared his throat, addressing Esha rather than the caustic Enyo. “What were the Cursed Realms like?”

He had labeled the top of his page “Cursed Realms” and was ready to scribble down any more information she might be willing to impart.

Esha actually looked uncomfortable at that. “It was long ago,” she murmured as if saying she couldn’t recall. But Enyo was leaning forward now, hand braced on one of Va'al’s knees as if he were her armchair.

“Imagine a place with howling winds and screaming voices; imagine that you are the most pitiful, weakling creature there. There is no color, no clean air or water. Just ash. Things that shouldn’t exist do, monstrosities that make your Gods seem benign. And the things that should exist don’t. Everyone can do magic ten times more potent than even the most powerful humans, and everyone stronger than you gets what they want when they want it. No matter what. Time has very little meaning, and hope is a novel concept.”

The hair on the back of Etienne’s neck rose at that description, but he wrote it down anyway, as close to word-for-word as he could get it. Moxous would want to know just exactly how she had said it so that they could pick her words apart.

“And that is the place all our magic comes from?” he shuddered, thinking that every time he worked magic, he was opening little portals into that horrifying realm. What if one of those monstrosities that Enyo spoke of decided one day to come through?

“If you are made of magic, then the spell that bound you must have stripped you of that power,” he went on, half to himself. What a tremendous amount of energy that must have taken. It took so much just to strip a mortal of the ability to access magic.

Something old and dark flickered behind Enyo’s eyes, and she looked away. “Va'al… What is the first thing you will do when you regain your original form?”

She snuggled back against Va'al’s lap, her rump wiggling obviously. Despite the stone curse sapping her strength, she still could muster up the energy to deliberately flaunt her physical relationship with the Trickster God.It seemed Etienne had gotten as much information out of her as possible regarding the Cursed Realms. He knew better than to push the Goddess.

Va'al leaned back, pinching Enyo’s rump appreciatively. “Greet the shadows, I expect,” he said, content for once. “Maybe nip off and cause some trouble before we deal with Mascen. What about you?”

The mage could all-too-easily imagine just what sort of trouble that might be, and he looked away, disgusted. He had never liked Va'al. Not even when he thought the God was a man named Tristan. Delyth was clenching her jaw so hard that he could see the muscles in her cheeks bunch even from this distance. Enyo had not become any more considerate of the body sheused since they last traveled together, and her ill-use was preying on Delyth’s already fraying nerves. He wasn’t quite sure how much the warrior could take.

And yet, they all were bearing the strain of traveling with the Gods. They just had to endure until a Vassal could be found.

“Bathe in starlight, maybe,” Enyo was crooning. “Paint the sky with thunderheads… regrow everything Mascen obliterated…”

“If all