Goddess by Liv Savell (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

Vent. They pulled the magic from the Wellspring and then inhabited it, for lack of a better term. Whatever constitutes the God, be it soul, consciousness, or spirit, can live within magic more easily than flesh. Perhaps, one day, humans will discover the process in which this is done. We could save brilliant thinkers from decaying bodies, give ill-formed children painless lives. Perhaps we could even breach the secrets of eternal life. It is also possible that the human soul would not survive such exposure to raw energy, andthus it might be morally problematic to try such experiments.

Magic is energy in its rawest form—purer than heat or light. Can you imagine, then, a body made of nothing more and nothing less than power? It would take years to fully study, to fully understand the nature of the Gods’ forms, but just the observations I have made in the day since their ritual have been extraordinary. The Gods change the world around them by merely existing. Every thought or intention they have is made reality. Aryus wants to be here one moment and gone the next, and so it happens. Enyo wants the land to bloom on the eve of winter, and so suddenly, it is spring. Esha wants to be adored, to be beautiful, and so all those around her love, desire, and admire her. There is no pulling magic from the Wellspring, no preparation of ingredients or sacrifice of blood. They are magic. They feed their own spells, and they do it as naturally as you or I might lift an arm or twitch a finger. There is nothing between their will and the change they impose on the world around them. 

That being said, the Gods do have limitations. They are not omniscient. If they cannot see you, if they are not in your presence, they can have no effect on you. They are limited by their own understanding, and they are not any more intelligent or any more enlightened than your average human. Sometimes, it feels as though they are less in control of themselves and their own desires than a petulant child, perhaps as a consequence of the ease in which they fulfill those desires. They have other limitations as well: Neither Esha nor Va’al can sway the thoughts of the other Gods, and Delyth likewise seems immune, probably due to her heritage as a descendant of both Maoz and humans. Their power is finite. They do not draw magic from the Wellspring and so need other means to gain power. I think this must tie into their desire to be seen as Gods by humans, but none of them will admit to using humans to access the Wellspring. I believe the ritual to gain their bodies was only possible because of the use of human Vassals. Lastly, they each have affinities for certain types of magic and cannot perform acts outside of those areas. Enyo cannot vanish into shadows. Maoz cannot charm others into adoration. Aryus cannot sing the trees into bloom.

If the Gods are flawed, then it stands to reason that they can be—

Etienne’s eyes lifted from his journal to the distant horizon, smoke-wreathed and shining gold in the last rays of the setting sun. They were camped far enough from Caerthleon’s defenses to escape notice, but close enough so that they would not exhaust themselves getting into the city the next morning. To his left, Delyth worked quietly, bent over her stiff, leather jerkin in nothing more than a loose shirt while she sewed closed a tear. The Gods likewise were hushed. Maoz was off hunting. Aryus was absent. Esha wove thread from the stamens of flowers, while Enyo and Va’al whispered together on the opposite side of the fire.

Into this silence, Etienne spoke. “How exactly does one banish a God?” He knew what the journal he had found at Moxous claimed, but he was becoming more and more suspicious that it was not correct. Perhaps it had even been planted there to draw a scholar into summoning Enyo and aiding her back to her artifact. Surely the Gods would know. “It would help to understand the process before we attempt to banish Mascen.”

Va’al’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know? Will you go back to Ingola as soon as the fighting is finished and attempt to return us to the void?”

“More likely, I’ll die before the day is out.” Etienne’s voice was old parchment dry. “Besides, you refuse to send Mascen to the void in which you were banished after the Great War. This, then, must be something different?”

“It is. We would never send our son to the void. Death would be better.” Within her original form, Enyo’s voice was the same as it had been the night her shadow had been summoned. Shrieking winds and the rumble of a landslide and a babbling brook.  Resolution was evident in her features, her belief that she would never send her son into the void. Death would be better? Etienne had not received any evidence that the Gods could die; perhaps they simply returned to the Cursed Realms. His mind flickered back to the present as Enyo spoke again. "We will send him to his island prison."

“Yes, but how?”

Esha looked up from her thread-making. “With water and—”

“It is not for mere mortals to understand the warding of Gods!” Va’al’s words were a snake’s threatening hiss, but in his hurry to stop Esha, he had given Etienne an excellent bit of information. Wards. Of course, it made sense. Those who practiced the “old ways” in Thloegr had to have learned the art of making wards from the Gods.

“But how will we fight him when weapons seem to do him no harm?”

“We’re weapon enough,” Enyo sniped. What did she care what Mascen would do to the “mere mortals?”

“If you have nothing to fear from Mascen, why are you still here? Why are you working with us to stop him rather than storming Caerthleon’s keep?” Delyth glared