Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m the pasture.” Aryus giggled, evidently enjoying the idea of being a place rather than a person. “Once, there were many shepherds. All those that could see the sheep.”

“You’re talking about people with spiritsight,” Etienne said, his voice a little awed. He found himself wishing, suddenly, that he had not packed away his journal so carefully. “Is that why we exist? To aid you?”

Aryus just laughed again. Either they didn’t know or wouldn’t tell.

“What about Alphonse? Will I see her spirit?”

“Some find their way home without a guide.”

It was a straight answer, as far as Aryus was concerned. Alphonse had left Illygad entirely. It was a darker place for lack of her, but at least she had found somewhere safe. Somewhere she wouldn’t be in pain.

Below them, Caerthleon was fast approaching, a city with two walls ringed in fire so that from this height, it looked like the dartboards that hung in some taverns. Ahead, Delyth was already descending, and soon Aryus turned to follow so that gradually the insect-small forms of the other Gods became visible, loping easily across the earth.

They would have to find some way in, he supposed.

And he would have to find a way to keep Delyth from following Aryus. For Alphonse.

The fortifications around Caerthleon were even more intimidating on the ground. Rings of jagged stone splashed upward like waves frozen in time, each reaching hundreds of feet into the air. Further out, around the rock barriers lay the magma ring, a lava moat twenty yards wide and impossibly deep. The thinkers at Moxous had long since surmised that the interior of Illygad must be some form of liquid—did it reach down that far? Was the magma cooling at the base of the continent in whatever sea it floated in?

Aryus landed behind Esha, Maoz, and Enyo, jarring Etienne only slightly. Va’al materialized nearby, and Delyth had already come down a few paces away. As one, they looked over the red river, at the stone barriers and the tops of Caerthleon’s tallest buildings just visible above.

“We need to get him to a river.” Enyo spoke first. “He’s created a nice little cage for himself in there.”

Esha approached and laid a comforting hand on Va'al’s shoulder, but Enyo didn’t react as she would have before the ritual. The Gods were less prone to argue over petty jealousies now. Perhaps because they had never been meant to use human bodies.

Etienne looked away, skin tightening around his eyes and temples. He was so… fragile since Alphonse’s death, as though without her, he might shatter into pale fragments.

“Perhaps Va'al could slip through and bring him out?” Esha’s question brought him back to the present.

“Or someone could fly,” Enyo muttered. “My priestess could go.”

“I am not your priestess,” Delyth growled, but the protest was half-hearted. Her gaze was fixed, dark and brooding, on the distant wall. “Do you really think he will be so easily fooled? He has no reason to leave that warren.”

“Which is why I’m saying you swoop down like the overgrown bat you are and pluck him up. Just drop him over the wall. I can summon enough water for a pond.”

Maoz looked a little dubiously at the Goddess. “The wolf is harder to kill in his den. But perhaps some bait would work better?”

Delyth managed a humorless smile at that. “Well, we all know there isn’t anything he wants more than his mother.”

Enyo snarled. “Well, you would know about the effectiveness of bait, Ba’oto.”

“If we can’t convince him to leave the city, then we’ll have to attack him inside,” Etienne said, stepping in between Delyth and the Goddess. He was half afraid that Delyth intended to provoke Enyo. “There’ll be water inside.”

His mind turned for a second to the night he had spent with Meirin exploring Gwynhafan, and despite himself, he smiled. “Actually, I have a plan.”

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

Excerpt from the Journal of Etienne d’Etoiles

Eleventh Moon of the Year 1819, Near Caerthleon

I have written before in these pages of the Gods’ claim to be made of magic. However, I am uncertain whether I have made it clear just what that means, so I will endeavor to rectify that before we enter the city and attempt to banish Mascen. Should we fail, this will be my last entry, and I will have hidden this journal in the city of Caerthleon in the hopes that someone else will find it and take up the work of freeing Thloegr. If that happens to be you, take this to Moxous. You will likely find help there—the Masters did vanquish the Gods once before, centuries ago. If they fail to aid you, turn to the priests of Gwynhafan and Glynfford.

It is strange to speak of my death so casually, to admit that it has every likelihood of happening, and yet to face the tasks ahead anyway. The boy that left Moxous this past spring would not have done that, I think. Alphonse would be proud. 

But now, I am rambling. 

According to the Gods, the reason they needed at least five of their number to accomplish the ritual described in my previous entry was simply to meet a requirement of power. Think, if you would, of the major workings discussed in the pages of Arsment or Nareau. These magics often require multiple mages because the power needed to perform them is too great for a single human body to hold. In this case, the magic the Gods drew from the Wellspring (or the Cursed Realms, if they are to be believed) had to be enough to weave into being new physical forms—magic made solid.

Yes, I know what you must be thinking: Jacques Vent’s Theory of Transference distinctly states that magic cannot be used to create something that did not previously exist. Mages can summon objects across great distances or transform matter into other forms, but they cannot create something from nothing. The ceremony performed by the Gods did not disprove