Desrho END: I'm reasonable, but even I can get mad ~ Past

Just like the prophecy from the Goddess of Wisdom warned, the island of Desrho submerged fully into the ocean. Not a single person who stayed to fight in it survived, but some living beings did abandon it before the final demise.

Brought into safe land by the God of the Sea, before he ran out of strength, three Gods arrived at the edge of a forest in the mainland. Leaving him alone so he could recuperate from the battle, the Goddess of Wisdom, the Goddess of death and her son, all walked inside the forest.

The kid was small, he couldn’t have more than 5 years, but by his appearance, he may not live to see any more years. His entire body was shining, even through his clothes, his breathing ragged and difficult, although that did not stop his incessant cries in hopes of calling someone who could relieve him of his pain.

To say that Mors was heartbroken would be an understatement, she could barely contain herself as she carried the kid in her back, following the Goddess of Wisdom with the hopes that she would fulfill her promise and help the kid.

In a matter of minutes, although it felt like hours for the grieving mother, they stopped in the middle of the forest.

“We have much to talk about, but let’s start with the most pressing matter first.”

The goddess turned around and looked at the kid. When she touched his forehead, she could feel that he was burning.

“His body is rejecting the God inside him. There are many conditions a vessel must have, and he fulfills none. If we don’t get this thing out of him, he will die.”

Mors gritted her teeth, a whirlwind of emotions that she could not put in order no matter how much she tried.

“Then do it, help him!” Mors screamed.

Although she was pleading for help, the shout he released was full of uncontained anger. How could she not be, when the woman saw that her son was suffering and the Goddess only kept wasting time?

“I will, although, I’ll need the thing you promised.”

Mors only gritted her teeth once more, distrust flourishing on top of her rage and sadness. The deal they struck before leaving the island was that she would give her the monster she had control over in exchange for healing her kid.

Out of options, she commanded the artifact to come out, and so it did. Just like the dozens of Keres that fled in the battlefield became a single entity when they died, that single being could also shapeshift again if so she desired. If she wanted to, that gigantic flying could now become as small as a simple necklace.

The necklace flew from her neck to the hands of the Goddess of Wisdom, who for once, seemed hesitant of touching it. Mors looked at her eyes, and for a moment, she could swear that she was alone in that forest. That for a moment, the Goddess of Wisdom had left her body and was now looking somewhere far away from where they were, or maybe, sometime far beyond the moment they now lived in.

“I see, even this would not change anything then.”

She took the necklace and then, took a bracelet that she herself was carrying on her wrist. When the two pieces of jewelry touched, they seemed to combine for a moment, but then came back to their original forms intact. Without any other words, she put the bracelet on the kid, who quickly lost the divine shine that was pouring from every centimeter of his body.

The bracelet adjusted to his arm by himself, and finally, the kid stopped crying, falling asleep from the fatigue.

When her power combined with the bracelet, Mors felt as if something had been ripped from her. As if she had lost a limb, a pain started beating inside her. But not inside her body, inside her soul. Wisdom looked at her, recognized what was going on, but decided to ignore her and start her speech.

“It is as I imagined, you were quite lucky, if you could say that. Let the kid down, we need to have a talk. No, not really a talk. This is what we are gonna do, I’m gonna speak, and you’ll listen, and if I hear you say a single word before I’m finished I’ll bring out my spear again and do something really regrettable. Understood?”

The whirlwind of emotions that Wisdom was going though in silence finally found release, and Mors felt that she was now in the eye of the hurricane. It was still raging, but for a moment, she could only feel peace and gratefulness when seeing her kid sleeping peacefully and breathing with tranquility.

“Now, I can guess that your grandmother did not give you that many details for the power you have now. Did she?”

A little more open to the conversation, but slightly enraged as memories of her grandmother came back to the forefront, she simply denied with her head.

“I imagined so, if she did, maybe you wouldn’t have gone and have a kid, but there’s nothing we can do to change this now, so maybe I’ll start with this.”

The Goddess of Wisdom wound up her arm and tried to punch Mors face with all her strength, but before her fist could touch her face, it stopped.

Mors, on the other hand, did not notice what she was trying to do until it was too late and could only flinch back, especially when the incredibly strong hit stopped mere millimeters from her nose.

“Quite impressive isn’t it? Thing is, we Gods have quite a lot of trouble when it’s related to hurting each other. Some of us are fully incapable of it, some others are incapable of it by using small artifacts like this bracelet that your kid has now. It’s a seal of sorts, and it’s the only thing that keeps me from killing those bastards, and honestly, the only thing that keeps them from attempting the same with me.”

Mors walked back, away from the fist, as the Goddess did the entire speech without moving a single centimeter. Only when Mors was far from it did she let her arm down.

“Not that we are completely incapable of hurting each other. That’s what we have heroes for. We seal our capacities for violence between ourselves as a show of peace, but grant that violence and power to a chosen human so they can do the bidding in our place. Most of them don’t know, but it was actually I who devised this system. You have no idea the bloodbath that was the pantheon before I created this.”

Mors stayed silent, both paying attention to the Goddess, analyzing the truth of her words, but also trying to find an escape route. The main problem was the fact that she had to carry Todo away with her when she did, but maybe if she transformed the necklace back into the monster she would be able to run. After all, The Goddess of Wisdom didn’t have her spear on herself anymore.

She only needed the right moment to strike.

“But you are the Goddess of Death and that brings you privileges, some very unique ones in fact. We all have a domain, and yours consists of two sides. The peaceful death, natural, sometimes painful depending on the case, but it’s the death a living being reaches at the terminus of their life. Your other domain is violent death, the cutting of someone’s life before they reach their terminus, and let me tell you, I can see you are very good at it.” Said the Goddess, pointing at Mors and holding the necklace up high while saying the last sentence.

After this, the Goddess started flinging the necklace around on her hands as if it was a mere trinket. She was going on a tirade, not even looking at Mors while doing it, just walking while gesticulating very markedly with both arms.

“With these two powers, you also got both blessings. If you had done your preparations correctly, you would be effectively immortal right now, but you messed it up quite terribly I must say. Your kid, as your son, has a very similar soul to you, and so when God was called he received a part of his power. If I am interpreting this right, he got the immunity to violent death, and your capacity to be violent and kill in that manner just spilled out in the world into this thing that now I’m holding in my hand and that I can see you eyeing, trying to transform it back into a monster.”

When she said this, she finally looked back at Mors. She paralyzed again, feeling caught red handed. How did she know? No, she probably knew from the start, took measures to prevent her from using it, and that’s why she was talking so calmly about it all.

“And that brings me to the crux of the matter. See, you allowed Leucothea to escape, and although you had no idea at the moment, you now caused a ripple effect that is going to end with our world. I have been eyeing possibilities ever since she escaped and let me tell you, there’s no world in which she won’t be back, and by doing so, allow entry to all those telchines that are observing our world from outside, waiting for a chance to come in and devour us all.”

The Goddess of Wisdom started walking towards Mors, her mannerisms were still the same, as if she was trying to explain something academically, but the tone of her voice was rising, starting to show increasing tones of anger.

“And I have kept the delicate balance of having enough telchines to be able to connect to our world without destroying this one but somehow you managed to ruin my many millennia of hard work in your first few minutes as a Goddess and let me tell you, I’m incredibly angry. I am the only reasonable one in the whole pantheon and you managed to infuriate me all the same. If the other Gods knew what you did they would immediately try to kill you, and let me remind you, your immunity to violent death is not on you anymore. I put it in this thing to save your stupid kid's life”

Mors was now with her back to a tree, while the divine being in front of her was now angrily shouting threats a few centimeters away from her. She was sure that if her fist hadn’t stopped before hitting her face in the earlier demonstration, she would now be pummeling her face to a pulp instead of just screaming.

“So, why do I even bother telling you this when you so foolishly just doomed the entire world? To be honest? Because I’m personally a bit over it. When you live as much as I do, your perspective on life changes a lot, and although I would like to live forever, I am no longer foolish enough to get upset over things that I know that I can’t change.

So, the world is about to be over, what can I do about it? Nothing. Sounds like I should not fret about it then, all that is left is to play my hand as best as I can before then and see how the end plays out. Nothing more, nothing less.”

The Goddess was screaming, with a manic smile, doing a proclamation to the four winds. At the start Mors thought that she was trying to convince herself of it, but the more she heard, the more she felt that these were all her actual, truthful thoughts.

“And what can I do? That’s the matter you see. Even though I know it’s a worthless feeling, I’m boiling in visceral anger. All I want right now is to split your head in two, but I can’t. What a dilemma right? But when we traveled through the sea to get here I figured out a marvelous solution, a fitting punishment for a fool like you are.”

Giving a bit more space between the two of them, she took the necklace, raised it to Mors face, and snapped it apart with her own hands. The power in it was liberated, but instead of returning back to Mors, it went back to a bracelet on the Goddess arm.

“You know, this was an experiment I was trying to do myself for my own purposes, and now you have given me the perfect material to try it out. One thing we all love as Gods is creating enormous, magical animals, and I wanted to do one of these for a while.”

The energy in the bracelet went back to her hands, taking form as she molded it. Glyphs started shining in her hands, going up to her arms, even separating and now dropping by the dozens down to the ground.

“So, as a little test run before I actually do one of these for my purposes, let’s see how you would deal with it.”

Finally, she opened her hands and the magic started growing. The Goddess of Wisdom threw it to the side as it started to grow in size. Soon, it was bigger than both of them and the enormous mass of power was bending and uprooting the trees around it with its size and strength.

When it reached three meters in height, it stopped, and its texture changed. Molding into an apparently endless, brown surface that later Mors would recognize as hide. The power took form, grew a head, rose in the air as it grew four legs, and finally, two enormous tusks appeared on the front of it.

It was an enormous boar, bigger than any other animal the two of them had seen before.

“And what a success I would say! I took the power from your kid and put it in your necklace too, so this power is both your capacity to kill with violence, and to avoid violent death. If you want it back, you’ll have to kill it, but I don’t recommend you try it yourself. You see? It will resist if it feels in danger, and considering that violence is now the only way you can die, well, you don’t want to die now that you have reached immortality, do you?

Now you are one of us, dear Mors! My recommendation would be to give it a rest, and eventually a human worthy of becoming your hero will take down the beast, then you’ll have your own footman to do your bidding, and you’ll be a full fledged God like we are!”

The boar looked at them with disinterest, and without any other word, turned back and ran away. It bent every single tree with its run, creating an enormous path of destruction behind it. If something like that reached a human settlement…

“But even so… who knows how long it could take for Leucothea to return, if I were you, I would like to have my power back before that happens. I wish you luck in your hero hunting my dear!”

With these final parting words, the Goddess of Wisdom started briskly and happily walking away, in the opposite direction the boar went. Mors was still shocked by the whole situation, and it took her a moment to actually move from the tree she was in. When she recuperated, she let herself fall seated, just on the side of her still sleeping son, Todo.

It was a terrible situation, and now the gigantic animal was almost out of view for her, marking the start of what she now knew would be a terribly long hunt. She could feel it, not on her body, but on her soul. When the animal was born, it was as if a part of her had been amputated and left behind a lingering phantom pain that throbbed on her chest if she paid attention to it for even a moment.

Night came, and before it could get worryingly cold, the Goddess had long taken her son on her back and walked away in search of refuge. Her mind in a daze, on the forefront worried about how her life would be for her and her son from then on.

But deep inside, she was already thinking in a way to recover herself, and to take down that enormous symbol of her personal despair that had now taken the form of a boar.