Pip did not have a shadow to speak of; the mark of a new God. That in itself was not an uncommon occurrence, as most of the Gods that people were faithful to were the new Gods. it simply meant that the God themselves would need to bestow their power among their chosen mortals. This would have been just fine with Pip. She would have happily given her power to a chosen mortal personally so that she could see her mortal rise to become the most formidable of all the chosen, and Pip with her.

She would have seen her chosen fight hard battles, defeat opponents strong and weak and rise to the rank of world priest. She would have comforted them when they lost, and provided encouragement when they struggled. After all, that was the duty of a God, was it not? She would talk of everything with her chosen. She’d tell her about her treatment by the older Gods, and how even the younger Gods had rejected her, and together they would have shown them all exactly how long they were to doubt Pip The Youngest.

That was, of course, if Pip had been able to give her power to a mortal. Without a shadow she would have been fine, but bad luck had taken even more from Pip. She was created without a binding. All Gods had a binding. From the smallest of the Gods of feathers, to the Gods of the earth and sky, each God came into existence with a binding; a way for mortals to commune with them in prayer. A God’s binding was what it meant to be a God. A candle, blood, even sweat could all be used to power a given binding, and in giving a chosen mortal would receive the blessing of their God.

Pip didn’t get one. She was forgotten by the world itself, cursed to be without even the lowliest of bindings. It was a sign of death for one of the new Gods.

At only seventeen, millennia short of even the lowliest of the new Gods, Pip was destined a painful death. That was exactly why she had fled the realm of the Gods to come to the small human city whose name had turned out to be Dasgad. The streets were not of paved or gravel stone, nor were the buildings the great works of the masters that she had heard about. The grand Cathedrals did not line the streets, and the powerful would not flock here to grow and be seen by the masses. Dasgad was not where legends would be made or songs written. It was a city like the millions of others that lined the continent of this world and many others like it. To Pip, it was the most wonderful place she had ever been in her short life.

There were no lurking Gods. Platinum chosen were nothing more than a myth in a backwater like Dasgad, and even an iron ranked chosen would be nigh impossible to run across. Pip, with only her own power, would be safe. That was worth more than all the works of the greatest masters put together. To the older Gods it would not have been worth the effort to spit on, but to Pip it was everything. it was something she had never even hoped to dream of. Days spent not in feat, but mundanity. Somewhat.

Pip was one of the new Gods, and the newest and weakest among them. That meant that she had very little control over her form, even less so than the lowliest of the Rieven-daas. She was lucky that her form was mostly humanoid- enough so that she might be mistaken as a mortal chosen of one of the more eccentric new Gods. with white hair and silver eyes, with cheeks freckled with glowing white spots, Pip stood out some among many of the humans. Among the elves and their choice of Gods she may have been less conspicuous, but her pitch black eyes would lead her to a swift death at the hands of the courts.

Her plain white traveler's cloak hid much of her most anomalous features, such as the singular lavender-purple horn coming out of her head and her four-fingered hands, but it would still be enough for anyone worldly enough to notice. There were no Gods that would dare mark their chosen with a horn. It had been Pip’s most hated feature in all of her seventeen short years.

____________________________________

“Your eyes are super red, you know that right?” Samantha said in a teasing tone.

“And yours aren’t, oh great paragon of emotional stability?” Micheal snidely replied.

“That might be so-”

“ ‘Might be so’ - I can literally see your eyes from here”

“Ok, it is so, but that is still beside the point entirely. You were the one that said you hadn’t been crying.” Samantha said as she pointed a finger at Micheal. He, for one, was feeling like she had taken that statement out of context. He had never explicitly stated that he hadn’t cried. He just felt that his tears weren’t really that bad compared to Samantha’s. So he hadn’t Really cried that much…

“SEE! You’re not even denying it,” she shouted. Micheal cursed aloud. Now she would never accept any argument that he could throw at her. She would just say that he hadn’t denied this. It was time for a change of tactics.

“Well, at least I didn’t make my way through the first hall without an apostle just because I missed my friend,” he said with his best attempt at a ‘you-should-kick-me-in-the-teeth face’. Both of them knew well why Samantha had done what she had done, and Micheal would never question her decision. He himself would have done it if the situation had been reversed. That did not mean that he would not make fun of her for it without mercy.

“And you wouldn’t have looked through the first hall for me back when you were lost?’ she said, arching her eyebrows in a knowing look. dammit.

“I would have charged right into the God's own living room to get to you, Sam,” Micheal said earnestly, causing Samantha’s face to turn red in embarrassment, which was as amusing to Micheal as it always had been. Neither he nor Samantha had any feelings beyond friendship between each other, but Samantha’s face would blush even so. It was hilarious.

“So would I,” Samantha agreed quietly as she turned her eyes to the floor to hide her red cheeks, and Micheal didn’t doubt it for even a second. Micheal would have staked his life on Samantha’s words at that moment, and he knew she would have done the same for him. His was an absolute and complete trust, as was hers.

“I know,” Micheal said softly. He moved over to his bed where Samantha was sitting, head still facing the wooden floor of his dorm. He wrapped his arm around Samantha, and allowed himself to simply feel his best friend against his side. Both of them silently acknowledged the moment, before Samantha faced him with an earnest expression painted on her face.

Samantha’s pupil-less black eyes were as striking as any he had ever seen. Few among the lost had abyssal eyes as complete as hers, with only his being a match within the orphanage. Looking into her eyes was akin to staring into a night sky absent of stars. Her eyes were a void of deepest black so dark that even light feared to tread amongst it..

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Micheal,” she said without her usual teasing or disinterested tone. Her words took on a weight at that moment, though to anyone else nothing would have been different. They were a weight to only Micheal. When she spoke, Micheal didn’t hear words from his friend, he felt the weight of expectation. Samantha’s expectation.

‘Mike,” she began as she shifted her weight off of his shoulder to face him more completely. “Where are we going to go from here?” It was a question he had wondered at since lying on the floor of the first hall with Samantha crying on his shoulder. Micheal had his goals. He knew what he desired. It was simple, after all. Power.

Kingdoms were made and destroyed based on power. It was power that crafted the world from the will of the Gods, and it was power that had seen the work that had brought the very mountains to be. It was power that dictated one's place in the world. From the lowest of sect leaders, to the great priests of the mighty cathedrals. Power was all that Micheal needed.

That would be the case, that is, if it weren’t for Samantha. Samantha was as lost as Micheal had once been. She would be no more powerful in a hundred years than she was at this very moment. That meant that all the power in the world for Micheal was nothing. At that moment, Micheal would have thrown away even the mightiest of artefacts if it meant Samantha would have been taken in by one of the Gods. What good was power without Samantha to share it with?

“I… I’m not sure, Sam,” he replied honestly. He really had no idea. His plans for the short term had been simple before. He wanted to ascend the ranks of the halls of the orphanage, hopefully reaching the third hall and becoming its representative. Once he managed that, he would have made his way to one of the weak local sects and done the same, all the way up to becoming a world priest. It was the way these things were done. There was order and structure to gaining strength. At least, if you were one of the lucky ones who lived long enough to gain said strength. The lives of chosen were seldom peaceful enough to grow without danger of death. There was a very good reason there weren’t world priests wandering the countryside in every nook and cranny of the world. It took luck and skill in equal measure to ascend to a level like that.

Micheal looked at Samantha as those thoughts crossed his mind. Pitch black orbs looked into his eyes. A small, lithe frame and raven black hair, matted in disarray, showed her state. Her eyes were puffy and red around the edges, as were his own. The tears had long since dried up, but their mark remained yet. He struggled to form an idea, and looking at Samantha, he struggled to think of anything to say at all.

“I think…” he said, hoping that beginning a sentence might help his words flow.

“I think we need to get you chosen, Sam,” he said simply. Samantha’s earnest expression immediately turned to a visage of pure scepticism that would make even the most suspicious of back-alley salesmen green with envy. Truly it was an expression of such scepticism as to warrant an award for sceptical brilliance. Said award would of course be delivered anonymously.

“Do please enlighten me on how you plan to achieve that impossible task, Mike. Because from where I’m standing, you’re just about the only one who I know that became found,” she said, clearly annoyed that her expectation had been matched in spectacular fashion.

“Well it’s simple, don’t you think?” he said earnestly.

“I very much do not think, but continue,” she replied flatly as she crossed her arms to show Micheal exactly how disappointed she was in him. This, of course, was hilarious.

“All we need to do is do something that will force the Gods to choose you as one of their chosen,” he said.

Samantha, as was her current mood, buried her face into her palms in pure frustration.

“You, Micheal, are an idiot,” came the muffled cry. An evil grin spread across Michael's face.

“You have no idea”

________________________________________

Pip ducked out of the alley she had hidden in fast enough that her pursuers were still left searching for nothing but her shadow. She forced her shadow to snake in and out of the building, leading the stone rankers on a chase that would rival even the greats. Franklin the fleet-footed and his quest for the meaning of life had nothing on the chase Pip sent those men on. She led them up buildings, down alleyways wholly unrelated to where there chase had begun, and even managed to send one of them into a sewer. While Pip wasn’t happy her shadow would smell of shit for the next few hours, she considered it a fair trade. The look on the guards face as her shadow faded into nothingness was priceless.

Pip was hopeful after her run-in with the guards. She had easily stolen food by using her shadow to take bread out from under the nose of a random baker, and the guards, even at stone rank, were hilariously ill-equipped to deal with someone as good at running and hiding as she was. In a fair fight Pip would never even beat an earth rank, much less a stone rank, but fair fights were not Pip’s forte. Pip, to her great annoyance, had been given one of the great ironies of the universe. Her ability had been the power of darkness incarnate. Shadows.

Despite Pip’s inability to ever possess the shadow of the Gods, their greatest and most prized ability, the universe had seen fit to give her a participation award. Her shadow, and eventually others’, were hers to control at whim. Her white hair often gave mortals and even lesser Gods alike the wrong impression. With a pale complexion and glowing white freckles, she had long been thought to be a lesser God of light. What the lesser Gods and men failed to understand is that the greatest Gods of shadow cannot simply use the shadow of the world to their own ends. Shadow is nothing without the light that gives birth to it. Shadow is predicated upon light as death is upon life. Two sides of the same coin. The brightest brights bring the darkest dark. Her bright complexion complemented her ability perfectly, which made her detest it even more.

It was useful enough. No-one would doubt that. She had led a group of the city's most powerful guards on a wild goose chase that ranged from dockside all the way to the tip of hedgeside and back down again. There wouldn’t be a single voice not singing the praises of such a student at the local academy, even the upper academy in hedgeside would be left in awe. Pip still hated it. Her ability had never been enough in her life. She had never been able to give gifts to mortals, neither had the older Gods sung her praises. And what was worse was that her abilities, so impressive among the backwater of Dasgad, were even less than what a child might accomplish in the lands of the Gods.

Hate them or not, however, Pip was too smart not to use them. She hated to imagine what some of the sickos in dockside would do if they found a God as weak as her, and she shuddered at the cruelty that someone in iron rank might be able to manage against her. Especially the mayor of Dasgad. He was said to be a man of exceptional cruelty. Even the street gangs spoke of him in hushed tones (yes, she had been to the street gangs. How else was one to get a feel for the place in a new city? They also happened to be very lovely in Pip’s opinion).

That meant that no matter her opinion on her abilities, Pip would have to use them to make a place for herself in Dasgad. That also meant she needed to find somewhere to make her beginnings.

On the street her answer had been simple. An orphanage that was said to house lost and chosen alike. They even had two or three chosen of stone rank. It sounded like the perfect place for Pip to grow.

___________________________________

“Micheal, You really are an idiot,” Samantha said with a face locked in both shock and awe. It was the most subdued Micheal had seen her since before they had become friends, with the notable exception of the night prior.

“It could work, you know. It could actually work,” she said, growing more and more excited as she pondered the possibilities. Both of them knew it would be hard. Nearly impossible, even, but that didn’t matter. He would help Samantha find a way to become chosen, if only so that when he saw the Gods limp corpses, he would have someone standing beside him as he did it.

“The question is how we get in,” Micheal finally conceded.

“That’s simple enough, isn’t it?” Samantha said with a newfound confidence in her voice. “Every hall’s representative is given a free ticket of entry, are they not?”

Micheal smiled wide and predatory grin. “Indeed they are, Samantha Cald, representative of the lower hall of the lost. Indeed they are,” Micheal said.

“It seems to me all we need to make sure I win this tournament is to keep me alive long enough to show the Gods something spectacular. A lost beating a bunch of chosen sounds like just the sort of thing the Gods would like to see of their newly found chosen,”

“That,” Micheal said. “Sounds like a legend in the making, Sam,”

“All we need to do is train enough so that this squishy lost doesn’t explode into a fine pink mist,” she said, gesturing to her squishy lost-ness.

“I think we may actually have a chance, Sam. if we’re really, really lucky, that is.”

“I think so too, Mike. thank you, for being willing to do it with me,” she said as she gave him a quick and tight hug.

“Anytime, you damn moron,” Micheal said, returning it.

______________________________________

Catherine sat in her dorm on her uncomfortable wooden cot, angry at the world and with nothing to do about it. Her roommate, Steven, had left her to do not only all of the cooking and cleaning for the night, but had also taken the liberty of stealing all of the food she was supposed to use to do said cooking. To top it all off, her partner for the dual tournament had cancelled on her earlier, leaving her only three months to find and train with a brand new partner.

Grace and Catherine had been partners since before she had entered the orphanage, it would be nearly impossible to find someone she was compatible with in time for the tournament, much less to practice with them as well. She was completely and utterly screwed.

Fuck.