Curiously, from the perspective of an omniscient being – be it the OneGod Om as believed by the aditarus of Maharanya, Aimin the Allfather – the Creator of all intelligent life and worshiped by a lot of the humans on Sindria, the Dualgods Aimin and Anantika, or even one of the eight gods venerated by the stonehorns – from the point of view of all of these deities, all followers are created equal. Always.

Or at least, that’s how the followers interpret it. And whenever convenient, their interpretation reveals that the only people created unequal – and hence inferior – are people who believe in other gods.

On one fine Monsoon morning, looking down from the vast emptiness of Space upon the planet Sindria, an even more curious phenomenon could be observed in the northern part of the country of Aiminia on the continent of Gaia.

A young woman named Eve was praying to all the gods. Om, Aimin, Dualgods and all the stonehornish gods she could remember. With equal devotion.

Prostrate, with her forehead touching the ground, both hands spread forward on the damp soil, Eve murmured one last time, thus finishing the ritual of worshiping Om.

Like most Aiminian women, she was short. But unlike most, she was buxom though not quite curvy, with shoulder-length curly dark-brown hair and a figure that was well-toned, but not heavily so, from a lifetime of exercise. As a result, most members of the opposite sex found her to be quite attractive. At five feet two digits, she was a shade shorter than an average human girl, though something in her demeanor would suggest just the opposite.

Getting up, she dusted her trousers and half-sleeve shirt, then, catching a whiff of herself, pinched her nose.

Her clothes had seen better days. She herself hadn’t seen many worse. Life as an outlaw was proving to be more difficult and daunting than she’d feared. And she’d never thought it’d be easy.

The morning worship ritual brought back memories of her mother who’d taught her to respect other people’s beliefs, a view that inevitably brought her many heartaches, though she bore them all with a patient smile. Too good for this wretched world, she was.

Thinking about her mother filled Eve with a sense of deep-seated grief. A bottomless pit seemed to open up in her Heart Chakra as she recalled the chain of events that had led to her present predicament. Rage, anger, and sadness almost choked her. Gritting her teeth, Eve swallowed the lump in her throat, trying to calm her tumultuous Chakra.

Just another day – she told herself.

Another day trying to escape the inevitable. Maybe she should’ve researched the various mythologies concerning afterlife in different religions.

Maybe in one of them, she’d be reunited with her mother.

The makeshift camp she’d cobbled together last night was right at the edge of the Shadow Forest, in a grove of banyan, mango, teak, and mahogany trees. The ominous reputation of the dense forest meant there were only a few scattered homesteads near the camp, none within half a mile, her earth senses indicated. As a result, only sounds of the jungle broke the early morning silence.

Dripping of rainwater from giant banyan branches, calls of a sparrow and a crow, both perched on said branches, chattering merrily away with their neighbors. Sound of the south wind gently rustling through the mango trees, all unfortunately bare of the tasty treats, summer having well and truly passed, though the muggy Monsoon put that notion to the test on some days, today threatening to be just one such day. The sounds brought a measure of peace. They reminded her of home.

While munching on the last of the travel bread procured from an unsuspecting hawker two days prior, Eve went over her options.

Need supplies; rabbits, fowls, and other forest animals had become scarce at the edge of the Shadow Forest. Trying to sneak into another town or village was always an option, much as she hated pinching food from honest hardworking folk.

But that would mean she might run into her father, the only pursuer left after the Guards had temporarily given up the chase at the other end of the Shadow Forest.

She’d set a false trail leading into the Forest knowing no Guard would follow her there, an idea given to her by the odd stranger who had appeared like an apparition – the good kind – in the middle of her campsite on her second night on the run. This was even before she’d crossed the river Lorian. He’d also cautioned her not to take the route north through Murinia, since it’d be the obvious course for a young woman with limited knowledge of the world outside her tiny village.

Despite his weird appearance and unusual manner of speech, after chatting over the campfire for a bell, Eve had felt that he was good peeps. And it was a damned good idea. So, set a trail she did, using all the survival skills she could muster. Then, after carefully obscuring her tracks during the cover of darkness, she’d skirted around the edge. The Cleric leading the contingent of twenty odd Guards was competent enough to see through some of her earlier efforts at misdirection. So the respite, she feared, was temporary. Another reason why she’d chosen this route around the edge, and perhaps even through, the Shadow Forest, though the latter she’d hoped to avoid.

For the umpteenth time, Eve weighed the pros and cons in her head.

Pro: Not even a Master Cleric would be able to sense her kernel signature, even the vibrations of her running feet, inside the bonfire of kernel that was the Shadow Forest. The enormous Batalyn trees may only contain one rudimentary Chakra, like all other large trees except the Great Vines, but the sheer density of rich white-golden kernel made the prospect of finding another signature all but impossible. Like trying to spot a speck of dust in front of the twinsuns.

Con: The Forest was creepy as Sigrid’s Crown, and far more deadly. There was a good reason why all right-thinking folk avoided it like the plague. It supposedly contained plants that were even capable of swallowing people whole. Literally. Eve personally thought it was just someone’s imagination having a field day.

After some more internal deliberation, what in the end triumphed was pure logic.

If she went through the Forest, she’d have only her father to contend with. And, whatever hid inside those dark depths. If she didn’t, she’d soon have the entire Aimin-cursed Order breathing down her neck. Plus her father.

“Creepy Forest it is,” she murmured, having come to a decision.

Lacking any life or Healing related affinities, Eve was uncertain how much actual danger the flora inside the distant treeline held, but her good old earth senses had detected more than a dozen large predators, just in the past day, and she’d scarcely even entered it.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

There were also some disturbing rumors floating around that spoke of a six-legged feline predator called Silmodin living deep inside the forest, but Eve didn’t put much stock in that. Apart from the now-domesticated Skelerians, which were used by the Order to ferry Clerics over long distances, six-legged beasts were rare, especially in Gaia. Rarer still were creatures who could Manipulate, or as was the case here, Enfold. According to myth, Silmodins used Teleportation to ambush their prey, though the range was supposed to be short.

“Just one more thing to be wary of,” Eve mumbled to herself.

At least, this challenge she was equipped to handle, having learned outdoor survival from…well, from the very man hunting her footsteps, just as he’d been haunting her dreams, turning them into torturous nightmares. The man, indeed the person, she loved most in this world.

Her father, who she’d idolized since she was a toddler, her father who’d murdered her mother, and then framed her for it, who now wanted to kill her in order to “Cleanse the Clan” as he’d termed it when a sobbing, inconsolable Eve had asked him why.

Fleeing her home, her village, the only place she’d ever known and loved, had been an enormously difficult choice to make for a girl just turned nineteen. On top of that, everyone thought she was a murderer, and she wasn’t even given a chance to prove the accusation wrong. Her father had made sure of that. Not that she gave two whits about what people thought – unless they were Guards who were absolutely convinced you’re a cold-blooded psychopath who’d just butchered her mother. Then, they’d be on your tail until you left the Aimin-damned country. Which is exactly what she intended to do. Unless, of course, her father managed to catch up with her.

Her nostrils flared as she remembered the words used by the Cleric who was the Order representative of the region.

Such acts of savagery can only be perpetrated by a crazed Manipulator, and it is the sworn duty of the Order to put them down, he’d claimed, totally disregarding the fact that most people listening in the village square considered him to be one such crazed Manipulator.

Her father, of course, would rather avoid all that, since Eve’s connection to him would then come out eventually.

She shook her head in frustration as tears pooled in her eyes. Just a month ago, she was a happy-go-lucky girl with a brother who didn’t hate her and a mother who absolutely adored her. And, even if he’d been absent most of her life, a father who cared deeply for her. At least, she thought he did.

He’d only been at the periphery of her life till then since otherwise it would jeopardize their safety, her mother used to assure her whenever she had inquired about her father. Later, during one of her infrequent trips to the hamlet near Aimingar where her father’s battalion was stationed, she’d learned enough to realize that her mother had, if anything, played down the risks.

And it was during one such trip last month that one of the Fatewardens must have taken a keener interest in her life, turning it upside down.

Ever since she was a kid, Eve had dreamed of joining the army like her father. He’d always tried to dissuade her from taking that path, telling her to watch her words when she interacted with people she didn’t know well, warning her repetitively not to mention to anyone that he was her father, or that they were related in any way.

One day at the camp, after sneaking out of the inn to get a drink, she’d met a charming and handsome young sergeant at the pub. Back at her village, due to her naturally aggressive nature and inclination to get into fights with boys which invariably ended with the boy decked on the floor, she had few – no not few, she corrected herself mentally – exactly zero suitors. So perhaps unsurprisingly, intoxication and flattery had resulted in loosening of her usually rigid tongue, and the next thing she could remember was her father’s livid and strangely frightened voice waking her up in the middle of the night, telling her to flee the camp and run home as fast as she could.

Two days after she’d reached home, her father had arrived, bringing with him a storm of violence.

Eve sighed, getting up. The campsite wasn’t going to pack itself.

Surya had already risen, peeking through the canopy overhead. If she tarried too long, it would be far too hot and humid to travel.

After nervously adjusting the cotton scarf around her neck, Eve checked the hand-drawn map to make sure she hadn’t deviated too far from the course she’d decided to take. The crude but detailed map was another gift from her father, along with her kernel-smoothening gloves, made from the hide of saltwater crocs – or salties, as the good peeps of the Lorian delta called them. She absolutely hated wearing them. Not that she could now, as it’d mark her as an Acolyte at the very least.

Her boots, made from the same material but Alchemically treated for better concealment, were a different matter. Not only did they mesh well with her fighting style, they also reminded her of him – the kindly old half-stonehorn peddler with a seemingly inexhaustible collection of entertaining stories. She’d grown up on those stories, until the village-Elders had decided the old man was trying to convert an innocent Aiminist teenager, and driven him out for good.

As for the course, well… it was straightforward enough. Crossing the Govindil River, then moving north-west to Shillang, near the border with Arunia. Crossing the border might prove problematic. She would assess the situation once she got to the mountain metropolis.

A week later, Eve stood on a rise overlooking the ancient city of Shillang in the foothills of the Kailash Mountains.

To her left, about a mile distant, in a small valley between two narrow hills, sunlight glinted off the distinctive hazy greenish surface of Loshillang lake, namesake of the largest city in the foothills of Kailash. The lake was formed over fifty thousand years before the Cataclysm and remained untouched during the upheaval as the land surrounding it was transformed. Both the Historica and the Lore of Legends claim it was due to Aimin’s own intervention, since he wanted to preserve the unique properties of the lake, found nowhere else on Sindria.

That’s not the only trait that sets it apart from all other lakes in Aiminia, even all of Sindria. Scholars postulate that it may be the largest meteor lake on the planet, while ordinary Aiminians believe the lake, once touched by the hand of Allfather himself, was sacred and the springs found around it have healing properties, And so, many make yearly pilgrimage to visit the ancient temple of Aimin, found near the northern shore, going so far as to collect water from the lake as souvenir, even though it’s highly alkaline and toxic to most living organisms.

Squinting, she could even make out the four ruined and abandoned stonehornish temples on the southern shore, far older than the one dedicated to Allfather, also a novelty so near a large human settlement. In an act that defied all common sense, humans and stonehorns both seemed to be happy with this strange dichotomy of faith found around the even stranger lake.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole damn world was like that?” Eve said to herself with a small shake of the head, then switched her attention to more immediate concerns.

She’d made excellent time. Taking the powercar from Varanski to the terminus depot just outside Shillang had shortened the travel-time by half. She was confident that the Guards in Shillang hadn’t yet received the weekly memorandum listing the names and descriptions of outlaws and fugitives. Even her father, a peerless woodsman, couldn’t have traveled faster than a powercar. And of course, he wouldn’t board one himself, not a civilian transport vehicle or indeed a military one, as an errant gust of wind might reveal his true nature.

All around her, passengers were disembarking from half a dozen powercars from all corners of Aiminia, while others were preparing their luggage for the imminent journey. She even saw an Arunian powercar from Jivanpur, notable for its slightly sleeker design. The presence of several grim-looking Clerics around it only served to highlight the difference. Tension between the two nations was at an all-time high.

After making some inquiries, Eve realized that if she could gather a few supplies quickly enough and get some much-needed rest, she could take the powercar leaving tomorrow morning for Garbal, with no one the wiser. But only if she had the necessary documents. Which she didn’t.

Giving a parting nod to one of her fellow passengers, a spice merchant from Ajoygar, Eve gathered the duffel bag, her only piece of luggage, and headed toward the city, racking her brain trying to figure out a way to scrounge up enough gold to be able to bribe a few officials. Life in the past week had presented one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another, and she’d crossed them all.

All she needed to do now was find a way to cross the most heavily patrolled border on the face of Sindria.

In other words, a miracle.