Chapter 3: Playing with my New Toys
Joan dodged to the left, avoiding a stream of fire as it shot past her like a thrown lance. It wasn’t a move that any normal human flesh and blood could have hoped to pull off, but the French saint moved like a ghost, never stopping, never giving me a clear shot. My following fork of lightning split the air, but again she wasn’t where it was going! Grimacing in concentration I gestured with my left hand, the ground just ahead of her sinking as soil and stone left it, rising up to form a ball the size of my head. The instant it was formed I shot it at Joan, the ball of condensed earth moving as fast and deadly as any cannonball.
In response she moved more gracefully than the most accomplished ballet dancer in the world could have dreamed of, combining a seemingly impossible tilt to the side with a folding of her legs. For a moment she slid along the grass as though she were a performer on a stage, then she was past the projectile, her sword out, completing a movement I hadn’t even been able to see. Behind her the improvised missile fell apart, cut cleanly into quarters, the earth coming apart as the magic was also divided.
My right arm moved, magic responded, and the very air around her condensed, dozens of square feet of atmosphere condensing down into a sphere the size of a basketball. In only an instant the ball of thickened air had moved, going from where it had been to directly beside the resurrected soul. Two thunderclaps rang out, one from where the ball had been, as air rushed in to fill the gap, the other directly on top of Joan, as I released the hold on the air globe, letting it spread out once more with the force of a hurricane.
Light sparkled around her, a dome of refracted light marking the edges of the shield she used to protect herself as she kept coming, the air hammer battering uselessly against it.
Both my hands closed into fists as the halo above my head let out a low hum. Beneath me an oval centred on the saint. one the size of a large room, turned white with frost as I called on ice. Heat bled from the oval, even as I forced the power of cold and winter into it. Spears of ice formed, shooting up from the ground as though subterranean soldiers were stabbing pike up through the earth. They were long, thin and clear, viciously pointed and more than enough to skewer an unwary victim.
The cold didn’t slow her down, the ice didn’t disrupt her steps, and the spears of ice couldn’t touch her, and those that tried to bar her path fell like wheat before her sword.
My eyes narrowed, my fists opened, and then my hands came together, the fingers interlacing as though trying to capture something between them. Beneath me fire erupted, dozens of small flowers of flame flaring into being around my protector, condensing down to tiny points, then bursting into a staccato roar of explosions that shook the ground, burnt the grass, and sent out shockwaves strong enough to shove me back a few feet.
Then Joan came charging out of the fire and smoke, her armour still gleaming, more flickers of light tracing across it as she kept going!
All I could do was stare in awe as she kept closing in on me, though some small part of me was petulantly shouting that this just wasn’t fair. That had been the hardest I’d ever hit her before, and she just shrugged it off?! I wasn’t sure just how strong that fire explosion had been, but I was willing to bet that it could have brought a house down. And Joan just kept on going?
Just how much had she been holding back in our sparring sessions before?
Desperately I sent myself backwards, flying away in an attempt to widen the shrinking distance between us!
“Allons!” The blonde saint yelled as she leapt into the air, covering the distance separating us with shocking speed. “Is that all that you have?!”
I was barely able to get a shield up in time to block the sword that came swinging at me, the arcana-based protection cracking even as it managed to deflect the strike. Another moment and I’d firmed up the shield, repairing it just in time to catch the second strike, then frantically working to get it ready for the next one. In the space of only three seconds my defences were repaired, nearly shattered, then repaired again almost half a dozen times! Then gravity regained its hold on Joan, and she fell to the earth, landing gracefully, then kicking off in a shower of loose dirt as she shot away like a rocket.
For my part, I was just trying to pull myself back together, barely able to keep up with the blisteringly fast pace that she was setting.
“Trop lent!”
The shouted French words were the only warning I got before a trio of rocks the size of footballs slammed into my shield one after another, each of them moving as though just launched from a catapult. I spun in place, trying to keep track of the resurrected saint even as I tried to understand how she’d been able to find and throw such stones so easily. My frantically searching eyes darted around, only to find her from the light she was giving off. I only had an instant to take in the sphere of blazing golden yellow energy held between her hands for a moment, then my vision turned white as she released it!
My shield held for a moment, then shattered inwards under the strain, the beam punching through and hitting me like a runaway truck! The white turned to black for a moment as I felt the air being driven from my lungs, and then the black broke into painful shards of a blurred and swimming world as I hit the ground. It was a harsh impact, hard enough to shake my bones and let me know I was going to be one big bruise soon. Shakely, I tried to sit up, my wings dragging at me as I struggled to remember how to move them.
Then I felt something cold and hard at my throat, and my vision cleared enough to see the sword blade laid against my neck.
“And now you are dead.”
We stayed like that for a moment, and I briefly considered using telekinesis to throw her away but dismissed it. In the past, I’d only been able to use my Arcana-based TK on her when I caught her off guard and she hadn’t been able to defend against it. As things stood, I doubted that she was leaving herself so vulnerable. Most likely she was braced and ready to shake off any attempt to send her flying or otherwise attack her. She had me dead to rights, plain and simple.
Sighing I let my arms flop down at my side, a clear indication that I had accepted my loss. Joan stared down at me for a moment, then sheathed her sword and stepped back. Magic let me float up onto my feet again, my wings fluffing slightly as they tried to shake off the soil clinging to them. It was an odd sensation; one I still wasn’t used to yet.
“A worthy effort,” The French saint commented, offering me an approving nod as she stepped back, the steel of her sword withdrawing from my neck as she did so. “You are correct that your power has grown. Your control and speed have also vastly improved.”
“Not enough though.”
I tried very hard not to whine or grumble, but I could hear some of my frustration seeping through. It wasn’t resentment, I knew that Joan was just giving me the best training she could. Instead, it was more internally directed. I’d really thought that I’d have been able to do better. Etienne had been so huge, so monstrous, so unstoppable, but in the end, I’d been able to stalemate him. Sure, I hadn’t beaten him, but I’d brought him to a halt, bound him in place. His monster . . . I could only imagine the sort of damage it could have done if it got into a town or city.
After taking on something like that I thought I‘d be able to make a better showing against my trainer. I hadn’t thought to win, but I had thought to drive her back, make her work for it. Maybe even make her resort to her angelic transformation to beat me. Instead, she’d just rushed through my attacks, dodging or enduring them with almost casual ease, all while still just in her human form. It brought home just how much she’d been holding back in our previous matches. Back then, when she’d been caught by my sand trap, how easy had she been taking it on me?
“It was closer than you might believe,” She assured me, her face serious. “If your power continues to grow at a consistent rate then it shall not be long before even honoured Hadriel will need to grow cautious.”
Her words made me feel a bit better. I was about to ask for more feedback when the sound of clapping interrupted. Looking back towards the farmhouse I saw two tall figures walking towards us. Athena was as stately as ever, a vision of dignified beauty. Kali, on the other hand, was less well-groomed. To be sure, she still appeared as gorgeous as before, but her clothes had a rumpled look to them, and she had some of the worst bed hair I’d ever come across. It said something about the nature of divine beauty that despite this she was still able to pull off the whole ‘sex on legs’ look.
Kali had been the one who was clapping, a wide grin on her face as she did so, and her voice sounded out as she drew nearer.
“Alright, I’ll admit it. That was pretty fun to watch!” She gestured to the scene of our short bout, taking in the scorched, frozen and cratered soil. “That was a whole bunch of elements you were throwing around there, so I’m guessing that you’ve got plenty of diversity to work with, right?”
“That much is certainly clear,” Athena commented, her expression considering. “Your diversity is considerable, but you may require further training in how best to leverage it against a foe.”
“The majority of Adam’s training has thus far been in control and power,” Joan explained, offering a nod of respect to the goddesses as they drew closer. “Though he has been learning to use the magic he has in combat he has yet to begin any rigorous combat training in how best to wield it.”
“Really?”
I was honestly surprised to hear that, and I couldn’t keep the question from popping out. What Joan had said just didn’t make sense. There’d been training, lots of training! I had the memories of angry bruises and broken bones to back it up!
Seeing all eyes turn on me I decided to keep going.
“Sorry, but what do you mean? What about all that sparring? All those times you and Hadriel came at me with swords? Wasn’t that combat training?”
“Adam,” Joan held up a hand in a gesture to ward off further questions. “Do not misunderstand me. That was training. Important training. However, it was focused upon letting you learn how to access and manipulate your magic in the heat of battle, not on how that magic should be best used as a weapon.”
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“But . . . why?” I was genuinely confused, unsure as to why she wouldn’t have begun with something so important. Just yesterday I’d been fighting for my life, shouldn’t I have been as prepared as I could have managed?
“Adam, you have only had your magic for a short time.” Her voice was firm but not harsh. “Your progress has been commendable, but you lack the instinctive grasp upon your power that other demigods enjoy. Your development has been akin to teaching the art of the sword to a man whose hands were cut off at birth, but who has now been completely healed. Before I can teach you the sword forms that will build your skills, I must first teach you how to grasp the blade and not lose your grip upon it when your attention slips.”
Okay, I could see where she was coming from. I couldn’t say that I liked it, but I could understand it. All that sparring was meant as pressure to teach me how to access magic even when I was being attacked and harried. I supposed that I could thank that training for my survival since without it I would have faltered and lost in the face of Etienne’s monster.
“Okay, so when will I be ready for real training then?”
“I believe it should be soon.”
The voice came from my side, startling me enough to make me spin in place, my wings catching the air and making me stumble as I used my muscles again, rather than my magic. As I caught my balance, I saw the red-winged form of Hadriel hovering only a foot off the ground, her arms folded under her breasts as she looked at me. Under most circumstances, the pose might have been sexy, but the stern way that the angel was looking at me made it perfectly clear that any appeal on her part was due to my male mind, not any effort of hers. Instead, she looked at me as she normally did, evaluating, and judging, making me feel more like material to be worked into something useful than a person.
“With this increase in power, we can begin your education in how to take advantage of such things as elemental affinities and domain weaknesses. We may also begin to work with higher powers than simple manipulation of worldly elements.”
“Ah, the fun stuff.”
The grin on Kali’s face would not have looked out of place on a shark that had just spotted a wounded fatted calf paddling in the ocean.
“Let me know if the kid ever shows any talent for Destruction, I’d be happy to give him some pointers if he does.”
“I think it unlikely that such will be the case,” Athena commented, her eyes moving from me to the other goddess and back again. “His lineage is powerful, but such powers are rare for demigods to inherit.”
“He’s descended from Shiva though,” The dark-haired goddess replied, her grin still on her face. “How likely do you think it is that a Legacy of the Great Destroyer will have access to Destruction?”
The Greek goddess didn’t answer, but her eyes narrowed slightly as she stared at me once more.
“Errr . . . quick question. What d’you mean by ‘Destruction’?”
I could practically hear the capitalization of the word, so I was guessing they weren’t talking about a talent for breaking things.
“It refers to one of the highest powers that gods or demigods sometimes possess,” Joan explained. “There are the elements of the world, things like fire, ice and stone. Then there are less tangible aspects, minds, souls, and life force. Then there are the greater building blocks of existence such as space and time. Above them are such powers as Creation and Destruction, the powers that normally only belong to gods of great power. Such powers are prized, but they are also feared.”
“Yeah, Shiva has some real power at his beck and call, but he doesn’t use it all that often,” Kali commented. “As his Legacy, there’s a chance you might have gotten some of it. of course, there’re other things you might have gotten. Strength, shapeshifting, wish granting, there’re plenty of options.”
“Okay . . .” again I tried to scour my mind for any forgotten tidbits on Shiva, but again I came up blank. Still, my curiosity demanded answers. “So, what is Destruction?”
“It is a feared power,” Athena explained, stepping forward. “One that represents the conceptual destruction of a target, a destruction that goes well beyond the simple breaking of its form.”
“What do you mean?”
“Destruction is a power that does not simply involve the fragmentation of the target’s composition,” She explained. “It also holds dominion over death, decay, anti-life, even the abyss that consumes all. Destruction is-”
“Look,” Kali cut the other goddess off as she raised one hand and pointed off to the field away from the farmhouse. “Why don’t I just show him?”
She was still smiling, but at that moment it wasn’t a pleasant smile. It was still as beautiful as before, but now there was something wild and savage about it. I could see shock crossing the features of Joan and Hadriel, but before either of them could say a thing Kali . . .
Saying that she shot something at the empty field wasn’t the right way to describe it. Using that word would imply that it was something that she’d pushed there, that she projected. What happened . . . it originated from the Hindu goddess’s hand, but it wasn’t sent out. It was something that was released, something aimed and then unleashed.
As for what it was . . . that was harder to grasp. It wasn’t so much that there wasn’t anything to see, as it was that what I could see didn’t make sense. There was an impression of blackness, as though what I’d seen should have been black, and then there were edges of something else around it that made me think of dark reds and violets. The thing was that all of that was just a . . . a hint, an impression. What I actually saw was like a heat distortion mixed with an image fragmenting like a broken mirror or something seen through a kaleidoscope. There were no colours, but at the same time there was a feeling that colours should have been there, that they were there, but I wasn’t able to see them properly.
It was brief, as the . . . whatever it was darted out of the outstretched hand and towards the open field in the space of a second, but it was enough to make my head hurt. What followed was far easier to see, but no less terrifying.
A massive explosion of power erupted at the spot where the distortion had touched, but it wasn’t like any explosion I’d ever seen, be it fireworks, bonfires, or special effects on a screen. The mass of angry, and clearly purple and red, energy resembled a combination of fire and lightning, but it moved oddly slowly. Sure, it was fast, growing from the size of a pinprick to a house in only a second or so, but it wasn’t the blinding speed I would have expected from raw unleashed energy. Instead, there was something slow about it, as though the power making it up was somehow ponderous. But what it lacked in speed it made up for in something else.
The half-sphere of roiling power was visibly turning anti-clockwise at a slow pace. However, it was at the edges that I could feel what was happening. My magic was now always available to me at some level, even when I completely let it go I had a sort of background awareness of the elements around me, enough to know what they were and how available they were for me to use. I could feel the earth, the air, even the light around me in much the same way a normal person could feel just how even the ground beneath them was. Most of the time it was something you did without thinking about it, but then something would change and you’d become more aware of it due to that change.
At that moment, as I watched the angry mass of power grow, I could feel the elements within it being torn apart! No, not torn, that would have implied that there was something left behind. It was more like I could feel them vanishing from my senses. But it wasn’t as though they were just popping out of existence. As I focused in on the feeling more and more, trying to understand it, there was a sensation of . . . grinding, tearing, clashing. It was as though the power Kali had unleashed was ripping at everything it came into contact with and carrying on that assault until the opposing force was shredded from existence, the component parts fading away as they came free.
Destruction, that was the only way I could think of it, pure and total obliteration.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the half-sphere of energy faded away. In its wake, it left a deep crater, one that showed that the force hadn’t stopped when it reached the earth but had extended its destruction downwards. The destruction wasn’t smooth though, it might have been better if it had been. Instead, the edges were ragged, with crumbling protrusions that seemed to continue to splinter and break as I watched. The final crater was huge, big enough to fit most of a house in it, and it had taken barely seconds to carve it out.
“And that’s Destruction,” Kali said, breaking the silence that had fallen on our small group as we all stared at the crater. “Get why it’s a big deal?”
I just nodded, my voice mute as my eyes remained rooted to the sight of the terrifying power. Yes, I could have made a similar crater with my power, but it would have taken me time to build up the energy, and even my best efforts wouldn’t have been so absolute. Fire burned, ice froze, lightning electrocuted, and wind hit, but those were all elemental forces, things of the world. This destruction . . . it destroyed. More than that, it wanted to destroy. I didn’t know how I knew it, but the same sense that let me tell the colours of magic and use them, also told me that it didn’t just destroy because of its nature, it had something akin to a will driving it on.
“Cool. Maybe you’ll be able to do that one day. Don’t get your hopes up too much though. Miss Greecey here’s right, it is a pretty rare power for a demigod to have.”
Under other circumstances, the face Athena made at being referred to as ‘Greecey’, which sounded way too much like greasy, would have been funny. It was a strange combination of affronted dignity and perplexed bafflement, as though unable to decide just how to take it. However, my mind was still full of impossible destruction that violated the principles of science that I’d grown up with my entire life.
Matter and energy couldn’t be created or destroyed; it was a simple lesson that I’d learnt when I was about twelve. Science might not have been my strongest subject, but the idea that the essential building blocks of the universe couldn’t appear and disappear, only change state, had always stuck with me. Here I’d seen that supposedly rock-solid law of the universe metaphorically being bent over and spanked by the power of a goddess. I’d felt it as matter was shredded from existence, I knew it with grim certainty.
It shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did, after all, I lived with a saint and an angel, I could fly, and I could make the elements dance to my will. But seeing something like this, something that so casually and blatantly violated a fact I’d accepted as true and immutable . . . it brought home just how different my world was from just one year ago.
“Is . . . is there another one? Something that creates?”
It seemed important. If there was this power that just destroyed things, that just erased them from existence, then wouldn’t there have to be something that made up for loss? There had to be some sort of balance in the universe, right?
“Indeed,” Athena spoke before Kali, giving her a warning glance before turning back to me. “Creation is the counterpart to Destruction and is held in perhaps even higher regard, given that it is the power that spun all that is into being. It is the power to create from nothing, to bring materials, energies, life, and even powers into existence without any source.”
“It’s a cheat code is what it is.”
Kali muttered her comment, but I still managed to hear her. It struck me how she was a strange fusion of divine power and beauty with familiar human quirks. That bit about the cheat code, that was the sort of thing I could see Doug saying, not a goddess of violence and destruction. It made me wonder just how much time she’d spent as a mortal, and how recently that had been.
The Greek goddess didn’t deign to respond to the other deity’s comment, instead, she simply continued.
“There are many levels of potency in such a power, of course, and it is not limited to the simple creation of new resources. It also allows the wielder to command and manipulate what already exists, to alter and mould it further. The powers of Creation are many and potent, a prize for those that hold it.”
I nodded, thankful for the short lesson, and once more reminded of how little I really knew. There was so much to learn.
“I think that such topics are for a later time though,” Athena continued. “Last night we were unable to adequately discuss the situation. Now that you are rested and recovered it would be best to continue in some more detail. I also need to educate you in the use of the gifts that were given to you, since I doubt you are educated in how to don Grecian armour. There is also the matter of the properties that you now own. It would be remiss of me not to fully inform you as to the details of your new assets.”
The change in subject caught me by surprise, but I had to admit that she had a point.
“Okay. How about I take a shower and get a change of clothes, then we can get to it?”
Joan might not have been too hard on me, but after she broke my shield and slammed me to the ground I had plenty of dirt and torn-up grass on my clothes and in my hair. Not the look I wanted while being taught by someone like Athena.
“Very well, unless your other mentors have anything that would demand greater priority?”
She looked around at that, but Joan, Hadriel and Kali shook their heads.
“There is nothing that cannot wait,” The angel state, inclining her head to the goddess slightly. “As you say, it would be best if Adam took some time to familiarise himself with his gifts. Their use should be made a part of his training.”
The resurrected saint nodded her agreement, and the Hindu goddess grinned as she did likewise.
“Yeah, let him check out his new toys. Stuff like that’s one of the perks that comes with being a demigod, so better enjoy it before the headaches start piling up.”
As I followed Athena into the farmhouse, I couldn’t help but wonder if my already complicated life was going to get even more tangled.