When something seems too good to be true, it’s normally because it is.
Yes, she knew the saying. Yes she had been suspicious when she had been allowed to select Goddess as a starting class. But the benefits, the sheer potential that the class seemed to promise, had just been far too alluring for her to ignore.
Eternal youth, incredible beauty, the ability to communicate with all intelligent beings, granting blessings to others, and a body that was for all intents and purposes indestructible. Those were just some of the perks that came with choosing the divine class. Perks that would have allowed her to not just survive, but breeze through the second life that was miraculously being granted to her.
That didn’t mean she selected the class right away. No, she made sure to do her due diligence and properly compare and contrast the class with all the others, doing this through a mental ‘screen’ that had been with her ever since she found herself in this ‘afterlife’. So she read the perks and abilities that came with each different class, and read the bonuses they were given to certain stats. And although there were no demerits mentioned for any of the classes, she did her best to work out what they must have been based on what information was purposefully missing from each class.
By the time she had finished, the Goddess class still seemed to stand head and shoulders above all other choices. Sure, just choosing the class would use up all the ‘points’ that were being granted to her. But she didn’t believe that a few extra skills or starting points could compare to the long-term benefits of being a goddess.
Still, she had gone over her mental catalog one more time. Trying to find a fatal flaw that she might have missed the first time around. But in the end, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t find a reason to pass up on goodhood.
And so, with only slight hesitation, she chose the class. Believing that her choice had been the right one, the wise one. That she was giving up short term gains for the sake of her new future.
But it was only once she had materialized in this new world, with full access to a game-like menu that detailed every part of her being, that she realized just how doomed she was. For it was only then that she learned that gods did not survive on food or water. That a god's existence relied entirely on having followers who believed in them and prayed for them.
And she had none.
So it meant nothing to her to have been summoned in some garden-of-Eden like location. Meant nothing for her to find a lush forest filled with fruit or nuts and all the food one could wish for. Meant nothing to her that she could find crystal clear water in the rivers around her.
Because no matter how many nuts she ate, how many juicy apples feasted on. No matter how much water she drank, not a single one of them did anything to stop the doomsday counter that kept slowly ticking down to zero. To the moment her irrelevance as a goddess would cause her to fade away.
By the fifth day of being stuck in that paradise that seemed to mock her, she had run out of curses and insults to throw at the mysterious force or person who had granted her this accursed second life. For misleading her by leaving out such a crucial detail about gods back when she was still selecting a class. And then for having the cruelty to throw her in a forest devoid of human life.
Perhaps her complaints had been heard. For by the tenth day she was freed from her forest prison, and instead found herself wandering aimlessly through a prairie, no longer able to find the forest that had welcomed her into this world.
By the twentieth day she had accepted her fate. Lost, alone, with no signs of civilization in sight. There was no doubt in her mind that she would fade away as the most beautiful person in that god-forsaken prairie. For even after all that time her divine looks were still as resplendent as ever, with not a single spec of grime or injury to mar her skin despite twenty days of wandering.
And on the twenty-seventh day, she laughed.
Before that moment, she had harbored a suspicion that humanity might not have existed in this new world she found herself in, that the cosmic joke being played on her was on a much larger scale that she could have imagined, one in which cruel beings of omnipotent power sat around and laughed at the hopelessness of her situation as she slowly wasted away with no way to save herself.
But the burnt ruins of what seemed like a medieval-era village put to rest that theory of hers to rest. For there was humanity in this world, or at least the scorched buildings and bodies would imply there to be. And yet, once again, this finding meant nothing to her. For what was she supposed to do with the burnt remains of a village and its people? Perhaps if she had cohen then Necromancer class this might have been a lucky find, but she hadn’t/ And dead people could not believe nor pray in her. So once again, she was in the same position as she had found herself at the start.
So she laughed. Despite the harrowing sight that would have once shocked her modern sensibilities, that would have had her throwing up and in tears at the cruelty of it all. She laughed.
And instead of tears of horror and sympathy, the only tears falling down her eyes were caused by maniacal laughter. For such was the sheer absurdity of the situation she was in.
From having appeared in a nebulous world without form or light. A world where the only other voice she heard was one informing her of her death and giving her instructions to ‘build’ the new ‘her’. And then actually being able to ‘recreate’ herself as a goddess in a new world, only to discover that in doing so she might have doomed herself. Something which more than twenty-five days of wandering had all but affirmed to her.
And so, after losing all hope, after believing that she would never come across even a sign of any people, she finally did. Only she did so as the remains of a small town?
It was ludicrous, yet another well played prank on her. So she laughed, because what else was she supposed to do?
But once the laughter had abated, and she was left with the company of the dead whose deaths she had callously laughed at, she couldn’t help but feel guilty for her attitude. So she wandered around, entering scorched homes and looking through debris-filled backyards until she found what she was looking for. And then she started digging.
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By the time she was done on the next day, she had dug forty-seven holes where forty-seven bodies lay. Burnt planks serving as makeshift tombstones to mark each single person.
She hoped with this that they would forgive her for having laughed at their demise, if they even knew what she had done at all. But even if they didn’t as she most likely believed, she hoped that someone out there would appreciate her gesture, that they would be able to remember these forty-seven unfortunate souls in the way that her, who would fade away into nothingness, could not be.
And so on the twenty-eight day she left the remains of the village, following the hard to see dirt path to who knew where. It was her best chance at finding civilization without doubt, but in truth, she doubted she would find anything. Inside of her heart, she truly did believe this all to be some cruel game, one where the point was to drive her to insanity and enjoy the resulting show. And to affirm her suspicion, the path she had been following had disappeared, and she was lost one more.
And yet, for some reason unknown even to her, she kept walking. Even as her ‘indestructible’ body began to quit on her on the thirty-first day, she kept dragging her feet forward. Even as her vision became blurry and thinking became difficult, she kept moving forward to a place only a real god could now.
And then on the thirty-second day, just as the last remains of her strength were giving out, she chanced upon two children who looked to be in just as miserable condition as she was.
No, that wasn’t right. She was sure still looked just as lovely as ever, so to say that she looked as bad as the kids was a lie, even if she probably felt the same way they did.
Scrawny, wan, dirty, and clearly malnourished. That was the appearance of the two kids resting against a fallen tree trunk.
She approached them, something they quickly noticed thanks to the sound of broken twigs and crunched leaves that her heavy footsteps produced. But despite seeing her, they showed no sign of taking any action, only staring at her with a blank expression as she slowly closed the distance between the three.
And then she stopped, having closed the distance to only a few feet. But despite the close proximity, despite each side looking at the other in the face, no one spoke. And so silence dominated the barren forest for almost a minute.
But eventually, one of the two kids, a young girl who was holding an even younger boy, addressed the goddess before her.
“Do you have any food you can spare?” She asked weakly.
The goddess didn’t answer. Just continuing to watch the two unfortunate souls as she wondered if this too was meant to be some sort of cruel joke. If there really was an omnipotent being out there laughing at this absurd situation filled with misery.
“Is that you brother?” She asked a question to the girl as opposed to answering the one she had been given.
“Yes, he is. He is terribly hungry, could you please help him?”
And he definitely did look famished. His eyes were sunken, facial bones easy to make out, while his limbs seemed as thin as some of the branches she had stepped on on the way here. And the girl wasn’t in any better condition either.
It was a miserable sight, one that as an older sister broke her heart to see. She looked around the forest. It was not at all like the Eden she had first found herself in. It was disorganized, rough looking, and without any clear fruits or other edible items in sight. But as it was a forest, she doubted it could be without food, especially with the warm temperature she had experienced over the past month.
“I can’t.” She immediately answered, and it hurt her to see the way the girl's heart seemed to break at her answer.
But it was the truth, by the time today was over, she was certain that she would have faded away into nothing. So she could not take care of the girl or her brother.
“But I can grant you the power to help him. Would you be willing to accept a blessing from me?” She didn’t know if it would work, if she even had enough energy left to grant a blessing. But she had to try, even if doing so would cause her to immediately fade away,even if her blessing would disappear as soon as she did so, she didn’t want to waste away while watching the two children do the same. So she chose to try, even if it proved meaningless in the end.
“Are…are you a goddess?” The girl asked.
“I am.” She answered.
“May I know your name?”
“Olga.” It was a name that she felt fit far better in an old woman than a woman in her late twenties. Which made sense as she had inherited the name from her grandmother.
The small girl seemed to hesitate for a moment, before pushing her brother out in the direction of the goddess.
“Then…Lady Olga…will you please help me take care of my brother?”
The goddess smiled at the girl. “Yes, I will.”
As soon as she had finished speaking, the new goddess felt what remained of her power fade away as it transferred towards the feeble girl and formed a blessing. By the time the process had finished, the goddess was far too weak to remain awake, and so she closed her eyes, believing this moment to be her last in this new world.
So it was to her great surprise when she suddenly awoke. Hearing the incoherent mumbles of the young girl as she held a loaf of bread in her hands.
“This is for you.” The girl said when she noticed she had awoken.
“…Thank you.” The goddess answered reflexively and took the offered bread. With her wits returning as she finished awakening, she took stock of her surroundings and noticed the young boy desperately chowing down on his own piece.
“I-I made sure to give you the best piece!” The girl suddenly cried out.
The goddess stared confused at the girl, before realizing that she must have been afraid of being scolded or punished for slighting a god.
“Do you want it?” She offered it to the girl, who had the smallest piece out of all of them. There was no point in her having it after all, food was meaningless to her unlike the hungry girl before her.
But the girl shook her head with great energy. “No, this is an offering for you.” She said almost desperately.
She had planned to continue pushing for the girl to accept the bread, when suddenly she felt a strange sensation at the words the girl said.
Offering.
The bread was meant as an offering. An offering to a god. To her.
She looked down at the bread, and suddenly, she felt as if eating it would no longer have the same empty results as before. So she took a testing bite out of it.
It was stale, hard, and cold. By far the worst bread she had ever tasted in her twenty-eight years of life. But even so, she could somehow taste the gratefulness and respect that the young girl who had offered it to her felt. And with each bite that she took, she could her strength return to her, feel her soul regaining some of its power so as to prolong her death to another day.
When she opened her menu to check on the doomsday clock, to see how much time this had bought her, she came across a shocking discovery. Where before her class had simply said Goddess, there now were two extra words added to it.
Name: Olga Ortiz
Class: Goddess of Thieves