I stood in the halls of a palace made of ice. Before me was the throne of the Moon Goddess, a towering construction of marble and sapphire. Moonlight radiated through the walls, illuminating rooms beyond them in the pale glow. This was relatively normal - I was getting used to passing through bizarre mental realms.
I didn’t particularly like that I seemed to have picked up a fleshy body this time. One of those ungainly, two legged, two armed ones, with the pointy ears. An elf. I had, so far, precisely no good experiences with elves, and finding myself as one was a little distasteful.
“That is the body of a mildly talented apprentice.” The Lady explained from atop her throne. She’d sort of materialized there the moment I looked away. “Apologies, but if I have to use real objects to form this vision. I needed a body and they came to mind.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you doing well. You seem much more alive than last time.” For instance, she was more than a disembodied voice. She wore a long dress made of the night sky, almost the same shade as her skin, with eyes that glowed in starry, pale brilliance. A single stripe of white was painted down the right side of her face.
The difference between seeing a god in my own form and in a form of flesh was- intense. She radiated a sort of instinctive awe that manifested as a pressure in my chest, an iron, squeezing weight on my heartbeat, my lungs. It started slow and pressed down. “A-also, you appear to be murdering me- j-just a little.”
She waved a regal hand. The pressure diminished. “I’m still quite dead, thank you. As a doornail. As a very dead thing. This was one of my dreams, before the end. I used it to build my blessing as a pathway to many visions. Look this way.”
I groaned, stumbling, and clutched at my chest as my heartbeat returned to normal. “I-” Damned mortal bodies. I could feel a sloshing around my brain, an unbearable sensation like a drum. A headache. My blood was rushing, the muscles of my legs wanted to give way, and as soon as I could get out of this stupid body.
Bodies of stone were so much more reliable.
“Are you quite done with the theatrics?” She gestured behind me, and I saw a wall of doorways made of silver.
“While greatly diminished in my ability to see the future, I can still offer the past to you. If you wish to see the battle against the Black Wolf it can be done. But I suggest you seek the guidance of masters from the old world instead. Great mages, artisans, warriors- anyone in the course of history you wish to speak to, you can. Although it will only be a vision. At best your host will have had a vague sense of forgetting a dream when they woke up that day. Changing the past is beyond me.”
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“I-” Long elven hair drifted down around my face. I had skin. The whole thing was miserable, and I tried my best not to be petulant about it. “Interesting. So the past is a thing that can be changed?”
“Altering the flow of time is a fire you can stick your fingers into. But I don’t suggest it.”
“And…” I paused. The doors showed different worlds, different pasts. I could find what I needed there, and I already knew who’s guidance I wanted, but I also had a goddess willing to speak with me. That wasn’t something to waste. “Tell me something. If there was another god against me, besides Arak, how would I defeat them?”
“There are no true gods left on that world. The war scattered most of to distant worlds, and Arak killed the ones who remained. Half-gods, maybe.”
“The difference being?” I raised an eyebrow. Making skeptical expressions was one advantage of this body. The only one.
She sighed. “There is a thing called the Construct. I suppose technically you have one, the thing you call Little Ibis. We gods are no better at interpreting the Pale Beyond than you, with a few exceptions who tend to also be raving mad. So we build a sort of alternate self, an avatar of the Pale, connecting us to the Form we would embody. This is the Construct, and it gathers the power of divinity through worship. Constructs can pass from one mortal to the next, can take on life of their own, can even be destroyed.”
“Ah. So if they lose their Construct, they’re a Half-God?” I already knew she was likely wrong. The old man’s story, the one about where he’d gotten his book of stories, had suggested a god had managed to return after the war. Within a lifetime, and so after Arak’s rampage.
It was entirely possible she didn’t know as much as she thought.
“Exactly. Arak is close himself. You’ve seen his Construct, the Blazing Crown, but that is a pale remnant of itself. His madness shattered his connection to Valor and left it badly damaged.”
“And yours? Is there the possibility of raising a new god from your Construct, or the Lady of Open Sky?”
“For me, the damage is done. Arak scattered my archives to the wind and has been hunting down everything that remains for centuries. When the last of my predictions come to pass my presence will fade from the earth. It would be easier to raise a new divinity than replace mine. Coincidentally, Arak has slaughtered every new god before they could ascend.” Of course he had. The last god on the planet had every reason to keep new ones from cropping up. I wasn’t even all that ruthless and I’d have the sense to do the same. “As for the Lady of Open Sky, you’d have to draw her Construct out of hiding. It’s inherited her irresponsible nature.”
I turned back to the doors. They seemed to respond to my thoughts, the views behind shifting constantly.
“One last thing. I have somebody I want to meet.”
“Oh?”
“I think I should speak to the strongest and oldest dungeon you know.”