Author’s Note and Warning

This is a tragic story in every sense of the word. The world is brutal to the people, to the gods, to everyone. Themes such as death, rape, slavery, uncaring cruelty, torture and hopeless situations are explored. Many of the main characters lives will end in horrible ways. Injustice and inequality are everywhere. Good things will happen to bad people and atrocities to good. The innocent are falsely accused, the guilty rewarded, the just defeated and the unjust proclaimed heroes.

It is a story that explores what extraordinary people do in impossible situations. The story is about the choices they make because they are the right choices to make. It is a story that describes a world clawing and scraping its way toward salvation measured by one martyr, by one heroic sacrifice, even by a single act of kindness made at a time.

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Prolog – What a Goddess is made of

[Who am I? What am I?]

Oriana.

[What does that mean?]

Oriana. Blond. Golden. Dawn. Sunrise. Rising. New. Beginning. Oriana.

[Is that my name?]

…

[What should I do? Where should I go?]

…

[What do I remember?]

A black man in prison being brutally raped. He committed four mistakes to be there. Being black. Being in the wrong neighborhood. Being poor. Having a seizure. His only crime? Resisting arrest by having a seizure while being questions by the cops on why he was in a rich neighborhood.

[That’s horrible.]

A small five year old Arab boy holding a grenade. He is told by men holding guns to his family’s heads to pull the pin when he gets close to the soldier. He doesn’t understand politics or why he has to die. All he knows is his family will be killed if he doesn’t do this. He runs towards the solider and pulls the pin.

[Why would anyone do that?]

A young girl is being gang raped. The witch doctor of the village said taking the virginity of a girl will cure AIDS. The men desperate for a cure will do anything. Even her father is taking part in the pointless ignorant brutality.

[How could they be so ignorant?]

Another young boy in bed coughing. He’s coughing so hard he can barely breathe. In-between coughs he makes a whooping sound as he tries to inhale enough air before the next wave of coughing hits. He knows there is a vaccine for this horrid disease and wonders why his parents never gave it to him. He also wonders if his next breath will be his last.

[Why would they do that to their own child?]

A family with crushing medical debt they can’t pay off. Begging at the doors of a megachurch for food to feed their children. As the congregation spits on them and tells them to get a job as their kind has no place in this house of the Lord.

[They make millions surely they can feed at least one family?]

A young Asian women is boarding a human trafficking boat. She has been sold so her family can eat. She hopes where ever she is going they will at least pay her enough to send some back to her family. But she fears she will never see them again.

[That poor girl.]

A young man held at gun point. Told he is now a soldier for the local warlord. He’ll have to learn to kill other such boys who are now men or else he and his family will die.

Stolen novel; please report.

The goddess starts weeping.

Another girl. Her feet being crushed as she is undergoing female circumcision with no aesthetics.

Another boy who is told he is living in sin and this is the only way he won’t grow up to be gay. As the clergyman forces the boy to give him fellatio.

It goes on and on without end. Oriana realizes these aren’t her memories but the unanswered prayers of people crying out. She tries to help, to reach out, to do anything but she is powerless. Each prayer she hears seems to strengthen her and beg her for help and she can do nothing.

The world is too old, too big, too set in its ways to be changed. Oh the people of the world could end all disease, all inequality, all starvation, all misery, all war, all crime and all hate with what they currently have if they all worked together. However they seem hell-bent on making it worse for their own greed and lusts. Using their beliefs as an excuse to continue tormenting others.

If she can’t help the living perhaps she can help the dead. She gathers up many of the tormented and ignored souls from that world and brings them to another. Or at least she tries to. Each world she looks upon is worse than the one she came from. People living by dehumanizing their neighbors, committing genocide, atrocities too numerous to count all in the name of their gods.

[Is this all that there is too the universe?]

[No! I refuse to believe that. If there is not a world free from evil I shall make one!]

She knows she does not have the power to create something from nothing that would take an entire universe worth of power to do. She does have enough power to choose her champions, give them gifts and set them to protecting those souls she saved.

[I shall choose that world. It’s new with many possibilities and still has the energy of creation about it.]

She notices other new gods about the world as well and hopes some may become her allies. If not she will make sure her champions can defend themselves.

She chooses those souls from her collection that are still shining. They still have hope. She can see each has been tormented by a tragic past but these souls seem to glow brighter when exposed to darkness instead of dimming.

[These are the souls I need to be my paladins on this new world.]

She does feel sorry for the souls she choose. They will have an advantage by keeping their old memories when they are reincarnated. It will both give them power and make it less likely they will give in to the cruelty of the world they will live in. However they will have old wounds never to be forgotten along with new ones they are sure to receive.

[Please do not break easily and protect those unable to protect themselves.]

She blesses them as she throws the souls into the world to be reincarnated.

To her horror she watches as the other gods snatch up many but not all of the souls and corrupt them to their own causes. She is again powerless to do anything as she gave all her power to those souls. All she can do is hope that it was enough to protect them from the other gods.