Two things about the city became apparent.

Firstly, most buildings kept their food underground.

Alice hadn’t noticed because the cellars didn’t have stairs, really. Normally it was just a ladder and a small hinged door leading down. Easily missed, and often covered by a woven rug or animal skins. There were plenty of foods she could eat inside the cellars, which was fantastic news. Preserved meats, stuff that looked like tortilla rolls, hard-tack meals, glass jars of preservatives and jams, dried fruits…

She got really lucky, all that stuff still being good. And it’d set her up for a good number of weeks, food wise.

Now, the second thing involved the tower at the center of the city.

Alice had noticed it on her way in, how it had looked almost half-way melted from a distance. It was spookier up close.

The ground floor was fine, if intricately designed. The tower had a hexagonal footprint, and looked more like a lighthouse than anything else from below. She could even walk inside it, up the stairs and everything. The second floor was also fine, and so was the third. There were a number of shelves filled with papers and important looking books on both floors, so the tower probably played a significant part in the community. The fourth floor was also normal, though ended up dominated by a large desk covered in a number of crystals. Some were gently glowing with an inner light, others were cracked and colorless.

There was glass in the windows of each intact floor, thick and visibly distorted from imperfections in the tempering.

The glass windows on the fifth floor had melted in their mountings, and the stone around the windows had sagged. Like someone had put the tower in a blast furnace, but limited the damage to the fifth floor and up. None of the furniture had survived from that point upwards. The wood floors barely held together despite deep scorch marks and the same decay found in all the other ruins she’d passed while reaching the city.

Needless to say, Alice didn’t go past the fifth floor. She didn’t want to test the tower’s integrity any further. She did look at it from outside, though.

There was a sharp divide between the melted and pristine sections of the tower. Literally. A straight line across the tower demarcated the change, and Alice could even see points where liquid stone had pooled mid-air, prevented from crossing the line by something.

Zeus shimmered into sight next to Alice, staring up at the tower with her.

“Now, isn’t that interesting?” he asked, almost absently.

“Why? Can you tell what happened?” Alice responded.

“Eh, I couldn’t tell you what caused the tower to look like a melted candle. I can tell you that it probably protected the rest of the city from whatever happened.”

“How?”

“How else?” Zeus said, shrugging. “Magic.”

“...Really?”

“Yeah. Something similar was done in places like Athens, Sparta, the like. They’d set magic up to prevent enemy sorcerers from taking down the city around them. Normally it’d be powered by a crystal or the ley lines, and channeled through an engraved circle. The circle formed the instructions. Together, they’d produce a shield.”

“And that’s what happened here?” Alice asked, looking up at the tower. She ignored the fact that magic seemed to be a thing for the moment. Had the shield only protected the tower below the fifth floor?

“Most likely,” he said, nonchalantly. “The top of the tower got fried, but it served the intended purpose and protected the rest of the town.”

“Would it work a second time, though?” Alice asked, looking up at the tower with a bad feeling in her gut. She got the distinct feeling that whatever had melted the tower was related to the total absence of people in the city, and the number of uninhabited, dilapidated ruins she’d come across.

“Probably not,” Zeus admitted. “But the divine blood I granted you should allow you to survive whatever had wiped out the people of this city.”

Alice looked at him, unamused. Zeus raised his arms in protest “It’s true! While the amount I allowed you isn’t anything enormous, it is a great boon to survivability! In fact, you’ve adapted to it particularly well, better than I’d expected, even.”

Alice knew what he was angling for. She sighed internally, making an effort to look interested on the outside. It helped that she was actually interested in what he was silently offering.

“Am I ready to take in more, then?” she asked.

A light gleamed in Zeus’s eyes. A faint smile crossed his lips. He wasn’t being subtle in the slightest. “You could take in more, yes. That is, if you really wanted to.”

“I do.” Alice immediately answered, her voice even and calm. “Would you please grant me more divine blood? It would truly do wonders for my chances of survival.”

“Then I shall grant you an additional measure of strength,” he said, poking her in the forehead again.

The instant, overwhelming pain from the first time didn’t make a reappearance. Instead, it simply felt as if her body was dunked into water a few degrees warmer than her usual tolerance.

“Take care when next activating my divine blood,” Zeus cautioned. “Trying to pull too much strength from it too quickly will end your story very quickly. Take the time to let it settle first.”

Alice nodded seriously. “I will,” she said. It was her body, after all. She didn’t want to see herself accidentally torn apart from the inside any more than Zeus did.

And with that done, she gave voice to another thing which had been on her mind.

“So, magic,” Alice said.

“Magic,” Zeus confirmed.

“It’s real?”

“Oh, yes. At least, when I walked the Earth, it was. It seems to have died off sometime since then, though has likely made a reappearance with the return of us Olympians.”

“What was it like?” Alice asked, halfway imagining herself flinging fireballs already.

“I wouldn’t know,” Zeus said, flippantly. “The powers of a god greatly outmatch that of any sorcerer. Very few of us bothered with learning the details of the mortal arts.”

“Oh.”

How disappointing. Faced with something new and unknown, most of the gods decided not to bother. What even was the point of eternity if you just sat around for most of it and occasionally terrorized women? So much wasted potential.

With that, Zeus vanished once more; leaving Alice alone at the base of the tower which had saved a city.

Shaking her head, Alice walked away from the tower with long strides, intent on searching the available boats and selecting the one best suited for the journey ahead.

A while later, she intentionally called on Zeus for the first time.

“And how can I help you this time?” he asked, stepping out from a tall totem pole in the middle of a city square after she’d spoken his name aloud. He seemed fixated on the spear she was holding.

“Can you teach me how to use this?” Alice asked.

“Don’t you have that pistol of yours?”

“Yeah, for twelve more shots. I need something for after.”

“Very well then. Don’t expect me to go easy on you.”

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And he didn’t. Despite being an arrogant, stuck-up, womanizing god, Zeus knew how to handle a spear.

‘Set your feet like this,’ he’d tell Alice, thwacking her into position with little bursts of pain from some stick he’d found. ‘Hold the spear like this,’ accompanied by more pain. ‘Thrust like this,’ he’d said, though this time it was a different sort of thrust and Alice thwacked him instead.

“How do you even know this stuff?” Alice asked, panting after an hour or two of being beat around by Zeus, who’d had a smug grin on his face the entire time.

“Some cultures did consider me a war god, you know. Plus, my iconic weapon was a spear.”

“Iconic weapon? I thought you were known for a lightning bolt?”

“It was a spear made out of lightning. And yes, iconic weapon. Some gods had implements which represented a part of their domains.”

“Ah, like Artemis’s bow, or Athena’s armor. Or Hephaestus’s hammer.”

“Exactly right. They were things representing an important part of our authority.”

“So that explains why you had a spear. Not how you know how to use it, though.”

“I’m the king of gods, I got around,” Zeus simply replied.

Alice decided not to question things.

She also practiced her archery.

Unfortunately, Zeus couldn’t help her with that particular discipline.

“It’s a domain I mostly passed to my twins, I’m afraid,” he’d said, snickering slightly as another arrow missed the target she’d set up in the middle of the courtyard. At least Alice didn’t need to worry about stray arrows; there wasn’t anyone else in the city to hit.

And while spear practice hurt, archery was an exercise in patience and determination. Each shot saw her become just a little bit more accurate, a little bit more in-tune with the arrow’s flight. It was still frustrating, watching them bounce off the ground short of the target or vanish over the roof of her backstop building.

Using her roots at the same time led to better accuracy, even with the hazy ache it caused. The extra strength let her hold the bow steady, though the additional reaction speed and heightened senses didn’t do much to help her at the moment. She’d need to reach a modicum of experience first.

Her expression of divine blood had changed since Zeus gave her more. The roots dug deeper, grew larger. And Alice realized a couple of things. Carefully activating the roots in different ways allowed her to grow used to the extra measure of pain they now carried, and showed her some of the finer details involved with using different expressions of the ability.

The roots could be grown for agility, allowing Alice to move faster, react faster, and take in more of the world around her. It was a great tool for survival, and the expression she’d initially chosen for the ability.

But she could change the expression, regrow the roots in a direction more suited for brute strength, or greater durability. It could be used to improve her thinking, or for something as superficial as beauty.

There was just one catch—because there always had to be one, yes?

Each time Alice regrew her roots into a new pattern, it burned like the first time they’d grown. Leaving her writhing on the ground, screams eked out between clenched teeth, everything burning and nerves singing their agony. Then it’d pass and she could use the roots again, so long as it was in the chosen pattern.

She experimented a lot. It meant often going to bed with bloody teeth and an exhausted, wrung out body. But learning more about her roots was worth it, and allowed for an informed choice to be made.

Likely, each measure of divine blood added to her body would make the pain of regrowth greater, meaning she needed to pick an expression and stick with it. But nobody said the roots had to be specialized in only one thing and Alice enjoyed having cake and eating it.

So she tried one more thing, and laughed and laughed when it worked.

Rather than regrowing the roots into patterns suited for one thing or another, she imagined them as small and flexible as possible, entwined through her entire body. Numerous little filaments threaded through her muscles, bones, and nerves. Then, with them grown, Alice tried clustering them into larger root-systems. It still hurt, but much less than regrowing everything. Smaller, longer bundles of roots improved agility and her reaction speed, gathered around her muscles and nerves. Larger, thicker bundles reinforced her muscles and bones, providing a measure of strength and durability. The thinnest, most ephemeral roots encircled the nerves responsible for relaying sensory information, allowing her to process more, faster. See farther, hear louder, taste more deeply. That sort of stuff.

Finally, there were roots in her brain. They let her sort through information faster, remember things better, and retain information more efficiently.

Improving everything wasn’t quite as potent as improving only one thing, of course, but it did give Alice a good base to start from. She was going to get more divine blood, and each increase would be used to strengthen all her roots. Focusing on one thing to the detriment of everything else just seemed like a poor survival strategy, even if that was what Alice had started with. Plus, the way she could use them like building blocks led to greater flexibility, allowing her to push more into strength or agility on the fly, giving small boosts in the event it was needed.

Her intensive practice did a lot to settle the divine blood in her body, each pull of her roots hurt a little less until it settled into a manageable ache.

Then Zeus gave her a third measure of divine blood and started the pain up anew. The wheel must continue turning, apparently.

With the help of her roots, Alice’s arrows started hitting near the center of the target. Her spear work was still progressing, and Zeus continued to make her feel like a rank amateur. But she could confidently stick the pointy end towards the enemy, which was really the basis of all spear combat, right?

The sword she’d picked up didn’t end up seeing any use.

“Just stab stuff with it,” Zeus had said of sword fighting. “It’s not complicated.”

Sword fighting probably wasn’t in any of his domains. It was still disappointing that he’d never tried to learn. Par for the course, Alice supposed. Zeus seemed content to never change or better himself. Were all the gods like that?

His lack of ability with a sword relegated her own blade to machete duty, unfortunately. If she ever had to use it against hostile wildlife, they were already too close.

The warmest part of the day was spent learning how to sail. And it was lucky that Alice decided to practice with some of the smaller, less ideal crafts first because so far three of them had ended up at the bottom of the bay.

She wasn’t a great sailor, but at least the fourth boat hadn’t sunk yet.

Most of the boats had oars and a single, square sail set atop a squat little mast. Some of the larger vessels had triangular sails instead, stretching nearly the entire length of the ship. Some of the ones which had been in the bay had come unmoored and floated away, but the ones pulled up onto land had wide hulls and a deep keel. The smaller boats she practiced with were flat-bottomed for the most part, though a good number included a long fin which could be mounted to one side of the hull. Dropping the fin made the boats easier to steer and maneuver while sailing, but only got in the way while rowing.

The boat she’d been eyeing for the eventual journey south-east was a bit larger than average for a one-person vessel. It had a square sail and a pair of oars, along with two deployable fins. They could both be on the same side or set on opposite ends of the hull. There were a bunch of fine nets in the boat when she found it, along with a couple of simple fishing rods.

She’d be leaving most of the nets behind when setting off.

That particular boat had called to her mostly because of the waterproof compartments it had, set along the hull. It’d give her a dry place to store supplies, and could hopefully keep the boat floating even in the event that she capsized it or something. A distinct possibility considering she’d done the same to two other boats already. The third had sunk because…well, it didn’t really bear repeating. Alice preferred to forget what had caused that particular embarrassment.

She was also learning how to cook.

Well, cook poorly. And not very creatively. There weren’t really any recipes laying around and Zeus was predictably useless when it came to food. Most of her meals ended up being made out of those tortilla-like flatbreads, some jam on top of it, and preserved meat off to the side. All her attempts to replicate the flatbread had ended badly. Who knew that burnt flour could be so hard to scrape off a skillet?

She stuck to eating the food found in cellars. It was safer that way. And didn’t cause Zeus to laugh at her.

Between training sessions, Alice wandered the city, checking the buildings for anything cool. It was evident that the previous tenants were very artistically inclined. Every wall had little personal touches added through paint. Murals had been carved into larger sections of wall and often depicted scenes of nature and the wildlife, or battles.

There was one wall-to-wall carving which had stuck with Alice. It had shown the subject matter through bold colors and simplified geometry, and contained a stylized hunter waiting, bow held taut as a deer walked in a clearing, arrow unerringly aimed and ready to fly. It felt as if the deer stared right at Alice, like she was the hunter.

It was a grim reminder. She’d have to hunt for food sooner or later while venturing down the coast, and she hoped her arrows would fly straight.

She briefly revisited the tower one day and checked out the books inside it. Predictably, she couldn’t read a damn thing from them. The written letters were blocky, almost hieroglyphic looking and she only knew English along with a smattering of Japanese. It was beyond frustrating to have all this knowledge present and yet lack understanding. One of the books could even conceivably hold answers about her situation, and she’d never know.

Eventually, her time in the city came to a close.

“I wonder if there are any other cities like this along the coast,” Alice idly commented while checking the watertight seals containing her supplies one last time.

“Possibly,” Zeus said, not sounding very interested at all. “I’m more concerned about you reaching any of those cities. Focus on not drowning, please.”

Alice waved off his concerns. “Please, I’ve got this down now. I haven’t flipped a boat in a week.”

“No, but you did manage to…”

“We do not talk about that!” Alice yelled, cutting the god off.

“Fine, fine. On a related note, I do have to ask; are you sure you’ve brought enough arrows?” he said, staring at the woven baskets full of hundreds of feathery shafts.

“No,” Alice said, quirking her shoulders in a shrug. “I’d rather have twice that number, but, well…” she continued, trailing off. All the arrows she’d left behind had been broken or lost through hours and hours of practice. Literally every remaining usable arrow had joined her in the boat which now gently bobbed in the water.

“Should I ask for Poseidon’s blessing or something?” Alice asked.

“What? No, of course not,” Zeus said, making a face. “You already have me on your side. No need to bring my brother into things.”

“Right,” Alice easily agreed. One brother was already far more than enough. “Right,” she reiterated, steeling herself for the journey ahead. The square sail was unfurled and caught the wind. The boat started moving. She angled it to the south-east with the oar-like rudder hanging off the back of the vessel.

“Let’s get this thing done.”