Sanity is stable. Sanity produces rules and outcomes. It guides behaviours, it makes sure that groups as a whole do not descend into anarchy. Yet there is a cost, self-sacrifice will be made out of sanity. It is ultimately better for one to take the fall then to let ruin sweep the entire group. The tireless grind to improve, only moving a tiny slither towards masterhood every week, is what drives men to devote their entire lives to the arts. Phobias, should as those of spiders or snakes, are speculated to exist because of genetic memories to protect one from poisonous critters. Likewise, the taste of bitterness is naturally disliked because most natural poisons are bitter.

All of these are perfectly sane, yet they are absurd principles that fall outside the natural, instinctual behaviours of animals.

Anassa has done the opposite. Why self-sacrifice, when enough power can simply remove the need for any sacrifice? Following that, if power can be acquired, then why must there be an investment for said power? Should the truly powerful not just grab power by the horns and wrestle it into the ground? What stops someone from immediately peaking at their potential? Why feel the most natural emotion of fear, when ultimately, with enough strength, there is nothing to be afraid of?

I am simply too sane to comprehend this mentality. I can look at it, I can understand the words on the page, yet my mind will simply not let me accept the fact that someone can improve without training. I refuse to throw fear away even though there is nothing I am afraid of. I refuse to treat sacrifice as a failure because it simply is a noble gesture. Some natural laws are absurd, but that is simply how the world is. It is just as absurd that snowflakes are unique and that butterflies are beautiful. That fruit are sweet and that wild animals can be domesticated. Some things are absurd simply because that’s how they are.

Yet Anassa rejects this idea entirely. Her thinking is unique to herself, I do not know of anyone else who can logically explain why the suspension of sanity is a benefit. Still though, the results speak for themselves. Anassa may be troublesome, but her strength does pose a question that we simply ignore:

Which is more effective: Absurd sanity or rationalized delusion?

- Excerpt from “Divine Ascension”, written by Goddess Elassa, of Magic. Kept within Elassa’s private chambers in Arcadia.

“It’s afraid of you?” Kassandora asked. It was one thing to put up with Anassa’s terrible character. It was one thing to have to complement her in order to get her to do something.

“It’s dreading me.” Anassa said. She started to move, to the front of the pack but she didn’t pull ahead of Fer. “I’m not mad, it’s not calling me. It’s just never met someone like me before.”

“Who has?” Kavaa asked flatly and Anassa chuckled.

“True, I am one of a kind.” Kassandora started to walk onwards, her eyes on Anassa for the first few minutes of it. In that cool darkness of the underground, Anassa was surprisingly easy to see. Fer too. One had a red dress of silken velvets, the other a mane of gold, both shone like bonfires when the torch was pointed at them.

“You can control yourself?” Kassandora asked. She had to ask. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Anassa, but certainty was the highest form of trust after all.

“Do you know who are you speaking to?” Anassa asked and Kassandora smiled to herself. There was only person in this entire who would be that rude to her, and it was indeed Anassa.

They kept on trekking for an hour in that darkness. Iniri was stop to inspect the roots every twenty minutes. Anassa would use her sorceries to cut them off, yet no matter how much they cut off, the plants started to wilt and die immediately. Even the Goddess of Nature could barely keep them alive. “They’re incapable of life.” Iniri said after the fourth attempt. “They’re getting fatter, that’s good, but they can’t be kept alive.”

“Say it so I can understand it.” Fer said from the side as Iniri few a root Fer had torn off the ancient dwarven tunnel-wall off.

“It’s as if I chopped off part of your finger and tried to keep it alive.”

“That’s possible.” Kavaa said and Iniri scoffed.

“Well this isn’t!”

“I do understand it though.” Fer said. “You can’t keep it alive.”

“No, you can’t.” Iniri said. “It just dies.”

“So we need a bigger piece?” Fer asked.

“We need one which has some…” Iniri trailed off for a moment. “The animal equivalent would be organs.” Fer nodded, turned and started marching again as Anassa restarted her joyous glide deeper into the cave. Two red orbs from the Goddess of Sorcery eliminated any need for torches, and Kassandora had turned hers off to conserve battery. Kavaa and Iniri did too.

Fer took a few steps, then suddenly stopped and sniffed the air. Her ears quivered. She turned to face the group behind them, opened her mouth, but did not need to speak. Almost the second she was prepared to explain, the ground started to rumble and shake. Dust fell from the walls and ceilings. Kassandora felt her nerves crack, whether it was the silence of the Jungle or simply the lack of talking from anyone in the group, she knew she was scared, she just simply kept on moving, one leg in the front of the other and repeat. And now that Fer had stopped, she did not want to start moving.

Kassandora felt the cool black metal of her armour hug her as it appeared. Joyeuse’s calming weight filled her arm as she gave the Greatsword a spin. It had been a while. Kavaa and Iniri both huddled close together when they saw Kassandora draw her sword, but they said nothing. There was nothing to say in fact, the rumbling was so loud now that it sounded like an avalanche approaching them. Fer sniffed the air again. Her ears jumped. She opened her mouth.

Too late.

The tunnel to their right cracked. The walls gave out, the ceiling started falling like an avalanche. Kassandora turned on the spot, all the fear gone, pushed away by the raw call to action of instinct. She saw a giant tooth, easily as wide as she was tall, slide past her. A giant tooth, a mouth drooling with venomous spit, and green scales. Each scale massive, as large as one of her artillery pieces and furiously dashing past her. Snake scales, Kassandora was sure of it. She took a step back, eyes looking around for her allies.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And the floor below them gave them. Fer roared in from deeper in the tunnel as Kassandora heard a shout. “KASS!” Kavaa’s voice.

“I’M HERE!” Kassandora shouted, although what could be made over the thundering of those tremendous scales against stones, she didn’t know. “I’M HERE!”

“I HEAR YOU!” Kavaa shouted. “I HAVE INIRI!” Fer roared from Kassandora’s side, and then the Goddess of War felt her sister’s arms wrap around her chest as she fell, and she felt Fer almost crush her spine in a brutally merciless bearhug.

They both fell through the floor of that tunnel. Deeper, and deeper, until Kassandora felt Fer’s arms wrap tighter around her and then the Goddess of Beasthood grunted as she landed on rock. Fer let go of Kassandora, the Goddess of War rolled off her sister and both pointed their flashlights up at that huge green avalanche.

It was still moving, the scales were sliding so fast through the ground they were nothing but a blur. Fer sniffed the air. “I can’t smell Ana.” She said. Kassandora looked up at the snake. If what Ana had said about the Jungle, of it being scared of her was true… She looked up at that snake. If that wasn’t a way to deal with someone you were scared off, Kassandora didn’t know what was.

“What about Kavaa and Iniri?” Kassandora asked, unable to pull her eyes away. It had simply shot out of the wall. There hadn’t been even a moment of preparation they could have done apart from taking a stance. Kassandora had only barely managed to slide into her armour. Fer lifted her hand and pointed towards the darkness.

“Over there.”

“I don’t see anything.” Kassandora said.

“Rocks fell. I don’t smell blood though, so they’re either knocked out or on the other side. There’d be blood if they were crushed.”

“Oh.” Kassandora as she turned around. There were roots here too, they were thicker, but the collapse of the ceiling had torn of them away. Various vines were already starting to push rocks over, but Kassandora didn’t care too much, she just stared at the sudden flash of red light had appeared. The entire cave sounded with a hiss as the snake continued, but it was when that monster had finally made its pass that Kassandora realised what happened.

The snake had swallowed Anassa whole, but the woman had conjured up one of her eraser shields around herself. With a single spell, Anassa had flipped the scenario entirely, the snake was no longer the fork stabbing into a delicious meal. Instead, it had become a block of butter sliding along the unmoving knife that was Anassa. That bright red shield, somewhat dirtied and darkened by the amount of sheer matter it had just absorbed lasted there for a few moments, and then it disappeared.

Anassa stood there silently, looking ahead, at where the snake had come from. Her eyes burning, her mouth twisted into a smile so wide Kassandora had not seen it on the woman since the Great War. And as the rumbling of the world went silent, as the snake put more distance between them and itself, as its hisses of pain died down, Kassandora could only look up Anassa and beat herself mentally that she had brought this fool here. Why? Shouldn’t she have known? It was like bringing Fer to a vegetarian party, like bringing Neneria to disco. It simply should have not been done. Kassandora looked up at Anassa’s face, and she knew that expression was what true madness looked like.

Anassa, still smiling wide, started to move in mid-air. She turned her head to the side, one eye looking down at Kassandora. “Kassie. You should retreat.” She said, her tone slow and almost drunk. Kassandora had no clue how, or why, or what caused the Goddess to enjoy this. She simply should not sound like that, no Goddess should!

“What?” Kassandora barked back as she grabbed onto her blade. Kavaa and Iniri lost. Just like that. They may have still been alive, but they were as good as dead when it came to the mission. If they were going to get out, tunnels would have to be dug elsewhere. Anassa excavating this could bring the whole highway down on them. Even if Olephia was here, Kassandora would have not risked the Goddess of Chaos blowing the tunnels open. And now Anassa wanted something. What exactly? It better be fucking revolutionary!

“Kassie. I want you to go home.” Anassa said again, her breathing heavy as she tried to control herself. A small amount of spit was dangling from her lips as more Jungle roots shot out towards her again. And Anassa didn’t even cast her sorceries at them, she merely turned to face them head on. And those vines, the limbs of the huge monster that terrified an entire continent, they turned and fled from Anassa as if they were little mice running away from a prowling cat. “I will kill it.”

Kassandora blinked. Excuse me? Anassa would do what? How? It was a Jungle! It was akin to saying one would kill an ants next, but when they were half the size of an ant! “What are you talking about?” Kassandora shouted as Fer sniffed the air behind her. Once. Twice. No need for a third time. Kassandora felt her sister touch her shoulder and pull her back.

“She believes it.” Fer said quietly and Anassa burst out in laughter.

“Of course I believe it Fer! Of course I do! This thing cannot defeat me!” Anassa turned to look at more roots that were slowly trying to creep towards to her. Her very gaze made them flee in terror.

“How?” Kassandora asked in disbelief.

“If a child came and said he knew war better than you, what would you say? If someone said they were a better survivalist than Fer, what would you say? Let’s take this farce further! What if someone was a better leader than Arascus!? What then?” Anassa looked down at Kassandora, her eyes glowing with an almost maddened joy about the situation she was in. Kassandora had not damn clue why the woman was so happy right now. There was nothing to be happy about. “If someone came in, and said they were madder than Anassa, of Sorcery, what would you say?”

“Then I’d simply laugh.” Kassandora said flatly.

“I would too.” Fer added as Kassandora continued.

“There’s just nothing worth discussing there, it’s just wrong.” Anassa nodded with every word. Too much movement, and her smile was too big. More roots were slowly crawling towards her on the ceiling. This time, the Goddess of Sorcery merely snapped her fingers. A flash of red light separated them from the main body of the Jungle.

“It is wrong.” Anassa said proudly. “In fact, it’s not just wrong. It’s a joke. It’s a farce. It’s the funniest thing I’ve heard since Elassa told me I could not match her in magic.” Kassandora blinked and looked to Fer. Was that a slip-up? Anassa did not know that they knew it was Elassa who created her.

“This is bigger than Elassa.” Fer shouted. She pulled Kassandora back as the roots of the Jungle started to approach them.

“This is a joke.” Anassa shouted from the air. “This thing is trying to match me in my own demesne. I’m not going to let it.” She turned around, the red silken dress cling to Anassa yet unmoving, as if the woman was a solid statue being rotated on the spot.

“Anassa!” Kassandora shouted. She had just realised what Anassa was wanting to do. “Don’t go in! We have the Reclamation War, we can burn it down safely.”

“Kassie.” Anassa started to float deeper into the hole. Kassandora felt Fer’s hand tighten on her shoulder, whether it was Fer anchoring Kassandora to the ground, or Fer anchoring herself to Kassandora, Of War could not work out. “It’s not a matter of safety or not. I’m perfectly fine, I’m perfectly sane, that snake, I don’t even know if it was real or not, but all I know is that it can’t touch me.”

“What are you talking about?” Kassandora shouted this time, Anassa was getting further into the hole. “Fer, it’s calling her.”

“It’s not calling her.” Fer said as she sniffed the air. “It’s still Ana’s smell. There’s a change when it gets you, Iniri had it. When you two got stuck in the hypnosis trap, you and Kavaa, your smells changed too. Ana is Ana.”

“It’s challenging me!” Anassa shouted proudly. “A Divine that drives people mad against a Divine that exists because it is mad! What better way to test myself than that?”

“Fer. We have to stop her.” Kassandora said quickly. Fer merely shook her head.

“You may as well be asking me to stop Olephia.” Fer said quietly as took a step away and pulled Kassandora backwards, to avoid the gnashing roots that poked at the locations they just stood. Kassandora realised why the woman wouldn’t even attempt a pursuit, Fer from bleeding from the side, and she winced as her body started to close its own wounds. It would only take a minute. Kassandora looked up. That giant tunnel the snake had made started to cover itself with regrowing, and further in, a red orb appeared as Anassa lit the way for herself. They didn’t have a minute.

Kassandora saw Anassa’s sorcery disappear deeper in that terrible web of regrowing roots. A Goddess of Sorcery lost, A Goddess of Health and a Goddess of Nature trapped, a Goddess of Beasthood almost killed. A disaster so terrible only the Goddess of War could have done it.