Chapter 2: Ash’s to Ashes
Ash yelped, the book smacking against the ground as he stumbled to his feet. His heart thrummed as the woman inched forward, lacing hands behind her back. She gave a shy smile, then slowly revealed one hand for a little wave.
The woman was stunning. The fur along her sides was brown flooded with gold, like a wheat field in the first hours of morning. In contrast to the light coat, the fur running up her stomach and onto her face was a thick cream. Her airy smile twitched up at the side, making her feel playful and seductive all at once.
Ash understood what a woman looked like. He and his sisters saw far more of each other than they intended, it was inevitable, living as close together as they did. This, however, was the first woman he’d meant to see in undress, and one unashamedly letting him at that. His gaze slipped from her lips down to her breasts, then lower still. Ash shut his eyes, sighing as he pulled himself together. Don’t be an asshole, Ash. Curiosity on his own time was natural, but this was a person he was leering at; even farmers should have some class.
“S’cuse me miss,” Ash said, raising an arm to shield her nudity from his sight. “It’s really not a reflection on you, but I was serious earlier, I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”
The woman giggled. “I’m not here for a relationship Ash, I came to make you an offer. Hear me out, and if you’re not interested, I’ll go.”
A lump formed in his throat as Ash shuffled along the wall towards the butchering room’s hidden handle, in case she forced the issue and he needed a weapon. Of course, had she wanted to hurt him, she probably wouldn’t have announced her presence. Still, Ash wasn’t keen on getting within arm’s reach. “Okay? Could you put some clothes on first?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Really? I thought you’d like it. Besides, it might be easier to recognize me like this.” As though to emphasize the point she stood straight, posing like a statue.
Well, she seemed in her right mind, and was literally inviting him to look. Ash lowered his hand, swallowing hard as he burned every curve into his memory. “I, uh, I really don’t think I’d forget you if we’d met before.” Well, he sounded like an idiot, but at least he managed to avoid drooling on his boots.
“Oh, come on,” she said, letting out a resigned sigh. “I’m gonna have to do the thing aren’t I?”
“What’s the thing?” Ash asked, warily clutching the door.
The woman snapped her fingers and her breasts suddenly swelled, drooping slightly as they tripled in size. Instantly, he recognized the statue he’d visited his entire life, the one he’d prayed to not two hours prior.
“Goddess Deianira...” Ash’s fingers fell limp at his sides as he approached and dropped to his knees.
Deianira sighed, rolling her eyes. “Always with the tits. I didn’t make any of you with tits this big, you know. They don’t make more milk if they’re bigger.”
With wavering breath, Ash collected himself, finally remembering to kneel properly. “I’m sorry, goddess. I—how can I serve?”
Deianira’s radiance was all-encompassing. The goddess of fertility created and sustained life, from the grass to the queen. Holidays and feasts in her honour were the background noise of his childhood. That she would appear to anyone, let alone someone like him, was unthinkable.
“First, stop worshiping me,” she chided, giving his antlers a playful smack as she passed. “I need to talk to you about that offer, and no one can have a decent conversation with people they worship.”
She was Deianira. If she told him to walk to Sibir to fight the wolf-queen with a stick he’d do it, or die trying. Talking to a pretty girl was pushing it though. The goddess’s breasts shrank again as she snatched the book from the ground, flipping idly through the pages. Ash’s skin grew hot as he rose on unsteady feet. “That’s just... I was...”
“I’m familiar,” she said, a small smile forming as she swept past him again, heading for the exit. “They took a few creative liberties, but most of it’s right. Up till issue 99 anyway, then they took a hard turn and just made stuff up. Everyone wants a happy ending, I guess.”
He numbly followed her into the barn, where every beast had fallen silent. Faced with literal divinity made flesh, he struggled to come up with anything halfway intelligent to say, but drew a blank. “So Sturm was real? You blessed him to help fight the wolf queen?”
She spun about, eyeing him playfully as she backed towards the barn entrance. “He existed, the rest is a bit complicated. I gave him the same offer I’ll be giving you. He accepted, you’re free to decline.”
The same offer as Sturm? Ash’s heart raced as he hurried to follow. Sturm was a holy knight, a champion of Sibir. If the man was real he was a fucking legend. Why would a goddess waste an offer on some island boy? And why would anyone turn it down? “What’s the offer?”
“Ooh, come on. Let me work up to it.” Her lips twitched playfully as she turned back, swaying her hip as she pulled the barn door open to let moonlight spill across her front and bathe her in an ethereal glow. “How about we start with the origins of the universe, or the meaning of life?”
Well, that was a lot to take in. “You... You’re going to tell me about...” Exactly how many people had spent their life contemplating those questions? How many had died in pursuit of stomping out heresy or fallen in battle? And that information was his, just like that?
“I mean, I’ll give you the short version, but this is only for you. Never tell anyone else. So, there’s actually a lot of gods.” The goddess moved right along, as though dropping by to tell a farmer the answer to ‘why things are’ was a completely normal occurrence. “Before the universe, we were constantly fighting, and when things got out of hand we’d attract the attention of The Kresh.”
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“The Kresh?” Ash asked.
“The Kresh is hard to explain. It’s like this massive hive mind of living nightmares that’s constantly trying to break into the universe to eat everything.”
“Oh.” He really needed to stop asking questions.
“A lot of us divided up our stuff, built a big barrier to keep the Kresh out, and spread out so each of us could make our own planet. That barrier’s what we call the universe.”
Ash put a hand to his head, shuffling into the cold night air after her. He hadn’t put much thought into religion before, but now he was technically the best theologian on the planet. One sworn to secrecy, not that anyone would believe him if he wasn’t. “Wait, each planet? So aliens? Aliens are a thing?”
Deianira sighed, but gave a begrudging nod. “Technically. Every god has their own galaxy, and we’re so far from the next one you’ll never meet an alien. Back to the gods. I know how this sounds, but being all-powerful is really, really dull, and we’re immortal, so that goes on forever. We’d end up picking fights just so something could challenge us, but if one of us weakened, The Kresh would come. Now that we’re all separated, we need something to challenge us so we don’t start fighting again. So we design our planet and become mortal. Like when you tie up a girl and play with her body so she can get off on her helplessness.”
Before this, Ash had seen Deianira as a motherly, nurturing figure, but her metaphor was rapidly changing that. However, her attitude didn’t make her any less his goddess, and even based on her revised history she was still responsible for life on this planet. That still left the question of what he could possibly do for her. “So, you’re going to become mortal?”
“For a while,” she clarified. “Nothing on this planet can actually hurt me. I’ll become mortal, have a bit of fun, then when my mortal body dies - Poof! I’m a god again.” With each step, the grass around her grew, reaching out to caress her ankles as she passed.
“Are you going to become a mortal near here?”
“Depends on if you accept my offer,” she said, half turning her head to fix him with a hungry stare. “I want to be you.”
“Me?” Ash choked.
Her playful demeanour dropped, becoming more serious as she proceeded toward the cliff at the far end of the property. “That’s the offer Ash. And it is an offer. I want to become you. I’ll forget my divinity to live a life in your body, with your memories, including this one. You, at least the you listening to me right now, will die.”
The night air brushed through his fur, sending shivers through his body. “Why me?” Ash asked, falling in line beside the goddess as the incline got steeper. “Why not the queen, or one of the emperors?”
She snorted. “I’m a god, Ash. I don’t need more power. I want a man to show me a good time.”
The dissonance of his revered goddess speaking like a pervert crashed over him, leaving him muttering to himself as he tried to sort his head out. “A... man? Wait, why a man? You gave women special natural skills, wouldn’t it be more fun as one of them?”
“Yeah...” Deianira chuckled. “I kinda used a template for the men and put a lot more effort in on the other side. Let’s just say that as the goddess of fertility... it’s not the giving birth part of fertility I’m here for.”
Ash ground to a halt, sending a shower of pebbles down the hill. “Wait. Is that the meaning of life? This planet was created as your personal sex toy?”
With a playful bounce, she pulled ahead, folding her arms behind her back with a wink. “That’s our secret too.”
Unbelievable. His goddess was a pervert. They’d held celebrations every year, prayed for good harvests, built cities, fought wars, and lived entire lives discerning the will of their god, and she spent the entirety of it trying to get laid.
Deianira paused, watching Ash’s expression before waving a hand. A flowing dress of blue silk materialized around her, covering everything she’d flaunted. “I’m sorry. I have memories from both sides of conversations like this, and I try to be easy to talk to. Is the world I made for you really so bad? I filled it with cute girls and food.”
“I don’t think the world is bad...” Ash hesitated, strangely more afraid of her as a girl than a god. “Just, people fight and bleed and die for you. They’re all out there, praying you’ll hear and begging to serve. It’s a bit hard to learn you’re... busy.”
She sighed. “Ash, I’m a god. So, yeah, I could fix everyone’s problems in a day. Hunger, sickness, violence, all gone. That’d be my life, billions of years tending to my pet mortals. But yours?” She motioned to the aibax barn they’d just left. “Be born, eat, sleep. Every day, then you die. If you think I’m not doing enough, fine; but I made paradise, it’s not my fault you can’t share.”
“Sorry,” Ash mumbled. “I didn’t mean...”
“I don’t want you to think I’m choosing you randomly,” Deianira said, holding his book in both hands as she sat on a rock overlooking the ocean. “Once I become mortal I am them physically, but I have the most magical power a mortal can carry. It’s where Sturm got his. Sure I became him for fun, but I chose him specifically because I saw what was going on, and I thought I could help. If you want a goddess that helps people, take my offer and go help.”
Ash was still for a long moment, eyes focusing on the moon and leaving the goddess in silhouette. Regardless of her flaws, she’d been Sturm, and who knew how many unsung heroes throughout history. Could he really claim she was absent if he was the one choosing what kind of god she was? Worse, was he worthy of making that decision? “What if I can’t make a difference?”
“I’m not sending you on a quest,” she reminded him. “Do what makes you happy. Maybe you’ll leave the world a better place than you found it.”
Another thought struck him; one that made him cringe inwardly. “I... um. I’m not great with girls. I’m actually a... I’ve never—”
A sharp laugh caught Ash off guard, but the beautiful girl wore a smile when he next saw her. “Ash, being a virgin’s one of the requirements. I’m not about to become a mortal and miss my first time! But...” Her voice lowered as she pulled a knee up. “Even if you never do, that’s okay. Literally, if you’re happy, I’m happy. I recommend it though.”
The moon shone brighter than he’d ever seen, bathing his family farm and the island where he’d grown in shimmering light. It caught the waves crashing against rocks below as they sent foam and glinting droplets flying. “Will it hurt, when I die?”
“Of course not. You’ll be there one minute, then gone. You won’t even feel it happen.”
With a deep breath, Ash sat on the rock beside her. It wasn’t often you got to speak with a god; it felt like a wasted opportunity to sit in silence. Then again, where do you go after the origins of the universe and the meaning of life? “I’ll do it,” he said. “Anything I should know about these powers?”
“There’s only two spells, Dawn and Dusk. There’s people out there who know how to use them, especially in the Dusk Empire. You’ll be able to do what they can, except at a level no mortal has ever achieved; so powerful you’ll do what people consider miracles while barely trying.”
His gaze swept from the waves below to the moon hanging in the sky. Then, mustering up his courage, he turned to tell the goddess he was ready, only to find she’d changed to look exactly like him. Then, like seeds from a dandelion, she scattered into the wind and swept off the cliff in a fine dust.
“Deianira?” Ash said, looking around.
“Goddess?” He stood, staring at the place she’d vanished from. Then stopped, looking down at the book in his hands.
“Goddess...”