Sending trolls and skeletons and zombies and whatever else I was encountering flying with a flick of the wrist was exhilarating. I really was a god. I was unstoppable next to these things.

It was a good distraction from the whole ‘just died and woke up in another world’ thing. Which was a distraction I needed, because otherwise I was not going to be in a great place mentally when it sunk in.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really know where I was going, so I was just sort of wandering aimlessly, batting enemies aside as I tried to figure out where the evil sorceress was. It was a bit tricky to keep oriented, travelling through the massive swarm of monsters on an open plain. Especially since I kept getting turned around as I batted off various attempts to attack me.

“Eww,” I muttered as a zombie fell apart with a smack.

It wasn’t bloody or anything, it seemed a bit too mummified for that, but it was still a little unsettling.

It wasn’t getting me any closer to the evil sorceress, however. And the longer it took me to find her the longer I was trapped wherever this was. The longer Lena and Kris thought I was dead…

So, there was only one thing for it: I had to ask for directions.

As a lanky goblin looking creature charged my way, I grabbed it by the chain shirt it was wearing and lifted it in the air.

“Where’s your boss?” I asked.

“Ehh?” the being replied, looking rather terrified.

“You know, ice blue skin, scorpion tail… ears that stick out a good foot from her head?” I said.

Ok, so maybe her ears weren’t actually a foot long… I wasn’t the best with the imperial system. Probably 20cm, though?

“I… uh… I don’t know?” the goblin-y creature replied, mouth quivering.

“… Really?” I asked.

“Lady Nemza goes where she’s needed. And she moves swiftly,” the goblin replied.

“Darn. I guess I have to get her attention then…” I muttered, before throwing the goblin over my shoulder, like a kid with socks on Christmas.

I took a moment to look around, before spotting what looked to be siege engines of some sort. Catapults? Trebuchets? One of those… or at least, the same basic concept as either of those. They were flinging boulders ahead, towards what had to be where the other side was.

They seemed important, so I started heading over, batting aside anything that got in my way.

The siege engines themselves were manned by more of those troll-ogre-things, with what seemed to be a few elves and humans commanding them.

“Who goes there?” a human man with sickly pale skin shouted from his perch on the side of one of the machines.

“I’m… wait, what was the name I’m supposed to go by here… It started with a V… Vi… Va… Ve… Ok, look, I’ve had a weird day, so a few of the details might not have stuck, but… I’m here to stop your little army,” I replied, realising that maybe wasn’t the most intimidating introduction I could offer.

“What?” the man replied, staring at me. “I… Get her!”

The last part was shouted, directed at the troll-creatures. They charged me, and, well, it went about as well for them as the other fights. Honestly, I felt like I was battling fruit flies.

I supposed that was the power of being a god. Nothing was really a threat to me.

After a punch sent the last troll flying, I then rushed over to kick out one of the supporting beams of the nearest siege engine. Despite being as thick as a tree trunk, it buckled under the force of my kick.

It was going to be a bit annoying to give up all this power when I went home, so… I decided to have a little fun with it. I picked up the next siege engine (which actually proved to take a bit of effort) and threw it at a third catapult.

The human commander scrambled down from his own perch on the last one, before I made it to him. As he ran, he tossed a fireball my way. Seeing honest to goodness magic from someone left me surprised enough that I didn’t really manage a proper response (like dodging). So the fireball hit me square in the face.

The heat felt like leaning in to get something out of a hot oven.

Which was probably better than I should have expected a fireball to the face to go.

The other two humans and elf, who had been standing on a nearby large rock outcrop, began peppering me with more spells.

None of them really hurt, per say, but they felt unpleasant enough I decided to raise my hands to form a shield once more. The golden glow of the shield increased the more spells hit it, and I was beginning to wonder if it was going to fail when, instead, it released a burst of magical energy back at my attackers. The wave sent both the mages and a good chunk of the rock face they were standing on flying, leaving a sort of half-crater in front of me.

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“Huh,” I said, staring at my hands again.

I had to wonder what the limits to my current powers were like, considering what I was managing without even trying.

“Vazehr Victrix,” a cold voice said from behind me. Turning, I saw the icy eyes of the dark sorceress herself. “I wondered when the cowards in the Sea Palace would call on you.”

Right. Vazehr. That was my goddess name.

Also, I realised I should probably reply. “It was Nemza, right?”

She did not look happy with my uncertainty about her name. “Yesss. Nemza, Lady of Surgess.”

“Sorry, lots of new names to… anyway, I just want to offer you a chance to surrender. Mostly because I’m realising that Loj dude might want me to actually kill you, and… I don’t really like the idea of doing that,” I said.

Ok, I’d tossed some of her troops around, but they’d surely ended up landing in the mud. It wasn’t that rocky here, so most of them were probably just a little battered rather than dead.

Also, even if she was evil, looking at me with pure disdain, I had to admit this Nemza lady was kind of attractive. Or, maybe my poor lesbian heart was attracted to her extra due to the whole ‘evil woman watching me judgementally’ thing.

I was still getting used to understanding my attraction to women was gay and what that meant… but, yeah, that wide sharp toothed smile spreading on her face was definitely doing something to me.

“Ha!” she laughed. “Ahahahaha!”

Ok, she was going full on evil laughter, throwing her head back, arms out to her side, shoulders (and other areas…) bouncing up and down with each laugh. She was one of those villains. The type who liked being evil.

She then snapped her head forward, glaring at me with a manic intensity, her face still twisting in a smile wider than I’d even seen a human manage.

“I’ll enjoy showing you why I fear no gods, Vazehr. Oh, Abandoner of Duties,” she replied.

That stung. Even if I’d had no real control over what had happened way back… whenever. It was still insulting.

So I felt less guilty about charging forward, to try to wipe that smug grin off her face.

Only to hit thin air.

“Apparently Justice is less swift than it once was,” Nemza’s voice said, from somewhere behind me.

Turning around, I saw her standing several metres away, arms crossed and looking deeply unimpressed.

I decided to charge again, throwing myself forward at full force. Running through the mud was tricky, the greater force I threw at the ground seemed to cause me to sink into it as much as it pushed me forward, but I was still moving quickly.

Only for Nemza to teleport away when I was barely a metre from her.

“Too slow again,” she said, now standing not too far from where she’d been before.

She then raised her hand, a crackle of dark energy forming above it. I raised my hands to form another shield as she tossed it forward, only for the ball of energy to explode into dozens of small shards that arced around my shield, slamming into my back and sides just as I realised what was happening.

“Gyah!” I hissed, falling forward as the dark energy dug into me.

“Ah. I see you’re as durable as a god should be, if nothing else,” she said, strolling over to me.

I noticed that, as she walked, she never sank into the mud. Instead travelling gracefully along the surface, as if it were level dry ground.

I waited for her to get closer, hoping she’d believe I was more hurt than I was. Once she was barely an arm’s length away, leaning in to gloat, I lunged at her.

Only to have her dodge, redirecting my clumsy strike, and leaving me sprawling in the mud once more.

“I’m honestly disappointed in you. A war goddess should be a better fighter than this,” she said, her voice like ice before she hissed words I didn’t understand.

Words that brought pain with them. It felt like a rain of needless, sharp pain piercing every part of the back of my body.

Struggling to my feet, trying to ignore the pain, I found the dark sorceress already summoning another attack, a sickly green sphere of some sort that she blasted into my gut before I could manage any sort of shield.

I had the wind knocked out of me by the blow.

Spitting something not quite like blood out of my mouth from the pain as I struggled to stay standing, I looked up to see Nemza looking at least mildly annoyed.

“I suppose I should have realised even an idiot of a god would be time consuming to kill,” she said.

I stared at her, still trying to catch my breath.

“Oh well. Your head will make a good prize, so I suppose it’s worth the effort,” she said, before blasting me with another bolt of dark magic.

Falling backwards from the blow, I noticed a sliver of the spell had missed my face. My eyes followed it, seeing where it slammed into the ground and caused an explosion that seemed like a grenade or an artillery strike in a war movie.

The fact that I’d taken most of that to the face and it had felt like getting punched gave me some sense of just how much power she was hitting me with.

Which meant I really should have been dead several times over, if not for this whole ‘goddess’ thing that still felt so alien to me.

Considering how poorly the fight was going, I was even starting to wonder if there’d been a mistake. If they’d grabbed me instead of whoever the actual goddess was. Surely I should have had more things coming naturally to me than I was getting. Wouldn’t a real goddess have figured these things out by now?

Another blast of magic hit me, like knives striking every joint of my body. I let out a scream, while my mind filled with a single wish: to get out of here.

As soon as the wish fully formed, there was a flash of light.

I then found myself staring up at a blue sky. The ground beneath me was soft and cool, but not the mud I had been in before.

Slowly rolling my head to one side, I saw trees. I was in some sort of a forest clearing. Or, maybe more of a jungle clearing. It looked kind of tropical.

Either way, I wasn’t where I had been.

Satisfied that I was probably less likely to die in the next few minutes than I had been before, I let myself pass out.

----------------------------------------

I found myself slowly waking up while lying down. I briefly thought I was in a hospital bed. That everything I was remembering was just some sort of weird dream after being hit in the head by a stray hubcap or something.

But… no. As my eyes opened, I realised that wherever I was was lit by a fire. I could feel the soft warmth of it not far away.

Beyond that, my surroundings seemed to be an earthen building of some sort. The walls were covered in hanging hooks and shelves, all of which held an impressive mixture of herbs and carvings.

As I woke further, however, something else hit me: the pain in my body, leading me to let out a groan.

“Oh! You’re awake!” a soft feminine voice called out.

Before I could turn to see the source, she was leaning over me, looking down with concern in her eyes. Though, her eyes weren’t really holding my attention. No, the fact she definitely wasn’t human was getting a fair bit of my attention. Or, at least, not like any human I’d seen back on Earth.