This idea that our characters are baked into us from the very beginning is another of Maisara’s great ideas. The woman has seemingly made it her life goal to fire off as many poisonous ideas as possible. What takes a minute for her to think up of takes an hour for others to disprove. Ideas she fortifies with a day of thinking take a week to siege down. Thoughts that have been preparing for a year take a decade to dismantle.

This idea, that our demesne decides our character, is another one such principle. It has no end goal, it has no positive conclusion, nothing of value can be gleamed from it. And yet it is fundamentally destructive. What lesson is being taught to Divines that are newly formed in this era of Pantheon Peace? That they will forever be weak? That because they come from a time absent of conflict, they should not even bother competing with us? And what about those that still stand from our time? Can we never thrive in a time of peace? Does the existence of this blessed era not immediately disprove Maisara?

Do I have to list every change ever made by a Divine? Do I have to doubt when one of us achieves some breakthrough? When Kavaa says she is trying to find joy in healing, do I have to assume her to be some lying sociopath who is simply saying what I want to hear? When we swore that another conflict like the Great War would never happen, was that a lie? Are we just destined to repeat these battles, forever?

No. I do not accept because to accept is to accept this stagnation in perpetual conflict. I incarnated during a siege, Pantheon Peace was my idea. If that does not prove that a foundation is irrelevant to one’s thinking and character, then I do not know what is.

– Excerpt from the private diary of Goddess Allasaria, of Light.

Kassandora’s crimson eyes flicked to Kavaa. Goddess of Health. A woman she found so much in common with that it was almost terrifying. A woman she supposed she found herself fond of, and fond of for her was already a step she knew was huge. She had spent more than two thousand years alive, she thousand herself fond of how many people? At the rate she was going at, it averaged out to less than one a century. But then was it a problem? Did she really care?

Kassandora looked at the grey Goddess of Health. Her entire form a monocolour of a skin, of uniform in Imperial black, of grey eyes and grey hair. And Kassandora kept her Orchestra playing in everyone’s mind. The organ for Elassa, sounding as if it wanted to be anywhere but here whilst also managing to sound as if it was about to slam down on all its keys. The flute for Neneria, deathly quiet yet never inaudible. It was always there and always signalling it was ready to grab Baalka’s soul should anything go wrong. Kavaa was a squeaking violin, loud yet never overbearing. It obviously knew it was the star of the show today, and it obviously knew that without the others, nothing would get accomplished.

Kassandora’s eyes flicked to Neneria. The Goddess of Death stood at Baalka’s head in a black dress with raven feathers around her neck. Then to Elassa. The gemstones that the Goddess of Magic had in her endless jewellery were all glowing brightly. Then to Anassa and Arascus who were watching from the side of the room. Then to Baalka in the circle of Divines that were performing the operation. The Goddess of Disease lay on a table, nude as Kavaa put one hand on the woman’s stomach, then another over her heart.

The violin in the Orchestra told everyone it was ready. That the power was channelled. That they should begin. The flute answered immediately after. It’s notes transmitted thought and word and everything that the others needed. Ready too, Neneria had opened the gates to her pitch-black heart and was ready to serve as the safety net should Baalka’s soul slip out of her body and try to flee this world. And the organ sang as Elassa channelled a spell. The air in the room began to grow hot, the electric light dimmed yet the everything only got brighter as Elassa channelled her power.

Baalka would feel no pain. She would be annihilated in a mere instant. Her body and whatever was plaguing it would be sent to the lands of non-existence when the beam would come down. Kassandora’s piano gave the signal, the organ replied. High-pitched keystrokes were overwhelmed by the low blur of wind escaping through pipes. Not yet. Neneria was there to catch the soul, the flute came in at that as Kavaa’s violin sung in low notes of patience. Yet Elassa’s organ brought a stop to it.

Annihilating the body was one thing. Neneria was the safety net, Elassa was the main arm that would catch Baalka should she try to escape.

And Elassa could not touch anything at all.

And through the Orchestra it all took a mere moment. A single sliver of existence as thoughts instantly overwhelmed thoughts.

Kavaa channelled her energy into Baalka pre-emptively. It was not to start the healing process yet, it was to make sure she was ready and she knew everything she could about the woman’s biology. Whether it was rat or whether it was Goddess of Disease did not matter, ultimately, the heart was in one place, the lungs in another, the feet somewhere else. The woman had tastebuds and eyes. She had nails and she had intestines. Her blood was unique, viscous and pitch-black with the amount of germs that just seemed to naturally exist in her body. Her heart was even stronger than Fer’s in terms of how much liquid it could pump. Her liver, transplanted into any other creature, could kill a man with how resilient it was. Kavaa had to ask herself whether Baalka’s liver would be able to transmute lead into gold because it was a practical furnace for everything in the woman’s body. Her bone marrow spawned disease, her white blood cells were large and yet sickly, even though they did not attack the body itself.

Baalka’s inhale brought in a case of the common cold into her nose. That was nothing special, the flu was everywhere. Once a person went through their annual trial, they would be able to dismantle the illness quickly enough as to not cause symptoms. Yet that did not happen in Baalka’s body. The moment the flu touched her nose, her skin devoured it. Bacteria was ripped apart and devoured and eviscerated as if bacteria had fallen ill in itself. Kavaa didn’t know if her thoughts were transmitted through the violin playing in War’s Orchestra or not and she did not care frankly. If Neneria and Kassandora wanted to know how impressive their sister was, they could listen in. If they did not, then they missed it.

And suddenly, Kavaa heard the organ that was Elassa. It was a slamming down on all the keys. And they gave a message that was impossible to ignore. A message simple and stern, that had no argument. There was some grand irony that Neneria’s flute tried to pick up on, before Kassandora’s piano shut her down. The Goddess of Magic and the deity that represented all the immaterial on Arda had suddenly sounded like the notification saying a computer program had crashed.

The violin replied back. It was impossible. Kavaa was sure that the woman had a soul. Her violin replied back, shouting over the organ. The woman definitely had a soul somewhere within her. Kavaa had healed the soulless dead that Neneria could raise. The shuffling automatons made of flesh that the Goddess of Death would stuff with basic commands that would pretend to have a soul even as they failed at it.

The violin replied back. Impossible. Elassa was just not looking deep enough.

And through the Orchestra it all took a mere moment. A single sliver of existence.

Neneria ignored the fact Kassie had just told her off. Whatever. It did not matter. They were here to heal Baalka. She knew she was in a bad mood. She knew she got aggressive when she was in a bad mood. She was still embarrassed about the fact she had argued so openly with her sisters in front of non-family when they were all marching through the corridor here. And she knew the embarrassment could be controlled and subsumed and put off for later. Neneria didn’t bother doing it. It was catching Baalka’s soul true, but it was doing an action she had done countless times before. Countless as in hundreds of millions if not billions of times before. Neneria herself did not know how many, she had stopped bothering to keep track long before.

Yet as Kavaa’s violin answered that the Goddess of Health was sure Baalka had a soul in her and as Elassa doubted the existence of one, Neneria probed her sleeping sister. There was very obviously something in there. Something locked deep within a castle that served as a prison. Untouchable true, yet Neneria was sure it was there. Souls were part of her demesne after all, and there was very obviously something deep within Baalka repelling Neneria’s touch. A magnet did not need to know what was pushing it away to know it was being pushed away after all, did it?

So Neneria probed deeper. There was no specific area or region to look for, some people had their soul stuck to their heart, others to their mind. Some had it reside within their body, yet affixed to a person wholly separate. Arascus was close by and Neneria had silently inspected him on the way here, Baalka’s soul had a connection to him only slightly stronger than it did to Kassie yet it was not was attached in the way of a madman. Neneria was not arrogant enough to assume Baalka had more of a bond with her than with their father, although she could not check anyway.

So Neneria probed deeper. Her flute blew high pitched notes that told Elassa to follow. The Goddess of Magic, as smart as she was, was a damn brute when it came to these things. She did not have the artisan’s touch that the Goddess of Death had been naturally given when it came to soul-manipulation. Elassa followed along. And Neneria dragged the other three of the instruments of the orchestra to the closed off spot. Baalka was asleep and unconscious, Baalka had been broken by the jungle but Baalka was still a Goddess and a sister. And if Neneria liked to prove her superiority over anyone else, it was over Goddesses and sisters.

And yet as Neneria sent out her tune, she suddenly felt the push become a pull. The fortress within Baalka became a hole. The advance became a retreat. And yet the retreat could not pull away.

Neneria’s flute echoed in the Orchestra. It would take them a moment to react. A moment would be too long.

And through the Orchestra it all took a mere moment. A single sliver of existence.

Elassa began to take the inklings of a deep breath. Her mind shot signal to her mind to mind to part her lips so that she could intake air, although it would still be a half-second before her body made any movement. Instead, she just followed Neneria’s line of attack. There was arrogance and then there was the certain sort of arrogance that made a Divine think they could outdo a Divine in their own Divine. None of those who possessed that greater form survived to this age, they had been picked before the Great War had even began and not a single tear was shed from Divine eyes for them.

So Elassa followed. She dragged Kavaa along and she knew that Kassandora was with them too, this entire Orchestra was Kassandora’s demesne after all. But then she heard the flute suddenly stop. The silence did not last even a moment because the moment the flute stopped, Elassa felt herself being surrounded. Nothing physical touched her, yet a thousand tiny mosquitos pricked her skin.

And then she felt the hurricane. Elassa became a drop of water in the tide that was pulled in before a tsunami hit the shore. A stream surrounded her. A river coursed around her. A waterfall crushed her. Elassa fell down through Baalka to regions Of Magic did not even know existed. Tombs unexplored and graves untouched. An organ, a violin and a piano crashed through them as they chased after a flute.

Elassa tried to pull away. She stopped channelling magic. She pulled out of the Orchestra. She tried to at least. It would take a moment, less than a second even, for her mind to think of the thoughts and then for those thoughts to be followed by her conscious. She did not have a matter of moments. She did not even have one.

And through the Orchestra it all took a mere moment. A single sliver of existence.

Arascus looked at the centre of the room. He saw that table. He saw the wooden floor and the walls that Iniri had grown to make this tremendous oak of a fortress. And he saw the wooden table. He saw Baalka lay on that bed. He saw the electric lamps fastened onto nails in the ceilings glow. And that was all he saw.

Kassie and Nene, Kavaa and Elassa had just disappeared.

Just blinked out of existence.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep