It was the morning of the 11th day of the grinding session. In proper ti, they were about 2 hours into the second day. Since they had entered about midnight, this put the current environnt of the grassy plain into a deep darkness. It was early June and the nights were short, but not short enough to end at 2 AM.
The obsidian tower lood. Its silhouette created a black rift in the stars. The pulsing of the magma and the presence of the night found an equilibrium in an enigmatic shade that covered the building. Only past an invisible threshold did the glowing of the molten rock penetrate the veil and make it to his eyeballs.
John walked over a thick carpet of white grass, lilac and lavender. The combination of pale and purple mingled nicely with the black and orange of Nathalia’s structure. The two goddesses awaited in the doorway into the tower. Rather than invite him inside, he waited for them to co his way. Altogether, they walked to one of the golden gates that let them step into the vast darkness of an empty space, waiting to be filled.
“Your Sanctum already exists,” Nathalia said in the tone of a teacher, reiterating information for one final ti. “It was created with the Faith that you now own, and so it is yours to own as well. Be careful, however, when moving it next to this place. You want to integrate, not to overlap.”
John suppressed a chuckle, rembering his second eting with the dragoness. She had invaded the barrier Magoi had set up to let him prepare for his fight against then-Thana. Because Magoi had wanted to keep her out, the ti dilation had not extended to the Sanctum, and so he had lost several days by being inside her Sanctum for a few hours. To not repeat that would be, indeed, for the best.
Nightingale closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The darkness around them shifted. Like rising steadily in an elevator, John felt like he was moving where he stood. A physical manifestation of a collective unconscious, the Faith of generations of humans, it responded to the call of its physical avatar. A sound akin to the drumming in his ear when blood was pushed through.
Then it ended and they stood in a plane of eternal night. A moon hovered low above them, the craters on the surface roughly outlining the shape of a bunny. The landscape around them was shaped into a Japanese temple. Stone tiles covered the ground. Red-painted wood ford the famous Shinto gates and held up lanterns. The temple grounds were large, all focused around a building as much a palace as it was a place of worship. A tower of stacked layers of roofs extended high into the air.
“Hm,” Nathalia clicked her tongue, putting a hand into hips, “inheritance from the last goddess of the night.”
“A beautiful sight,” Nightingale stated. “To destroy it outright would be a waste.”
“Then do not. This is your Sanctum. Its size and its arrangent are beholden to your will.” Nathalia gestured as if she was pushing sothing. “Make all of this descend on a lower layer or move it to the outskirts, if you are keen on exploring it another ti.”
Nightingale nodded and closed her eyes again. The sensation of being in an elevator returned. The entirety of the temple complex was swallowed by an ocean of impenetrable darkness. The trio remained standing, rising with the blackness, until there was nothing in the world besides them and the moon.
Eyes raised, the harpy fixated on the celestial body. It was pushed back, until it had the proper size, then rotated until the side shining down onto the night ocean was akin to what the Europeans would see. “This seems much easier than what I have to do with the Guild Hall,” John comnted.
“We don’t have to create things from scratch like you do,” Nathalia explained. “We’re drawing shapes out of the Faith. Imaginations and mories of buildings or landscapes.”
“It is liberating,” Nightingale added. At the speed of a soundwave, the ground around them rippled and turned into the white grass he had seen outside. A second pulse followed, flattening the grass in the decorative stone roads. A third pulse created a palace garden, with vast patches of lavender and lilac. A fourth pulse saw the palace around them rise. A renaissance structure that enveloped the courtyard entirely. A fifth pulse made everything shrink down, from a complex that was appropriate for hundreds of people down to dozens.
“A good base for a Sanctum,” Nathalia humd.
“I doubt more is needed,” Nightingale responded, causing the dragoness to raise an eyebrow. “I’ll customize further. The size is enough for .”
“What is the point if the mortals can’t see your supremacy from kilotres around?”
“I will not assert myself like that.”
The exchange ended with Nathalia shrugging. “You’ll be training on your own for a few days. There’s nothing I can teach in regards to your Sanctum beyond the basics of entering it. Our Faiths are different, after all.”
“You have my deepest gratitude.” The harpy bowed before the dragoness, causing the latter to show a pleased smile.
John stepped away and inspected the lavender. It had evolved since he had last inspected its kind. From being a night blooming variant of the plant, it had now beco a new magical plant in its own right. Its sll was srizing and the description implied it could be brewed into a calming tea. “Gods truly are fascinating,” he humd and looked back at the duo. “What’s next?”
“A focal point,” Nightingale responded. “Like the gem embedded in Nathalia’s chest, I will bind my powers into an object of great might. A grail to contain the excess Faith, consolidate it.”
Sashaying forward, Nightingale spread her raven wings and humd. A little song stuck in her throat turned into a wordless song leaving her lips. The colour of her feathers bled into the colour of the sky. The colour of her white thighs bled into the white grass. All around, she blurred, the borders between her and her realm diminishing.
John glanced at Nathalia, who crossed her arms and just watched. Since she wasn’t alard, he didn’t choose to act either. On matters of gods, it was best to trust gods.
First, Nightingale seed like she would vanish into the realm. Then, her wings extended. Layer upon layer of additional feathers, rippling out into the night sky, until it appeared that the entire firmant was connected to her slender shoulders. Under the weight of the sky, she trembled. She did not give. With a glow of deep purple light, she brought the infinite wings together. Her feathers t, and the expanse consolidated between them.
For a mont, Nightingale remained like that. Straying tendrils of midnight black still sought their ho in the space between her wings. When the last of them had retreated into the safety of her embrace, she did pull back. “Peculiar.”
John stood up and circled around to get a look at the item she had created. Hovering in the middle of the air was an acorn. An acorn of silver and midnight blue, purple around the rims, but an acorn nonetheless. Observe gave cryptic descriptions of its nature. Nothing John could use, considering he had just witnessed it being created. “Is that normal?”
“A god’s focus is manyfold,” Nathalia answered with a shrug. “Odin created two ravens. Tiamat made her own flesh into new gods. Sol and Luna made of themselves shield and weapon equally.”
Nightingale’s sovereignty opened a little hole in the ground. The acorn fell into it, then the hole closed and more loose dirt was piled on top. “This is the right course of action,” she simply decided. “It will be seen, what cos of this.”
___________________________________________________________________________
John returned to the estate on his loneso. He was barely any wiser when it ca to either the crafting or divine progress. Both were doubtlessly because they were engaged in activities he could not or did not want to engage in himself. He was no crafter and he certainly was no god. He was just looking at these ongoings from the outside.
Off in the distance, he saw the tell-tale flashes of Rave fighting Salamander. He rembered the days when they could have trained indoors. It wasn’t that long ago. Nowadays, a stray attack could have shaken the foundations of the house to the point of collapse. One expertly reflected teorite and they were one place to sleep shorter.
John entered a mostly empty house. It was unusual to not hear anyone shout about so bullshit in a ga or be otherwise in eager conversation. Wordlessly, he walked past first a false, then a real Momo. The difference was easily apparent by the eyes and the wings. Moreso, it was clear in the body language. Unless the fairy maid made the deliberate effort, all of the bodies of her hivemind had sothing robotic to them. They were attractive dolls, until the bookworm decided to put her equally attractive character behind those eyes.
“Oy!” Momo cried out, when he ruffled her hair on his way to the kitchen. Grumbling, she combed her white strands back into place with her fingers.
John grabbed a snack out of the sizable fridge. As a child of the internet, he had long loved all manners of sweets. As a man with a maid (in this case the first one had been sufficient), he had long since admitted that healthy snacks were actually preferable to sweets in both taste and a lack of unwanted unwellness after the consumption. The problem was only that he was too lazy to make them. That was where the aforentioned maid ca in.
Today’s snack was a fruit salad, primarily consisting of strawberries and blueberries. An unusually sugary treat. Aclysia was on a crusade against unnecessary carbs, so this had to be carefully calculated.
A bowl filled, he returned to the gaming room and sat down. As the fans of the PC whirled to life, he snickered about the absurdity of his life. Five minutes ago he was witness to a goddess shaping her own pocket of reality. Now he was considering what ga he wanted to play. Minecraft felt like a good excuse to lose a couple of hours in.
And so he did.
No distractions entered his mind. No double of his was active and no one needed him for anything. The work phone lay in reach, as it always did, but never once buzzed with a new ssage. No harette sought him out. It was just a nice couple of hours spent playing the silly block ga. At the end of it, he had built a brand new farm and was 1 step closer to beginning the building project he planned to do.
When he stopped, he did not do so because sothing pulled his attention away. He simply had achieved what he had wanted and shut the ga down. That in and of itself was an achievent these days.
John went upstairs to check on tra. Casually, he walked feeling the pleasantly balanced temperature of the air brush over his naked skin. In the hallway in front of tra’s room, he t Claire. The maid was holding a basket full of laundry. Sheets from one of the many side beds of the estate, no doubt. If no harettes were coming to him for sexual relief, they would have found it with one another and won were perfectly capable of creating stains on their own.
The Gar spontaneously decided to bring up what was bothering him. “Claire, you’re lying to , aren’t you?”
Rather than look guilty, the vampire maid’s pinkish red lips spread into a wide smile. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re too smart to not be adored?”
“People constantly tell I’m too smart for my own good,” John pushed back. “What are you hiding?”
“You can find out whenever you want, Master,” Claire responded and gave his spirit an inviting tug. She stopped just shy of actually pulling him into her thoughts. The last step was his to take. He had full consent, every ability, and a good reason. Still, he lingered at the edge of her consciousness, feeling the pink radiating from her thoughts. “Haaaaaahhhh,” she sighed dreamily. “Blessed are those that love you, John.”
John’s sigh bordered on exasperation. “I trust that whatever you’re cooking will not lead to anything unwanted?”
“I solemnly swear that precautions have been made. Nothing I ever do in secret or in the open will ever be of harm to you, my chosen Master.” Only the laundry basket kept her from throwing her arms around him. “I believe my course of action will be for the best.”
Rubbing his forehead, the Gar tried to let go of the matter. “Yeah… I trust you… it’s just really annoying to have this thing happen around that I cannot quite confirm one way or another.” John rubbed the back of his neck. “Each ti I decide to let this go, it worms its way back into my thoughts. What am I dealing with anyway? A secret gift? A hot stalker? Soone taking asurents of the property?”
Claire just kept her enigmatic smile. She was too good of a liar. A consequence of both the Charisma she had and her upbringing. To survive as an Ironborn, she had needed to veil her traitorous intentions just enough that Arkeidos didn’t actually cave her skull in.
“My mind is yours to probe,” Claire swooned, then began walking past him. Hips swayed, a smile was cast over her shoulder, John tapped his heel on the ground.
‘I love that she has cheekiness beyond that obsessed loyalty, but I absolutely loathe not having answers,’ he lanted. Fact was only that he had no one but himself to bla for not knowing whatever was going on. He had every ans to find out and didn’t employ them. Trust in a loved one was a powerful thing. ‘I’ll let this go… I’ll let it go!’ he tried to convince himself and entered tra’s resting room.
It was, like most of the mansion, an unpersonal but comfortable space. A bed, a closet, so space to walk, and a desk to place things. tra lay on the bed, completely still. She did not breathe in her sleep, simply existed, turned on her side, naked and clean. Undine had done them all the favour of giving her a quick sli bath before they hauled her passed out form into this room.
John sat down on the edge of the bed and gently ran his fingers over her shoulder. The smooth, olive skin was warm to the touch. Her blonde hair, as voluminous as a lion’s mane, parted around his digits next. Just sitting there, looking at her, felt like everything was right in the world.
Gently, she stirred in her sleep. A deep breath betrayed that she was about to awaken. Bowing down, John whispered into her wolf ear, simultaneously scratching the soft hairs at its base, “Welco back, my lady.”
“Lady?” tra mumbled, half-asleep, half-laughing. “The fuck does that even an, you many-worded scher?”
“If I ever beco a king, then you’ll be a lady at the very least.” Shaking her head, tra stretched, eyes still closed. “More importantly, do you want to pick which of our weapons gets to beco even stronger?”
The wolf woman’s eyes flew open. “For real?”
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