-The Gods: 7 Soriel, The Goddess of the Woods and Trees. This Goddess is unique in that she is occasionally worshiped by the Fay and Forest spirits. She was a hermit in her human days who preferred a life of solitude, finding balance with the world. She was skilled at living off the land and creating what she needed just off what the forest provided her. As a divine, she guards the forest. She also is worshiped as one to bring balance to the different kinds of life that walk and live among the trees.-
Hadres and Hatsheput sat together looking out over the serene landscape that only an icy mountain range could produce. The breeze carried small pieces of snow up into the room from the lower edges of the mountain but the artificial warmth created by Hadres melted them away completely before they even hit the floor. The warmth was so pleasant that even at this high mountain altitude they were wearing black linen outfits with light jackets and short sleeve shirts.
"They are coming," Hatsheput said calmly. Normally, as a servant, she would stand behind her master. But in this area, she was seen as the newly formed divine being.
And it wasn't that there really wasn't a newly formed divine being created from a belief on its own. It was just that the being had already been found, captured, and dealt with. Below where these two stood the infant divine was being held captive and its powers being put to use by Hatsheput.
Hadres was scheming and setting all this up at the orders of others, but this wasn't really too far from his normal base of operations.
Hell was really a frozen place. When souls had earned the attention of Hadres and his skilled helpers they spent their time frozen in place in the farthest region of the planet. Deep inside the frozen mountains, souls were kept in a state just barely separated from alive and dead. There Hadres could dispense divine punishments as he saw fit. His punishments were not only reserved for humans, but you rogue divines and spirits as well.
This temple, as it had been built up for the new spirit, wasn't far from Hadres home so it made it easy enough to commute and keep an eye on his disciple. The last thing anyone needed now was a rogue spirit and a newly formed god teaming up to cause mischief.
"Don't worry Hatsie old pal. You knew they were coming, we led them here! We are going to make sure they come out as GLORIOUS victors against those pesky rogue gods!" Hadres said smiling and waving his hand in a flourish.
Hatsheput looked down her nose at Hadres and wondered if she was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb. The problem was that the bard might remember her from their visit to the Oasis.
"Stop worrying Hatsie," Hadres said while getting up from his chair to walk to the edge of the ledge that acted as the porch they were sitting on. "I have plans for that one hiccup."
"You remember that we have been banned from killing him or undue bodily harm."
"I know, that bard is the personal plaything of Ysennia," Hadres replied staring out over the edge towards the mountains. Hadres was often displayed in the church as being evil and using his evil to punish those who committed acts of evil.
The truth of his personality was that he firmly believed in order. And he found extreme joy in making sure that people were penitent for the crimes they had committed. It wasn't a perverse joy, more like the joy you find when someone agrees with you after you explain something, more like a teacher-student relationship.
"I plan to distract him, we can split them up and control them like puppets. I have a lower spirit whose death will be spectacular enough for everyone to see. I also have a gift from Ysennia, a body for us to use and leave behind for the prophet to bring back and display if he chooses."
Hatsheput wrung her hands together. She didn't have issues with most of her boss's proclivities but this whole scheme made her a little uncomfortable. She was not a follower of Ysennia, and seeing Hadres being used by the Goddess made her uncomfortable. She worried about her god being used a scapegoat should this all go south.
She also believed that a better option would have been to bring the new divine being into the fold with the other divines. When Hatsheput put this idea forward it had been shot down with the explanation that gods were only alow to ascend to heaven. If we took every spirit that popped out of thin air the pantheon would be too large to manage.
More than just bringing everyone together, changing the number of gods would cause an imbalance in power. And that was unacceptable to Ysennia. The divine power must be maintained to keep the Lord's attention focused elsewhere.
"So where are they now?" Hadres paced the room and walked over to a decanter and poured a drink out slowly. Divine beings didn't need food, but they enjoyed the sensation.
Hatsheput looked over at her boss and smiled with mild concern. "They are nearing the last village up the mountain. They have traveled faster than I expected. Are you prepared for me to take the first step then?"
Hadres put his hands in his pockets and walked towards Hatsheput. "When they get halfway up the mountain, then you can begin."
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Chester pushed forward into the biting wind. Any normal sensible human being would have walked back down the mountain as soon as this wind came howling in from the north. The group of four people making the trek now didn't count as sensible.
Rennish was huddled inside a thick green blanket with the edges tied around his head. Even Ashra who had initially insisted that her feline traits would take care of the cold quickly changed her tune and took a provided blanket. Erust had wrapped himself in a dark brown long coat that he had produced from thin air.
The wind whipped inside coats and covers and gnawed at the skin and stamina of them as they walked up the path. The mountain had an exceedingly convenient path laid out for pilgrimages to the top. They had debated if the path was too good to be true. Chester had asked around town and the villagers had said that when the god created his temple he had used divine power to create that road to the top.
Rennish distrusted anything divine by nature, he had been double-crossed by the gods so many times it was nearly impossible for him to trust anything related to the gods. Erust had pushed forward that the only way to get there was up. Ashra just followed wherever her husband went and refused to argue. When Rennish had pushed for caution and exploration she had acted as an intermediary until they had agreed to wait a few days and find someone who had made the trip up once before.
The person they found told them that the path was warm and pleasant. When a blizzard had come along it was as if the path was inside a hallway. The snow and wind had whipped around them in a winters fury but the path clear and comfortable.
Rennish assumed that this turn of events and wind meant that the god ahead knew who they were and why they were here.
"They know we are coming!" Rennish screamed over his shoulder.
Erust shook his head and screamed his reply back up the mountain. "That means we absolutely can't turn back now!"
Rennish shivered against the cold and pulled forward. The halfway point was Chester's way to stop going any further up. They didn't want him involved in whatever happened any further up. Chester was braving the cold and wind as best he could. He had spent the last few years on the ocean heading further south than this so the biting cold wasn't so bad to him, he cursed his luck as being put on this godforsaken misadventure though.
The halfway point was a cave that had been carved into the side of the mountain for folks to rest. A series of benches had been created in the walls. A small stack of wood was in the back and depression for a fire pit had been carved into the granite.
Rennish rushed inside the cave to get out of the wind, followed quickly by Erust and Ashra. "Get some wood started will you?" He said in Ashra's direction. She nodded in agreement and rushed into the cave. One of her traits was a heightened sense of sight in the dark, so it made sense she went a little farther in where human eyes were at a disadvantage.
"Chester, here is your pay." Rennish pulled a bag from his waistline and handed it over. "You are free from here on out. If you wait for us to return I will get you some extra, but I hate to see you risk your life any further."
Chester took the bag and put it in his lap. "I don't like the idea of leaving you here but this cold is demonic. After you leave I will decide what I do..."
Erust sat down across from Chester, as far back from the cave entrance as he could. "We won't blame you either way. Just make sure whatever you decide you are okay with."
"Rennish!" Ashra yelled from the back. Rennish shook his head and used his hands to push himself off the bench. His legs and knees refusing to work normally due to the cold. "Coming!" he yelled back into the cave so she could hear.
Rennish excused himself and patted young Chester on the back when he walked past him. Rennish knew that the wood was probably wet or something like that and was almost afraid of what he would find when he made his way back there.
The dark encroached him, he wondered how Ashra could even see back here with her eyes. This dark was absurd. It had gone from being just hard to see in, to be almost like you could feel it closing in on you. "Ashra?" he yelled into the darkness, calling out for her voice to guide him. Not even echoes replied to his calls.
Rennish panicked slightly inside and put his had out. He felt something hard, cold, and wet against his fingertips. It felt like rock but it was warm. The mountain wasn't a volcano was it, he wondered to himself. What on earth was going on?
A speck of light started to fill his vision, instinctively he walked towards it with slow caution. His path in front of him was still barely visible and he was concerned about pits in the floor or cave-ins.
As the pinpoint of light became larger he blinked his eyes to let it adjust to the sunlight. "Ashra? Where are you? What happened here?"
No reply came, the white light was pure, blinding, and almost hot in the back of his eyeballs. He hadn't been in darkness like that before so he chalked the pain up to his eyes catching up to the sun. LIke coming out of a dim house into the crazy bright mid-day light of summer.
"Ashra?!" He called out. No echoes came back... The light slowly dimmed as he took a few more steps forward. He realized he was no longer a dark damn cave. The hole he stepped out into had tree's made of crystals. A large light radiated from the roof like a sun but it writhed as if it was alive. The light magnified and split through the crystal trees and left large lines of rainbows across the floor.
Rennish took a step and put his hand on a tree. The lights were disorienting him as the rainbows splayed across the walls and floors in no obvious pattern. He looked around for anything that would give him a bearing. Even the cave entrance seemed to be gone at this point.
A voice spoke to him from the void. "Rennish, this way." The soft words urging him forward into the forest. He walked ahead cautiously, dragging his feet to create trails in the dirt he could follow back if he got lost. "Ashra? Slow down, you're too far ahead. Let me go back and get Erust. He needs to see this..."
"Come on Rennish, I need your help..." the voice was getting fainter and had moved a little to his right. He turned his head and got a small case of vertigo through the lights and reflections. He hoped that whatever had possessed her to go this far was worth it.