-The Gods, 10 Zandor, The God of Beasts. As a human Zandor was a tamer. He was skilled at doing just the right thing to gain the trust of any animal. He was safe around savage beast or common house vermin. He could turn even the hungriest animal into his friend. Today he is prayed to only when house vermin are detected. Savage beasts like bears, tigers, and wolves are exterminated. His skills are a lost art.-
Erust and Ashra walked into the room and waited for their eyes to adjust to the change in light. Ashra didn't have to wait as long due to her half feline nature but Erust took a bit longer until he could see clearly.
The body of Axil was seated across the room near a fireplace. The crackling moving fire gave the room an organic feeling as shadows moved and danced across walls and drapes. The room opened up into a large area behind him where a crevice fell straight down. It emitted a small amount of steam, helping to keep the room warm and reminding them that this was a volcano at one time in its life.
"Welcome to my home," Axil said. The two visitors had no idea he was a puppet being controlled from inside.
Erust and Ashra took a few more steps into the room and bowed in respect. "Welcome. We have come to talk to you about your interference in the world."
Axil laughed. "Maybe I am putting things right? Have you considered that you are just helping to preserve a system that is against a union such as your own?"
Ashra instinctively curled her lips. She was angered that the god would stoop so low as to point out that their marriage was only really acceptable in the southern lands. And even then some people were still against the blending of the bloodlines.
"Do you know why you there are hybrids between humans and Demi-Humans? But in nature, you never see blended animals." Axil stood from his chair and moved to poke the fire. A log fell and sparks crackled up into the room and out through the hole where the crevice ran further up.
Erust had assumed that was the way was created. Ashra bristled. This was not why they had come to this rim, to be educated on why their marriage was a gift. "My kind are a creation not from the gods. That is why we are shunned."
Erust looked at Ashra with surprise. This was news to him. In the northern lands, the stories were told that Humans and Demi-humans had lived together as long as time. "What does that have to do with us being here?"
Axil smiled and stood up straight putting his arms behind his back. The process of stretching out looked almost painful for a moment. "Well, why would you come at me about maintaining the natural order, when nothing is natural anymore..."
"So, that's a justification?" Erust said slowly moving to keep across the room from this man but stepping forward ever so slowly to keep removing the distance between him and Axil.
"Nothing is justified. That assumes that there is real justice in this world. There is no such thing as justice, no real sense that when something wrong happens it will be taken care of. The rules of this world only reward growth and development. What you call justice is nothing more than imposing the will of the strong onto the weak. In this case, imposing the will of divine beings onto the mortals so that you play their little game and do their little dance."
Hatsheput was uncomfortable inside the skin of this man. Although the soul was dead his brain was still technically alive. Kept in a sort of suspended animation, the neurons were firing to keep him breathing and his heart beating. Now that her soul was inside she was feeling the memories of him in the background and so she decided to use his own ideology to explain his actions.
The problem was that the truth of his words stung just a little. She knew that the divines could be seen as bullies if you took away the church and the books that justified their behavior. Behind the stained glass and rituals and immortality, they really were just as he described.
Erust shook his head. He was listening to the words coming from this newly formed divine being and knew he was right. But he felt that tug to defend the order of the world. The more he fought the idea the harder the compulsion was to obey and defend. He chalked it up to his mandate from the gods. A part of the gift of his powers that made him want to complete his mission. He was unaware of the real truth behind it or he might have actually joined sides with this man. That was exactly what they wanted to avoid.
"Maybe you are right," Erust started still inching further. Ashra was just a step behind him at all times. "But to collapse the whole system will destroy the way an entire population believes. You will collapse the whole way everyone lives and put them all into danger."
Axil stepped forward and stood in the middle of the room. He was only a dozen feet from Erust at this point. "People adapt and overcome my poor deluded little prophet. Of course, it will change everything! Why else do this? Why else put myself out and into the world like this. When my power increases I can expose these charlatans and watch the world reblend. When the humans realize they have been lied to, yes some will cling to their ancient dogmas, but others will blend and start to question everything. And just as they start that, I will retreat and let the humans and demi-humans become one social entity again."
Ashra stepped up and put her hand against Erust back. "You are insane, even for a divine being you should be enlightened toward one goal. You can't honestly say that this is your enlightenment?"
"You learn fast, exactly. I studied here and achieved the necessary amount of divine power to transcend with this single goal in place." He laughed out loud at the two as the simple nature of his creation became apparent. He was a god, created to destroy the system that made him.
"And if we asked you to stop and let us handle the change of this world what would you do?" Erust said without having the time to stop himself. He couldn't grasp where the idea came from, but his mouth moved before his brain.
"Could you really though?" Axil crossed the space and put his hand on Erust shoulder.
Erust smiled and grabbed Axil's arm at the wrist as hard as he could. He poured as much power as he could into turning the skin of the arm and the cloth of his robes into stone as quickly as he could. He wanted to bond them together so that he could maintain his grip.
In an instant, the two were bonded together. Axil stood in surprised shock for a moment before realizing what was happening. Hatsheput was surprised and pleased at the turn of events. She had expected the felis woman to spring into action and try to kill the body as the man acted as a decoy. She hadn't considered using this route against him.
The problem in this battle was that Hatsheput was far more used to using her own mana as a way to change her appearance and control life. Erust was using Divine power, and he had been practicing. Hatsheput borrowed her powers and the limits were set by Hadres. She had never needed to practice much to control them because her control over them was so limited. Erust on the other hand was nearly unlimited in his ability because it was his own genuine power, not borrowed.
Erust focused on the face of the god as the expressions changed from confidence to shock, and then finally from shock to anger. Erust poured his power into maintaining the change and fighting to spread it as quickly as possible. Axil began to scream and thrash, with one free arm he slammed it into Erust face and pushed on it as hard as he could to fight back.
At this point, Ashra took the initiative and sprang into action. She jumped on to Axil's back and in a rare moment of use, she extracted her claws from her fingertips and sank them into his flesh. With the attack on both fronts, Axil screamed in pain. The plan wasn't to kill him but immobilize him. Neither of them considered themselves murderers and they wanted to keep from killing him if necessary.
Erust held his grip on the arm and as he fought to keep the stone change on the arm he began to focus on Divine power. It was only a guess but he figured if he could absorb as much as possible from the divine being he might be able to disable him. Erust knew he wasn't absorbing the power as much as he used to so this was a good time to refill his supply and disable him if possible.
Hatsheput realized she felt Hadres power being sucked from her body. She would lose her ability to control divine power after too much more contact with Erust. She felt the pain from the claws in her back and the pain in the arm from flesh being turned to stone. She was starting to see her vision turn colors around the edges as her brain was having a hard time maintaining control of the body and fight the turn to stone. She panicked. She needed to escape soon but how?
Axil turned his head around the room while screaming at the top of his lungs. Hatsheput saw through the eyes everything around her. She waited as long as she could before using her last-ditch effort. She had expected to be able to step backward out of the body and maintain her invisibility. But with Ashra on her back, that option was gone. She looked to her left and right but both ways had very slim escape routes. She had up or down.
She swallowed to calm herself and released her control of the body as her vision became more blurry from the pain. She knew that below the great hall were rooms and caves littered around. She had created some and some were lava tubes leftover from times when the mountain was an active volcano.
Axil's body let out a primal scream before falling silent and slumping against Erust body and then sliding to the floor. Erust had taken in more power than he remembered having since the incident with the oracle. His body felt like it was pulsing inside as it struggled to contain the divine power. When Ed and Erust were one he was nearly limitless. With the damage done to the soul, he didn't realize that he was limited and currently overloaded.
Hatsheput kept herself slightly out of phase with the world as he slipped inside the rocks. She was waiting for a space large enough for her body to fit in before becoming corporeal again. She knew that above the man and woman were struggling with the suddenly limp body. She hoped she would find a spot before she passed out herself from the sheer exertion.