Rennish had a divine body. Ysennia had made him fully human and for a while he got to enjoy the feeling of being drunk again. When she had rewarded him again by giving him back some of his divinity he had regained part of his drinking resistance. Emotions were the best part of being human. He enjoyed smiling, he loved the warm feeling of being drunk, he loved the feel when the barmaid rubbed his arm with her chest.
Now all that was dulled. His reward was really a punishment.
He wandered back to the hotel with the box under his arm. He could feel himself sobering up and he wanted to pout about it. What kind of gift is this really?
When he got home he wandered into his room and put the box on the edge of his bed. The thought of the barmaid came back to his mind again. Why did she look so familiar?
Rennish tossed his bag of instruments on the table next to the hay stuffed mattress. He peeled his jacket and upper shirt off before kicking his boots next to the bed. He was going to enjoy not having to sleep on the floor of the cart or in the hard cold dirt. He wished he could have had a bath eventually.
His only regret left for the night was that he couldn't drift off into a drunken sleep. The more he thought about he missed the feeling of falling deeply asleep while drunk.
The next morning light pooled in through the window and spilled across his face. He pulled his arm over his face and groaned. "Damn light. Let me sleep. I don't even have a good enough hangover for this..." He tossed in the bed and tried to hide his face from the light.
"Up at 'em sleepy head!" A vaguely familiar female voice said from the bedroom.
Rennish rolled over and rubbed his eyes until the female form across from him quit being blurry and turned into the shape of the woman from the bar last night.
"What the hell. I don't remember bringing you home last night." Rennish turned his body to get up from the bed and accidentally kicked the box off the end of the bed.
The woman reached down and grabbed the box as it fell to the floor. "You are such a clutz Rennish. Shouldn't you be more surprised?"
"I'm surprised it's not a big blond muscle-bound idiot watching me sleep." Rennish pulled his shirt over his chest and reached for his shoes.
"Not a nice way to refer to him is it?" She put the box down on the ground and looked over to him.
Rennish shrugged and stood up. "Says the woman who just broke into my room." '
His brain was slowly warming back up and he was starting to realize she knew who he was talking about. "Wait a minute, you're one of his lackeys aren't you?"
"I'm no one's lackey. You don't recognize me?" She flipped her hair with her hands.
Rennish looked at her and searched his memory for her. She had one of those faces that you could vaguely remember almost anywhere. It fit in nearly everywhere, but also you never really remembered where you saw it.
She stood up and put her hand out. "The name is Or'Ain. I can't believe I'm having to introduce myself to you."
Rennish about choked on his own tongue. This was the goddess of a good time. The goddess of the party and the drunk. This was his patron saint as a human. He humbled himself before her. If anyone god was his kind of person, this was probably the only one.
"My Goddess," he stammered out as he fought the urge to look at her face.
"Knock it off Rennish. I've been around you so many times that we should be old friends by now." She put a hand on his head and tussled his hair. She hated formalities as much as he did. If they had lived as humans together they would have probably been soulmates.
"What do you mean?" He got up and stood a little too quick. His eyes blurred for a second as the blood rushed around his body.
"Long before you came back I was around. The first night at the bar when you fell asleep with the pigs, who gave you the information about Ed being chased by the bandits? Later on at small bars here and there. I saw you in the bar in the glass capital. I was in the bar in Ganel with the ghosts. I was in the bar when you left Ark City, I also helped you get the rogue gods body. You are probably my most devout follower."
The memories came to him as he remembered each of these times. In each of them, she was served by a woman who roughly fit her description. The tiny discrepancies between each could be explained by the fact she was one of the divines.
"Why me though?" He couldn't think of a reason why she would have cared what happened to him. Usually, when he came in contact with a god they were helping themselves. His lot in life was a joke to them.
"Let's just say I can't watch you fail. They treat you like a background character. You have an important part to play. It's just too bad you are so god damned dense." She sighed and sat back in her chair.
"Take this box for example," She held it up in the air. "This needs to get taken care of NOW before Ysennia comes looking for it."
Rennish realized he had been sleeping with a ticking time bomb. "What is that damned thing? Why could Ysennia want it so badly."
"I can't tell you. It's something that belongs to the girl in the room across the hall. You need to get her to hold this box. When she does I will do the rest. If you want to help your old friend Ed get back what was taken from him."
"It's Erust now. Just so you know." Rennish corrected her without thinking. The longer they were together the more he went back to old habits.
"Is it now?" She smirked. "Well, whatever then. The catgirl needs this. Go do it now. If you are a good boy I will be here waiting for you." She rubbed her body seductively.
"Yeah, good joke. You won't be here at all when I get back. What do you really want?" Rennish rolled his eyes.
"Honestly Rennish, I am just trying to help you. If you weren't so dense you would know this. God, how does Golliad get you to take a hint?" She shook her head and got up from her chair.
"With a hammer and nail." Rennish snorted. "Or he interrupts my sleep and robs me of a good night's rest and I spend the whole next day trying not to fall asleep and fall off a cart to my death."
She laughed at the idea, "Well then, maybe I will come to you in your sleep then. You'd like that right? Or the next bar, maybe I will just cozy up to when you least expect it." She reached under her blossom with her arms and shook them at him. She was enjoying teasing him. She knew that he was half-human and half not right now. Part of him was excited, the other part was trying to figure out why he was excited. Rennish hated that he couldn't just be one or the other. IF he was human he might have risked his own life and properly lusted after her.
"Fine, I will go wake them up. Just don't torment me too much, I get enough of that from the rest of the divines." Rennish grabbed the box from the floor and walked towards the door. "Why do you all do this to me?"
"Isn't it obvious? You were one of us Rennish. And not all of the gods are against you. Some of us have your side." She smiled at him and reached out to touch his arm. "Trust us, even if we don't act like you'd want us to."
Rennish shook his head. "Okay, see you again I guess. You know you could say hello occasionally."
She smiled and shook her head. "Takes the fun out of it."
Rennish walked through the door and headed across the hallway. He wanted to talk to her more about other things but she had made this all business. It's not very often you meet a divine that you actually wanted to talk to. Usually, he was stuck with the ones who were out to abuse him.
"Come in Rennish," came from the other door when he knocked.
The door creaked open as he walked through. Both of them were up and getting their bags packed. They each had one small bag with things like clothes or combs and the like. Rennish traveled light. Plus if he was creative he could make his bag make almost anything he needed. "We need to talk," he said holding up the box.
"What's that?" Ashra said taking it from him.
Rennish went into the story about the party and the barmaid who had told him it was delivered for them. He left out that it was a from the goddess Or'Ain. If they knew that she was divine they would have thrown it out the window.
"It's supposedly something of yours," he pointed to them both.
Ashra looked it over before putting it down in her lap. Rennish heard a voice in his head, he recognized it as Or'Ain almost immediately. "Touch the box now."
He jumped a little in surprise before making a snap decision to act like he was falling. He faked tripping over his own feet. As he stumbled forward a step or two he put his hand out to steady himself and touched the box.
"Graceful move their Rennish," the voice of Or'Ain spoke inside of his head. "Now hold on, this is going to hurt a bit."
From somewhere else, Or'Ain poured power through his body into the box. Rennish winced visibly as he became the conduit for a whole other full divine being.
Ed and Ashra watched him as he shook for a few seconds. To them, it looked like he fell and was in immense pain. Erust wasn't watching intently or he would have seen the power flowing into the room and through Rennish.
Neither of them noticed when the box shifted slightly in Ashra's lap.
The box shifted and deep inside a seal broke. Ysennia had an immense amount of power. And the only way to break her creation was to combine Or'Ain and Golliads power. They used Rennish as a conduit to force the lock on the box. Divine power swelled through Rennish and eroded out the magic like sugar melting in water.
Once a whole formed the magic broke and that's when the trapped item jumped from the box back into its intended home.
Ashra jumped as the power flowed into her body. She felt the invasion for a few seconds. As the warm power melted back into her body she tried to throw the box away from her. Rennish was glued to the box with divine power and couldn't move as she shoved it away.
"Rennish, move!" Erust screamed jumping off the bed.
"Ungghhhhh...." Rennnish groaned as he was trying to fight to take his body back.
Erust came over and grabbed Rennish across the shoulders and pulled. It was just then that he noticed the flow of power from his body into the box. "What the hell Rennish?"
Slowly the power ebbed from Rennish's body and he slumped to the floor. "Rennish!" Ashra screamed and tossed the box off her lap. Erust put his hand out and kept her at bay.
"Don't touch him." Erust firmly put out while he felt the last of the power vacate the room.
Rennish rolled onto his side and pushed himself onto his knees. "Damn you." He cursed at the air before looking at Erust and Ashra "I didn't piss myself did I?"
"What was that?" Erust put a hand out to help him up.
"The voice said this is yours." He looked at Ashra. "This was stolen from you."
For a moment Erust had a memory flash through his head. He remembered vaguely when they couldn't touch each other. "You don't mean?"
"Possibly... I really don't know. Whatever it was I guessed I unlocked it." Rennish covered as best he could that this was direct divine intervention. He knew full well it was her and Ed's baby.
"How do you feel?" Erust looked at Ashra.
She shrugged and rubbed her body to see if anything hurt. She took a moment to think about her body and see if anything felt... off. She realized that she felt normal, almost better than normal. "No, I feel fine."
Erust looked at Rennish and pulled him up on his feet. "We keep an eye on her. Might be a trick from the ones we are out to find."
Rennish winced, he knew that Erust firmly believed that statement. "Yeah, maybe it is."
Inside of Ashra something that had laid dormant in her womb suddenly came back to life. Where something had once been, an empty spot had stayed. Now that hole filled back up with life. And inside her body, she felt the warm feeling of life. Since she had never been pregnant she didn't recognize the feeling. To her, it felt like butterflies. She chalked it up to whatever power had flowed into her.
When life settled back into her body, the little body kicked and squirmed. It was glad to be back home. Across the world, Ysennia felt something tug at her mind. She looked up and felt for anything else, but no other pull or force came at her. She shrugged and forgot about it. She had other things to worry about it.