by Loki Renard
As he speaks, the form moves and changes shape. I realize that it is not a single being. It is a swarm of flying creatures which change shape and form like a shoal of fish in Triton’s ocean. Unlike those fish, it is not beautiful. It is terrifying.
They move up in an arc over the chapel, swarm down inside it, blacking out the flames with the mass of their being.
“What is it… are they doing?”
“Searching, I think.”
“For what?”
“Traces of you, perhaps.”
My blood runs cold. That thing is looking for me. This is the monster my mother fled and now it has scented me. Has it detected me? Have I left some part of myself in that place?
“I’m afraid.”
Tanuk holds me closer. “I can take us off this planet. What do you think? Do we stay here, face this? Or do we go back to Okeanus, face your fathers’ anger?”
My mind goes to the man I saw in the chapel. I had forgotten about him until now. Is this what happens to people like him? Are they incinerated without mercy? I knew things were bad on Earth, but I still have a hard time fathoming the way evil sang through the air, casting death upon all it crossed.
“It’s a monster. Can’t you stop it?”
“A god’s power is not less on Earth than it is on Okeanus, Raine, but it is different. I cannot take direct action here. I can have those who believe take action on my behalf, but directly interfering in the physical material of the human plane is impossible.”
“So you’re weak here. Helpless to help these people. Helpless to help me.”
“I can help you. You have the spark of divinity. You are different from the rest of humanity which remains in corporeal chains. The flesh which clothes and comprises their bodies keeps them of this world.”
“Except when it doesn’t. My mother escaped this world.”
“Yes. To Okeanus.”
“We have to help people escape here to there.”
“If you think humans are cruel to one another, you are yet to imagine what gods do to them. Your mother was exceedingly fortunate the gods she found did not simply devour her in an instant. We cannot simply scrape people up off the soil and drag them to Okeanus and hope for the best.”
“We can’t hide here and do nothing, either.”
He holds me close. “I am sorry you are seeing this, Raine. I am sorry that the truth of the human world is so desperately cruel, but there is nothing we can do, not while hiding in the bushes.”
Satisfied with its destruction, the swarm heads off toward the horizon. I breathe a very short sigh of relief thinking that the danger is passing.
It is over for us, but it is not over for all. It takes me a moment to see why the swarm has moved away. The fires have flushed out a small group of people who must have been camped nearby. They are running straight towards us with a desperation which wrenches me to my core. The fires of Entity burn hot behind them, turning the earth black in their wake.
I am about to see them die. Time seems to slow as I stare, focusing on each of their faces. These people are dressed in rags. They look thin, hollow-cheeked, and horrified. Their faces are twisted with fear and the anticipation of pain and my heart goes out to them. There is a part of me very much joined with them. Their pain feels like mine. Their fear feels like mine.
“Do something, Tanuk!” I cry out to him, but he merely shrugs. To him, humans are barely anything. They are like bugs, I think. Something mildly interesting, but not worth lifting a finger to help.
“What can be done?”
“Something godly?”
He gazes out at the fire-breathing swarm and a slight smile twitches the corner of his lips.
“I’d say that is fairly godly,” he muses.
“You’re evil! Those are people!”
“They are people living in a construct of their own creation. They have crafted their destruction. Let them enjoy it.”
Enjoy it? I think he is mad. I think he is evil. I think, in other words, he is pure deity. To a god there is no such thing as good or bad, there is just what he wants and what he does not want. No wonder humans rejected the divine. There is nothing more capricious in all the universe.
I cannot allow this to happen. I will not sit here and watch people die. I break out of Tanuk’s arms and run toward them. I’ll force him to do something. Either he saves us all, or we all die.
I look back over my shoulder. He’s not coming. He’s standing there, glaring at me furiously, but not lifting a finger. I should have learned the first time — Tanuk does not stop me leaving. He does not treat me like a child to be protected. He lets me make my own decisions, even when those decisions are stupid as all hell.
The swarm is almost upon them, and almost upon me. Their screams are louder now, complete guttural terror which reaches inside me and hits a switch I didn't know I had. They are being herded to their deaths, and they will be taken by the flames unless I do something this very moment.
So I do something.
It’s not something I’ve learned. It is instinct that comes from the core of me, a place of power I have never felt before.
I put my hand to the sky and as I do, I feel power flowing through me. It’s not me. It comes from the earth. It comes from the roots of a tree so old it has stood before time. It comes from a tree beneath whose boughs I played as a child. It comes from the old place. From my father. From my mother. From the worlds above and the worlds below.
Ragnar told me I had a special connection to Yggdrasil. I never felt it until this very moment, with the fires roaring and the blood rushing in my ears, I hear the chanting of a thousand warriors and the booming of the war drums. The tree is not merely a tree. It is a conduit of pure eternal energy into which I am tapped.
Entity’s drones are nothing to this power which extends in an arc above my head, the boughs of the branches extending in their fractal beauty, sheltering the humans beneath. I have become everything I was always intended to become, everything I secretly was and never saw.
The drones cannot penetrate the sheltering shield of Yggdrasil. They come from a place of cold mechanics, and this power is far greater. They press against the wall, more and more of them joining the fray until we are swarmed in black mechanical wings.
Entity will not give up. It demands sacrifice. It demands blood. Some of these humans are barely a dozen years of age. They are small. They are weak. They are no match for Entity. They lie on the ground next to my feet, clinging to my ankles, crying and begging for their lives.
I feel something I have never felt before. Anger. True, deep, furious rage. These people have done no harm. They are not capable of doing harm.
Somewhere beneath my feet, an unseen dragon roars.
And so do I.
I scream my anger to the sky, I bellow a challenge to Entity and as I do the last vestiges of my self-doubt evaporate. The barrier which kept the drones at bay is no longer merely a guard. It has become a trap.
Power flows through me in a sudden white surge. Entity’s minions spark brightly in a cascade of light then tumble en masse to the ground, lifeless, useless, nothing but bits of broken metal.
And then there is silence. The barrier collapses. The power leaves me. I am myself once more, just myself, though now aware of all that lies beneath me.
I hear the sobs of the rescued between my own panting breaths. I am exhausted, but exhilarated. I look at the people at my feet and I know with absolute certainty that they would not be here if not for me. I have saved them. I have done some good in this blighted world, and I may yet do more.
Slowly, they rise from the ground, and around me, more emerge from the bushes and rocks. We have been surrounded this entire time without knowing it. These humans have learned to hide impeccably, to make themselves one with the trees and the soil. They call to me in language I recognize because it is my mother’s tongue.
“You saved us!”
“You saved our babies!”
“Who are
you?”
I have no answers for them, but they do not need answers. They are swept up in the joy of survival, and soon I am too, as they grab me, lift me onto their shoulders and carry me aloft. I have never been celebrated before. I feel ecstatic. I feel powerful.
I now know why I have never experienced my powers before. It is not because I didn't have them. It is because I am like my father. I am a guardian. I just never had anything to guard. There was no danger on Okeanus. There were no people who needed saving.
They are my people. Humans who share my blood. My heart. My origins. When they were in danger, I felt instantly protective, and my power flowed as easily and powerfully as the waters of any number of great rivers. What I did was not brave. It was the result of pure instinct, the kind of instinct which can only be bred into a being. This. Here. This is what I was made to do.
9
Raine
It is quite some time before I am able to speak to Tanuk alone, but when night has fallen and everybody is asleep beside the sentries who keep watch for the drones, he approaches me where I stand.
“Tanuk… did you…”
“I saw,” he smiles. Is that pride on his face? I’ve never seen it before. He’s usually smirking at me with some kind of secret only he is privy to. Right now, he looks pleased. Very pleased.
“I thought I brought you down here to escape the wrath of the old gods,” he muses. “I had no idea that you had…”
“Awesome powers?” I finish his sentence with enthusiasm.
“A destiny,” he finishes his own sentence somewhat differently. “You have a purpose here, Raine. That was no accidental event. You have come alive.”
He is right. I have come alive. I feel powerful. I feel, for the first time, as though I exist in my own right. In this moment, I am nobody’s daughter. I am nobody’s sister. I am Raine. I alone have the power to help the people of Earth, and…
“But you are going to have to be careful,” Tanuk says. “If you use your powers too much, they cease to be miracles and start to be expectations. And you do not want to be a goddess who has failed to meet human expectations.”
I brush his warning off. Expectations? I can remember how happy they all were, how they looked up at me with shining eyes and covered my feet in flower blossoms.
“Careful,” Tanuk says, reaching out to steady me as I wobble on the pedestal they put me on. “Getting up there is the easy part. Staying there is hard.”
He’s not wrong. A moment later, I wobble and topple toward his arms. He raises a brow at me, and I give him a broad smile.
“You’ll catch me when I fall.”
“Yes,” he smiles down at me, his palm leaving my ass for a moment before returning in a hard swat.
“Ow! What are you doing? I was good! Beyond good. I was great today. I was…”
“That’s a matter of opinion. You risked your life. If you had not conveniently discovered your power, I would have watched you burn to a crisp. Did you think about that when you were being paraded around like a heroine?”
“No?” I squeak the word as I slowly come to realize that yes, I am in trouble. Actual trouble with Tanuk. That has never happened before. He punished me when we first met, but that was a teasing spanking. The dark look in his eye now tells me that this will not be. Tanuk is patient, but he always takes what he is due.
“You could have stopped me if you wanted,” I argue. “You let me run down there.”
“Could I?”
“Couldn’t you?”
“A god never admits the limits of his powers,” Tanuk drawls. He has a firm hold on me now, and I know his powers include being able to make my ass burn hot and red.
“Come here,” he says. “Away from your worshippers. You might find yourself losing their respect if they see you being thrashed.”
“Tanuk, please… you can’t punish me for finding my power.”
“That’s not what I am punishing you for, and you know it.” He smiles even as he draws me toward my punishment. I have the oddest concoction of feelings in my belly. Part tingle, part fear, a whole lot of inexplicable excitement and yes, even anticipation.
Does he know how I love to be his bad girl? How being the bad twin was never something I was saddled with, but instead something I relished?
He takes me further and further away from the others, under the cover of thickly growing trees. In a dark corner of pristine forest, I face my stern god lover.
“Bad girl,” he purrs, tipping my head up with two fingers underneath my chin. “Such a very bad girl. And you’re going to be even more so now, aren’t you, now you have your powers.”
“Maybe,” I admit with a little giggle.
This is serious. I know that. But it is also Tanuk, and so he is not going to growl and threaten and lecture. He is going to seduce and caress and still make the same point. His smile does not mean mercy. It means the kind of pain I need and deserve.
He takes me by the hand, sits upon a rock and draws me down over his thighs. I do not fight him, because I know fighting would only delay the inevitable — and I want the inevitable.
Tanuk
She is such a bad girl, but she is also the best woman I have ever met. Raine truly has no thought for self-preservation. Twice now I have seen her embark on a mission of mercy. I fell in love with her when she tried to save her sister, and I have fallen in love with her all over again watching her nearly give her life for a band of humans she barely knows.
Raine's power has been inside her all along. That is a cliche, but as with so many cliches, it is one for a reason. Many have lived and died without truly knowing what they were capable of.
It is her destiny to care for others so deeply she would give the essence of herself to protect them. I do not know how I ever came to deserve the love of such a pure creature, but I will do all I can to protect her while she concerns herself with protecting everything else.
“Ow!” she gasps as my palm meets her cheeks. There are a thousand other ways I could punish her, but I choose this, perhaps the most human way to discipline a wayward young woman, because Raine is nothing if not human.
“Tanuk, please… you know I had to do that.”
“And you know I have to do this,” I say, slapping her cheeks firmly with hard, punishing, severe swats. Every single one is essential. Without doing this, I would be letting her believe that there are no limits to what she can do — and if she begins to believe that, her life would be in extreme danger. What happened today was a kind of cosmic beginner’s luck. It will not always be that easy, or that successful. If all it took to defeat evil was the power of a god, then evil would have been banished before it took two steps on dry land.
I can also hardly deny that I enjoy this. It is primal. It produces all those sweet scents and endorphins which tickle parts of my godly physicality which should not strictly be there. I like punishing my naughty little demigoddess. I like it even more now that she is powerful in her own right, and that she has the ability to resist and fight. That means her submission, if she chooses to give it, means something.
I hear her soft little sigh, and feel her body relaxing into my embrace. She is not tense anymore. Her body has begun to convert the harsh slaps into a different kind of energy, a soft, wet arousal which distracts me from all punitive intentions.
The need to claim now rises in me. It is not enough to have her over my lap, her hips grinding with open invitation, her thighs parting to allow me access to that perfect little core.
“Are you going to be a good girl?”
“No,” she whispers, telling the truth as I run my hand over the rise of her cheeks and let my fingers brush against her sex. I can feel her wetness, the slickness of her body growing by the moment as her hips continue to grind. Her motions are sinuous, inviting, needy.
“What happens to bad demigoddesses?”
“They get abducted by gods and taken to distant planets where they start their own cult followings?”
�
�True,” I chuckle. “What else happens, sweet one?”
“They get punished,” she moans softly.
“And what else?”
“They get…” The word lingers on her lips. It is a crude word, but very descriptive of what is about to happen to her.
“They get fucked, don’t they,” I prompt, sliding two fingers deep inside her tight, hot channel.
“Mnyyess,” she moans. “They get fucked hard.”
I fist my hand in her hair and pull her up from my lap. I don’t need to be gentle, and I don’t want to be. I want to be inside her. I want to feel her walls clenching around my cock. I want her to buck and moan and cry out for me.
“Down,” I growl, standing with her as she comes up from my lap, but returning her to the ground where she belongs. She’s going to kneel for me. She’s going to bend and spread and give herself to me. I do not ask with my words, but with my body as I put her into position, shifting her until she is on her hands and knees before me, her thighs parted, the entrance of her a softly weeping aperture hidden between the folds of her lips. She is gorgeous from every angle and in every way. I am astonished that I have been able to take her for my own, and that she bears me no ill will for stranding her on this planet of damned humans and their tyrannical digital overlord.
Raine is a goddess made for hard times. She is thriving here amid the danger. I have never been more attracted to her than I am now, holding her down in a position of submission, imposing my will on her, knowing that she wants it too.
Raine
I can feel him behind me, not just his heat, but his power. I have found new senses on this planet of people. Tanuk is no longer merely a physical being I interact with. He is so much more than that. He is ancient and powerful, mysterious and mischievous. I feel him as energy concentrated behind me with carnal intensity.
He plunges forward, his cock spreading my pussy open, his hard flesh surging inside me with rough thrusts. There is no tender introduction. There is no soft seduction. There is rough claiming, total domination. There is everything I need from him, his big hands holding me, one on the back of my neck, the other on my hip.