Leonie tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “I was beginning to genuinely think we’d never find this place.”
“I never doubted it for a second,” Therese shot back.
“Liar.” Huk snorted. When Veronica asked him to explain, he was silent.
They made their way up the stairs toward the temple doors. It was calm around them, the music of the parade lost in the city. Clerics and other classes roamed in reverence, pausing at the fountains and occasionally closing their eyes to just breathe in the air.
Inside the temple, it was much the same, an even larger fountain taking center stage. A large basin at the bottom caught the overspill of an upper basin ten feet above it. Taking pride of place in the center was a carved tableau of every god imaginable.
Veronica recognized a few of them, but she hadn’t had the chance to learn about every god the game had to offer. It seemed there was someone for every element of life, and with just a quick glance, she could guess what a few of the gods embodied.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” a soft voice said from beside her.
Veronica snapped out of her thoughts, surprised to see a robed woman. She was as wide as she was tall, and her face was friendly.
“How many are there?”
“There are different tallies, depending on who you choose to listen to. Me? I choose not to number the immortals, for there can never be an end. The gods have bred and multiplied since the beginning, and who knows what great divine plan is in place to bring upon us more guardians?”
The woman smiled, radiant warmth emanating from her presence. “Hi, I’m Elisia, the Elder of this temple.”
Veronica introduced herself and the others.
“What brings you all to our little slice of paradise? I remember every face that has entered this hall, and I’m confident that I’ve never seen you folks before. Adventurers, judging by your attire and demeanor.”
“Oh, she’s good,” Huk whispered.
“We are just visiting,” Veronica said. “We are new to the city and wanted to get our bearings. My first ports of call are always the temples and shrines. There’s no better way to get a grip on where you are than to associate yourself with the shortest paths to the gods.”
Elisia smiled. “Amen.”
“We’d also love to take advantage of your fast-travel spot,” Therese added rather abrasively.
Veronica looked mortified. “’Take advantage’ is a crass term. She means we would love the opportunity to make use of the facilities. We’ve traveled a long way, and we’d hate for our journey to be for naught.”
Elisia chuckled. “No offense taken. I understand entirely. We’ve had a lot of blessed pass our way recently, so I’m no stranger to your ways. Come, let me show you around.”
Elisia led them around the temple, passing various open arches leading to shrines dedicated to the different gods. Once they had connected with the fast travel spot, she asked to whom they would each like to pay their tributes.
Since Huk and Therese had never aligned themselves with a god and didn’t plan to make a decision then and there, they said they would wait outside in the sunshine for the others.
Leonie, on the other hand, asked to pay her respects to Meruer, knowing that, for warriors, paying tribute to the God of War often granted temporary boons and enhancements to their attacks, strength, and ability to level their swordsmanship at a faster rate.
Veronica watched her leave, wondering what she would find when paying homage to him.
“And you?”
Veronica considered this, wondering if she was really making a wise decision. Ever since leaving Killink View, she thought about her alignment with the gods and who best to try to communicate with to improve their prospect of success in their mission.
For well over a week, she had tried to communicate with Meruer. As KieraFreya’s father, Meruer seemed the likely option to try to discover more about KieraFreya’s path and the rocky moments before KieraFreya had been divided into pieces and thrown back down to earth.
But she had had no luck. There had been no response whatsoever. It was as if he simply refused to pick up on the call.
Or maybe you just aren’t strong enough to communicate with the gods at will?
“I’ll be honest, I’m torn,” Veronica stated. “I’ve paid homage to a great many gods, and I’m still undecided about who best to dedicate my life to.”
“Well, sweet one, you know that only through true dedication can a cleric grow her skill set and develop in her class. Ambiguity and indecisiveness are no paths to take. What is it that holds you back?”
Veronica chewed her lip. “See, I’m struggling to feel a true connection to the goddess of my choice, KieraFreya. In prayer and contemplation, she evades me entirely, and her father, Meruer, is just as evasive.”
Elisia nodded in understanding. “The gods can be slippery, which highlights the need for sole dedication. Perhaps they sense your doubt and anguish.”
“Perhaps. Maybe I just need to find members of the family who will communicate.”
“The families of the gods are tight-knit and small,” Elisia explained. “The trick is to not explore the family ties and beat around the bush, but to be specific. Target. Find out what elements appeal to you most, and see what you can bring out of yourself to further their influence on this world.”
She grasped Veronica’s shoulders, peering deeply into her eyes. “Tell me, what do you desire more than anything else in the world?”
Veronica was caught off-guard. She felt light-headed. Without hesitating, she said, “Love.”
Elisia chuckled, breaking her gaze. The spell lifted off Veronica. “As I suspected, and a wise choice, too.”
She placed a hand on her back and ushered the cleric toward a room with an arch decorated with roses and flowers. Around the bottom of the walls were brightly-colored flower arrangements, many shaped into hearts.
Elisia stopped in front of this room’s fountain, which featured a carved man and woman naked and locked in the throes of lovemaking above the tumbling waters.
“Oella is the goddess you seek. The mother. The founder. One of the sovereigns. It is through her open embrace that you will find what you desire.
Veronica stared silently at the fountain. She had heard of Oella, Goddess of Love, along her travels. The sovereign gods were the most important for new and budding clerics to become familiar with, but she had never thought of aligning with a goddess who was centered on such a fleeting emotion as love.
“Are you certain, Elder?” Veronica asked, realizing that Elisia was already at the doorway behind her.
“Oh, yes, child, I’m certain. Who better to guide you toward your clerical specialization than KieraFreya’s mother?”
When she saw Veronica’s shocked face, she added, “Maybe you’ll have more luck reaching this goddess.”
With that, she silently exited the room.
Chapter Four
Demetri woke up to an empty bed and the sound of frantic typing.
He blinked stupidly in the glow of the morning sun, wondering why his alarm hadn’t gone off. He’d had a night filled with the strangest dreams, and felt like he’d been in bed for hours.
A quick look at his clock told him that it was 6:55am, five minutes before the alarm was due to ring.
Shaking away his grogginess, he reset the alarm, then sat up in bed and stretched, remembering it was his day off. One of those rare days on which he was out of the office for the entire day, which took place once a week at most.
He pulled on his pants and a crumpled tee and found Mia at the kitchen counter, her laptop open, her eyes wide and glued to the screen.
“You look frazzled,” Demetri said, planting a kiss on her cheek as he made for the coffee pot and began brewing a fresh pot. “You’ve been up all night.”
“I know, I know,” Mia said, waving Demetri’s comment away.
“Again.”
“Mmhmm.”
When
the coffee was ready, Demetri poured some into the cup, then pivoted and rested with his back against the counter. “You know, you used to bitch at me for doing that.”
A pause. “What?”
“Working too much.”
Mia looked over the top of her screen, eyes shadowed and dark. “Don’t start.”
Demetri held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not.”
He watched her for a few minutes, moving the mouse around the screen, occasionally jabbing fingers at the worn keyboard. Her phone would flash and draw her attention, then something on the screen would draw her back.
Demetri let out a long breath and made his way back over to Mia. He stood behind her, lacing his hands around her waist.
“You know you can take a break, right?”
Mia didn’t reply.
“Sweetie?”
Mia finished typing the email she was working on, then hit Send. The email flew into the corner of the screen, leaving behind a black background with various lines of multi-colored code on it.
Mia exhaled, rubbing a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s just…there’s so much to do. There’s not just the AI versus the gods situation to look at, but I’m being contacted by every friggin’ inferior in the company, asking for advice and solutions.” She turned to Demetri and kissed him on the lips. “Five more minutes, baby. I promise.”
She joined Demetri almost an hour later. By that point, he was watching Chloe on the projector in the study, scrolling through the comment boxes and checking out the latest ratings and standings of Obsidian and its key players on his laptop.
Mia hovered in the doorway.
“Well? Are we going?”
Demetri laughed. They had arranged to spend the day walking around the city park, and maybe stopping at Mia’s favorite restaurant for lunch.
Demetri raised his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” Mia said, realizing how she had sounded. “It’s just…I’m so tired.”
“C’mon,” Demetri replied, leading Mia to her coat and shoes. “The fresh air will do you good.”
They were outside for the better part of half an hour before Mia complained that she needed to go home. Her eyes were drooping as they walked, the fresh morning air doing nothing to wake her up.
They made their way back to the apartment. Demetri took a seat in his study chair, and Mia collapsed instantly as her butt touched his lap.
“I don’t know if I’m cut out for this,” Mia said. “I was sure that Devlin was a shitty manager, and now I’m learning that his role was impossible. I’m just as bad as he was.”
Demetri thought back to the weedy, up-his-own-ass jerk who had attended the meeting at the Lagarde offices with Mia and him. The guy who did no work and took all the company benefits he could.
“No way,” Demetri assured her. “You’re not a terrible manager. You’re a new manager.”
“That’s the difference?”
“A new manager hasn’t yet learned to delegate. You know how you used to complain about Devlin never doing work? That was because he passed it all down to you guys. When you take over from a manager, you have to be strong and not take all the work that gets pushed back up to you. If you take up everyone’s slack, you’ll have no time for your own work.”
Mia nodded. “I am getting a lot of questions and issues.”
“So delegate. Put someone else in the line of fire. You’re a manager now. Free your time up to work on the stuff you’re meant to be doing. The important stuff.”
Mia nodded slowly, realization sinking in. “I am on the cusp of something big with the AI; I can feel it. I found an entire sheet of code that had self-generated a few days ago. It could be big, but I haven’t had the chance to analyze it properly yet. Too busy putting out fires.”
“Hire a fireman.”
Mia looked up at Demetri. “You could be my fireman.”
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be.” He smirked.
They kissed. Something moved on the screen, and Demetri’s attention was pulled to the image of Chloe and Gideon standing outside a small farmhouse, with a pen in the background that had some kind of birds roaming around.
“Funny,” he mused. “The ebb and flow of video games. One minute, their lives are on the line, and there are fires and monsters and armies. The next, they’re sipping herbal tea with old ladies in the wilds. I wonder what the drinks taste like in Obsidian? Do you get to program taste, too?”
Demetri’s voice trailed away as he looked down and saw Mia snoozing quietly on his lap.
Chloe and Gideon shielded their eyes as they exited the mages’ school.
They had spent several hours studying in the dim candlelit gloom of the school’s library, and now their eyes struggled to adjust.
It had been a fruitless afternoon, the books on the shelves yielding little in the way of history and lore that might help them track down KieraFreya’s missing companion.
Chloe had hoped they might find something that detailed the powers of the gods and how they related to the etheric, but instead, she and Gideon had been distracted by the array of spells and incantations they had found in the books, the pages of which nearly all were torn and damaged.
“If you want pristine resources, try going to the Mages’ Academy,” a surly mage had grumbled to Gideon after he had asked what had happened to all the books. “We do what we can.”
“Perhaps there’s another library? A public one with resources on the ancients?” KieraFreya suggested as they made their way back through the city. “The mages’ educational facilities can’t be the only places with books.”
“We’ll try tomorrow,” Chloe replied. “We promised the others we’d be back ten minutes ago. Maybe they’ve had more luck than we have.”
Chloe fell into thought as they traveled back, not in the least disappointed that they hadn’t found what they were looking for but wondering why they hadn’t stumbled across a single Guardian at the school.
A small part of her had hoped they would find Hammersworth’s equivalent of Arizona. Someone who would be able to help them further harness their etheric powers and teach them even greater control.
In Killink, Arizona had spoken of levels of magedom, and a small glance at her teachings had made Chloe hungry for more. What she wouldn’t give to have her here right now!
After several wrong turns and a lot of asking for directions, they eventually made it back to the inn. They found the others sitting on a bench outside the door to the inn, each with a drink in their hands.
“Hey, you made it, then? Thought you might’ve got caught up in the festivities.” Huk laughed, raising his glass at their arrival.
“Shut up.” Therese chuckled, waving them over. “Come on, we got your drinks already. Good thing they ain’t coffee or tea since they’d have gone cold ages ago.”
Chloe and Gideon took seats.
“What do you mean, ‘festivities?’” Chloe asked. “We’ve seen nothing going on.”
Veronica explained about the parade they’d seen in the center of the city. She asked how Chloe and Gideon hadn’t seen it since they had been heading that way to start with.
“We got waylaid,” Gideon replied.
“As usual.” Therese grinned.
Leonie turned in her chair. “Okay, what happened?”
Chloe and Gideon proceeded to tell them all about their excursion with Burdock and Reyner, including the information they had found out about Doris and her visitor. When they were done, Leonie leaned forward and said, “How weird.”
Ben, who had been quiet until that point, nodded in agreement. “It does sound pretty strange. He’s an elusive character. Even the Rangers’ Guild has nothing to say about him, other than they’ve heard of his arrivals. He’s like a whisper in the breeze, a man of myth who keeps to himself.”
“No,” Leonie said. “I mean, it’s weird that peacocks are rare here. Where I live, they breed them like chickens and roosters. They stand on shed roofs and screa
m at the morning sun.”
“How the hell are we supposed to find him, then?” Therese asked. “This whole thing is just another wild goose chase.”
“Peacock chase,” Talbot said, chuckling into his glass and stopping only when Gideon finished their tale by telling them that Doris was expecting him to return before the next full moon.
“So, what?” Huk asked. “We keep an eye on the old hag until the man appears again?”
Chloe elbowed Huk. “Don’t be like that. She’s a lovely lady. And that’s not what I’m suggesting. She’s a breeder of fowl and birds, and has messenger ravens she’ll send to this address when she hears from him again. Until then, we can either go off on our own adventures into the forest or hang around the city and hone our skills.”
“I vote for both,” Ben said. He looked worn out, as though a good sleep wouldn’t be too far away. “The Hammersworth Rangers’ Guild is close-knit and specialized. I’ve gained more experience with them in one day than I might have in a week elsewhere. They have masters who are willing to teach, and I am willing to learn.”
“Then how is that ‘both?’” Leonie asked. “If you’re gaining skills with the rangers, you’re not looking for the Wrangler.”
“Where do you think the rangers train?” Ben asked.
“You mean—”
“Yep.”
“Then it’s decided,” Chloe said after draining the last of her drink. “Hammersworth is home, for now. We all need to improve our skills while we have a chance. Considering the last showdown we had, I have a feeling any additional bonuses and boosts we can get will be absolutely vital for survival. Remember, we had a god working against us. Imagine what our next obstacle might be?”
Everyone nodded in agreement, then started chattering about their day and what they were hoping to achieve tomorrow. A short while later, they began peeling off one by one to go to bed as the sky grew dark and the air turned chilly.
“Chloe?” Veronica asked, grabbing Chloe’s arm before she broke free of the group.
Goddess Complete Page 4