Heretic
Part Three
Chapter 9
A complex mix of emotions warred inside Kierna. Confronting Ganiza was something she desperately wanted, but she was completely unprepared for her appearance out of nowhere. And she was no longer certain what sort of relationship they had. Was Ganiza still a friend and mentor, or a malevolent trickster who’d led her to abandon her faith and poison her mind with delusions of grandeur? Was Ganiza responsible for the death of Kenth and the wounding of Hammarra, or was that Kierna’s burden to bear?
And the strangeness of the Godsrealm pushed in on her from all sides, a crushing, overwhelming sensation of too much sensory information. She couldn’t feel her body any more, but her mind was lagging, frustrated and anxious.
How are you here? Kierna asked, blurting out the most pressing question without conscious thought.
There is no ‘here.’ You have opened your Eye far enough that it has stretched to encompass the whole of your mind, your soul. Your body’s physical location is irrelevant. The Godsrealm is a world of concept and impression, its geography formed by the thoughts of those who impose upon it. How do you think gods are able to hear the prayers of those beholden to them? Those few who care to listen, anyway.
So you can contact me anywhere?
Only if both of us are completely open to the Godsrealm. It is different for the Bound. They have rules in place, restrictions, as in all things. An oversight, perhaps. I don’t believe any of them considered how powerful humans could become, once their limits were removed. If they had realized it, they surely would have taken steps to restrain them.
Though Kierna’s mind seemed to shake at the power of her words, Ganiza spoke with the same calm, measured quality as she always had. The thoughts Kierna had of her being some cruel trickster who would laugh at her for falling for her ploy began to unravel. Ganiza didn’t seem to be vindictive, but neither did she seem apologetic.
Why? Kierna realized she was parroting Abeini’s single-minded questioning, and forced herself to explain. Why seek me? Ganiza’s soul-form flickered and twisted slightly, a movement that Kierna somehow parsed as a quizzical stare.
We are traveling together, are we not? I stayed behind to defend your party from Kwovo’s warriors after you won your duel with Munashe. The danger was significant, but I escaped unharmed. I have been following in your footsteps. But I lost my mount in the attack, and have fallen behind. I am several days travel away from your position.
That’s not what I- Kierna cut herself off in frustration. The last thing she’d expected was for Ganiza to waltz back and act as though nothing had ever happened. How can you come back and act like nothing happened after what you did to me? Kenth is dead!
You are angry with me, Ganiza said. I did not kill your friend, Kierna. If I had not acted, at considerable risk to my own self, it is likely you and the rest of your companions would all have died as well. So, why exactly is it that you are filled with such hostility?
You knew what would happen, didn’t you? When I gave in to the Dea, used its power. It changed me. Made me a murderer. And because of that, Kenth died.
If I handed you a sword with which to defend yourself, and you managed to cut yourself instead, would the fault be mine? I am sorry for what happened, Kierna. But you are blaming the wrong person. Worse, you are holding yourself back. I see that your soul has grown small and weak once more.
You think I’d make the same mistake again? Anger flashed through her. As if in answer, the realm around them shown brighter with silver light.
I do not believe you are a fool, Kierna. Cutting yourself off from your true power is an act of childishness, hiding the mess you’ve made instead of cleaning it up. You haven’t faced it yet, have you? What happened that led you to make the choice to kill Munashe.
Was it a choice? Kierna tried to shake her head, but felt nothing. The nausea was rising. This world of emptiness and ephemera was overwhelming.
All thinking creatures make choices, regardless of how little information they have with which to make them. The actions you make define you.
Do you deny that the power you taught me to take hold of changed me?
No, I would not deny something so self-evident. Power changes the wielder, but that does not remove the reality of choice. You seem to believe me to be possessed of foresight. I knew only that helping you to remove your limiter would grant you power, the power you admitted you needed to accomplish your goals. I could have had no way of knowing what you would do with it.
Then why? I have never enjoyed combat. I have never been one to grow angry with a sword in my hand, or to kill anyone when it was not necessary. So why would this power change me so greatly?
That is a question you can only answer yourself, but I will attempt to help you see. You have just spoken with a local goddess, did you not? Tell me, what was she like?
Kierna sighed, though she could neither hear it nor feel it. Ganiza was falling into the same old patterns. Her question seemed irrelevant. What could she have learned from a goddess with such a meager attempt at communication. But she had a habit of following a strange train of thought, leading Kierna to whatever conclusion she meant to imply.
I couldn’t say. She barely spoke to me. She didn’t even seem to comprehend speech. She only sent me feelings. She had no interest in communication, and refused to even consider my attempts at negotiation.
Appropriate, wouldn’t you say, for a goddess of solitude?
What are you saying…?
As paladin, you have certainly met your fair share of gods and goddesses. Surely you have seen similar qualities in them. Resolute. Uncompromising. Unshakable in their adherence to the qualities they represent and the purposes they work towards. This is what makes them worthy of worship, is it not? How unlike humans they are. We who war with our own thoughts and feelings.
Your saying, what, that the Dea makes them unchanging?
Absolute conviction is the natural state of the soul, Kierna. It is the human brain, with its limits and contradictions, that allows us to think from other angles. When you have a difficult decision to make, do you talk to yourself, consider multiple options, feel pulled more than one way by the possibilities? Gods have no such complications. They are what they are. The Exemplars, gods of concepts and beliefs, did not choose an attribute to embody, nor did they come into being that way. Their own natures, over time, led them to become reliant on a single method of action, or several related ones.
So yes, when you opened yourself to your Dea, it changed you. It lessened the influence of the material form your soul inhabits. The brain that allows your soul to perceive the material plane. The blood and bone that renders you so vulnerable to that same reality. Unrestriced, your soul made the decisions then, and your soul is so much more pure. Stripped of all the habits you’ve built to control yourself, you chose to do what you felt was right. What you felt, at that moment, was just.
Ganiza’s words seemed to echo in the emptiness. The memories of the duel with Munashe, the ones she’d been trying to avoid, flashed rapidly through her mind. When she’d begun the fight, she’d had a single, simple goal. Defeat Munashe, and be given the prisoners so that she could see them safely away. An act of charity and compassion. Not an act of justice. Munashe and his fellow murderers would have been left to walk free, unpunished for the evil they’d committed. She would have left with the choking taste of defeat in her mouth, even if she’d won. With the survivors under her protection, she would have been forced to abandon or postpone her pursuit of the heretic, further moving away from the mission of justice her god had given her.
She’d known it was the right thing to do, logically. She’d made the decision long ago that protecting innocent lives was worth almost any cost, even if it meant failure in other duties. But what she thought was not what she felt. That failure would have taken root inside of her, festering, drawing her into darkness and depression. The same thing had happened when she’d returned to Ethka with the refugees Amauro had tried to murder. She’d saved lives, but that hadn’t made her happy. She’d longed to return to the grasslands and continue her hunt for Isaand. And again, she was going to have to give it up.
As the battle had raged on and she’d stoked her Dea, allowing it to consume and transform her into a sort of half-goddess driven by pure conviction, those logical considerations had swiftly fallen aside. Anger, which she’d worked all her life to hold down and lock away, had leaped to the forefront. Without the complications of all her thoughts, a simple quandary had become apparent. She could put aside justice, and save those in need. Or she could leave the powerless to the fate that had been dealt them, and punish the man that she despised.
Had she a body, Kierna would have shrunk in shame. Thinking now, she could remember how good it had felt to make that decision. To throw everything aside and finish it all with a swift strike of her sword, the consequences be damned. For an instance, she had been a goddess of vengeance, passing judgment on the wicked from on high.
Then the moment had broken, and she was just a woman again, crying out in pain as her friends were killed and injured around her.
What will happen to me now? Kierna asked. My soul is in tatters. Did I ruin it? Will I stay sick and weak like this forever? If I can’t return to normal, my friends are as good as dead. Whatever mistakes I have made I will pay the price for, as is right. But they should not have to die for my failures.
The soul is not flesh, to be battered and broken. So far as the divine is concerned, nothing is permanent. You turned your back on your Dea, afraid of what the power taught you about yourself. You can undo it in the same manner. It is simply a choice.
You make it sound so easy. How can I trust myself again?
It is not easy, Kierna. Self-reflection never is. The physical world is transient, easily destroyed or reshaped, but the soul is far more stable. But it can be done. You should be grateful that you were split from the great Dea and given human form. It is easier for us. The true gods do not even consider how set in their ways they are, and those few who try to change may spend centuries or millennia in their attempts.
I don’t have millennia, Kierna said. In a few days, Abeini will destroy us for remaining in her land, or else we must flee. The instant we step outside her border, Amauro will attack. Without that power…
You will die. I am sorry. If there was some way for me to hasten my pace and reach you in time, I would take it. But that is not my Nature. Bonds and clear-sight are the miracles at my disposal. I will do what I can in that regard at least. I will send Eitia to meet up with you. Secure in the sky, she should be able to reach you without being attacked by the wolf-goddess. She will do what she can to help you.
Will she? A suspicion had formed in Kierna’s thoughts long ago. She hadn’t asked, not wanting to offend the shaman. With things in such disarray, she couldn’t see the harm in asking now. Eitia is a goddess as well, isn’t she? Just as stubborn as all the rest. How is it that you find it so easy to gain her assistance?
Eitia is a goddess, yes. The swirling pillar of energy that was Ganiza flickered with a flash of heat, the trio of eyes narrowing. But she is mine to command. I embraced my nature long ago, Kierna, and my nature is Dominion. I have kept my powers subtle in respect of your beliefs, your faith in the gods as your rightful masters. But I do not adhere to them. Eitia, Malerax, and Aeshana have bowed to my will. To them, I am the goddess and they are the servants.
Kierna felt the pull of the great pit again, an emptiness opening to swallow her up. For a time, she’d thought she could consider Ganiza a true friend.
You’re a heretic. Just like the one I hunt. Worse, maybe. At least Isaand is only a servant of a god in rebellion. You would make yourself an equal to your creators?
Equal? No. The gods made a grave mistake when they wrote their Pact, and again when they chose to meld soul and body into humans. Seizing on that mistake, we have the potential to become greater than the gods, Kierna. You cannot claim that the idea doesn’t appeal to you. Think about all you have seen since you joined the army of the gods. The suffering in the world, the disparity, the injustice of it all. You could change that.
Maybe I could, Kierna said. But-
She tried, but she couldn’t find the words. She was too tired, too distracted by the torrent of information rushing through her head. She couldn’t argue against Ganiza’s words, not now. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe she wouldn’t live long enough to have to make a decision.
Before Ganiza could say anything else, a thunderclap broke through the silence. Kierna’s soul flickered like a candle-flame in the wind, almost sputtering out, bringing with it a cold ringing pain. She gasped as the landscape shifted before her eyes, the sky shattering and then reforming into a vast image of an endless plain of golden grass that extended around them in a massive inverted sphere, so that she saw its surface wherever she looked.
Two orange suns burned in the sky. They coalesced into the eyes of an enormous wolf created of flickering green flame and wind. The world shook with the growling of her throat, and distant howls echoed in the sky. Kierna shrank back, tiny before the vastness of a true goddess.
TRESPASSER. POACHER. I’VE CORNERED YOU AT LAST. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THIS TIME.
Amauro’s words crashed against Kierna’s soul, rocking it and forcing out gasps of pain. The great beast growled and opened her mouth wide, teeth wider than mountains, stretching down to devour her. Kierna screamed.
Do not be afraid. Ganiza’s voice cut through the sound of howling. The Pact restricts her. Gods and goddesses cannot harm each other directly in the godsrealm.
SHE IS NO GODDESS. SHE IS A PITIFUL PRETENDER.
It doesn’t matter what she says Kierna, you are safe here.
Shaking, Kierna tried to pull herself together. She’d learned even as a child that the only way to defeat fear was to look it in the eye. So she desperately latched on to what Ganiza told her and threw herself defiantly towards the great wolf.
The massive goddess vanished in an instant, reappearing distantly as a smaller image, snarling in rage.
HUDDLE IN ABEINI’S DEN WHILE YOU CAN, LITTLE PRETENDER. YOU WILL COME OUT SOON ENOUGH, AND MY HUNT WILL END.
Kierna coughed, her chest wracking in pain at the sound of the words that echoed across the sky. Someone’s hands were on her back and shoulder, and she heard voices calling in desperation. A wheezing, agonizing breath ran through her, her lungs burning. She felt like her body was about to burst. And still she could see the godsrealm, superimposed over the reality her body lived in.
You have to go, Ganiza told her. You are not strong enough to stay here like this. Return to your body, nourish it, regain your strength.
And ready your soul to take up arms again. Or you will not survive.
Kierna realized Farrus was looking down at her, concern turning his boyish face into a mask of terror.
“Kierna, please, can you hear me?” he said. It sounded like he’d been speaking over and over again for some time.
“I-” Kierna was interrupted by a cough that felt like a stab in her chest. She took a breath, her very lungs feeling bruised. She tilted her head back drunkenly, seeing Garreth behind her, holding her up. “I’m not okay. But I will be. I know what to do now.”
Heretic 