The Greatest Sin

The Greatest Magician on Earth, brought low by insanity and delusion. How Anassa appeared, it is unknown. She is the only Divine to be older than her demesne. Perhaps there is a little bit of Anassa within everyone? After all, who wouldn’t want the power to re-write reality?

- Excerpt from the secrets texts in the White Pantheon’s closed library. Written by Goddess Allasaria, Of Light: ‘Untitled’.

Anassa opened her eyes and took a breath. The air here was noxious and bitter and stinging with the fumes of concentrated mercury underneath her, but she didn’t mind. It was the first breath she had taken through her real nose for a thousand years. A hundred crystals she had told Elassa back then, two hundred she got. Fer had reduced them to ninety-nine. A hundred was what she demanded, and she was never wrong.

Anassa’s sorcery flowed through her as the crystals started to glow and whir. The tension in her wrists lowered as her feet found air to stand on. It was easy to stand on air, bees were fat little things and they managed to do it, all it required was a change in perspective. Theosius’ centurion-sentinels took a step back as Anassa fed the crystals her energy.

They started to glow and crack, unable to contain her. That was only natural of course, such small things wouldn’t be able to contain a Goddess such as herself. No, ninety-nine was not a hundred, and that little number could be infinitely expanded. It had an infinite amount of decimals within it for Anassa to find her grip within them. It was all a matter of perspective after all.

One crystal shattered. Another. That started a domino effect, they all fell one by one. Crystals lit up, started to glow a blindingly brilliant bright white, and then shattered. Anassa moved a finger, still bound by the chains hanging onto the ceiling as Fer laughed from below. “I knew you could do it.” She said as she coughed up blood.

And then, the rest of the crystals went as Anassa overloaded them with her energies. She didn’t care for the sciences of it, magic was a domain she had long decided was a trite thing constrained by theory and thought. She lifted higher as the floor of air moved her and she looked at the two chains. Pure mithril, the strongest metal on Earth that could still be forged. Almost as strong as Godstone.

But then bacteria considered a grain of sand a mountain. An ant would look up at a boulder and see an unsurmountable height. Trite little descriptors like hard, like strong, like unbreakable were simply a matter of perspective. The mithril gauntlets collapsed into shards and cascaded down like snowflakes. Anassa smiled as she stretched her arms above her head.

She looked at the cowering automatons. These great centurion-sentinels crafted by Theosius to stop anyone from trying to enter her prison. Reinforced with antimagic and to be used as a last resort in case she managed to free herself. What was antimagic anyway? All magic had to be cast, all magic could be overwhelmed. There was no such as antimagic when put up against the Goddess of Sorcery, it all depended on that perspective.

Anassa burst out into haughty laughter as she cast her arm forwards. An automaton lifted into the air as she played with her prey. A leg shattered, an arm cascaded off as swords of red light slowly crawled and made their way through the machine’s entrails. She found the heart, a core drench with the stink of Elassa. And her red pins pierced that core.

The machine screamed, the rest of its arms and legs falling powerless to the ground. Anassa raised an eyebrow, she never knew why Theosius liked his toys so much. Kassie had her armies, but those were extensions of herself. Armies were needed to hold ground and such, Fer had the same with her herds. But this? This was as impressive as when Elassa would summon a dancing fire to entertain troops! So not impressive at all!

Anassa grinned as sorceries wrapped around the hulking piece of metal, she closed her fist, and the automaton was crushed into a ball by red energies cracking with lightning. It scorched walls and set blue fires alight on the mercury.

Anassa waved her finger to the left as she turned. That metal ball became a mace she rolled through the automatons still standing. They were scratched, a few had torn arms and broken weapons, Fer had done a number on them. It was really quite impressive how much damage her sister could do considering she fought with her body.

Unfortunately, Anassa fought with her mind. And from this high up, she could not tell a difference between Theosius’ toys and tiny little ants to squash with a hammer. She made a full circle as she hovered in the air, or maybe the room simply twisted to make sure it she wouldn’t exert herself. Goodbye little toys, when adults came back home, it was time to be cleaned up.

Anassa dragged Fer up into the air. She was a little lion, and cats where held up by the scruff of their necks. A red claw of sorcery weighed Fer exactly like that as Anassa brought her sister to look eye-to-eye. “I hate when you hold me like this.” Fer said, the claw wrapped itself under her shoulders and her legs dangled to the air.

“You have a tail now.” Anassa said as she inspected the Goddess. Fer was badly hurt, another soul would have panicked, but Fer knew her sister well. All the woman needed was some fresh blood to power up a round of regeneration.

“I drank Baalka’s blood.” Fer said, those golden cats eyes focused on Anassa’s red crimsons. Fer stretched her arms forward. Anassa smiled and hugged her sister back. Fer was too cute to say no to. Nor was she annoying and argumentative like her other sisters.

“I guess that explains it.” Anassa said. Honestly, it explained nothing but questions demanded answers, and sometimes the answers were unsatisfying. Sorcery was filled simple and unsatisfying answers, why shouldn’t Fer be allowed to have her own.

“I got blood on your dress.” Fer said and giggled as she pulled away from the squeeze.

“Don’t worry about it.” Anassa snapped her fingers and a wave of red from her body cleaned her dress. How hard was it to isolate dirt from clean cloth anyway? Mages apparently struggled with it, Anassa had never known why. Dirt was dirt, cleanliness was cleanliness, there was a huge gap between them. “Let’s get out of here, right Fer?” Fer smiled and nodded as she kicked her legs in the air, seemingly enjoying the ride.

Anassa turned to a wall and snapped her fingers.

Logar felt the momentarily lull in battle. The mage in front of him did too. They both stopped as they looked up at that great wave of red coming from the Divine Library. As if a giant had swung a crimson staff through the building in an effort to behead it. The towers toppled, the roof collapsed.

The rest of the beastmen stopped moving too. The other mages, those in the air and those on the grounds ceased their fighting for a moment as they looked up at that giant building the pack had been holding the entrance to.

“What did you do?!” One of the mages screamed out in disbelief. Logar didn’t have a chance to answer as the cloud of dust was blown away as if it were fog giving way to a crisp morning wind. A woman spoke, her voice terrible and commanding and cold as she hovered in the air. Packmaster hovered by her side, held up by a terrible red claw that cupped her, with three snake-like appendages extended away as they circled to protect her.

And Logar saw the woman. He had never considered many humans to beautiful, they were all too soft and too pink for him, but he looked up at creature and felt his heart beat in terror at the picturesque perfection of her.

“What did I do?” That woman said. “You do not have the credentials to ask me that question.”

Anassa looked down at the mages. She looked down and sneered. Some hovered in the air, some had closed the distance around the pack of beastmen. Others were laying dead, felled by multiples holes in their bodies or by the cuts of sword and axe. She gestured to Fer and laid her down on the ground as the mages took a step back. One, an old witch, finally mustered up the strength to speak. “And who are you?”

Anassa turned to the woman. Old, haggard, terribly weathered by the trials of time. She had never liked mages in the Great War but now? She wondered what their ancestors thought of them. It was obvious from their essences already, the strongest reached maybe a quarter of the strength of what trained battlemages could do. To compare them to the great Archwizards of the past, who moved mountains and raised islands… it was downright offensive. She had not lost a war to be questioned by ants like this.

Anassa twisted her arm. Red lightning shot from her. Not Olephia’s vicious diseased red, a noble crimson that could serve as a cape or a flag. The same crimson her dress was fashioned out of. A man died, his heart impaled by a red pin, so thin it was difficult to see. Then another. A third. “WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!” A man shouted. “STOP HER!”

Anassa raised an eyebrow in surprise. Stop? Not Kill? She had never liked children or idealists, they wouldn’t be able to kill her if they tried, but stop? What then? Imprison? Talk to her? That was a notion hilarious in its farce.

A man flew a fireball. Anassa let it travel up to her, it had lost most of its energy by the time it got to her. Then she simply moved. From one space to another, a mere step. An ant would look at a dashing cheetah and be amazed at the speed, likewise here. It was simply a small step, a matter of perspective.

Logar looked up into the sky as Anassa blinked from one point to another. She moved faster than the wind, even the trail of her smell disappeared and reappeared as she shifted position. Logar shook himself out of the confusion and cut the mage who had been trying to brawl him down. “BRING PACKMASTER BLOOD! HEAL HER!”

Anassa flicked a finger again as she watched that fireball ascend to the sky. A red spear caught it. This weak? She turned back to the mages. Did Arda lose its magical energy? She scanned the leylines, uncaring for the spells being flung to her. A red net caught them all anyway. No, the leylines over Arcadia were as strong as she remembered them, maybe even stronger.

Then what? Where they just all children? Did they not know how to fight? Anassa kept position as she hovered over the mages. Even the sorcerers she had been training personally, children and unskilled as they were, were far more powerful than… than this. A few had put up barriers. Her net of sorcery spread out and shot in all directions.

And it was over.

Logar looked at the corpses around him as mages fell to the ground. In a single instant, Anassa’s spikes hand descended from the sky and annihilated every trace of life in the area save the beastmen and Packmaster. They had pounced as if they were leaping cobras, going for the jugular and hearts without a moment of hesitation.

Anassa looked up to the night sky. South west, to the direction of Olympiada. So the Divine Mountain tried to stop her? She burst out into a laughter again as her sorceries cackled with her. Red lightning flowered from her position as she turned to face whoever these newcomers were. Finally! Someone she could test herself against!

Godhood was a position given, it was a position earned. Godhood needed gatekeepers, else everyone would think they were a God! What a fools! Anassa turned, her smile wicked. Petty Divines were the worst of the lot! Only a hair more powerful than a trained sorcerer and thinking they should stand on the same stage as Anassa herself!

It was time to gatekeep Godhood once again, as had been done in the past, so will be done now.