The Greatest Sin

Irinika is overwhelming and mighty. The Goddess of Darkness, revered out of fear and out of greed. An overlord to her followers, but her position is deserved. If out of nothing but her sheer power. It is fitting that she completes the duality of the two of us.

Olephia is destruction incarnate. Of Chaos, a Goddess to satisfy and feed sacrifices to, or to pray that she never comes close. Undefeatable, it is a mystery how she escaped the realms of overwhelming Divines, such as of Time or of Attraction and incarnated into the realm of mortals. We should have killed her before this mess even started, but the ease of turning a blind eye to Olephia and sequester her off to uninhabited lands than kill her let her live made sure the hum of Chaos was never silenced…

- Excerpt from the secrets texts in the White Pantheon’s closed library. Written by Goddess Allasaria, of Light: ‘My thoughts on the Daughter-Goddesses.’

Anassa took a step towards the dirty horde of measly claimants to Divinity flying in from the south-west.

Logar looked up into the air as the fires of the forest where extinguished in a breeze. Anassa blinked from her position to one further down, and then again, and again. He felt his throat tighten as he looked at Fer drinking blood from the third corpse the darkfurs had brought her. Her wounds finally closed and her breathing was stabilizing.

Anassa stopped as she realised how slowly the Divines were coming. Mages were rising from the air to meet them, but it would still take at least a few minutes for them to reach her. Why should she approach them? She stopped and scanned the area of Arcadia. Back then, it had been a magical place, downright fantastical. Elven magic had forced the leylines to expel magic, trees were wild and glowing, the first beastmen came from Arcadia, where magic and sorcery had forced man and beast to cohabit one soul.

And now? She smiled to herself as she looked at the burning buildings with people scurrying around them. What a farce. Geomancers unable to smother fire, Hydromancers unable to drown it, Aeromancers unable to pull the oxygen away and kill it, Pyromancers unable to just snuff it out. This was what mighty Elassa had to deal with? These were her people? No wonder she was always in a bad mood in the few times she visited Anassa in the Divine Library.

Anassa looked around.

Edmonton took a step back as the remnants of his magic intertwined and buffered by sorcery stopped a ball of fire in his tracks. Eliza stopped too as her mouth fell open, her brown eyes widened and she looked up. The mages surrounding the containment quarter stopped too.

Vines roaring along the ground retreated back into the earth. Lyca’s fire simmered and disappeared in a final series of sparks as the man took a step in front of Eliza. The howling orchestra of winds Fleur had been casting disappeared as her magic started to wane and cool down. The mages they were fighting all pulled back, expressions of terrified awe as they looked up.

Four young sorcerers and fifty mages put down their hands as they looked up into the starry sky of Arcadia. A woman was near the centre, a woman in a red dress held up behind her as if invisible maids were helping her carry it, with marvellous black hair that flew in the wind.

A terrible crimson eye appeared in the air next to her. Cut out of thin lines red, as if someone had incarnated a picturesque drawing into the real world. Then another. A third. Ten. A hundred. They sprawled out around her, the woman took no notice to the powers around her, she merely to look at the four.

Edmonton blinked as she disappeared, felt her sorceries above and behind and turned. In one instant, she had covered shut a distance. And then, Anassa spoke.

“Kneel.” Anassa said, her voice hard as stone as her red eyes stared down upon the mages that were trying to harm her students. She saw Lyca and Edmonton and Eliza and Fleur drop to their knees instantly and rolled her eyes. “Not you.” Anassa raised her hard and showed who was to kneel.

Fleur felt her mouth go dry as she looked up to Anassa. To the mages, above them, a giant hand of crimson sorcery appeared. Opaque, as if shaded, with the edges growing bright. As if someone had brought a drawing to life. Fleur could only stare up as she looked at that delicate hand stretch one giant finger out and point towards the magicians ahead of her.

“I do not repeat myself.” Anassa said, her voice boomed across the valley. The mages stood there, frozen with fear and with shaking legs. The Goddess rolled her eyes again. Well, she gave them a chance, didn’t she? She clapped her hands, above her, two giant red hands of sorcery clapped in unison as her eyes moved to her students. “Stand up, watch and learn, I will now demonstrate what Sorcery is capable of.”

Her four students stood up, straight backed and watching with attention. She felt their sorceries and magics flow through them meagre as they were. When she had been locked in the Divine Library, she could only cast mere visions of herself. Now, there were no limiters, no more of Elassa’s little crystals that tried to try and pretend that the two arts were matched. Sorcery was a temple for the elite and the best of the best, magic was shit for the plebeians to lie down and rot in. A thoroughly uncreative art, refined to be trained in mass.

A hundred little mice where nothing for a man with a heavy boot. One of the mages turned and took a step. Anassa smiled as his head fell off his shoulders. It would have been too fast for anyone to catch, but it was a merely a small pinch. A man could crush a new-born’s bones with a pinch, why shouldn’t a Divine be able to do the same to adults? It was simply perspective, these people were staring up at a mountain they couldn’t even fathom the heights of.

That head rolled on the ground as the body took another step, realised what had happened and fell. Magicians neighbouring it screamed and jumped away. “Who are you?” One woman shouted. A pyromancer, with a full-red cloak and a staff already trailing with fire as she made a wide circle with it.

Anassa waved her hand again. The woman looked down at her chest, she coughed, blood spilled from the ground and she fell face down on the floor. She didn’t have the right to even speak to Anassa, much less demand an answer. Dogs were put down when they barked too loudly, why should humans not be? What difference was there to a Divine between a dog and a man? Anassa trailed her finger through the air as she spoke to the four students before her.

A copy of herself, a false-vision, appeared besides each of the four and leaned in to speak quietly. “When you fight, there is no reason for grandiosities.” Anassa and her copies pointed to a geomancer raising stones out of the ground. “That is called pressing a sword to someone’s throat.” The earth-mage had the same fate as the pyromancer. His stones suddenly dropped, he coughed up blood, and he fell dead to the ground. “Bandits and robbers press swords to men’s throat to terrify them. We do not.”

Another two magicians fell, a man and a woman who were working together to summon a beast of water. “You can play at combat, or you can kill. Children play, adults kill.” Anassa flew closer to the men as she thought of what else to teach them. She shouted this time. “The next to attack me can have a free shot. Have at it, as strong as you can.”

A ball of fire flew up from the ground from a mage. Another two turned to run from the Goddess. Anassa dropped the first two, then extinguished the spark of life from the pyromancer as his fireball soared through the air. The ball of fire disappeared quickly as it lost the force guarding it. Anassa sneered. That was it? Where were the cones? Why was the air around her not alight? Where was the Sun’s wrath? “Again!” She shouted. “STRONGER! KILL ME!”

A group of geomancers took up position and hurled a stone the size of the ground out of the building. Anassa tapped her thumbs along her fingers as her mouth twisted in rage. Just that? Just a stone? What was a stone? A mere grain of sand beneath her! She waved her hand lethargically forwards.

Lyca looked up, his mouth full of awe as Anassa moved her hand. The stone before stopped in mid-air, then cracked. It cracked again, and again, and again, the sound of tearing stone screamed through the air as stone shattered on stone.

And then… nothing.

Anassa finished her hand stroke and the stone dropped. It wasn’t a stone anymore, it was a pile of dust, it hit the ground with a heavy thud and sent a grey cloud up into the air. That was what she thought of such an attack. Where were the stone birds? The endless hails of metal? The rising mountains and cracking Earths? Did magic really fall so much. She kept looking at the mages before her, but her eyes saw the approaching Divines, too much time had been wasted here, she would end this faster. Frankly, she wanted to end it already. It was an insult to sorcery that this farce called itself magic. What would the hydromancers do? Wet themselves?

Anassa snapped her fingers and sixty-three men and women collapsed to their knees. Each pierced by a thin vein of sorcery. It would be too small to see for mortals, too small to even produce a drop of blood through the piercing of skin, but once inside body, they’d quickly slice the heart into a hundred little pieces. “That, children, was a demonstration on how to fight mortals, killing is not theatre nor art, it is merely the claiming of lives. You kill, or you die. How you kill is unimportant. You simply do it.” Anassa said as she turned away from her students. The four false visions repeated the words to her students and disappeared.

Anassa hovered higher and higher as she looked at the oncoming Gods and Goddesses. Too short to be major players but there was a good deal of them. Anassa didn’t bother to count, there was no reason to give that much worth to little flies. She outstretched her arms, sighed as she leaned back and cracked her fingers together. That felt good. The eyes around her scanned the crowd as they approached her, they could fly, but that meant little. Only fools cares about which Divines could fly or not. Fer could not, and these figures where not even fit to be the dirt she trod on.

Some minor God was the first. A soft-faced repugnant fellow with hair trailing down to his shoulders, with green eyes and wearing the whites and golds of the Pantheon. He drew up his hand and the horde of Divines and mages stopped in mid-air. Anassa looked at them from below, then took a step above them before speaking. “Know your place.”

“We are not here to fight you.” Anassa smiled down at the man. Behind her, a giant image of herself appeared, sculpted entirely of sorcery. A drawing in her mind cast onto the fabric of reality, that was sorcery in its truest form, something magic wished it could achieve. It sneered down at the crowd as they formed a tighter circle. The mortals put up defensive shields, spear and sword appeared in the hands of the Divines. Of course they weren’t here to fight her, what hope did they have of stopping her?

She was Anassa, Goddess of Sorcery. She was chosen by Arascus. She was a pillar of the Great War. She had books written about her.

Of course they did not come to fight. They came to give up their lives and be the first atonement of the White Pantheon for their crime of imprisoning her. They came to be slaughtered.

Anassa let those little mages put up their little blue shields. She felt their magic, it was a measly little thing. To think the best could only have been a mediocre battle-mage in the past. Elassa really let her domain slip. Anassa stood on the air in her red dress. “You did not come to fight, so why come?” She felt her energy build up within her, it was time to let the world know that even if the world had regressed, she had not.

“We came because Arcadia was under attack!” That lead God shouted back as he looked at the ruins of some trite halls. The mages had finally put it out. They were starting to look at the confrontation in the skies. Good, Anassa always liked having an audience. She deserved one.

“And?” Anassa asked, the grand incarnation of herself behind said the words loud enough for the whole land to hear. The God looked around.

“And we’ve come to ask you to stop!” Anassa raised an eyebrow. Did the man not realise who he was talking to?

“I did not attack Arcadia.” Anassa turned and pointed to Fer, the woman was stood as her beastmen finished off another team of mages. Fer grinned up at Anassa. “It was her.” Fer put her hands on her hips and made a grand posture no one but her beastmen and Anassa could see. Anassa smiled at that silliness, that was Fer through and through.

“Then why…” The God slowed his speech as if at a loss for words. “Then why did you… kill those people?” Anassa cocked her head to one side in disbelief. Was that such a grand notion? What was Divinity if not the right to decide who should die and kill? A man with a sword was a God to the swordless, just as adults were Gods among children.

“Do you know who you are talking to?” Anassa asked, the Divines all shared wary glances, a few shook their heads. Anassa did not let them embarrass themselves or her anymore. “This should help jog your slow little minds.”

The giant Anassa behind her disappeared as the Goddess extended her hands and floated higher up. Her hair started to dance in the air, her dress lifted up to her knees as sorcery started to flow out of control. It shot out of her fingertips in arcs of bright crimson lightning, it spiralled around her and flew up into the night sky.

Paintbrush and pencil painted the sky red, with thick dashes of crimson and thin lines arcing from star to star. Anassa smiled as she heard one of the terrified expressions of awe, she saw it in their faces and their eyes. That collapsing light of confidence, that slight tension in the neck as they held themselves in place even though they wanted to, the curling of fists around swords.

The moon behind her turned crimson as Anassa’s mad energy seared itself into reality. The pencil and the paintbrush were gone, someone had spilled the bucket directly onto the canvas. The Divines took a step back as the world became tinged with crimson.

“We are…” One of them began in a hurried and apologetic tone. Another turned immediately and started to fly away.

Anassa snapped her finger.

A sword erupted from the sky above and shot down as fast as lightning. It was the flick of a paint brush smearing the ground with crimson sorcery and red blood. That Divine, whoever he was, was not worthy to give himself that title. Anassa spread her arms out to either side as she felt the satisfaction of guarding her own. He lay, unmoving on the ground as the sword disappeared into butterflies, a gaping hole left in his chest.

Godhood had to be earned, if you could not withstand even a single attack from her, you had no right to claim the same stage. It was that easy. Power was given to those who could use it, those who could not had their power revoked.

The Divines took up defensive positions as Fer howled in the distance. Anassa’s eyes of sorcery hovering in the air saw beastmen pull their wounded and support each other as they made their way back to their leader.  “Fight me!” Anassa shouted out. “Prove your worth! Touch the hem of my dress you worthless wastes of space! Even once and I will accept your claim at Godhood!”

Edmonton looked up at the sky as the crimson moon above Arcadia started to grow and expanded. It came close to Anassa, a perfect circle of sorcery still and glowing as its redness saturated the sky behind it.

Anassa looked at the Divines and mages in the air before her. Not a single one of them moved. “I will not repeat myself. Touch the hem of my dress and I will let you go.” She raised her hand. “You have thirty seconds.”

A Divine dashed forwards. Another God, with black hair and another soft face. He held his long blade awkwardly, too tightly and his muscles were stiff. Anassa merely took a step to the left.

Lyca looked on in awe at Anassa as she blinked from one space to another. The God who tried to cut her looked around in confusion before he saw the Goddess of Sorcery thirty metres off to his left. Anassa made that patronizing of hers as she looked down at him.

Lyca wished he could have that sort of power.

A fireball came at Anassa. She did not even dodging it. What was fire anyway? Just hot air, just some chemical reaction. The ball of fire travelled through her and was swallowed by the crimson moon in the air. A shard of ice cast by several magicians came quickly. Anassa stepped over it. Another Goddess, this one with a spear and face full of fear. Anassa lifted her arm, the moon behind her pulsed with red light and the spear turned to dust in the Goddess’ hands. It wafted away in the cool night breeze.

“Do you understand now?” Anassa spoke softly to them, but everyone in Arcadia heard her voice travel along the wind. “You are not Divines.”

Anassa turned around as two Gods came to her. She had given them too much time, five seconds had passed and she was already getting bored. They came at her, roaring winds and flames burning in the air. Shards of stone rising from the ground and flung towards her as if by slingshots. Gods and Goddesses with sword and spear. Man-sized icicles that shattered into a thousand fragments.

Anassa stepped through them all.

Ten seconds left. She took a deep breath and decided there was no point moving. The crimson moon behind her pulsed and an opaque sphere of red touched her. A sword touched it and was cut, where the metal tried to stab, the metal simply disappeared from existence. As if the red sorcery was an eraser rectifying an artist’s mistake. A snake of water smashed into it. There was no splash, no explosion, no mists of steam. The snake merely dived into the sorcery and never returned. Anassa stood there, hands behind her back as she studied the Divines and mages attacking her.

The White Pantheon really has fallen.

This level of magic would not even warrant a true God being held in reserve, it was a simple joke. She would rather have mundane beastmen at her side than whatever this farce the mages tried to pretend magic was. This power of the minor Divines had nothing in common with the ancient battlefield heroes. Ten minor deities could hold back an army back then. Kassandora had needed to bless every individual one of her soldiers to even give them a fighting chance, and now? Now a few dozen men would be able to one of these frauds claiming the title of Divinity.

“Stop.” Anassa said. “Thirty seconds have passed. You have all failed.” She lifted her hands into the air as her eyes saw the crowds of students and teachers throughout Arcadia. The beastmen, her young four sorcerers, they all looked up at that fruitless assault the White Pantheon had formed. “To all the dirt in Arcadia, let me give you the most important lesson in your life. To you frauds in the air, let me show you what Divinity really is.”

The Divines backed away, the mages kept up their assault, a few had raised defensive barriers as they prepared for Anassa’s counterattack. “Raise defensive barriers.” Anassa said. “Commune for it.” She looked at the confused faces of the mages. Did they not even know what a communion was? What a joke. Anassa clicked her tongue in frustration. If they had waited a thousand years, then the Great War would have never happened, it would have been called the Great Cleansing instead.

The mages raised barriers. A few worked together. Anassa’s eyes scanned how they used magic, worthless. It wasn’t a communion, it was simply a mutual spell. No conduits, no hierarchy, no efficiency. Others were under some notion that they could take on Anassa alone, they raised personal shields around themselves, faint bubbles of blue. No one tried to eat from the leyline, no one pulled in the stagnant energies from the air, not a single one of them made any attempt at multiple shields, not a single one of them put up a specialized barrier to deal with sorcery.

Anassa took a deep breath. “If you survive one shot, I will give you a minute to flee.” A trained mage could cover enough space in that. “I will not give chase, but if I can reach you from here, you will have not fled enough.” She looked at the mages again, some where trying to conserve strength upon hearing that. Fools again, a mage who didn’t push his body to frying should have stayed back home and toiled the fields.

A child on the ground stepped forwards and raised his wand at Anassa. He was crying, his shirt was covered in blood. The wand started to glow red. Anassa did not even turn to recognize him as she whisked her hand through the air and his hand fell off. Sliced by a sorcery that buzzed through the air like a wasp.

Anassa spread her arms out.

The crimson moon around her pulsed. Eleven more appeared as if the hours of the on a clock. They surrounded that group of Divines and mages. The group tightened and shrank. Shields and armour appeared around the Divines. Blue barriers hardened and hummed with magical energies.

Anassa put one arm into the air.

Insects had to be crushed, fools had to be pushed into their place, vainglory had to be erased. Magic was for the elites and no one else. Godhood had to be gatekeep. As was done in the past, as shall be done now.

Anassa twisted her arm and brought it down in a sharp swing.

There was no build-up, no slow humming of sorcery, no great charging of power. The crimson moons simply opened up, each with a thick beam of sorcery the size of a great hall. Anassa closed her eyes as she felt her sorcery impact on magic.

Sorcery touched magic and wiped it away. It incinerated skin. It vanished armour and blade. It tore through bone and organ. A single blink of an eye would have been enough to miss it.

And it stopped.

And there was no one in the air.

And there was no one where the beams touched the ground.

And Arcadia stood in tremendous, terrible, terrified silence.