Heart of Dorkness

Bane Eleven - Worship

Semper sat at the back of her carriage, the sky outside was beautiful and clear, with only a few large cumulus floating high above in a bright blue sky. She flicked a finger and the curtains closed her off from the view.

A pile of books, all fit for travelling, sat on the bench across from her, but they were as of yet untouched.

Semper was keen on her own emotional state. The path to godhood did not allow for laziness or anything less than absolute dedication to one's domain and art and magic. She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and focused inwards.

Most gods and goddesses were masters of their craft, but mastery wasn’t the end.

It was strange, how life was merely a series of cliffs, the next always more difficult than the last. Godhood was the latest cliff she had climbed, and above that was another great peak, taller and more imposing than any before, and yet it was one that she had never seen during her long climb to where she was now.

It had taken her centuries to reach godhood. How many millennia would it take to surpass that?

How long had the great gods taken to reach their spots? There were exactly five of them, the number impossible to hide when each could make the world tremble on a whim. How many normal gods were there below that? Fifty? A hundred?

Semper found that spending time with Luciana was... heady. The woman was a master next to a novice when she swept past Semper. So Semper closed her eyes and cycled her disgust, her anger at herself, combining the two into a sickly volatile mess in her core that gleefully waited for her to unleash it onto the world.

Luciana’s magic wasn’t like this. It was powerful, but controlled power. Perhaps the climb up the next cliff was all about learning great finesse. To use the match where another would use a bonfire.

Perhaps in a few decades more she would know.

The carriage rattled faintly as it touched down.

The pegasi pulling her along wheeled the carriage around in a large half-circle, then came to a slow stop, hooves stomping and wings beating to work off excess energy.

Semper opened her eyes and let go of a whistling breath that steamed the air before her. The dark path of her veins just under her skin faded and her eyes started the slow process of returning to some semblance of normalcy.

She flicked a finger towards the door and opened it up even as she stood up. She had arrived at a secluded archive. One of her great libraries, hidden in the mountains to the north of Casera. It was where many of her archivists trained, and where some of her most precious tomes were hidden away, guarded by powerful men and women on their own path to power through contempt and literacy.

“My lady,” a chorus of mixed voices said. A dozen archivists bowed at the hip.

Semper stepped out of the carriage and started for the Archive. She was never one for the small platitudes that other gods took as their rightfully deserved reward. A senior archivist jogged up next to her. “Report, please,” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. What came next was a long spiel of platitudes. Recruitment numbers (up in the west, significantly lower out east), reports about food and maintenance and book procurements (interesting, but only in passing, as long as things were regulating themselves she saw no reason to muddle). A few archivists had gone missing (entirely normal in their line of work) two were confirmed to have passed away. Both in the east again.

“Have a senior archivist head east. There’s something going on around there.”

“Yes ma’am,” the senior archivist said. “Did you have a good time? We didn’t receive any news for a few weeks.”

Semper nodded slowly. “Yes, actually. It was... enlightening. Fun, even. I think I’ve grown a little, but then...” she slowed to a stop and the senior archivist did the same. The man was middle-aged. Ruben Bescos. She remembered him being much younger when he first joined. “You have children, right, Ruben?”

“I do,” he said.

Semper knew that no two gods treated their servants the same way. Alehandro had lovers, the Three had runaway girls and tired mothers serving them. Heroe had an army of wanna-be adventurers. Luciana, of course, had her monsters. She always respected her own. Certainly, they were not at her level, and there was an element of... servitude between herself and her servants, but past that, she tried to ensure that the formalities between them were few.

She used her archivists to learn more, and in return, they had access to some of the greatest education affordable, and the greatest libraries on Monsterra. “Tell me, Ruben, are any of your children married?”

“My oldest,” he said. “Little Aitana. Though I suppose she’s a grown woman now.”

He seemed fond of her, if nothing else.

“How did you discover that she was in love?” Semper asked.

“Ma’am?” he asked, obviously confused. “You mean, with her husband?”

“Yes,” Semper said.

Ruben thought about it for a moment. She was patient for such things. “I suppose my wife noticed first. She spends more time with the children, of course. Aitana started pining after the neighbour’s third son. Not the man I would have chosen for her. He’s more of a... brawn over brains sort. But whenever Aitana saw him she would let out these little sighs, and it seemed as if her sharp mind would escape her at times.”

“Interesting,” Semper said. Nothing she hadn’t read about in any number of books about love and the like. Though... perhaps what was in books was not what was in reality.

There was a disconnect between the sharp, clear focus of a story and the muddled truth of reality.

“Why do you ask?” Ruben queried.

“Ruben, could you inform the librarian that I need certain books?” Semper asked. She wasn’t certain if this was a good way to pass her time, but what was the point of immortality if one couldn’t spend it as they saw fit? “There is something I need researched.”

“Certainly,” Ruben said. It was blindly obvious that he was excited. “What will we be researching?”

“Young love,” Semper said.

He blinked, and she sensed that he wasn’t expecting such an answer.

“The fate of the entire world might depend on it,” she replied.

Largely false, but melodrama came with the territory. And besides, it put a bit of pep into people’s step when they thought they were acting to save the world.

She was curious, she had to admit, and it would serve some other purposes as well. Getting her closer to Luciana, who was a very dear friend, and perhaps keeping an eye on three young ladies who were almost certainly destined to cause a fair deal of trouble in the future.

“Ruben,” she said. “I will also need a glimpse into all of our books of prophecy. The unfulfilled ones. Do we have an expert on the subject here?” She gestured to the archive, the grand building of carved stone buried into the side of the mountain as though it had been there for millennia, though it was not nearly so old.

“Not at this archive, ma’am,” he said. “Though I can communicate with the other senior archivists, and given a day or two, I am certain those experts would make themselves available for you.”

“That would be nice, yes,” Semper said. She wasn’t linked to any seers, but there were a few archivists who made note of the movements and words spoken by those. Predictions of the future tended to fall apart when they dealt with those who chose their own fate, but they were nonetheless accurate some of the time.

She had heard it likened to the art of predicting the weather. The predictions were certain within a wide range, with decreasing certainty as the range was narrowed by specificity. Still, there was a middle ground where the weather’s true actions and its predicted actions would be close enough that one would know whether to bring an umbrella or an extra shawl.

All predictions went out the window when certain elements were involved. Luciana was one of those. She didn’t take kindly to being told what she would do in the future, and tended to find a perverse pleasure in ruining ancient prophesies she was involved with.

How, Semper wondered, would that impact her child?

Semper smiled, if only to herself. Yes, returning soon wouldn’t go amiss.

Besides, she liked spending time with the Dark Goddess, and the children were... amusing, especially the way they flustered Luciana.

***