The Greatest Sin

…Fer. Wild and charming. A shame really, since the animal in her is so deadly yet so easily sways soft hearts and dulls the cautious mind. Yet the beast hidden with her heart forced her away from the order of the White Pantheon’s Coalition. I sometimes think what Arascus plans to do with her? Does he actually believe he can civilize Beasthood?

Neneria, a Goddess whose uneagerness is mistaken for hesitation. Almost slothful, with little drive to do anything. After all, Death is a certainty for us all in the end. Apolitical and not ideological in any fashion. In the past, she would visit graveyards and battlefields to send souls off. Cold, but very tender. Even Helenna is baffled at how it was possible that after ages of being an observer, undeciding death finally chose a side…

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

Elassa’s heart had sunk when she heard the news upon returning to Arcadia. It had plunged even deeper as she made her way back, the flight was short. It was only a few hours with her usual speed, today it had taken less than an hour. Her mind descended into the cold depths of worry and dread as the wind beat into her.

The rising Sun over Arcadia did nothing to warm her up. When she saw what happened to her kingdom, she realised that no matter what she could have thought of, it didn’t go far enough. That cold ocean spat her out into a howling, blinding blizzard.

Arcadia centre was destroyed. There was no other way to say it. Elassa hovered in the air in the blue dress as her people worked underneath. Several of the fields had been converted to field-hospitals. Tents had been put up, yet people still lay on stretchers on the grass besides them. Burns and bullet-wounds, missing and broken limbs, faces and bodies covered in bandages. Elassa could only imagine what the inside of those tents looked like.

Several of the gardens had been burned down. Noble, century-old trees had been turned to ash. Mages were working to clear the ash and fell trees that had no chance at being healed with floromancy. And then the dorms. The floromancer quarters had been reduced to rubble. Several mages were working on evacuations as others held up stones and vines to keep the structure in place. The pyromancer quarters had lost half the structure, the half that still stood had was being explored by small teams that were pulling students out.

The aeromancer’s building was charred. Two more homes of learnings needed to be cleared. The hydromancer’s structured had collapsed. Almost every strand of green grass had been painted with grey ash or crimson blood. Elassa’s skies travelled north. Uncleared corpses still lay on the grass, her eyes found a beastman laying dead on the ground.

Elassa’s fist curled in rage. Fer should have been put down millennia ago, she was a wild animal, not fit for inhabitation of this world. A beast whose capacity on massacre depended on her mood was a walking disaster. Elassa started to hover north as she travelled to her favourite area of Arcadia. Her Divine Gardens, that she maintained personally. More blood, more of her people torn apart. Fer’s work, that much was obvious. No other creature killed in such a way, even pull bullmen slammed and crushed, only she would leave clear holes in chests as she grabbed and tore at hearts.

And through the northern woods, reduced to ash entirely. There was no point to even try and save these trees, several had collapsed already. More mages lay dead here, this wasn’t Fer’s work although Elassa still recognised the wound pattern. Muskets had been invented in the Great War, one of Allasaria’s greatest achievements had been that she wiped that weapon from existence.

And now, seeing people with small holes in their chests. With heads torn open and the insides splattered on the ground. Muskets had returned, and it was obvious these weren’t the primitive guns of the past. Elassa sighed as her eyes travelled further. Beastmen on the ground, dead and torn apart by magic. At least her mages put up a fight.

And then… Elassa felt herself plunge into the cold ice of an endless abyss. Her eyes travelled to the Divine Library. What remained of the Divine Library.

Anassa’s prison had been cracked open. And it had been cracked open by sorcery. The fragrance of that cursed magic still littered the place, and there was nothing in the world that would make such clean cuts. Elassa came close as she inspected the damage. Stones animated by magic moved out of her way as she came to the central tower were Anassa had been kept imprisoned.

Fer. It was obvious from the damage the sentinels displayed. Claw and tooth marks littered the hard metal. Some machines had been ripped apart, others torn open. Theosius’ magical machinery within their bodies strewn over the ground. And Anassa. One sentinel had been crushed into a perfect ball, Elassa scanned her crystals. Some had been cracked, others had signs of overloading.

Anassa survived then. Anassa survived and was free. And the lack of Fer’s essence anywhere meant that she also was taken. With treacherous Kavaa in Arika, Fer would be up and walking soon no matter how much damage she had sustained. Elassa took a deep breath as she wondered on what to do.

Arcadia had never been attacked previously, not even in the Great War had it sustained such damage. Even Arascus and all his mad hubris had not tried to attack the country of mages. It was… It was a first. That was certain. And now Anassa had been freed.

Sorcery would spring back up then. And if once again entered the world, the mages of nowadays would not be ready for it. Elassa turned back from the Divine Library as she slowly hovered back to the centre. Past those corpses, she silently blessed and thanked and pleaded for forgiveness with each of those souls.

Her mages would come to her. People were already beginning to turn their heads, a few raised shields. That was no worry, Elassa expected them to. They had just had to suffer through Of Beasthood and Of Sorcery. The Goddess spotted a teacher she knew. Dominic Whitaker, an old fellow, bald and with a huge beard. His back crooked, his staff used as a cane to support himself with. Head of Hydromancy, one of the few people who had contact to her.

Dominic was working his magic to stem bleeding, holding water around cuts and holes and broken arteries to create makeshift passages for blood to flow in until those specialized in healing could come to fix the wounds. Elassa’s staff appeared in her hand, a long piece of pale wood, taller than her, with a white diamond nestled in a crown at the top. She effortlessly took over the man as people realised it was her and dropped their shields. A few bowed, others gave sighs of reliefs, several exploded into tears.

“What happened?” Elassa said softly as her shoes touched the ground. This had been a park when she last saw it, now it was dirt that had been cleared of ash. Dominic had been keeping two hundred souls alive, Elassa sewed the magical threads together as she started to slowly heal them. Not as powerful as Kavaa’s mind-rending healing, far slower, but it could be done without inflicting the pain Kavaa always carried. Dominic bowed before responding.

“It is good to see you Goddess.” He spoke slowly, unsure of himself. “I…” He wobbled on his staff, dark rings were under his eyes.

“Sit.” Elassa spoke softly. “I am here now. The nightmare is over.” It wasn’t, Elassa had been in enough battles to know the nightmare really only started once you started counting the dead. But the man needed to hear something good. “You did a good job holding these alive, sit and rest, I can hold them.” Elassa expanded her magic, her staff started to glow brighter as she forced the other hydromancers nearby out. A thousand, two hundred and eighty-three people lay on the ground, two hundred had died already. Elassa’s magic started to heal them all, she turned around to speak to her mages.

A crowd had formed already, people collapsed onto tears, a few fainted of exhaustion once they realised their Goddess had come. “You all did well, I will take over this group, heal the others, those you cannot leave for me.” She repeated herself twice, her voice soft. It was one thing to shout at stubborn Maisara and Fortia, she could not bring herself to be angry at these mages. They were purposefully not trained in combat arts, the fact Arcadia still had people alive, the fact they had managed to slay at least a few of the beastmen was a show of tenacity in itself.

The responsibility of these deaths sat with her. Her alone. They should have been prepared to face what was happening. She would personally visit each home of the slain students to beg apologies from the families that had lost loved ones.

Elassa turned back to Dominic, he was already on the ground, eyes closed and breathing heavily. That gnarled staff topped off with a blue sapphire across his knees. “Dominic, hold yourself together, you can sleep later, what happened?” The man nodded and winced. Elassa scanned him with her own magic. Two ribs where shattered. That explained it. “Don’t move.” Elassa said as she started healing him. It was slow, all she could was amplify natural regeneration, not heal by force as Kavaa, but it was enough. The man sighed after a few moments. “You shouldn’t move.” Elassa said. “But tell me.”

“Last night, some hours after you took the peacekeeping enforcers.” The man sighed and shook his head. The aged man, wrinkled and dirty, looked up at Elassa with the dim eyes of a pleading child. “Fer came first. Then her beastmen. They attacked with fire and with… I don’t know what.” He sighed again. “An object they would point, it would explode, and then someone would drop dead. It wasn’t magic, we thought it was at the start, but it wasn’t.”

Muskets definitely then. Elassa sighed. So new classes would have to be re-instated. She closed her eyes as her mind travelled back to her memories of peaceful Arcadia. A place of refuge for mages, too powerful to live in pure harmony with the mundane folk. That was an Arcadia gone. Not to return until Arascus was dead.

She silently cursed herself that she did not massacre everyone in Nanbasa back then. The nation that stands? She looked around at the wounded around her. A few were starting to rise from the darkened dirt. A building in the distance started to lean, vines and trees and pillars of stone swiftly shot out of the ground to catch and support it from toppling entirely. A few people started flying out of the balconies, carrying wounded with them. Elassa took a sigh. Kirinyaa had stood, and Arcadia had fallen on the same night.

She looked gave a final look at Dominic as the man slowly leaned from side to side, then looked to another a collection of students. She was about to wave them over, but something stopped her. No, she could not act out of rash action. There was damage to be fixed first. Dominic was in no state to take orders either. “Sleep Dominic, you’ll feel better when you’re healed.”

Elassa stepped away as she lifted into the air, the magical healing here could be tied off and left to operate on its own. There were more people to save, there were dead to count, there were meetings to make. Arcadia had to awake from this nightmare before she got her mages moving.

Arcadia was strong. Mages had once shackled the world with their power. It was only by the graces of Allasaria and Elassa that they found such a perfect system to keep send that dragon of magic asleep. To isolate it from the rest of the world. Anassa and her sorceries were like that too, a dragon. A dragon to be imprisoned and captured and forgotten. To disappear from the world and leave Arda in peace. The world did not magic.

Elassa looked at another field, filled with students lying on their backs. Healers were operating here, crouching over bodies missing limbs and with their stomachs torn open. With burns that had melted flesh to reveal bone. Elassa uncurled her trembling hands around her staff and got to healing. With each person that awoke, she saw the fear and the sadness overwhelm them. They broke into tears, they screamed out, they stood up and they ran off. And then she saw those who awoke in shock. With that little bit of humanity that was impossible to slay, that little of bit of humanity that gave Arcadia its entire purpose: Anger. A righteous anger, a call to destruction and devastation. That little bit of humanity that Maisara thought she could kill. That little bit Elassa always called beast within.

But that was not true either. The mundane were beasts. They could lash out and kill one or two in anger like a roaring wolf. The best of humanity had prowling tigers or furious bears within them. Mages though, they were no mere animals. Arascus should have not awoken the sleeping dragons.