Goddess Rising

Aria pulled the rings out of her pockets. All eighteen felt dense with power, but like all dumb, inanimate objects, they said nothing of what she should do with them.

Fighting gods is beyond my power. They even know the future. What then?

If only that stupid boy hadn’t kept me in the dark.

Oh, let’s face it. I would have done what I wanted and shunned him, anyway.

The gritty sand and humming sea seemed different now, sweeter, as if crawling back from the jaws of death had given them a richer color.

She picked a ring at random from her pile, plucking up some sand as she picked it up. The grains irritated her finger as she slipped it on, forcing her to rub her to dust off her fingers and rid herself of the discomfort.

As the ring slipped on, calm and strength washed over her, and her mind went back to her first meeting with Achi, the rage and terror of it, and the warm jacket.

She forced the memory back and focused on the ring. She gave it a mental command to activate, but nothing happened. She could feel power in it, however.

The pile of trash was still in front of her, so she fixed her gaze on it. She tried to move it, making sure to draw power from the ring and not herself. Satisfaction washed over her when it succeeded. She felt a pulse from the ring, and the trash pile moved one foot to the left. She tested the ring for a few more minutes, but it revealed no abilities but those of a power store.

With mild disappointment, she took it off her finger and picked another from the pile.

An anxious feeling came over her suddenly. She was exposed, sitting on a beach beside a house that Garo had recently looted. What if he returned? What if someone else came and wondered what she was doing there? What if it was a god?

She teleported away from the house and to a spot in the nearby woods. There was no sense in going farther; nowhere was safe. Still, she would have time to escape anyone who went up to the house.

Despite the relative security, she sped up her experiments, putting on rings and taking them off in seconds. She managed to draw power from each one she tried but soon despaired of finding any more function to them.

Until the eighth. She put it on, screwed up her face as she attempted to activate it, and the world turned pale. Everything colorful object bleached into a slate gray while the air itself took on a hazy quality, like in a fog. The sea and sand, free of their color, somewhat resembled each other, but for the undulating waves disturbing the water’s surface.

She turned to look at the house. It had suffered the same fate as the rest of the world, but, behind it, something was in full color. Achi’s golden building, home of his paintings, was now visible to her through the trees and despite the magic he had spent hiding it. She could not see through its walls, but its exterior was as clear as in daytime.

She shot to her feet in excitement, teleported to it and attempted to push the door open. To her disappointment, her hand went through it. So, it was still visible, but still hidden under its enchantment.

She sighed and took off the ring, and the building disappeared from her sight. On a whim, she stretched a hand out for the now-invisble door and was surprised with her hand collided with it. She pushed, heard a whisper like of a well-oiled door opening, and then the building was visible again.

A moment of apprehension followed, but she ignored it - as she did all her feelings these days - and stepped through the threshold.

The interior looked different in Achi’s absence. White cloth still covered portions of the walls and she left them there not wishing to see the disorienting depictions of herself again. Instead, she focused on the one new object in the room: a wooden stool with a sheet of paper on it, folded into thirds, and her name printed on the exposed portion.

She made straight for it and opened it so quickly that it almost tore.

Only three sentences awaited her, penned in weak slanting strokes, as if by a tired and hurried man.

“You have a house. The northwest corner. Press the four fingers of your left palm to the wall.”

Aria glanced at the northwest corner and back at the note.

There was no one to ask any questions. She could only obey or refuse and what reason was there to refuse? She returned the note to the stool, then, on second thought, took it with her to the indicated corner. There, she pressed her fingers to its left side. With a smooth hiss, almost like the door, The back disappeared to reveal another wall slightly further back, so that the room was only a little larger than it had been before. The new back wall was covered, end to end, by a shimmering, orange-red curtain that reminded her of the pathfinder’s watery walls.

She felt a burst of anger toward Achi. Why leave cryptic messages where she was unlikely to find them? And what exactly was this doorway? For all she knew, it was a trap by Tivelo meant to lead her to another prison.

She cast about for something to test it with, but the only potential object was the stool. So, she retrieved it, and threw it at the shimmering wall. It went through without sound or ceremony.

Aria sighed. Achi probably wouldn’t harm her. Still, she stuck a finger through the wall and successfully pulled it back before committing herself to the experience.

As she walked into the wall, she kept her eyes stubbornly open. Still, the world darkened for several moments, as if she was suddenly blindfolded.

It cleared all at once, and for a moment, she stood in shocked silence.

The thrown stool lay two feet away from her, on a bed of grass. To her side, the letter had fall when she lost control of her arms. Every bit of thought in her body was devoted to keeping her upright while she took in the sight in front of her.

Achi’s sanctuary was gone. In its place stood lush grass, dotted with wildflowers of every color, and a gazebo. The gazebo’s thin pillars were covered in vines, each greener than anything she could recall in her life and merging with the cool air for a pleasant and unidentifiable scent.

But that was not what had stopped her. A short distance away, perhaps a five minute stroll was a palace straight out of a wordsmith’s tale. The exterior was impressive enough as palaces went, but it was the interior that had stopped her.

Past the palace, the pristine sky met a forest of dark green. There, trees grew so close to each other that picking through them would be a chore, their tops forming one large, seamless platform. In their canopy, it must be as dark as night, despite the unmistakable daylight.

Behind her, the meadow she stood in continued, ending shortly in a cliff. Beyond the cliff, a river had cut out a valley. She could hear its roar as it cascaded down a series of waterfalls. On its other shore, grazing animals roamed or lounged unworried.

The building, itself, was perched high enough that it looked down on both the cliff and the forest. It had no upper level, just one sprawling complex of rooms in every shape and size. She counted twenty bedrooms, each with its bath, receiving room and lounge, four large kitchens, and a smaller, more intimate one, pools, gardens, fountains, terraces, sunrooms, and various other rooms that were likely merely decorative.

All of that was merely in the first building. The second held smaller rooms - servant's quarters - tastefully decorated. The third and fourth seemed to be miniature mansions - guest quarters. She ignored the fifth and sixth buildings, having seen enough to extrapolate. It was bigger than Garo, Evera’s and Tivelo’s palaces by a significant margin.

I left you a house.

He had better have a more detailed explanation in there.