Chapter 29: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Roothammer and the First Goddess

            Lily hurried between the same two buildings, following an alleyway to the pier. Leo waved to her, and she stopped and motioned him back toward the town.

            Leo quickly reached her side. She grabbed his arm as he hurried up. “Guess what I just discovered!”

            “What?” Leo simply smiled from being caught up in her excitement.

            “Well, I figured out what’s up with the church! Just come look! It’s amazing, truly, and I want you to see!”

            “I probably won’t even get why whatever you want to show me is impressive. You know that, right?”

Then Leo laughed as Lily yanked on his arm and tried to drag him down the street. “Come on, come on, just humor me on this one!”

Lily was usually staid and mature and didn’t act her young age. It was cute to see her so exuberant.

Leo allowed himself to be dragged along. It only took a minute to walk past the houses and the empty cages, climb the stairs of the church, and reach the now-open door.

The inside of the church didn’t look like a church at all, more like a thick, botanical garden… if gardens were evil. There were over-sized venus flytraps, vines everywhere, and mushrooms that were glaringly poisonous. The air was humid in a suffocating way, and filled with the stench of rot.

And Leo felt the magic of the place, a dark and feral thing that hungered for blood and death.

“Why is this living advertisement for never leaving your house a good thing, exactly?”

“Because they failed!”

Lily pulled him along to the far end of the church, where they found a small, wooden altar. It was a work of art, with scenes of idyllic nature on it, as well as carvings of a female elf with vines for hair, whose feet merged into the earth, providing food to elves and animals both. In the center was a tiny dip where water gathered, and a finger-sized emerald and a similarly-sized amethyst bound together in silver filigree, studded with smaller emeralds and amethysts. All of the gems glowed slightly.

The magic here, right up against the altar, felt peaceful. Leo had a sudden strong sense of lying on his back in a field of flowers, the warm, fragrant breeze blowing through his hair as a few clouds floated lazily by overhead.

“What is it?”

“It’s a Temple Stone to Iluvin Eteria,” Lily said. “A fully functional temple stone! I can’t believe this wasn’t looted by someone! Maybe the old priest hid the stone, and the orcs just recently found it. But the orcs were trying to corrupt it, and they failed!”

“Is it easy to corrupt one of these?” Leo asked. That sounds like it would require a lot of magic… Whom do the orcs have that can do this?

“Um… no,” Lily said, all excitement gone from her voice. “I think the minimum level needed would be twenty. Actually, if that person had been around, I suspect we would have lost our fight, and most of us would have died.”

“Then let’s take this and get out of here before that person returns,” Leo said.

Lily gave a subdued nod.

Leo reached down and grasped the gem.

***

            Leo stood in a grove of trees, and fairies flew around him. A babbling brook that appeared it contained purple wine ran through the trees. Dryads and naiads played with fauns and multi-tailed foxes.

            Leo glanced around, blinking. Had he teleported again?

            And lost everyone a second time?

            He was no longer in the church.

            “No, Leo Evans, you haven’t left my temple on Toth. Whenever you wish, you will return there.”

            Leo turned to see the most elegantly beautiful woman he had ever seen before—growing out of the ground. She appeared as an elf, but she was full-figured in a way elves almost never were. Her hair was green, and she was wrapped, just barely enough to be decent, in vines and leaves. Her hair and pale skin were flawless, her face perfectly symmetrical, her every move grace personified. She might as well have been airbrushed. But where her feet touched the ground, she was merged into the soil, the grass rising up and slowly becoming flesh by mid-shin.

           

            Leo was about to ask who this lady was, but the answer was obvious. “You’re the goddess? Iloovine Eternia?”

            A deer-centauress ran by, giggling and squealing happily, pursed by three of the multi-tailed foxes.

The presumed goddess smiled indulgently at Leo. “Iluvin Eteria, my young king. Although the specific names mortals call me aren’t really relevant, in truth, and you may address me as you wish. I am known as Gurv’gik the Mother of Fungus to a race of insect people far below the surface of the continent you are on, and go by the name of Golverdin the Tree Uncle and am thought of as male in the northern third of the nearest continent not of the thirteen you inhabit. But of said thirteen, I am, at least on the surface, known to all by this name.”

“Sorry, Goddess. Iluvin Eteria, I mean.”

Leo couldn’t feel any magic from her, despite the fact that she was bare inches from him. Which was weird. He’d felt nearly overwhelming power from the Wolf Queen…

“Freyvir was physically present, and although she is orders of magnitude lower than I, she could not disguise her power when next to you. But you are communicating to me across dimensional boundaries, and in, essentially, an illusion as well.”

Iluvin swished her hair back, and birds flew from her tresses, their cries an exultation of the life they now possessed.

“I am Wyld,” Iluvin said. “I am both the nature you see around you, as well as Nature Red of Tooth and Claw.”

Wolves rose from the grass, forming almost at once as they lunged at the deer-centauress and the foxes, which all went down screaming for a few seconds as the wolves ate them.

“I am the growth of plants, the birth of animals,” Iluvin continued, and the grass sprouted flowers, which opened to reveal tiny baby deer-centaurs, which quickly grew into frolicking children of eight or nine.

 “The hunt, lands untamed and put to plough both. I am the nurturing of that which came before civilization and that which civilization is built on. Patron of the hunter and the farmer, the rancher and the explorer. And I offer you, Leo, the chance to become a priest.”

Leo had questions, but before he could ask, she collapsed to nothing.

Then Iluvin becamea huge tree that ripped itself from the ground. It shot upward, becoming a tower. The bark and trunk of the tree wrapped itself until it was shaped like Iluvin, but without any of the sexy.

“It’s a pact, much like the one you have with Freyvir, but far stronger,” the new form of Iluvin said, her voice reverberating across the clearing. “You gain power from me, and in turn, serve as my instrument on Toth. Each god can make a few true priests. Even ones of my strength can only have a handful per continent. I would offer you this boon.”

Eyes formed on the Iluvin-tree and blazed green. Then they became wolf eyes, and a mouth formed full of wooden teeth.

She continued. “The power of my boon far exceeds that of the Wolf Queen.”

Leo wasn’t convinced. “What price, Goddess, do you demand in return?”

“I told you—to serve my interests on your world.”

“Am I magically compelled to do so?”

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“Of course, although you’ll find me a lax mistress,” Iluvin said, and the tree rotted before his eyes, collapsing to the ground covered in moss.

A deer-centauress, now adult, bounded next to Leo and put her hand on Leo’s shoulder. This was Iluvin, too. Her eyes stared into Leo, and he marveled at her ability to shape change. “The link allows me to send more than power through it. If you were to turn against me, there would be… consequences.”

Iluvin’s hand on his shoulder made Leo nervous, but he answered honestly. “I’d pass then, Goddess, with respect.”

“Are you sure, Leo? Can you afford to pass on power, at this stage of your existence? Power for yourself, and power for your people?”

            She dragged her elegant hand from his shoulder down to Leo’s chest, which was suddenly exposed to the wind and sky, his shirt gone. She then grazed her hand along his skin as she trotted around him and leaned her upper human-body in, her teeth scraping the shell of his ear.

“Can you afford to turn me down, Leo? Now, when the darkness bays for your blood, and there are teeth and claws around every corner?”

Leo grimaced. “Are you threatening me?”

“Not in the least,” she said, pressing herself gently into his back.

Leo was conscious, suddenly, of how long he’d been without physical intimacy… although, the whole centaur thing weirded him out a bit.

“You have my word, Leo,” she breathed into his ear. “If you turn me down, there will be no consequences. My Temple Stone will still work. The benefits of the temple will be yours, assuming, of course, your society doesn’t violate the deepest ethics of my faith—as it is for every nation. My faithful in your land will be rewarded as they always were. I would not have you think I wasn’t playing fair. But I offer you more in return for the agreement, as I stated. And I point out that you need more, more of everything, right now.”

Leo was sorely tempted. He did need more. His position, not even established, was precarious the way a stick of dynamite sweating nitro-glycerin was.

But he already knew he didn’t want to be in a position to be compelled from above. It never worked out well for the compelled, sooner or later.

Besides, if he were to have a god, he was pretty sure it would have to be Asnandi. The god that had brought him here, and the god of portals—the god of Yggdrasil.

“You would serve that enigmatic hussy, would you?” Iluvin asked, and she pulled away from Leo, all of her playful, flirty movements and noises gone.

Hussy? Leo turned to face her.

“We’re… sisters, of a sort. Not in the sense you think. It’s hard to describe to one not yet ascended. Never mind. She’s hard to work with, for all the gods. I won’t break the faith I had with you, but know, Leo Evans, that I am disappointed in this choice.”

“I doubt I’ll be a priest to any god or goddess, Ms. Eturia, but thank you for your forbearance regardless.” Don’t get smote, don’t get smote.

Iluvin laughed again, her previous demeanor back as if it had never left. “‘Ms. Eturia,’ huh? That’s a new one. Perhaps I’ll try to get it to become my name in some blighted land where they haven’t rediscovered the gods yet.”

“Interesting.”

She smiled benevolently down at Leo. “Now, to return you to your own mind.”

***

            “Leo? Leo, can you hear me?”

            Lily waved her hands in front of Leo’s face.

He blinked, then focused on her.

            “Yeah, sorry,” Leo said, focusing on Lily’s blue eyes. “I was, um, otherwise occupied.”

            “Did Iluvin Eturia speak to you?” Lily asked excitedly.

            Leo glanced around at the marble walls of the church, and the dark foliage all across the floors. Not a hint of the grove, the sun, the sky, or any flirty centaurs.

“Yeah, she did. She wanted me to be her priest.”

            Lily’s eyes got wide. “As in, a formal priest? A cleric of the god with access to her power, not just a ranked worshipper in her church hierarchy?”

            “Yes, that.”

            “That’s amazing, Leo! I can’t believe we got the formal support of the Goddess of the Forest and Elves! Although I’m a bit jealous, it seems like you’re racking up titles and perks the way a stray dog collects fleas. I had foreseen a bit more of that for myself, given my status, but still—a priest of Iluvin Eturia. This is so wonderful!”

            Ah, fuck. “Um, I turned her down.”
            “What?” Lily asked, her voice shocked and angry both.

            That voice promised at least ten hours of arguing, Leo was certain of it. Probably a good thirty to forty snide comments about his decision-making as well.

            Leo hoped, if he was reasonable enough and explained well enough, he could stave off a bit of it.

            “So, before I say anything else, she did promise that we could still build her church and she wasn’t upset…”

            From Lily’s expression, he doubted it would work.

            Then there was a crack from the altar, which split apart.

            “You’ve doomed us with the goddess of the elves!” Lily exclaimed, her hand in front of her face.

            As the two sides fell, however, a massive hammer, made entirely from what appeared to be petrified wood, was revealed. And Lily’s eyes went wide, not with fear, but with wonder.

            “I’m sorry, Leo, I stand corrected. You’ve somehow won the favor of the goddess, or at least a peace offering.”

            “Why do you think so?” Leo asked, concerned by the splitting altar as well.

            “That’s the Roothammer, an artifact of the church. It combines Iluvin Eturia’s blessing and a great deal of advanced imbuing work. It’s said that if the hammer’s handle is thrust into the ground, roots will spread from it, destroying whatever it’s placed upon, making way for nature.”

            That… sounds like a terrible thing. I’ll be sure to never use it.

            Lily was still talking, her voice excited. “When placed upon an altar, it also adds to the power of the altar, and improves the entire realm.”

            Now that, Leo thought, is something I can get behind.

            “Thank you, goddess,” Leo said.

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