Chapter 7: Chapter Seven

My eyes watered as we passed through an unexpected cloud of gnats. Was there a Gnat God? Would all the annoying insects disappear if that deity died? I don't know. When I died wolves continued to roam across portions of Gyrrelle. Two of them now followed me everywhere I went. . . and a fox to boot. 

“So, you aren’t the original Ruka? But you’re going to become her gradually?” Pyra asked, raising an eyebrow. She was having trouble wrapping her head around my decision to leave my human life behind and become a goddess. 

“That’s pretty much it, yeah,” I said. “I know my brain still struggles with the concept, even after waking up here in this body morning after morning. My new reality still seems. . . misty to me.” 

The bard locked eyes with me. 

“What do you mean by ‘misty’?” she asked. 

Shrugging and trying not to trip over an exposed tree root, I tried thinking of a better way to explain it. In hindsight, that word didn’t seem to make the most sense. 

Gray Paws bumped into my hip and looked up at me with a silly grin, tongue drooping as Streak walked behind him. I couldn’t help but return his grin and pat his back a few times. 

“It’s like. . . where I came from, I was raised to think there was only one god and one world. The idea of becoming a goddess myself never occurred to me. And now, here I am. I’m supposed to just do whatever it is goddesses do. I’m not sure how to go about that,” I said, eyes looking head to my wife leading us toward the town of DuPais. 

Popping my knuckles and choking as I walked into a second cloud of gnats, I immediately felt disoriented and nearly tripped. There was goddess-like behavior for you. Pyra caught me by the shoulder and leaned into my ear while I tried to wipe my still-watering eyes. 

It was here she whispered, “I think you already know how to be a goddess. It’s. . . using your power to help those who cannot help themselves. My mother was never great at that, but I’ve seen you do it twice now, Ruka. You saved the village of Decarth and rescued Katira from the flooded river. That’s being a goddess.” 

As I stood up, my back popped in a couple of places, and I just stared into the bard’s amber eyes. Her tail bumped into mine as she smiled at me and kept following Red. It was only now I realized Pyra’s scent was that of cedar chips and raspberries. 

Was that all it took to be a goddess? Helping people with my meager magic? Surely there had to be more to it, right? Some ritual written in a series of holy books carried across history for a couple of thousand years and re-translated so often as to be stripped of historical context?

I caught up to Red and Pyra as we came to a clearing in the forest. We stood on a bluff overlooking a much larger town than Decarth. I could easily see a few thousand people living here. Smoke rose from several places between buildings, and I found myself wondering at the level of quiet for such a small town. 

Near the town gates, some parts of which were smashed to pieces, dual banners hung. Though they were stained with grime and a little blood. The previously-white tapestry carried a triangle made from red feathers. 

“What does that symbol mean?” I asked. 

Red turned back to me, a small glimpse of pity in her expression for my lack of complete memory. She’d been trying to hide it, but I saw it more and more with each question I asked that the previous Ruka would’ve known. 

“That is the banner of the Hawk God. This town worships him, has for centuries,” Red said. 

Nodding down past the gates, Pyra asked, “And a piece of her heart is being kept there?”

My wife nodded once. She pointed to a large manor toward the back of town, easily three stories tall and surrounded by an iron gate, though we couldn’t make out any more than that from here. 

“That’s the home of Duke Vach Cherrinson. Now long after you were killed, he came into possession of a piece of your heart, which he placed into his collection. It was a macabre detail among the paintings, books, statues, weapons, and more he kept locked away in his gallery. After 200 years, I believe his great-grandson Duke Vach Cherrinson IV inherited the collection. Though I doubt he knows half the stuff his family initially collected,” Red said. 

My wife recited this information as though she was the world’s most bored museum guide, not that I blamed her given how long she had to carry the weight of knowing a piece of her beloved’s heart was on display for a rich man’s private amusement. 

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned, wrapping her well-toned arms around me, squeezing until I gasped and laughed. 

“Ready to go get your heart?” she asked. 

The naked feeling was an itch that’d only continued to grow as we hiked an extra half-day to find a bridge that wasn’t washed out by the flooded river. Knowing we were close. . . I suddenly felt like I did back in Decarth about to get my divine marking again. Scratching my left arm, I had to physically stop myself, or I might have kept at the skin until I drew a little blood. 

I caught Pyra staring at my arm while Red plotted the best plan of attack to get into the gallery and get my heart back. But all the planning in the world turned out to be unnecessary as the town of DuPaid had been ransacked by raiders over the last month. And the first thing they hit was the private collection of the wealthiest man in town. . . the duke. 

My anguish must have been visible on my face as we stood outside the manor, which was covered in broken windows and smashed walls. Glass was scattered everywhere, and the grass was torn and scorched in several places. A broken statue of a rhino lay on its side nearby, bashed repeatedly by a blunt weapon of some kind. 

Now I knew why the town was so silent. People were cowering in their homes, trying to savor what feelings of safety they could. 

While Red and I stared at the manor, we waited for Pyra, who had disguised herself as a typical human once more. Around us, I only counted two people walking the streets, both of them younger men out running errands the rest of their family was too scared to do. 

A heaviness weighed over the village that left me chained in silence. They had no hope. Pyra confirmed as much when she returned with word the town’s guards had escorted the duke to safety and then failed to return and protect the rest of the citizens. 

“The woman I spoke with advised us to leave. Apparently, a bandit group calling itself the Hawksmashers is planning to return at sundown as part of their weekly visit demanding tribute. Villagers who don’t have anything to offer are taken and killed or sold off as slaves,” the bard said. 

Hawksmashers? I thought. Oh, because the town worships the Hawk God. 

I wondered where he was. . . why he wasn’t here to help his faithful. But that question was of less importance than Pyra’s. 

“Do you think the bandits took Ruka’s heart piece?” she asked. 

Red scratched her chin, not liking our trio’s options if that was the case. She instinctively reached up and pulled my hood down tighter so my ears remained covered. 

“Let’s just head into what’s left of the gallery and see if they might have left any clues,” my wife said. “I doubt there’s anything of value, but you never know.” 

I nodded, and we proceeded inside the ruined building, which smelled of smoke and, disturbingly enough, human excrement. 

The gallery was in worse shape than I thought. All the doors had been ripped off their hinges, and the blue carpet was nearly destroyed. So little of it remained under our feet. There was twice the smashed glass here, and in every spot my eyes crossed where some small treasure or cultural achievement would be found, only emptiness greeted us. 

From the way Red described the place, it seemed like a man of obscene wealth had created a pretty box to stuff with treasures that any individual would be extremely fortunate to possess even one of. I imagined this duke would come in here in the middle of the night and just gawk at all the amazing things his fortune had assembled. 

And then maybe his son started every morning in here, obsessing over the things his father had collected and beaming at his inheritance. If the duke lived to see his grandson, then I assume that child, too, grew into a young man who strode proudly through these halls, recalling each story his grandfather told him about acquiring this piece and that. 

Did the latest duke still find as much pleasure in this room as his father did? A fat lot of good it did him now, hiding in some neighboring town with this DuPais’ guards now employed as his private protection. And everything his family collected was now in the hands of people who’d stripped it all for whatever worth they find. 

The three of us split up to search each room, and maybe it was fate that I found where my heart had been kept before Pyra or Red. My hands shook as I came to the frame, the left and top pieces of which were still hanging on the wall. 

Shards peppered the floor from where the damn thing had been busted open like a pinata. I sighed and noticed a plaque under where the frame once hung whole. It read, “Heart of an unknown goddess.” 

Unknown. Two centuries was all it took for my name to be severed from a piece of my heart. Was it done intentionally by the first duke to strip my identity and make me unknown to history? Or had all care of my relative unimportance in this world faded away that easily?

Back on Earth, Americans could probably name a handful of Greek gods even thousands of years after they were first written or spoken about. But 200 years, and I was just the unknown goddess whose heart was on display for some private collector? What did the duke think when he looked at it? Did he wonder? Spend any time at all trying to solve the mystery of this piece of flesh that hung on a wall in his gallery?

No, I suppose not, I thought as Red and Pyra came over to where I stood. 

“This is where it hung,” I said quietly, wanting to vehemently scratch my arm again as the naked feeling consumed me from the inside out. And I doubted this time a rogue demigod was going to step out of the shadows and offer it to me in exchange for some noble deed. 

 Pyra put a hand on my shoulder, but Red looked around at the broken mess of wood and paper on the ground near our feet. She kneeled and pushed aside the rubble before gasping. 

The bard and I looked down to see what’d caused her exclamation, and she rose with her hands together, a piece of pink and red flesh covered in veins and ventricles resting on her flat palms. 

Nobody spoke. Time stood still at least until the realization dawned on me. Well, two realizations. First, my heart was right under my nose at the moment. And second, every other thing in this gallery was stolen because it had perceived value. But this piece of my heart was left behind like a piece of refuse. 

Now that is bittersweet, I thought. A town that worships the Hawk God, who isn’t here during its darkest hours while the Wolf Goddess stands here. . . present but forgotten. 

The resulting mix of happiness to finally have a piece of my heart and bitterness at it being treated like a worthless thing made me want to step outside and puke. 

Instead, I grabbed the cold flesh and swallowed it whole. 

Down the hatch, I thought. 

For a moment, nothing happened. I worried that perhaps I had consumed a different god’s heart. But then my chest rattled like a snare drum, and I started to vibrate uncontrollably. My hands, shaking, wrapped around my shoulders, and I felt my magic bubble up inside of me as the piece of my heart took its place in my chest. 

Faintly, I heard it start to beat. Bump. . . bump. . . bump. I had a fucking heartbeat again, weak as it was. Still, a quarter of a heart was better than no heart, right?

Breathing heavily, I put a hand on the wall to steady myself as a wave of memories poured through my head at the speed of a flooded river. My first kiss with Red in the field of wildflowers, and her not being able to stop sneezing afterward. Adopting a beautiful black wolf named Chip into my pack and watching him grow into a strong, powerful beast that traveled across Gyrrelle with me for years afterward. And even the first time I met the Bear God. Though that wasn’t one I wanted to focus on at the moment. 

I was still far from whole, but everyone present seemed to sense a change in me, namely in the comfort of my stature. I’d regained a piece of myself. And not myself as in Lea, but Ruka. For the first time, when I thought about my former self, I couldn’t picture what I looked like. 

Wrinkling my forehead, I tried to remember anything from the color of my eyes to how long I wore my hair. But those memories seemed to have checked out of the hotel in my mind. 

Red brought my thoughts back to the present by placing a hand on my cheek. It was cool to the touch, and she held it there until I pushed my mental distractions aside and looked deep into her brown eyes. 

She seemed to find renewed affection in my gaze, because Red brought her other hand to my cheek as well. Pyra backed up and gave us space. 

“How do you feel?” my wife asked. 

And I took stock of everything running through my chest and mind. There were plenty of questions, certainly, and I was still torn on how to feel about the bandits leaving my heart behind. But my magic was pulsing stronger than I’d felt it before. Dare I say it? Feeling my fists tighten and my head swimming with possibility, taking in each new breath with a beating heart, I felt ready to take on the world. 

While that was all well and good, I suspect what Red was looking for was an affirmation that she’d gotten back a larger piece of her wife. 

So, I leaned down slowly and nibbled on the edge of her nose as I’d done so many times before the Bear God tore us apart. Red’s lips parted for a moment, and I whispered, “I remember how you got that scar on your cheek. We were climbing a particularly steep cliff. Della had been abducted, and the two of us were trying to get them back. About halfway up, it started to rain, and you lost your grip. You fell toward me, your face scraping the one branch growing out of the entire godsforsaken rock. And I caught you with one claw.” 

My wife held me tight, and a small sob escaped her lips. I returned her embrace and hoped this brought her some measure of comfort. But while I held Red against me, I happened to glance up for a moment to see a look of concern on Pyra’s face before it vanished. She turned to walk outside with Gray Paws, Katira, and Streak. 

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When she could speak again, the huntsman whispered, “I’m going to make you whole again, darling. I promise you. . . this is just the first piece of more to come. We’ll make things right again.” 

And what else could I say? I just nodded and held her closer, pushing aside thoughts of forgetfulness when it came to my prior appearance. 

As we prepared to leave DuPais, making our way back toward the gate, I heard screaming and a clattering of metal weapons. 

“They’re back!” a man yelled from up ahead of us. 

“Oh gods, why? Haven’t they taken enough from us?” an older woman screamed behind me before slamming her front door shut and locking it. But that would do little good against the men and women I saw coming into view. 

They’d wrapped themselves in various animal furs, foxes, and wolves amongst them and carried any weapon they could get their hands on from swords to daggers to spears. 

These must be the Hawksmashers, I thought, sighing. 

Red caught my shoulder and stopped us, pulling me back around a corner and looking off to another side of town. 

“We should make for the western gate and head back into the woods,” my wife said. “We don’t need to get caught up in this mess.” 

I was about to agree when Pyra put her hands on her hips. 

“You’d just abandon these people to the fate of bandits? Look around,” the bard said. “They’ve sucked all the life out of this once-vibrant town. You cannot justify leaving things as they are.” 

Red took a step closer to Pyra and hissed, “That’s 15 well-armed fighters I counted out there, and you want us to go through the trouble of fighting them for what?”

The bard showed no fear, taking a step toward my wife until their faces were only a few inches apart. Pyra’s black nose and whiskers were twitching. 

“To save them, Jenny Red. To save the people of DuPais who desperately need someone to come in and restore some measure of hope here.” 

Throwing up her arms, my wife scoffed. 

“This is a village of Hawk God worshippers. They don’t even remember who Ruka is. Why should she risk her newly-regained power for people that don’t worship her?”

I gasped. What Red said made total sense to me. I wasn’t exactly itching for a fight, but then two things happened close to each other than left me struggling to justify a hasty retreat. 

For starters, a child screamed, and I realized it was because a bald man with piercing red eyes held a dagger to her throat while the mother begged on her knees, emptying pockets, throwing any little thing that might be of value at the bandit’s feet. But this mother had clearly given away everything during previous raids. 

“Please, I’m begging you. You already took my son last week. Don’t take my daughter now. I’ll find something of value for next week if you’ll just let her go,” the mother said, her hands reaching for a struggling child mere feet away. 

But the bandit scoffed. He held the knife even closer until I smelled the faintest hint of blood appear on the little girl’s neck. She couldn’t have been older than six or seven. 

My brain started to run through some defenses for walking away. People died in this world every day. I couldn’t save everyone. How many towns and villages had been raided where I wasn’t at the time? How many were burned to the ground by violent people in the 200 years I’d been gone?

How then could I justify acting now, for a village that didn’t even know my name? How could I risk my safety when Red had told me to keep a low profile?

It was pointless, though. The second thing that happened was I stole one more glance at Pyra’s face and knew there was no way we’d be retreating this day. DuPais was a fucking fox in the river, and my bard was pleading with me to fish the vixen out. 

It’s problematic realizing that I’m losing my ability to say ‘no’ to her, I thought. If I ever had that skill. 

At that moment, I recalled Pyra’s words before we even entered DuPais. 

“I think you already know how to be a goddess. It’s using your power to help those who cannot help themselves,” she’d said. 

Stepping around the corner and into view of the bandits, I heard Red hiss, “What are you doing?”

“Giving them something to believe in,” I said, recalling a memory that rocketed into my head before today. As my newly-regained power started to stir with each step I took toward the bandits, I inhaled slowly and exhaled. This is what being a goddess meant. Doing the impossible to stir the faith of believers. 

The bald man wore a large pelt around his waist and chest, pulled tight with a belt. The skin belonged to some large cat I couldn’t place. It was orange and had swirling patterns of gray and yellow here and there. 

“Put the kid down,” I said, stepping closer. 

Everyone turned to look at me as I shed my cloak and revealed my true self to bandits and villagers alike. 

“Well, what do you know? DuPais was hiding a demigod this whole time. Your blood should fetch a nice price at the Adellan Market,” the bald bandit said, and I got the feeling he was in charge. 

“No a demigod,” I said as I raised my mark of divinity glowing a bright silver, and sent a wave of my magic shooting forward. It wouldn’t knock them down, but it would allow them to feel they weren’t in the presence of some meager practitioner. 

One or two of the thieves exchanged glances with a look of wariness plastered on their faces plain as day. 

“My name is Ruka the Wolf Goddess, and I’ve returned to this world with a big to-do list. Protecting these people just floated to the top,” I said as my hair started to rise and swirl with my building magic power. And I had to say. . . it felt good. This was power I’d called on many times throughout my centuries of wandering. It was mine again. 

“I dunno, Tegan. Maybe we should just take our cut and walk away,” one of the bandits whispered in his leader’s ear. My magic display was getting to them. Good. 

Tegan threw the girl to the ground and reached behind him, pulling out a hand crossbow, firing the bolt right at my chest before I had time to react. Before I could curse, a thin blade spun from over my shoulder and clashed with the bolt, sending a metallic clang through the air as my ears twitched. 

Looking back, I saw Pyra standing with an empty hand extended. Her other hand held a thin throwing knife similar to the one on the ground at my feet. 

“Put those little things away. Bandits mean brawling,” my wife said, running around the corner and charging at the men and women who’d come to pillage DuPais. 

As she ran by me, Red flashed me a look of minor annoyance and clutched her large axe tightly in both hands. It was then I heard her roar, and an aura of pure rage engulfed the huntsman. Her muscles doubled in size, and her double-headed axe took on a slight red glow. 

She rocketed toward the bandits and sunk her blade into the chest of a man before anyone else could react. Then she took off a woman’s leg and kept screaming for more, dodging a sword swipe and cleaving another bandit’s head clean off. Only then did I recall I was married to a berserker. 

The very air was suddenly charged with her angering desire for bloodshed and wanton violence. She aimed it precisely at the people who’d come to harm DuPais. The pheromones she gave off now were unlike her normal scent of campfire smoke and worn leather. I caught a glimpse of Red’s eyes, and they were pure white, with no pupils to be found. 

“Mow them down! There’s only three,” Tegan yelled, trying to reload his crossbow with shaking hands. 

“Six,” I said, before howling into the night sky as Streak, Gray Paws, and Katira bounded into view, sinking claws and fangs into bandits my wife hadn’t gotten to yet. “And one of us is a goddess.” 

With newfound magic, I held my hand over my head and found something deep within me, a well of ability I was eager to drink from. 

Pulling my hand away, I found in my grasp a leatherbound book glowing a bright silver, the grimoire containing my spells. 

“Pyra, if you’d be so kind,” I said as she pulled her lute around after throwing a knife into a nearby bandit’s shoulder. 

“I’d love to, my goddess,” she said, strumming the strings of her instrument, crimson energy swirling around her hands and then flying into my body. She choked out a harsh melody of bloodshed and necessary violence. Her magic adding to my own felt natural in a way I had no words to describe. It was a pairing I longed to complete again and again. 

Flipping open my spellbook, I counted about five bandits the huntsman hadn’t gotten to yet. With eyes flowing down to the gleaming page of sigils and runes in front of me, I read aloud, “The second spell! Frostburn.” 

My magic turned the air around us frigid instantly, and spiderwebs of ice formed on any nearby puddles as the liquid changed to solid in the time it took to whisper a quick word. 

With temperatures plummeting, I held the spellbook in one hand and raised my other, directing mine and Pyra’s magic toward Tegan and those immediately around him. 

The light in my outstretched hand changed from silver to a bright blue, and that’s when I released the focused spell and watched several waves of translucent energy race across the space between us. 

Each one that hit the bandits knocked them a little harder and caked them with a layer of ice stretching over their flesh. They cried out as though they were on fire, but the waves didn’t stop coming until all including Tegan were glass-like statues. He hadn’t even had time to reload his damn weapon. 

I watched as my wolves and fox took turns body-slamming into the ice-covered bandits until they were pulverized into tiny pieces. 

Right about that time, Red was pulling her axe out of the last bandit and sighing heavily, her breath fogging in the frostburned air. 

My wife was covered in blood and walked toward us, shrinking back to her normal size with a look of weariness in her eyes. 

“Next time you want to pick a fight with bandits, give me a heads up,” she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. 

I held her close for a minute or two until Pyra interrupted. 

“Um, Ruka? The villagers,” she said. 

Looking around, I saw the people of DuPais had surrounded us with a cautious look in their eyes. They were waiting for something, but it took me a few moments to figure out exactly what. 

That’s when I felt it. . . their faith. They’d found something— someone who had shown up for them in a moment of need. And that’d earned me their belief. Describing that feeling was difficult, but looking in their eyes and seeing relief and happiness for my deeds. . . it instilled a little joy in my heart that filtered up into a smile that revealed my canines. 

Taking a deep breath, I addressed the crowd and said, “My name is Ruka the Wolf Goddess. I return to you now to remind you of what having faith in a god or goddess should bring you. . . hope, peace, and security.” 

Murmurs spread through my sudden audience, and to my absolute shock, one by one, the residents of DuPais slowly dropped to their knees, folded their hands, and bowed their heads in a prayer of thanks. 

And it was then their combined faith truly washed atop me, overwhelming my heart to the point that I nearly cried. They had something to believe in again, and maybe I could afford to believe in myself a little more than I had up until now. 

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