White Flower, Black Feather

Interlude 5 – Observers

Gods need mortals, more than a mortal needs a god… there is one exception to this rule

The primary job of a god consist in: being there. The moment this wasn't required, they could be destroyed, or, they could just stand aside and observe

Some gods, require of the worship of mortals to maintain their existence. Others, are born directly from the Primal Soul of their planet and can only be destroyed, or, die of ‘old age’ with their mother planet

Unless the mortals that inhabit said planet, manage to escape destruction and still held belief in the god. Then, the deity could still observe, follow and perhaps, even help them, but in that case they would need to depend of the worship of mortals to exist, wherever they were Primal Born or not

Still, that choice depended entirely on the personality of said god…

A personality shaped by mortal's belief

Mordauntless, first non-primordial god, born from the Primal Soul of the planet Yvni wasn't an exception to this

And was ruminating about that, and many other things

A long time ago, he used to interact with the mortals of Yvni and because of the role he was required to act at the time, he was know as an evil god. He had managed to obtain redemption thanks to the beliefs held by one of the earliest civilization that followed their pantheon, and was in the path to be healed from his affliction…

But greed is strong…

Mortals are fragile…

And some civilizations don’t last long enough…

Only because part of an ancient record was recovered centuries ago, less than a sigh for an undying being, is that he was ‘Remembered’ presently. It was thanks to this that he had his new name too…

The main instance of Mordauntless was currently sitting on his domain. A space separated from both, Yvni and the nameless world, where he was trying to help the latest exceptions to the rule, a pair of souls that were stuck in the mist between worlds…

Mortals might have given many names to the world, but he, and the others, respected the wishes of the three mourning goddess and didn’t use any of them until they were ready

He, the main instance, sighed and looked at his left, where a representation of Yvni was spinning without sound inside the white room… no other soul was stuck in the mist, thankfully… and seeing the tiny lights in some spots of it, soon you would only need one hand, to count the amount of people that knew about him… he sighed again and looked forwards to the other representation in the room

The world that he and the others were helping, had considerably more people that knew and believed in his existence. He had forgotten the feeling of belief nurturing him… but he couldn’t help but feel guilty, because they didn’t knew what he was originally

Mordauntless, inside of his domain, always took the form of a human, recently in a business suit. He was sitting in a plain looking couch. His long black hair pooling around him, would have been unusual, if the fire burning inside his eye sockets didn’t revealed that he wasn't a mortal instantly

“Why you haven’t picked a name yet…?” that was one of the many, many, questions he had muttered in the short time that she had been alive, the floor in front of this representation was littered with broken crystals all of them had the shape of a snake before being destroyed

The lone god raised a finger and three more of them, appeared on the model around one specific light. A light that had the same snake-like shape. These crystals were the results of the calculations made by the god, in order to predict what she was going to do

Then she did something completely different and the crystals were destroyed… again

Mordauntless could think about billions of words, in millions of different languages, that could describe his feelings at the moment

“Fuck…” but he just choose the simplest one

He rubbed his forehead with both hands, while recalculating the results of the girl latest action, again, when he felt something unusual. His brother wanted to send an instance to his domain

“Am I that distracted?” they didn’t needed to do that to communicate, even if he was focusing most of his mind on observing both worlds and the snake girl, he could still talk with any and all the other gods, even at the same time if needed

Mordauntless still accepted the request and made another seat to his right, missing the fact that the girl gained a title due to his headache

“Hi Mor!” the moment the other instance appeared on top of it, the seat transformed into a rocking horse made of purple wood

“Hello De…” he glanced to his brother, but returned his focus to the representation, his fluorescent, color changing robe, was painful to see

“Emerald, Onyx and Ruby started to laugh!” the horse, now made of ice, started to ski doing laps around the older god “Well, Ruby is pretending to not laugh. So I wanted to mess with you, until you share what is so funny!” the younger, short haired god looked around and noticed the broken calculations “What?”

Mordauntless sighed and extended a hand to his side making a folder to appear on it

“I can’t predict her…” his brother, now a sister (wearing a bikini) snatched the folder from his hand still doing laps around him in a caterpillar

“But that is good! What is so-?!” she absorbed the folder on her hand and started laughing, her ride stopped on its original spot and turned into a chrysalis “How is she not dead?! Hahaha!”

“I have no idea…” he raised a finger again making three more predictions, his sister did the same but only with two predictions, Mordauntless looked at her, slightly confused by her antics

“So, What is the problem?” she turned male again, still wearing a fluorescent color changing bikini “She sounds fun”

The older god sighed again before answering

“The problem, is that this is not just about her” he pointed to a small blue light floating away from the representation in his focus “She is waiting for her to be born, but like this, I can’t let her be born again. They both are going to die again if I do it” all the calculation broke at that moment, but “What…?”

“Oh! I got close!” his seat hatched into a cow that started to walk backwards around the display, still giving him a ride

Mordauntless glared to his brother, now a baby

“What?!”

“You know she couldn’t hear me properly… and saw me as some kind of jester…”

“That wasn't me! You know that I don’t mess with that part of your job!” the ride of the now dress clad little girl, withered and from it a mechanical flea got out, still carrying her “I don’t want to die! And I still feel guilty about your eyes!”

He rubbed his forehead again… she was telling the truth… then… it’s the fault of a previous life?

“Wait!” she gasped and her eyes glowed with a bright blue light and the flea turned into a cow sized version of her head with wings instead of ears and started to bounce “This means-!”

“No” Mordauntless interrupted his sibling dryly

“WHY?!” he, now wearing a full plate armor, completely dark and full of spikes, jumped from his mount and landed in front of his elder, his blue eyes glaring at him with a flowing cape of skulls made of smoke howling behind him

“Because, I will not give the responsibilities of a god to a mortal” the fire in his eyes was calm, yet unyielding “She just wants to be a woman and maybe find love, not carry this burden”

“THEN” he grasped his hand causing a mace of lava to appear on it and used it, to point at the light of the snake “HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN HER ANOMALOUS ABILITY?”

“I don’t care who or what, she was in a previous life” he held the gaze of his sibling, neither of them moved for a few seconds…

While the enormous head bounced to its original place and popped like a balloon, turning into a granite throne

“Fine!” she, now naked, walked towards her seat and sat on it while pouting without looking at him “But I’m telling the others!”

“Don’t bother, Aufiea is going to say the same thing” the answer he got was a loud ‘Hmph!’

“Why they might die anyways?” Mordauntless just pointed to the snake while De looked again turning into an old man wearing a tutu dress “Oh… her mind is about to collapse…”

“I don’t see a way to stop it in time” another sigh came from him “And stopping it now would mean… turning her into a time bomb… I can only think about letting it happen and… if she survives… then I can try to let the crow be born… in that place…”

‘In a way, the death of the snake would meant a safer life for the crow… I would have no reason to let her hatch there…’

“But its risky…” the old man pouted and his throat expanded five times his size as he turned into a gigantic frog

“The best option…” the seat of his sibling sprouted tortoise legs and started moving, as his throat exploded turning her into a dancing bear with a wig “Eludes me…”

The moving seat started to balance on one foot as the two gods keep silent while thinking, a few moments later the bear turned into hundreds of floating paper flowers and a genderless mechanical voice emitted from them

“We should get instances of the others here… maybe with that we might have the processing strength to predict her?”

“Aufiea and the Triad only” he shook his head for a moment “They have an interesting idea going on, but the rest of us have nothing to do with them”

“What about Lulu?” the skeleton riding the galloping seat asked “The keyboardist is her follower and she had a history with both of them!”

“Did she?” Mordauntless looked at the nearly empty display and focused… “Uh… interesting… but the snake got Magic Drained, she doesn’t remember her. So, not for now, wait until the crow is born”

“Wait!” the skeleton turned into a tornado of dust carrying his seat around the display “Are you kicking me out?!”

“You don’t have anything to do with-”

“Is that so?!” the tornado threw the seat to the starting point and collapsed into a gigantic scorpion “How about this?!” her stinger shoot towards Yvni and pulled a single string towards her

Mordauntless looked at the string of probability and how it caused a series of ridiculous and chaotic coincidences, until it made a lawyer trip with a rubber duck, landing in the bosom of one of his coworkers and scattering their paperwork

“Nailed it!” the exoskeleton of the god exploded into a whirling mass of muscle and moved to the seat

“Clever…”

“Now she owes me one!” the sphere of energy laughed “She may be wrong at thinking that you gave her those eyes, but she is going to appreciate this!” the smugness of the god radiated as toxic levels of energy around it…

Causing the seat to melt and reshape

“You are not wrong… fine, you can stay too”

“Then I’ll start messing with her-”

“How about a bet?”

That comment of Mordauntless destroyed the fairy and turned her into a tall, spiky haired, statue of a raccoon

“NOW YOU ARE TALKING MY FAVORITE LANGUAGE! SO, WHAT IS GOING TO BE?!”

“She is going to meet Diamond Volcano” he regretted those words when they came out of his mouth… but…

The statue cracked like an egg revealing an intersex elf laughing

The laughter of his sibling lasted for a long time and it took many transformations until he calmed again

“Not… fair…” he was breathless and trying to recover “That one… might actually… happen” she chuckled again and sat properly on the coral forest that grew in the seat “Fine, I’ll wait before messing with her… but, what now?”

Mordauntless keep silent while looking at the snake…

Then he made four more seats appear on his domain, before talking again

“If the collapse of her mind turns her into a calamity, we’ll need to kill her…”

-----

Hanna did one last jump and landed in front of her house made of compacted earth and dropped the dead boar she was carrying, resolving to prepare it later has she saw her boots and what written in the ground near the door

-You forgot these! Be right back!-

“I had no time for boots” she said aloud before using a spell to clean herself and wearing her boots “And you better get here today, or I’m going to drag you out of there again!” the message vanished and she huffed while crossing her arms

She walked like that around the house until she reached the southern wall while looking at the trees around the empty space in that side

‘I don’t think we are planting anything this year…’ it was a bit late to start planting crops, that the trees weren’t going to help protect and both of them favored meat as their main source of food, so that made her choice easy

Hanna moved to the middle of the field and took out the figure imbued by the snake girl out of her pouch, before kneeling and placing it on the ground in front of her

“I’m not good at magic… but…” she started to think about what she wanted in the spell and her necklace glowed for a moment sharing the information she needed to make it work

Then she send an enormous amount of magic to the figurine and the ground, so much that it made her hair flow behind her, dust to move away from her spot and the trees, meters away, to lean away due to the pressure crashing against them. Her spell just lasted for a few seconds and when she stopped the figurine now looked like an exact copy of the snake, but in a different earth color

“Cute little arms!” she looked at the figurine as it spun in the same place and the dirt around her took the shape of the forest around her “I hope I didn’t scared her too much with that…”

The trees had no leaves in her creation, something that made sense to her. And the bushes and rocks were just drawings in the dirt, but all in all she was happy with the thing

A few moments later the girl started to move, that was displayed in her creation, as the surroundings of the figurine changing around her, keeping the snake in the middle of a circle two meters in diameter

“Um… you are moving in this direction…” the snake was moving along the river “I hope you are not trying to get here. Crossing the Line as you are is suicide… wait, can you even cross the Line?”

Hanna stood up and walked out of the map, the place where she was, quickly changing to show the area around the girl and she took hold of her necklace

“Aufiea! You better answer me that!” she spoke aloud again “If you guys really want her alive, you need to tell me now! There is a Destroyer on this side, but is far closer to her, than I am! And I am not moving my house again!”