Chapter Three (Part 2)

And he was right, I was bursting with power. Just the other day I’d tried to summon the book I’d been reading from one room to another, too lazy to get off my ass and get it myself, and I’d accidentally summoned my entire library from my old palace, which was currently only occupied by Wisdom and my Sublime Ones, the snake/panther hybrids I’d created as guardians so long ago.

Idris hadn’t been able to open the door to our rooms because there was a wall of books blocking it. He found me buried in a pile of them, messy and overwhelmed and – in his words – looking like a cat that had accidentally tipped over a shelf onto itself.

Once he finished laughing at me, he helped me escape and returned the books to their proper places, which then naturally segued into him once again asking me to just permanently move all my things to his place, which lead to another argument, as it always did.

When pressed about why I refused to move all my belongings to his place, I found it difficult to give him a straight answer. He had a point, after all. We were married. It was expected that we would live together full time, and we did. Mostly. But I still left my palace in the former venomous forest exactly where it was, with many of my books and other important belongings within it.

It was difficult to explain it to Idris without hurting his feelings. There was the reason I gave him when he asked, which was that I had built that palace from the ground up. It was special to me, important. Despite some of the horrific memories I had there, it was still mine, and I had so few things that I could really call my own, so I was reluctant to give it up. Plus, my palace was cool as hell, why wouldn’t I want to keep it?

But then there was the real reason, and that was that it comforted me to have somewhere to escape, if I needed to.

I didn’t think Idris would ever hurt me or intentionally give me a reason to need to escape. He just wasn’t like that. He was too good to truly hurt me.

But I would be the first to admit that my first relationship had kind of fucked me up beyond repair. My palace was my escape from the cruelty of paradise, for one, and for two, being with Calix had made me realize that having somewhere to hide from my significant other if need be was a pretty good idea. I hadn’t been able to hide from Calix.

And I knew Idris would never make me want to hide from him.

But that scared, animal part of me liked knowing that I could, just in case. Not that Idris couldn’t just go there to find me, but my palace was comforting, familiar, and most importantly, my territory. I was in control there.

My palace was still considered relatively remote, even after the merge. And I knew Wisdom would probably have chosen to live closer to a city if given the opportunity, if only for ease of access to new knowledge and the ability to learn from local experts, but she had been quick to volunteer to remain in my old palace, tending to it diligently and keeping my Sublime Ones company. The people of the god realm were still very nervous around my kitties, so we’d decided it was best if they stayed in the surrounding forest.

Wisdom had always seen right through me. She knew exactly what my palace meant to me, and so her staying there had been a very subtle way to discourage Idris from suggesting we destroy it entirely.

Not that he ever outright suggested it, knowing at least subconsciously that I would take said suggestion very badly, but he had suggested other things, like renovating it into a public building of sorts. A school perhaps, where students could go to learn about the many poisonous plants and creatures that used to live exclusively in the venomous forest, but had now spread all over the realm. Some of those plants were extinct, snuffed out by the merge, but others had learned to adapt to the changing environment, and it was important to educate people on them to prevent nasty accidents.

As necessary as that might be, I shot him down immediately, because no fucking way was I going to let a bunch of strangers into my palace. Hell no.

“More power isn’t necessarily a good thing,” I told Peace dryly. “I was very content with the power I had, actually. And the problem with all the new worship is that these fuckers think I can actually do something to help them.”

“But you can’t,” Wisdom agreed, “and eventually, they’ll take out the frustration of not having their prayers answered on you.”

Peace didn’t like that at all. He frowned and shot upright, earthy brown eyes suddenly alert. “What? What makes you any different from any of the other gods they worship and get no response from? People pray to Idris all the time, and he never helps them directly, but they’ve never tried to hurt him for it.”

I smiled slightly, but tamped it down quickly, not wanting him to think I was making fun of him. His indignance was just so cute. I held up two fingers.

“Two reasons. For Idris specifically, they’re probably too intimidated by the fact that he literally created the realm and half the creatures in it to ever think of retaliating against him. And second, these people have an almost obsessive relationship with the idea of love. They tend to think that if they find it, everything else in their life will fall into place. Everyone wants it, very few people get it, and unfortunately, now that there are temples dedicated to it, people seem to be treating love like something they can buy rather than something they are given. And let’s just say that people are going to start writing very bad reviews of my ‘business’ when they don’t receive the product they asked for. Except those reviews will probably be in the form of pitchforks and torches. Maybe even the rack. That sounds kind of nice actually, I have this knot in my back -”

“Absolutely not!” Peace said, clearly not enjoying my attempts at humor, which is a shame. That was pretty damn funny. “What are we going to do?”

Wisdom tilted her head. “I believe he called us here to ask us that question, brother.”

Peace’s lips pursed in an o-shape, but I shook my head. “I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do, at least not right now. I just needed to talk about it. I can order to have all the temples shut down and put out an announcement for people to stop praying to me for love, but will they listen? And if they do listen, will that just outrage them even more? It’s too risky. But I think I need to talk to whoever started building temples for me, because clearly, they took the ‘love god’ joke too far, and I need to know why.”

Wisdom nodded, grabbing her own strand of vines to pet absentmindedly. “That’s a good idea. Just be careful. Building a temple implies that they have not only a lot of power and money, but also are probably the most desperate for love of them all. Bring Idris with you, please.”

“I can protect myself,” I said automatically, defensively even, because it irked me how often people tended to forget that I was the second most powerful god in the realm (probably first now, actually, with all the extra worship) and that I was fully capable of killing a bitch if I had to.

Wisdom bumped me with her shoulder, jostling the scowl off my face. “I know you can. But I’d rather you not have to.”

I was just about to make another snarky comment when there was a sudden snorting noise at the edge of the garden, by the row of lilac bushes, followed by the crash and crackle of something large breaking branches. We all went silent, turning towards the noise. Idris’s garden was heavily protected by wards held up by his power, much like the rest of the palace. And while certain small animals had made their home here, uninhibited by the magic, it sounded too big to be a bird or squirrel. Had one of the guards gotten lost?

I slowly disentangled the blood-drinking vines from my wrist and stood, curious but not alarmed. It wouldn’t surprise me if a larger animal had accidentally stumbled in here, possibly drawn by the scent of smaller prey. If so, I would need to assess exactly what kind of animal it was to determine if it could stay or needed to leave to preserve the garden’s ecosystem.

Many of the animals once native to the venomous forest were now extinct, but a few had managed to adapt and now wandered the realm freely. The heart-eating frogs and lichen deer were just two of those that had spread out, and while the frogs were too small to be a huge issue to people, the deer were proving to be a problem and had to either be put down or safely directed to other areas.

Lichen deer, as the name suggested (I wasn’t the best at naming things, okay? Don’t judge me), were deer that instead of being covered with fur all over, were covered with a type of parasitic lichen that made the deer behave in much the same way an animal with rabies might: spittle dripping from their lips, unprovoked aggression, gnashing teeth. They also developed a nightmarish, stumbling walk that would definitely create that crashing noise we’d just heard.

Unfortunately, unlike rabies, lichen deer didn’t suddenly develop the affliction through a bite or contact with another infected animal. They were just born that way, inheriting the parasitic lichen from their mothers. Their behavior wasn’t the sign of a horrible disease; it was just how they were, and actually was the only reason the deer had been able to survive in the former venomous forest, because the lichen not only deterred most larger predators, it also seeped through their skin and gave them immunity to the many poisonous plants in the forest, allowing them to find food in things that would have killed them normally.

Even more unfortunately, with the destruction of the venomous forest, many of their food sources had died off, leaving them to search for alternatives elsewhere. This garden, full of all different types of plants growing like crazy in the summer heat, would be a strong lure to them.

I carefully approached the lilac bush, seeing a definite four-legged shape through the dense leaves and tightly clustered purple flowers, and sighed. My initial suspicion had been correct. Luckily, given that I’d come into contact with pretty much every poisonous substance in the realm and had gained immunity to them, the lichen on the deer wouldn’t hurt me, so I could safely teleport it elsewhere. The deer looked scary at first glance, but they still weren’t meat eaters, so they weren’t dangerous in that sense.

I took another step and abruptly stopped, watching the shadow in the bush suddenly get a lot taller, the deer appearing to stand on its two hind legs.

Okay…lichen deer didn’t really…do that. Usually. And it was definitely a deer. I could see a peek of white antlers spotted with green lichen through the leaves.

“…find…you…find…him…find.”

Hm. Lichen deer…didn’t really…talk, either. So, uh.

I shared an alarmed look with Wisdom, rooted in place, watching the tall shape through the bush as it swiveled its head, scenting the air. Looking for something. Someone.

The voice was raspy, stilted. A human voice coming out of vocal cords that weren’t designed for it. It sounded like someone sawing at a cello with a shard of bone.

The deer took two clopping steps to the left on wobbly hind feet, closer to where I was standing. Wisdom grabbed my bicep so hard I could feel it in the bone and pulled, trying to get me to budge from where I was frozen staring at the creature, but I stayed in place, both fascinated and horrified at once.

Peace grabbed the back of my shirt to try and help his sister pull me away, but my eyes were locked on the deer as it took one more awkward step and finally cleared the bush, nose to the air, nostrils flaring as it huffed.

It was a lichen deer…kind of. Now that I had a full view of it, I could see some definite differences.

Like the human hands attached to its front legs.

Two more steps. Clip, clop. A deep, rasping breath expanding a powerful lichen-covered ribcage was followed by that head finally swivelling towards me. Eyes that were definitely blue and frighteningly human locked on me.

“…find him…find…found you.”