I squished my hands in the mud one last time, flattening it out. Sweat – I did not know before now that I could sweat – practically poured down my body, soaking my robes. I was glad that I had dismissed my armor before I started working. Though that did nothing for my wings, which were filthy with mud and dirt and swamp water.
Swamp water.
By my fellow goddesses and my mother’s wilds, I didn’t know for sure how long it had been. A few months? A year? It was hard to say. I had been busy doing the work, not marking the days.
What was easier to say was that it was finally done. After a lot of field research and flights to different planes, after asking questions of the Dea Pronoia and other goddesses who remembered swamplands, after finding plants stashed away and hidden, after literally changing the course of a river to have a proper offshoot...
Swampland now returned to Thyrsus.
Thank you, Grixis and Alara, I thought as I looked over my work. Thank you, Thunder Junction. Thank you, Innistrad. Thank you, Arcavios. Thank you, Capenna. Thank you, Tarkir. Those six planes and the information from them had been the most helpful in this endeavor. Everyone who cared for those planes, mortal or undead or immortal or something else, had helped in some way with restoring my home.
Kholkis rolled around in the mud that I had just tamped down. I laughed and reached down to pet the hatchling behind the horns. “I know, isn’t it so exciting?” I asked, a little rhetorically. “We have a swamp again! Let’s go get Drakôn and make sure this helps her.” Kholkis let out a low trill and curled up around my arm, snuggling against the crook of my shoulder. Already she was growing, her wings becoming more powerful and her coils becoming longer, in ways she hadn’t on other planes or in the non-swampy parts of Thyrsus. That meant that at least part of my theory worked.
I spread my four wings, beat the mud and dirt out of them, and took off into the sky and towards Drakôn’s hiding place.
The cave that the Progenitor Dragon was still inside of had not changed much. Its blood still coated the cavern floor. Its coils still wrapped around every twist and turn. Its breathing was still labored.
“Come on, Drakôn,” I coaxed as I carefully approached its greatly-horned head. Its deep violet eyes locked onto me as I stepped closer. “I won’t lie to you, it’s going to hurt, but we need to move you. There’s a swamp now. You can heal. You just have to let me help you out of this cave.”
My second-eldest sister, who predated every goddess but our creator, studied me warily. I waited, my hands extended, my paws still against the blood-tacky stone, my wings carefully folded to minimize my possibility of seeming like a threat to a being who predated me many millennia over. Kholkis remained wrapped around both of my shoulders, studying her source in turn.
Drakôn let out a noise that may have been a sigh were it not for how pained and raspy it was. It slowly uncoiled its body with a hiss that even I recognized as pain, allowing me to support its head as it unthreaded itself from the cavern that had been its protection since the Phyrexian Invasion.
“I know,” I murmured as I pet one of its great horns. “I know. It’s not going to get better until we do something about it. You’ll heal. I know you will.”
The next steps – Drakôn dragging itself along the stone and then the grass by its trembling legs – were difficult. So was every step afterwards. But I stayed by my sister’s side, supporting it when it stumbled and keeping its head up.
The swamp I had restored was not far from its cave, but the trip was still made longer by its injuries. It took an hour to get there – an hour of stumbling, an hour of hissing, an hour of blood seeping into the ground, an hour of pain and misery on the behalf of the Progenitor Dragon.
But the moment Drakôn stepped foot into the restored swamp, it was all worth it.
I watched, mesmerized, as the horrible ripped gash in its throat began to close, folding in on itself and sealing back under muscle and tissue and skin and scale. The trembling of its limbs subsided. Its wings spread to their full strength. It raised its head without my help and let out a roar that shook the very earth.
I grinned and pumped my fist in the air. My wings flared out as I did so. “Yes!” I laughed. “Yes! We did it, Kholkis!”
Kholkis let out a delighted chirp and slid down from my shoulders. I watched in real time as she also grew. Her teeth finally came in, her dark grey python-patterned body continued to lengthen, her grey wings with white patches – my own healing work – grew in size and strength, and her bright yellow eyes remained clear and focused.
It worked. It worked.
Drakôn leaned down and pressed its forehead to mine. I reached up with my left hand to cradle its jaw. “You’re welcome, adelfí,” I murmured. “I’m glad I could help you.”
That was when I felt something else. A summons from our mother. That was...odd. Usually she waited until the ten-year meetings to speak to most of us. Especially me.
I brushed that off and looked at Kholkis. “I’ll be back,” I promised. “You keep...growing, I guess.” Kholkis chirped and began to roll around in the swamp water.
I smiled and focused on the divine realms. With a flash of light from my horns and feathers, I stepped sideways and up into my creator’s domain.
My mother’s divine realm was a classic wooden temple. The Dea Xenia did not need the shows of power that the other goddesses made of their realms, because the fact that Thyrsus existed at all was evidence of her strength. The long table for visitors remained in the middle of it all, running the length of the worship hall and leading up to the roaring fire of the hearth that remained eternally lit for sacrifices. And there, standing with her back to me and facing the fire, stood my mother.
My paws padded on the wooden floor. “Dea Xenia,” I called as I approached. I stopped a few feet away from her, not climbing the dais that led to the hearth. “Uh, Mother. Is something wrong?”
“No, Soteira. Quite the opposite, in fact.” My mother’s voice rumbled with power. I sometimes thought about how stressful it must be to be so strong that even your own voice shook. “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been working hard for half of the year in order to alter the landscape and restore swampland.” My mother turned around to face me and, as usual, I was struck by her resemblance to Lily over the rest of us. Sure, we all had the same skin tone and black hair, though Cinderblaze and I both cut ours short, but the differences were in the details.
I bore two black horns leading to four green points, freckles across my whole body, four black and green and white feathered wings, and the paws of a lion for feet.
Cinderblaze had four black horns where the front two turned red at the points and the back two turned green, roan patterning on his shoulders and furred hips, black and red and green draconic wings, furry legs leading down to hooves, and three draconic tails.
But our mother was once human. She had no horns, no wings. She had scars across her face that marred her features greatly; I often wondered if she was permanently scarred or if she just preferred to bear them. Her black hair was pulled back in a braid, though some shorter chunks framed her face. And Lily looked the most like her, with a small scattering of freckles in place of scars and a ponytail in place of a braid.
But while Cinderblaze had red eyes and I had yellow, both Mother and Lily bore green eyes. Even though Lily was made of water like I had been made of light and Cinderblaze had been made of fire, it wasn’t reflected in her eyes like our sources were.
Sometimes I was jealous of that. I wanted to look like our mother. I wanted to bear a greater resemblance to the powerful woman who had created all of us and our home. Other times, the idea of being in such a feminine body made me recoil. Sometimes, being called a goddess felt...bad.
But in the present, I kept my shoulders squared. “I have,” I confirmed. “Drakôn had been injured by the invasion and was hiding to heal, but she couldn’t heal because Húdrā had turned all of the contested ground into forest, and because she was injured, she couldn’t just turn it back. I realized what happened when one of the satyrs I was hunting a dragon with found a baby dragon that didn’t grow, and that brought my attention to the problem. I found Drakôn’s hiding place and realized what the problem was. So I’ve been working on studying swamps and ecological restoration methods introduced on other planes, because Lily said I should give it a look.”
Mother was rarely a woman who smiled, but to my surprise, that was what I saw as I finished speaking. “Thank you, Soteira.”
I blinked a few times. Then I folded my wings more properly against my back. “I didn’t do it to be thanked.”
“No,” Mother agreed. “You did it because it needed to be done. You did it because you saw the problem and did not want to let it remain a problem. And THAT is why I thank you.”
“...Oh,” I said. That was what I had done.
Mother stepped down from the dais. We were the same height, though my horns and wings and layered robes (...that were still stained with dirt, I realized) made me visually larger than her. But I still felt smaller than her. It was so easy to remember the process of my own creation, how she cradled light in her hands until it turned into me. I was the youngest of my sisters, the youngest creation before Dea Haliplanktos made manticores. And with how tired Mother seemed, I was pretty sure I would be the last thing that she personally created.
Mother’s palm cradled my cheek like my own had just cradled Drakôn’s. “You have done something new and impressive, Soteira,” she said, trying to make her voice softer. “I am proud of you. This was an oversight that I should have addressed myself, but even I did not realize what was happening. You have done something good, something that benefits the whole of Thyrsus. I would like to offer you another domain, another aspect, to make this easier in the future if it becomes necessary again.”
My wings fluttered against my back. I raised my gaze to my mother’s in shock. “Really?” I asked. “That’s...I can have another domain?” I already bore light and battle as part of my duties. And Lily had claimed trickery several months ago, but it did not occur to me that Mother could just...grant it.
Mother nodded. “If you would like, you may bear the duties of ecological care, expanding your duties as the Saving Goddess from saving not just mortals, but also to the lands they live and rely on.”
I thought about that as Mother’s hand fell away for a moment. I was busy and often called to aid or bless mortals who fought monsters. Some even called me to bless their hunts. Already, mortals considered my duties to expand from battle against monsters to more of a battle against hunger itself. So why not expand that further? If I were also involved in monitoring and caring for the land itself, it would be easier to see what was a threat and what animals or monsters needed time to recover their numbers. I’d be able to better help with the balance between Drakôn and Húdrā. It would be more work, but I wouldn’t be doing it alone. I could get the help of other goddesses, of mortals, of people past Thyrsus, just like I already had.
I finally nodded. “I accept, Mother.”
“Then I name you Dea Soteira, the Saving Goddess, the Light of Battle, Sword-Sister, the Savior of Land and Beasts.”
Marshes and Swamps by Mia Bosna, from the Journey To Rewilding oracle deck. I found out about it via this Tumblr post.
Upside of staying in mortal realms for prolonged periods: You don't feel as disconnected from everything.
Downside of staying in mortal realms for prolonged periods: I am now apparently an expert in mortal relationship drama. Someone in this port is getting divorced over a goat.
My chest heaved as I pulled my primary sword from the now-still hydra’s body. The band of satyrs who had joined me in the fight were checking their wounds and doing initial medical care with healing magic and bandages. One poor satyr had wound up taking a direct hit from the hydra’s poison breath and was now ten years older than she should have been. I wiped my brow and flicked the blood from my swords before dismissing them back into the core of my being.
“Dea Soteira!” Another satyr trotted over. He had returned his xiphos to his hip since the end of the fight, so its sheath bounced against his leg. He was probably into his hundredth year, about halfway through the natural lifespan of a satyr. His fur and hair were as uncontrollable as every satyr’s.
“Krotos,” I greeted with a nod. “Casualty count.”
Krotos straightened up immediately. “No deaths, plenty of injuries, we’re gonna drop back towards Latessos so the band can recover. But we found what the hydra had been going after.” He trotted away and soon returned with something roughly the size of a puppy in his arms. “We didn’t know what to do with it, so we decided to defer to you.”
I pulled my wings in and peered at the small animal. It was serpentine and dark grey in color with patterning like a Tarkiri python. Two wings with tattered black membranes between the fingers and small claws. More tail than body at this rate. Its eyes were an odd color – a bright yellow just like my own.
It was a baby dragon. The first one I had seen since the Phyrexian invasion three years prior.
I frowned and held out my hands to take her, so Krotos dutifully handed the dragon over. The dragon allowed herself to be handed off. That was also strange – the few times I had previously seen a baby dragon, they scrambled to get back towards swampland so they could hide and keep growing until they could face hydras or mortals. But this one just wrapped herself around my arm and settled in to be cradled.
“I’ll handle this,” I promised Krotos. I jerked my head to gesture in the direction of Latessos. “Fall back and heal up. Thank you to you and your band for your help and service.”
Krotos bowed low and then trotted back to the other satyrs. I readjusted my hold on the baby dragon slightly and pulled all four of my wings in close around both of us. “Alright, little buddy,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure if she could understand me. “Let’s take a quick trip to the divine realm and have a look at you, alright?” I received a soft noise that was a mix between a hiss and a purr in response.
My feathers and horns gave off a flash of light as I slipped sideways out of the mortal realm with the dragon curled up in my arms. I beat my wings and flew up to my own divine realm.
Some of us applied names to our divine realms just so we could personalize them a bit more. I called my portion Megálofýllo. It was bright and exposed entirely to my sister Ending’s sun, even in the winter like it was now. Other realms had temples of wood or stone or metal; mine was merely a large plant, the broad leaves serving as the ground. I kept my equipment close to the stems of the plants instead of on the bouncy leaves. As such, I gently set the baby dragon down for a moment to remove my armor and readjust my tunic. Then I scooped her back up and stepped back towards the edge of the leaf so I could peer down into the mortal realm.
I frowned, blinked a few times in case I still had blood or dirt in my eyes, and looked down again. No, I wasn’t blind; Thyrsus was alarmingly green considering what time of year it was. Most of the land was pastoral and hilly, but the parts of the continent that were dedicated to the fights of the Progenitor Dragon and Progenitor Hydra were also full of lush green forests.
There wasn’t a single swamp on the plane.
I frowned. “That’s...not right. This can’t be right,” I said, as though the baby dragon would be able to explain why something was wrong. “Húdrā shouldn’t have this much territory, Drakôn should have forced her back...” I looked down at the dragon in my arms. “Okay. Let’s get you patched up first, then we’re going to look for her.”
The baby dragon looked up at me and yawned widely. The poor thing hadn’t even grown teeth yet. And unless Drakôn made more swampland with her breath, this dragon wouldn’t grow at all. I felt a sudden twinge of guilt; I had recently helped mortal defenders kill another dragon, Ismenios, and now most of the monsters that we faced were hydras or manticores. Had that been one of the last remaining fully-grown dragons? Was I holding an endangered species now? What had become of Drakôn?
I pushed that aside. I knelt down on the broad leaf of my realm. The membrane of her wings were beyond mortal repair, but luckily neither of us were mortal. I made sure the fingers were spread appropriately, took a deep breath, and drew on the power of light that suffused my realm and my being. Beneath my glowing hands, white membrane stretched to fill the tattered spots. The baby dragon let out a delighted chirp and nuzzled my hand once I was done.
I smiled and gently scratched her behind her horns before I got up and pulled my armor back on. She spread her wings and jumped up to my shoulders, settling across them like a very odd cat. “There you go, anipsiá,” I cooed as I gave her another scratch behind the horn. “Let’s seek out Drakôn.” After an affirmative chirp, I spread my wings and slipped down and sideways back to the mortal realm.
We landed in the dense forests. I waved my hands to shake off the light that drew itself to me in a desperate bid to be at least a bit stealthy. There wasn’t much I could do about the glowing green of the ends of my antler-like horns beyond dimming it. My paws made a little noise across the grass and dirt as I padded through the foliage. I kept all four of my feathered wings drawn in, hoping that the black and green feathers would hide the white ones below them.
Together, the baby dragon and I traveled through the forest.
And more forest.
And even more forest.
And way more forest.
Way too much forest.
I stopped in front of a cave. This one was large, yet not deep. It did not lead down to the House of Endings. It couldn’t have. It was not the home of the dead. No goddesses dwelt here. Only two primordial beings would call this place their lair, had they the sapience to do so. Perhaps they still called it home regardless. Either way, I ducked inside, keeping the baby dragon on my shoulders as I moved. My horns illuminated the area enough for both of us to see.
Great coils of mottled blacks, dark greys, dark purples, and dark browns wrapped up and around stalactites and stalagmites and pillars where the two had joined over the centuries. This was the only place in Thyrsus that smelled of swamp.
I realized that what I was stepping into with my bare paws wasn’t condensation from the ceiling or puddles of bat poop. I leaned down and scooped some onto my fingers, then pressed it to my tongue. A slight tinge of spice and acidity; an overwhelming surge in power for what magic I wielded. This was dragon blood.
I slowly straightened up and took quiet steps towards the nearest coil. There was no way that Drakôn hadn’t realized I was here. The coil moved steadily, following a pattern set by breathing. Extremely labored breathing. The type I had seen on the battlefield before soldiers beside me died of infection well after the initial injury. If I strained my ears, I was pretty sure I could hear its head further in the cave.
I dared to speak. “Drakôn?” I stayed still and waited.
The coils next to me moved. It was a slow slither like any much smaller snake or dragon. They weren’t very fond of exposing their stomachs to air. It was a weak point, after all, and one should always guard their weak points.
I saw its head. It was crowned in many great horns that curled like its coils. Its eyes were a deep violet color, the kind that poets swooned about at length without actually being brave enough to see. Its many fangs were sharp enough to cut through stone as though it were merely parchment.
Its mouth was slightly open, each breath desperate, and its throat was wickedly ripped open far wider. Blood dripped from the damaged muscle and torn scales. Its hiss wasn’t even a warning; it just sounded exhausted.
Like every goddess, Drakôn could not die, even if we wanted to.
Despite my years of oration training and these thoughts, the only thing that came from my mouth was, “Mētrokoítēs.”
The raspy noise that came from Drakôn came not from its mouth, but from its throat directly, causing the wound to open slightly more. More blood dripped from it. On my shoulder, the baby dragon let out a soft whimper. I gave her a small, reassuring pat with my right hand.
I reached up and gently pressed my left hand against Drakôn’s snout. “Is this where you’ve been for the past few years?” I wondered aloud. It looked like the injuries I had sustained personally during the Phyrexian invasion. “How come you haven’t healed?”
It snorted slightly. It turned its head out of my grasp and attempted to use its venom breath. But instead of the familiar blast, all that came out was a smoldering glob of mucus.
I thought about what I was seeing. I had read over pretty much everything my sister Lily had written about dragons, hydras, and manticores in order to be better at protecting the mortals. And one of the most important things she had stressed was that dragons needed swampland to retreat to in order to heal. Not even a healing goddess could heal the Progenitor Dragon or Progenitor Hydra, it was a careful measure created by my mother in order to keep the goddesses from using them in proxy wars against each other. But with no swamps on the plane and with Drakôn unable to make more... It couldn’t recover from the invasion. Not like Húdrā obviously had. Without Drakôn, there were no swamps. And without swamps, Drakôn couldn’t heal or plant its teeth to make more dragons.
Which meant that the baby dragon sitting on my shoulders was definitely the last mortal dragon. Which meant that Húdrā would just keep overrunning the plane primarily with hydras instead of the balance that had existed before between them.
“Motherfucker,” I repeated with a groan, rubbing my face with both hands. “Okay, shit. I’ll...find a way to fix this, Drakôn. Somehow. I promise.” Drakôn’s hiss sounded a bit like a laugh before it sounded pained and the Progenitor Dragon’s head withdrew back into the depths of the cave. I waited a few moments, then cursed again – much quieter this time – and turned back to the cave entrance. “Okay. This is fine. I’ve just gotta...manually make a swamp. That’s a feasible thing, right?”
The baby dragon slow-blinked at me.
I sighed. “If I had the family spark, I could just go to where Lily is and she could tell me what I need to do first.” But if I had the family spark, then Lily wouldn’t, and she’d just be in Actalia. She loved that port a lot. “I guess we’ll have to travel ourselves, eh? And you’re going to need a name...” I hummed softly and tried to think of the names I had heard from other dragons. Every dragon and hydra had an innate understanding of its name, an understanding that passed to the people who killed them. But she’d need something now. Finally, I snapped my fingers. “Kholkis.”
Kholkis wrapped herself more around my shoulders, sinking somewhere between my armor, my chiton, and my wings. I chuckled and pressed a hand to my breastplate. It transformed into another layer of cloth above my chiton and a heavy hooded cloak, enabling Kholkis to cuddle among the layers and make herself more comfortable. “Alright then, we’ll just head west, pick an Omenpath, and go from there.”
I had mixed feelings about traveling without the family spark.
On one hand, Thunder Junction was lovely. I had learned enough from the Abzan Houses to turn sand in my favor. Unlawful or extra-lawful folks both gave me a wide berth after I used just one wing to send a would-be attacker flying the length of a stadion.
On the other hand, the plane that Kholkis and I wound up on was the Grixis part of Alara, and I was sick to death of...well, the death. I had located some wonderful swamps to examine thanks to directions from some of the locals that didn’t attempt to attack myself and Kholkis on sight. The main one that we were currently at was apparently called the Dregscape. Everyone I spoke to about it called it bleak and disgusting.
And while it was that at a glance, it was also the most thriving ecosystem I had seen on this shard. Even without the greenery I expected thanks to growing older on Thyrsus and despite the fact that two-thirds to three-quarters of all “life” was rather a type of unlife, there was still a lot of diversity in the creatures I found or watched from a distance. Bats, large beasts called dreg reavers, vultures, large cats, particularly agitated dragons that looked more like lizards than the serpentine ones of Thyrsus, elementals that were so visibly furious that I gave them a wider berth than was technically necessary, some miscellaneous creatures that the locals I spoke to just called horrors, insects such as banewasps, barely-comprehendable leviathans in the distance, an abundance of rats, and plenty of worms made up the living animal-to-undead animal population. These were occasionally accompanied by undead peoples in various forms – zombie, skeleton, vampire – or living human necromancers or ogres. There were also other animals, but most of them were just undead and seemed to have wandered in from another shard.
I was taking notes on the animals in the swamp in a journal, trying to figure out how to determine the salinity of the brackish water, and internally arguing with a strawman version of Lily about taking plants and introducing them to Thyrsus (an argument which I was losing), when I realized with a start that I truly and genuinely had no idea what the hell I was doing. I was a war goddess, the first one proper in Thyrsus, made because of a gap in the pantheon that my mother recognized and wanted fixed. I was not the goddess of knowledge and information. I didn’t have the existing skills necessary for this. My notes were simplistic, just going over what animals I recognized, but just dragging animals to another plane wouldn’t actually turn a forest into a swamp. I could take all the notes I wanted, but would that even help?
Then Kholkis shifted on my shoulder to nuzzle more underneath my cloak. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was doing all of this for her and for Drakôn. I would figure out whatever I needed to learn. This would just take more time and a lot more research than I thought. It wasn’t like a battlefield. I couldn’t just take a look at the soldiers under my command and the size and injury state of one opponent.
“Okay. New and updated plan.” I summoned my communicator. “We’re going to ask some other folks for suggestions and for other swamps to come look at. And I can message Lily and get her thoughts and recommendations. How’s that sound?”
Kholkis responded by yawning, exposing her fangs. Despite us standing in a swamp, she hadn’t grown an inch. That had swiftly killed off the idea I had that we could just bring baby dragons to another plane to let them grow. In order for her to grow as quickly as she was supposed to, in order to heal Drakôn, in order to have more dragons and restore the balance, we needed to figure out how to introduce swamps back to Thyrsus without Drakôn.
And fast. I was a highly-required goddess back home. If there were too many hydras and no dragons to take them out for territory, it fell solely to the mortal militias that I trained and fought alongside. The militias were well-trained and capable, but they were mortal. They faced more danger than I did.
My hand lowered to my lower abdomen. I still remembered the feeling of a Phyrexian made of a dark metal and flames tearing into my body. I still remembered my ichor on the blades at the end of its arms. I still remembered fighting regardless of what I lost or how injured I had been. I was a goddess. I could not die. Compleation did not strike us. So I had been the vanguard.
I still found myself thinking about the invasion. Analyzing every move. Analyzing our response. Analyzing how it could have been better. Sometimes those thoughts reared their heads during a fight and froze my muscles. Lily had mentioned a very long name for what I dealt with. I just called it soldier’s shock. I had seen it in some of the militia members I had trained. But it was only after the invasion that I truly understood what it was like.
I moved my hand away from my stomach and gave Kholkis some more scratches instead. “Look at my mind wandering like that,” I said softly, chiding myself rather than the baby dragon. “Let’s focus on sending messages and taking notes, yeah? That way you can grow up big and strong.”
Kholkis let out a chitter-like hiss and settled down for more scratches. I frowned slightly. It had not escaped my notice that Kholkis growing up meant that she would become a threat for the mortals. A threat that I might be called upon to help put down. This had never bothered me before. It was my duty to protect the mortals, and when a hydra or dragon threatened them, I would respond. But I was getting more and more attached to Kholkis as we traveled together.
“Focus, Soteira,” I quietly chided myself.
I summoned several jars from my magic. Into two jars went some of the brackish water. Into two went soil samples, one from next to the water and one from a little further away. And into the final two went various twigs and leaves so I could get a better look at what they were. Then I flared out my four wings and took to the air. I headed back towards the Thunder Junction Omenpath.
There was so much that I needed to do and ask. And I had so little time. But I could at least travel on short expeditions to other planes using the Omenpaths, then return home to help guard and protect the mortals. I just needed to chip away at all of this bit by bit, like the cyclopes did to stone.
I stood in the cavern with a lit torch. Warm orange, red, and purple light flickered and bounced off of the brown, grey, and black stones. Another mortal had died. Another mortal needed to be guided down. The same thing, over again, just like it had been when I first took up this position.
I had often read what my sister brought back from other planes. Legal codes, music theory, biographies of people who had lived and died far from where I would ever reach even if I did planeswalk using the family spark. Things that used to exist. But it was in the stories she brought of other planes’ divines that I found the term “psychopomp”, which I supposed was the closest word to describe my duties.
I met the soul of the dead. Thankfully, unlike the last time, this one was a Thyrsian. The centaur was cradling her arm, as though expecting it to still be broken. She was faded and washed out as all newly-dead souls were. I kept my torch raised in my right hand and offered my left to her. She took my hand after a moment when she realized where she was. Together, we set off further down into the cave and towards the House of Endings.
My mind wandered as it always did during this part of the journey. This was repetitive, known, familiar. I was happy with my duties. But at the same time, I felt a yearning coiling within me, where the family spark would be if I were the one to have it. Even without the spark, I felt too restless. Was this how Lily felt all the time?
I soothed myself by going through the same spiel I did every time I guided a soul down. “We are heading to the House of Endings. Once we are there, you will go through all you saw in life and make amends for any cruelties you have done and then be cleansed. Then you can choose to return to the mortal realm as a guardian spirit, to reincarnate, or to simply rest.”
The souls of the dead did not speak. At least, they didn’t speak to me. Ending could get an answer from them, but as the eldest daughter of the Dea Xenia, Ending could get words out of anything. It was ancient in the same way the rest of our plane was. Everything respected it.
I went quiet again. My mind wandered back to one of my early judgments. The one that made me less confident about how I reacted to when mortals would hurt each other.
I was six or seven years old. Not that it mattered much; Bralla, Lily and I did not grow or change over the years. We looked the same as we always had, and anything we did to change how we looked faded faster than it did on mortals. Lily regularly dyed the streaks in her hair but didn’t bother with cutting it off. Bralla and I helped each other take knives to our own hair to keep it short and manageable. We had no guidance other than our titles. I hadn’t even named myself then.
There was a satyr man who wanted to clear land and create a feast hall. He had an axe and was going to cut down a sacred tree containing an ancient nymph. Galateia. She was an Epimêlis, a protector of sheep flocks and a living fruit tree. She was one of the first to turn her tree into something that the mortals could eat from. And now one of those very mortals threatened her tree. She prayed for protection, for the weapon to be laid down. It was a prayer more befitting my sister, the Dea Soteira.
I had lied slightly when I told this tale to other demons I had met through the communications network that the Dea Pronoia showed me. Like my sisters, I could intervene even without prayer. The goddesses did what they wanted, and I was no different.
The axe swung. I landed and grabbed the shaft, keeping the blade from biting the bark. The satyr stumbled over himself in apology. I hadn’t heard it. All I heard, all I saw, was someone who had only been thinking of themself against all of the teachings that the mortals had received over the years. So I passed my judgment well before its due time.
His hunger never waned after that. Not even when he turned against his own body.
And when he died, the Dea Telos handled it. The soul was cleansed and then sent on to reincarnate, the satyr’s memories lost in the darkness on the way back to the light.
I took a deep breath and loosened my tight grip on my torch. My knuckles had gone white, my muscles cramped, my grip clammy. Part of me still felt angry. Most of what I felt now was guilt. I should have done something differently. I should have waited before passing judgment. I should have just settled for scaring him off.
We made it down to the House of Endings proper. My contribution, a wall of flame, parted smoothly in front of us to allow the two of us to step through. As the centaur stepped over the threshold, color returned to her features and she gasped.
The House of Endings was both underneath Thyrsus and stood alone as its own realm, just as the divine realm did. All tunnels lead to the same singular entrance. The cavern was lit by balls of fire that did not require fuel and the river of flames, water, and light that encircled it all; the River Katharízo, which cleansed the dead on the way in. Fields of asphodel and poppies, the comforters of the deceased, stretched out so far that it would take a mortal soul several decades to find a wall beyond the sole entrance. In the distance, the places of rest could be seen, comforting areas that reflected the mortal realm in architecture or layout. The souls of nymphai and lotus eaters had chosen to recreate forests by picking their preferred locations. In the far distance lay a lake that spanned like an underwater ocean, the home of telkhine souls.
Every soul, regardless of whether my creator or my sisters made their species, had a place in the House of Endings at the end of their lives. If a mortal wished to reincarnate, they would disappear into the shadows that somehow still remained. If they wished to return as a spirit to guide and guard the living, Ending would lead them back over the River Katharízo, cleansing them a second time and sending them up. Elsewise, the souls of the dead remained to rest. Some were still here from when the second souls taught the first souls the laws of hospitality post-mortem. Others were scared of losing themselves.
I had lived here for most of my existence, carving my own cavern into a wall that mortal souls did not notice. It was the closest I had to privacy. Deities could visit each other’s divine realms and often did so, but I didn’t enjoy the company of most other goddesses, so I just stayed in the House of Endings. Ending itself never complained or...well, said anything at all about it, so I assumed there wasn’t a problem.
I felt the pulse of power as it built before us on the other side of the river. Darkness, decay, and the soothing calmness of death itself took form. I bowed low as Ending appeared in its preferred guise of a minotaur a few feet taller than I was. The mortal soul followed my example.
River Katharízo did not impede Ending at all. As the host of the realm, Ending could walk across the river as though it were stone. Its hooves didn’t even sink into the magical waters as it approached us. It had chosen to appear with brown fur of the same shade as our shared creator’s skin. Its hands were slightly lighter than its fur, and its hooves were a shiny black that matched its curved, ram-like horns. While we weren’t particularly bothered about our mortal forms, it preferred to appear wearing the same clothing every time – a simple royal purple chiton held up with brooches depicting dragons, with a black hooded cloak layered on top. Ending was naturally beautiful in any form it took on in a way that none of us could ever match.
Her voice was soft in the same way that rotting wood was soft. “Thank you, Dea Praxidike. I will handle this one.”
I kept my expression the same despite the guilt and shame. “Of course, Dea Telos.” I offer the mortal soul a smile and step away, almost fading out of view as Ending takes over and leads her into the river.
It had been like this for the past seventeen or eighteen years now. I was always the assistant, not allowed to make calls or pass judgment on mortal souls, not since my last mistake. I tried to soothe myself by imagining that Ending might not have realized how many years had gone by, but even that lie fell flat. I certainly tried to make my job sound more interesting when I explained it, but I was ultimately just my sister’s secretary for managing the dead.
Pull yourself together, Cinderblaze, I finally hissed at myself. Just panicking isn’t going to change anything. I extinguished my torch with just a thought and plunged myself into the darkness. I watched Ending walk through the fields with the centaur woman for a few minutes. Then I turned and disappeared towards the mortal realm.
I emerged from the cave and breathed in the harsh, salty air. There’s only one cave entrance even remotely close to where I wanted to be right now, which actually meant that it was a few miles away and up in a cliff. There was a light wind that carried the promise of harsher ones to come. I took a deep breath, shook out my wings, and flung myself into the air. I caught the wind beneath the fingers and membrane of my wings and allowed myself to glide for a few moments. Then I began to beat my wings to stay aloft so I could actually reach my destination.
The port village of Actalia was one of my sister Lily’s few holdings in the mortal realm. Wooden buildings and wooden docks with stone foundations. Wood was a strange choice for a port town, but before Actalia had a goddess guarding it, they simply had to make do. It was exactly the sort of thing that tugged at my sister’s heartstrings and led to her becoming a trickster goddess.
I painted a smile across my face while landing outside of Actalia. I pulled my wings close to my back and made sure my three tails only curled lazily behind me. I needed to act the part of an older brother who was still in control of his duty. Whether or not Lily saw through it didn’t matter. I had to keep it together for the mortals.
My hooves were quiet as I stepped across the stone pathways. Mortals greeted me like one of their own, and I greeted them in turn, though I couldn’t keep up with who all spoke to me or not. I sought out my sister’s temple. All I had to do was follow the well of water magic wrapped in the same cycle of life and death as my own brazier of fire and Bralla’s beacon of light. I ascended the stone steps and passed the lit fires of the brazier outside. So long as it burned, the doors would remain open, and the chill in the air remained at bay once I made it across the threshold. Luckily, my younger sister was in this temple and turned to greet me, as though had already known that I was on my way.
When you looked at me, you saw the Odithian demons I was patterned after; the fire that I was made from colored my eyes. When you looked at Bralla, you saw the Odithian angels and the light in her eyes. But when you looked at Lily, you saw our mother, and even her eyes were the exact same.
I think that's what always pissed Lily off the most.
Bralla and I were consciously designed, made to be similar yet different, but Lily had once lamented to me that she felt as though our mother took too many shortcuts. She was shorter than us, she had no Odithian features beyond those our mother bore, and to hear her tell it, our mother had even forgotten to grant her blood or ichor and certain anatomy that mortals pretty standardly had.
Even still, her smile belonged to her alone, and I was thankful to see it when she saw me. “Cinder! Come in, I was just putting away some new notes,” she said as she beckoned me further into the library-like interior of her temple.
I gratefully picked a cushion to sink down on while she scurried up a ladder to place another tome on the shelves lining every wall. I let my tails curl around the cushion and readjusted so that I could stretch my hooves in front of me. I still had my torch, but it remained unlit, so I dismissed it into the core of my being just so I wouldn’t keep holding it.
Lily plopped down on a cushion next to me. I could feel a small thrumming from her, a sign that our mother had given her the family spark when she returned recently. “Hey big bro. What brings you up to the surface?”
My smile fell a little before I quickly caught it and put it back. “Figured I should get my head out of the dirt like you tease me about.” No need to mention another dismissal, another job I couldn’t do despite my designated duty.
She saw the slip. Of course she did. We were the closest to each other. “Alright, Cinder. You can stay here as long as you want, of course. Let me know if you want anything.”
A lump suddenly appeared in my throat. I swallowed it down. My voice came out smaller than I meant for it to. “Thanks, sis.”
“Any time. And I mean that.” She got up. “You want some tea? I picked up a blend from Kamigawa that Koda recommended.”
I snorted softly. “Are you sure you’re not in love with him, Lily? You talk about him a lot.” As soon as that left my mouth, I was worried that she’d take it the wrong way.
To my relief, she didn’t. “Ha! No, I’m pretty sure I don’t experience those emotions. It’s just nice to have a mortal friend. I recommend you find one too, it does wonders.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “I don’t think I’m sociable enough for that...”
“Neither am I. I met Koda because he beat me to a kill.” She held out a hand towards me. I felt the family spark pulse. “If you want to travel again, I can give you the spark.”
I hesitated. I could leave the House of Endings for a little while without issue. After all, Ending had appeared to lead the dead well before I was crafted. And I did enjoy my previous visits to other planes like Eldraine, Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, New Capenna, and Theros. Especially New Capenna, what with the Riveteers who had no issue with me observing their worksites.
I turned slightly to look out of the doors of my sister’s temple and towards the ocean. Omenpaths to our plane opened up above the waters. I knew there was one out there that led to New Capenna, one that the Obscura and Riveteer families shared from what Lily had told me previously.
“...What if...I travel without the spark?” I said softly, putting words to the yearning in my chest.
Lily leaned back on the cushion, propping herself up with her hands. “I mean, now’s the prime time to do it, since Mother hasn’t closed any of the Omenpaths that Ending and Beginning agreed to let open,” she reasoned. “And you have wings. You don’t need a ship like I would.”
“Does...does receiving sacrifices still work even when we’re on other planes without sparks? Or do I need to worry about food?” I knew that Lily had recently left without her spark, though I didn’t know the details. “...Do we even starve?” I knew that we couldn’t die, but starving was far different from dying.
“I didn’t have any issues, but I still ate mortal food anyway. I recommend you do the same unless you want to help me research this.”
I shuddered. “Nope, not this time, sorry adelfí.”
Lily pretended to pout for a moment, but I could tell that she was already thinking of something else. “Which plane do you think you’ll go to? Do you have clothing to fit in there already?”
“New Capenna. And...sis, we can materialize clothing. It’s practically the only thing we can change about ourselves.” I hadn’t intended to say that. Not aloud.
She grimaced slightly. “Right. Yeah.”
I shrunk a little at her tone. We fell quiet for a few minutes.
Finally, she spoke again. “Keep your communicator with you, adelfós. Please. I want to be able to contact you.” Her hand found mine and squeezed. “And vice-versa, just in case.”
“Fisika, adelfí.” I had given up on planar common immediately. I took a deep breath and moved my hand to give hers a gentle squeeze back. “Look out for Bralla while I’m gone?”
She snorted. The tension disappeared between us. “Like our baby sister needs backup, as though she’s not the one who usually saves us. But I’ll make sure to tell her what you’re off doing.”
I offered Lily a grateful smile. After a few more moments, I took a deep breath and stood up to leave. She stood up as well. I didn’t know what to say. What could I? I had already fumbled enough of this conversation.
Before I could say anything else, Lily dragged me down into a tight hug. “Come back home eventually,” she said softly.
I hugged her back. “I’ll try.” That’s all I would promise. Or maybe it’s all I could promise.
I took off into the air as soon as I left the temple, my clothes already shifted into the very same ones I had chosen when I first visited New Capenna. I had wound up in the lowest level, the Caldaia, and it had been the most comfortable place in the entire city while I was there. And that was, in theory, where the Omenpath to New Capenna led.
I swooped down low over the water, allowing my momentum to carry me a few yards before I flapped my wings again and regained some height. Flying was a workout that I desperately needed after remaining in the caverns leading to the House of Ending for so long. I even did a roll through the air just to make sure I could. I laughed once I pulled it off; I realized that I hadn’t felt this free in a long time.
There were scattered islands in the waters and the air that acted like the continent’s honor guard. I landed on one that I didn’t remember the name of to take a break before I continued to the Omenpath. The island was decently large, but I stayed away from whatever village was on it. I wasn’t tired, not even close, but I wanted to feel the sand under my hooves. So I landed and plopped down into the sand.
The sun was setting, taking the little bit of warmth it granted in winter with it. Ending was in charge of making sure the sun moved as it was supposed to, just like Beginning commanded our moon. The goddesses of the stars and constellations would be emerging from hiding soon.
A breeze kicked up. I tensed when I realized that it carried a warning and climbed back to my hooves.
It was a bit harder to identify the other goddesses, the ones that weren’t directly my sisters or my creator. But I realized that the harpy who landed nearby was another god. One who typically appeared as a telkhine like he was before he became immortal, but who could freely shift in the exact way that Lily, Bralla, and I couldn’t. But there was a green tint to his feathers that made it immediately clear who they were, he bore a nose and lips like a siren rather than a harpy, and the fine blue chiton with a sea monster brooch to hold it in place that they wore made it obvious.
“Sea-Roamer,” I greeted, keeping my tone level and professional. I refused to be prone to bouts of anger and frustration. Not anymore.
“Exactor,” the Dea Haliplanktos greeted with a smile on his face that didn’t even attempt to reach his eyes. “Odd to see you out here.” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, how his eyes took in the Capennan clothing I wore. “And dressed so...strangely, even.”
Every step he took made me more tense. I shrugged my shoulders, spreading my wings slightly. I was trying to keep my posture calm and relaxed. I didn’t want him to see how much I didn’t want to talk to him. “I’m traveling again,” I said simply.
“Without praying to a fellow goddess when you’re over the water?” He pressed a hand to his chest. I didn’t know if he was genuinely offended or just playing it up.
I tried not to make my irritation obvious. “That’s not how it works, Sea-Roamer.” Goddesses did not pray to each other. Not on Thyrsus. We worked together of course, but that didn’t require prayers from one to another.
“It’s a joke, Exactor.” He was only a few paces away now. I hoped he stopped there. “You’re quite tense.”
I did not rise to the bait. I had heard Lily haul him and the other goddesses down a list of their most recent exploits at the last meeting that our mother held. I didn’t like him much well before he decided to cause an upset in the mortal realm by creating a new monster species that had caused my workload to triple overnight before Lily got the help of that extraplanar draconic demon to study them and gave the information on how to take them down to Bralla.
So instead, I offered a closed-mouth smile that was dangerously close to baring my teeth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Another step closer. I willed myself to not tense up more. The Dea Haliplanktos offered me a smile that I saw nothing but a threat in. Even still, I scowled when he reached out to touch my shoulder. His smile must have seemed charming in his own mind. “You are gorgeous, Exactor. But high tension is not a good look on you.”
I took a step back. “Do not touch me, Sea-Roamer,” I growled. I fed my anger and resentment and disgust into my flames until they flickered off of my body. A warning. He was a much older goddess than I was. More powerful, especially here, surrounded by the ocean.
I needed to get away fast.
“Come now, Exactor.” He took another step towards me. “There’s no need to be hostile. I am merely paying you a compliment.” His gaze was leering.
I thought back to one of the phrases I had picked up from those Riveteers who had helped me learn about New Capenna. “You can take your ‘compliment’ and shove it up your ass.” Before he could respond, I spread my wings and beat them to force myself up into the air. Being made from fire meant that I could always make my own thermal to get height quickly. Then I took off through the air towards the New Capenna Omenpath.
It was low, partially submerged in the ocean, and apparently connected to a “canal” on the other side. I swooped down to it and felt its shield’s resistance falter as I whispered the password. Once I could push fully through, I flew through the tunnel and emerged in the Caldaia. The family symbols around this Omenpath were twofold: Obscura and Riveteers. I let out a small sigh of relief and landed on the solid walkway next to the canal.
I took a moment to brush myself off, smooth down my shirt, and readjust my suspenders. I hated trying to put on shoes with my hooves, so I had skipped that annoying part. The pants I had chosen were cropped just below the knee for the same reason. I had hooves, two wings, three tails, and four horns. If anyone had an issue with the demons I resembled, they’d have to deal with it on their own time.
I knew that someone was approaching and finally turned when she approached. She was a cephalid woman, maybe around my visible age but most likely younger. She was well-dressed in a three-piece suit under a trench coat. Her head tentacles were arranged to look like a boyish haircut favored by the sapphics of New Capenna. The bioluminescent patterns across her skin were shifting in what was clearly a nervous display and occasionally brightened before dimming again. She offered me a smile but didn’t meet my eyes. “Hello, uh...sir, ma’am, or mir? I am Vanah of the Obscura, I’m...supposed to speak with you and make sure that you’re...”
“Supposed to be here and not a threat?” I guessed, taking a little pity on the woman. She must have been new, and, well...it wasn’t like I told anyone on this side that I was coming through. “I’m Cinderblaze of Thyrsus.”
She nodded nervously and whispered into something in her trench coat. I tried not to listen in, but I could overhear someone giving instructions to Vanah. I just waited patiently until she was done. She nodded once and turned back to me. “We’ll have to ask you some questions regarding your intent on traveling here.” Her patterns lit up for a moment as she cast a spell that settled into the area.
“Of course, Miss Vanah,” I said with a nod.
“O-okay! So, first question, what brings you to New Capenna?” As she asked that, she found a notepad and a pen in another pocket of her trench coat and prepared to write.
“Traveling. I did a lot in the past, figured I’d retread familiar ground.”
She scribbled down that answer. “Desparked planeswalker?” she guessed aloud. She realized what she had said, and her patterns collected towards her cheeks and lit up softly. “I-I mean, um-”
“It’s alright,” I soothed. “I, uh...I am.” It was a long story to explain to someone and technically the truth – sometimes I had the spark, but most of the time I didn’t, ergo, desparked.
Vanah nodded and kept her eyes on her notepad instead of on me. “Retreading familiar ground means that you’ve been to New Capenna before. Do you have any connections or enemies here?”
“I used to know some Riveteers, but I do not believe they survived the invasion.” I had planeswalked back two years ago to try and find them, but knowing who all was dead was alarmingly easy for my magic in this city. I made sure that they had received the proper last rites before I headed back to Thyrsus to give Lily the spark back. “No enemies that I’m aware of just yet.”
She nodded again and kept writing. “And what organizations are you aligned with back in...” She hesitated for a moment before trying to pronounce my home plane like I had. “Thuh-er-suss?”
“Thur-suhs,” I corrected. “I’m the Dea Praxidike aligned with the House of Endings.” She had grown flustered at my correction, but blinked owlishly when I had continued. I amended my statement. “I’m part of the pantheon. I help to look after the dead.”
“Oh! Okay, I think that makes sense.” Vanah wrote some more things down. “Um...I don’t think there’s anything else I need to ask you, but let me check.” She spoke into the thing in her coat again. She nodded again after a few moments and dismissed the magic that had sunk into the area. “Okay, that’s all! Thank you for your patience, Mx. Cinderblaze.”
I didn’t quite like that title, but I offered her a smile. “And thank you, Miss Vanah. I hope you have a lovely day.”
I watched her leave, then took a moment to figure out my next move. Lily had recommended that I make sure I eat mortal food just to be sure that I would be fine. It would probably also be wise to figure out where I could stay even though I didn’t actually sleep.
I took a deep breath, chose a direction, and started walking. I’d figure things out as I walked.
[The Dea Pronoia’s transcription/translation note: This is a very simplified form of the myth, quite abridged to help focus on the themes of hubris. This myth is also why horses are considered a reduced form of pegasi, rather than pegasi being an advanced form of horses.]
There once was a pegasus known as Orkus. He was a great hero who had killed or helped to kill many dragons and hydras in the early days of the Silver Age. He protected early city-states and wandered the plane looking for new challenges. When Thyrsus offered no more, he turned his gaze fully skyward.
For the reader unfamiliar with Thyrsus, one should know that there are floating islands dotting the skyscape. And above that, at least to mortal eyes, is the divine realm, perched among the highest clouds that no mortal can safely navigate to.
But Orkus believed himself to be capable of getting there. He had been hailed as the greatest hero on Thyrsus and knew that mortals could be raised to godhood. He believed himself worthy of apotheosis as well. So he took off into the skies, but his mortal nature meant that he often had to stop for rest.
He landed on the first floating island along his route, the one modernly referred to as Mileneia. Even when Orkus was visiting, it was inhabited by phoenixes, pegasi, and griffins who scorned the company of other species across Thyrsus out of disdain for them. Though they deemed themselves better than other mortals, they did not see themselves as being closer to the gods, but rather to each other. Orkus’s boasting was as strange to them as it was to the other mortals he had previously interacted with. Depending on the myth, they either ignored him or tried to talk him down. In either case, he did not listen and continued on.
This pattern repeats twice more across three floating islands – on Kalletria and either Astussae or Thyrastro. Myths varied about who lived where and what they did, but like on Mileneia, ultimately nothing deters Orkus.
Finally, through means more poetic than navigational, Orkus achieved the unlikely: he slipped sideways through the clouds and into the divine realm. His hooves landed on the floor of the wooden temple. A fire burned within it, not devouring the temple yet remaining ever-fed. It was not just any divine realm, but the Dea Xenia’s own pocket thereof.
The Dea Xenia appeared, furious at this unwelcome visitor appearing in her own domain without invitation. Orkus boasted of his great deeds and demanded to be recognized as a divine like the Dea Lykeie had been. The Dea Xenia’s response remains the same in all tellings of this myth:
“You have entered this realm without being invited in. You proclaim your achievements rather than apologize for trespassing. Had you only waited, perhaps you would have been recognized as worthy of divinity. Instead, for your crimes against the divine realm itself, I will make sure you are an example that none forget.”
Vines sprouted from beneath the floor and wrapped around Orkus, dragging him all the way back down to the mortal realm. As he was brought low, his wings shriveled and his mind dulled. When his hooves met the ground, he was on par with the cattle and the lions, the sheep and the wolves.
[The Dea Pronoia’s transcription/translation note: Preliminary notes on the newly-created manticores of Thyrsus. Translated from Thyrsian.]
Background information on the manticores of Theros, as granted by Captain Sussana Libertaria of the Parsec Fleet:
Manticores of Theros are rumored as being made from either the fury of the forge god, Purphoros, or the transformed states of angered and hateful soldiers. All recorded manticores are Nyxborn or connected to Nyx in another way. Regardless of origin, they lack many self-preservation instincts found in "natural" animals and beasts.
Preliminary notes from finding and studying a Thyrsian manticore:
Manticores of Thyrsus have the manes and bodies of lions, tails of scorpions (one tail each thus far, thankfully), wings of dragons, and faces of centaurs - or humans for those of you on planes where humans are actually present. (Thyrsus has no native humans beyond myself by technicality.) Regardless, despite this, the teeth are more akin to those of a bear, which I would like to put down as evidence of lying by omission as this was not mentioned during their creation. I would also like to stack on the fact that the wings do not actually resemble those of a dragon's, but rather more like a bird wing that you put more skin on.
Their stingers contain a venom that causes incredible pain. It does not paralyze or kill, it's just painful, making its usage very limited - especially considering the rest of the manticore's body is usually in the way of its stinger when facing an opponent. Far more dangerous if you try to sneak up on it from behind.
Unlike the manticores of other planes, Thyrsian manticores do not have the capability of breathing fire. Rather, they were created by an ocean god, giving them limited capabilities around water. They can swim but do not have gills. There is no breath weapon to speak of and they are surprisingly flammable. WARNING: Setting a manticore on fire means you then have to deal with a manticore that is on fire.
In total, they are hardy and aggressive beasts who are intent on devouring the mortal population. But they can be killed like other beasts. Due to their comparatively smaller size and ability to fly, they are a bit harder to aim at than a hydra but not as dangerous to fight as a dragon.
More notes will come as I work on studying how to take them down.
I appeared out of the planeswalk in a flurry of pages and a small burst of mana. I could sense the mortal realm and tap into it just as easily as any other goddess, but for the first time in a while, I planeswalked out into the divine realm instead.
Most mortals perceived the divine realm as being above the tallest clouds and tucked away. The reality was much stranger. It was more like stepping sideways out of the mortal realm and then using flight magic to go upwards to the gallery adjacent to a theater stage. The divine naturally had box seats to the dramas of the mortal realm.
This was my first divine meeting in nearly a decade. The last time I had been called to my creator’s divine abode was when Cinderblaze, Bralla, and I had all reached our twentieth year of existence. We had been called back to the divine realm from our various wanderings – my studies at Witherbloom College, Cinderblaze’s role in the House of Endings, and Bralla’s wandering fight-settling ways – in order to serve in our roles as primary deities for the plane overall and create our banes and boons for the mortals. I had codified my teachings of information-sharing and how it should be done and granted it to some of my relatively few mortal worshipers to better standardize the entire process. Not every divine had been as kind to the mortal population on the plane, not even the ones who had once been mortal themselves. I hadn’t thought much about that back then.
But I was certainly thinking of it now.
Cinderblaze, my “older” “triplet” “brother” – it was hard to say any of those unironically considering we were crafted at the same time by our shared creator, we barely looked similar because he was patterned after demons and I was patterned after humans, and mortal concepts of gender was something we both had a vague grasp on at best – was waiting for me when I arrived. His demonic wings were pulled tightly against his back, as though he were trying to disappear without shifting back to the mortal realm or the House of Endings. I watched the tension leave his shoulders. “Hey Lily. They’ve been at each other’s throats all day.”
I forced a smile to my face. “Then let’s see if I can make it worse,” I joked, offering my arm to him. Out of all of us – myself, Cinderblaze, Bralla, and our creator – I was inexplicably several inches shorter than the rest of the family. Yet another thing my creator messed up for me, in addition to forgetting to give me blood or ichor and giving me some of her mental illnesses.
Cinderblaze laughed and accepted my offered arm. I felt a little smug about that, admittedly; I was closer to Cinderblaze than I was to any other divine in Thyrsus, and even our elder sister Ending couldn’t get a laugh out of him like I could. Together, we stepped inside our creator’s divine home.
Each Thyrsian goddess, born or apotheosized, had their own personal portion of the divine realm, which expanded with each new addition to our pantheon. And considering the sheer number of us across the plane, that was for the best. Even still and despite the argument inside that was reaching a fever pitch, the domain of the Dea Xenia always felt the most like home. My creator’s divine abode was a large yet simple wooden temple, with a fire burning to transfer offerings from the mortals and a long table for visitors. I had learned during my first decade that there were proper seats at this table.
My creator, who currently appeared as a human woman that I heavily resembled, sat at the end closest to the fire, with Ending (who looked like a minotaur as usual) to her right and Beginning (who had switched to her preferred satyr guise) to the left. My eldest sisters were the first goddesses crafted after the plane and its first beings had already been made, so such a place of honor was a natural spot for them.
Then there were some of the older apotheosized divines as the table slowly stretched closer to the entryway. The Dea Lykeie, a massive wolf goddess who had already bat her chair away. The Dea Eurynome, an older pastoral goddess who stayed with the Dea Lykeie pretty much every time I saw them. The Dea Euenemos, a sphinx and Beginning’s eldest child in addition to being the Fair-Winds God, sat with the Dea Haliplanktos, a telkhine who was raised from mortality and became the Sea-Roaming God. (The Dea Haliplanktos glared at me, and I glared back. Our recent competition to become the patron goddess of Actalia had left bad blood between us despite me winning quite decidedly.) I much preferred the Dea Ouranios, the Sky God and the Dea Euenemos's son who also appeared as a sphinx, and his partner the Dea Pandemos, the All-Loving Goddess who alternated regularly between harpy and siren forms. There was also the Dea Khalkeus, an apotheosized cyclops who was now the Bronze-Smithing God.
And finally, I, the Foreseeing Goddess, sat down with Cinderblaze, the Exactor of Justice, leaving me sitting across from our sister Bralla, the Saving Goddess. We were the newest goddesses. And the weakest. I clenched my fists under the table, furious about that fact. I barely qualified as a goddess – I was comparable to, at best, a sufficiently powerful mortal mage. I couldn’t shake the plane like most of the goddesses at this table. Even Bralla, the war-loving Dea Soteira, had gathered dedicated followers who prayed to her first and foremost. I simply disappeared until people remembered to pray to me.
Our plane’s creator stood up from her seat once she noticed that I had arrived, thus marking the thirteenth member. “Silence,” she said to the Dea Euenemos and the Dea Khalkeus, who both promptly shut up. “I did not convene a council just so you all could argue with each other. As many of you know, this meeting of the divine typically happens on a decade basis. This time, we had to convene a bit earlier due to the general state of the Multiverse.” The Dea Xenia stepped aside to prowl around the table like a hunting animal. I mentally slapped myself for the comparison; of course she did, she was the originator of the concept of druids across the Multiverse, like the oldwalker Serra had been the originator of angels on many planes. “The Omenpaths have opened across Thyrsus despite quarantining attempts. And I must head to other planes to tend to business regarding some old friends and acquaintances.” She stopped behind me. Silently, I offered my right hand, calling our family’s shared spark to it. She held my hand for a moment longer than necessary to accept it. Then, she kept moving. “Because of that,” she continued as she walked around the other side of the table, “we will be handling the wonders now.”
Whispering broke out among the other goddesses. The wonders were how we – twelve divines chosen by the Dea Xenia out of hundreds – influenced the mortal realm in a broader stroke than we usually did. This rationing of broad divine power was what kept Thyrsus from being destroyed by any individual petty goddess.
She sat down once more at the head of the table. “Dea Telos, if you would begin.” Ending was always the first, as the eldest of us all.
Ending nodded. “Thank you, mother.” It stood up. “As I did eight years ago, I shall be expanding the House of Endings and creating a larger rest area for those who do not wish to return to the surface world.” With that, it sat back down. I wasn’t surprised by Ending’s declaration; it was devoted to its duties in the afterlife. Nor was I surprised by the surge of divine power that traveled through the entirety of Thyrsus to follow its will.
Beginning, the Dea Arkhe, stood up next. “And I will be using my own wonder to assist the Dea Telos with making the afterlife more comfortable to the dead.” It sat back down. The surge of divine power followed just as quickly as the first.
I paid attention once it shifted to the Dea Lykeie’s turn. Usually, I spent this time pondering how to help the mortals of Thyrsus most and fulfill my role as a goddess of information and knowledge. But something felt off this time. And something I had learned from being an adventurer was to never shrug off something feeling wrong.
The Dea Lykeie stood up, her lupine form towering over the rest of us. “I will elect the mortal Iokheaira as a paragon for my faith so that it may be spread deeper into the wilds.” Iokheaira, I recalled, was a prodigal centaur archer that was from the Dea Lykeie’s bloodline before she became the Dea Lykeie. I bit my tongue as I felt the divine power surge to make her will true.
The Dea Eurynome was next, and she straightened up once the Dea Lykeie sat back down. Being a centaur meant that the chairs were not built for her current form. She was far angrier than usual, which was apparent in her wonder for this decade. “The lotus eaters of Orchinia have slighted me, and I will be blighting them with a drought until the next set of wonders.” I frowned as that one set in. The Dea Eurynome wasn’t usually a spiteful goddess. And as a harvest and pastoral goddess, she was one of the only ones who could give bounties and droughts that easily.
I was less surprised when the Dea Euenemos stood up fully next and declared his. “Likewise, I shall be raining disaster upon the village of Latessos. Their fields shall flood and be rendered useless.” Latessos had a large population of those who did not fall under the love domain of the Dea Euenemos. I was also immune to his bastardry. Under the table, my nails dug into my Strixhaven uniform as divine power surged once more.
The Dea Haliplanktos was looking at me as he stood up to declare his. “I will be creating a new species for Thyrsus,” he began. I met his gaze and raised my chin, challenging him. I hadn’t backed down from the older god during our contest over Actalia, and I wouldn’t back down now. “A beast with the body and mane of a lion, the tail of a scorpion, the wings of a dragon, and the face of a centaur. They shall feed upon meat, even that of the sentient races. They shall be called manticores.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my creator scowl for a moment. My gaze did not waiver as power surged to create the manticores. I quietly made a note to find ways to destroy them quickly as the Dea Haliplanktos sat back down.
The Dea Ouranios was a lot more withdrawn when he stood up. “I shall safeguard Salaros.” A floating island that served as a library. One of the few places with consistent worshipers of mine. I felt a little bit of relief as that went through.
“And I shall safeguard Lesbos,” the Dea Pandemos said as she stood up once the Dea Ouranios was done. At least those two had their heads on right.
The Dea Khalkeus, however, returned to the form that the other gods had set when he stood up. “I will create an avatar to walk Thyrsus,” he said, his voice far louder than the rest of ours. “To punish the mortals who think themselves above me when working the forge.”
What in the name of other planes’ hells has gotten into everyone? I wondered as that change surged forth. I had been distant from Thyrsus during my studies, of course, but nothing had felt this...drastic. I quietly reached over to squeeze Cinderblaze’s hand and reassure him.
The Dea Praxidike squeezed my hand back before he stood up. “I shall enact judgment,” he said, his voice far quieter than the Dea Khalkeus’s had been. That got everyone’s attention. Like the Dea Eurynome giving bounties and droughts, my brother was the only one who could enact judgment. It would randomly bend the divine power in a way that he chose as he found out what it would do.
We all held our breaths as the power surged to him. His eyes were closed as he analyzed the divine magic. Finally, he opened his eyes and spoke. “Dea Soteira, a powerful mortal will challenge you to a duel within this decade. I do not know when, where, or who, but it shall happen. This is my judgment.”
Bralla silently pumped her fist in the air in excitement. The other gods let out the breath they were holding. I did the same. Usually judgments went far worse for the mortals, but this was one of the few ways that Cinderblaze experimented with the chaos that was innate to demons of other planes.
The Dea Soteira stood up next, even though it would have been my turn next. I didn’t mind, I needed the extra time to think of how to help the mortals after all of this spite. What none of us expected was for the Dea Soteira to brandish her sword towards the Dea Euenemos. “Dea Euenemos, I challenge you to a duel for my wonder,” Bralla declared, her chin held high and her angelic wings flared. “Winner takes a portion of divine power from the loser.”
I watched the Dea Euenemos hesitate. If he accepted, there was no doubt that the Dea Soteira would win and switch places with him in the divine pecking order of strength. If he declined, he would be considered a coward. He finally shook his head. “I refuse the duel.”
Bralla’s smirk remained as she sat back down. Once more, divine power surged, writing a new myth of the cowardice of the wind god. The mortals would come up with different details on their own. That was the incredible thing about mortals: the stories they told.
Finally, it was my turn. I closed my eyes for a moment. The other gods were surprisingly petty, vengeful, vindictive, and spiteful. How could I target the mortals to optimize helping them? I couldn’t undo the wonders of the other gods, especially not ones like the Dea Eurynome’s drought. I cast my mind to my fellow Strixhaven students, all of the ones I had agreed to look out for – Rohia and the others from the Brazen Coalition of Ixalan-Torrezon, Ghostmark of the Dokuchi Reckoners, and so forth – and all of my mortal friends – Koda, Tabitha, Beatrice, Lohiarm, Gideon, and Benoe – and I realized then that I needed a new trick up my sleeve. Or, rather, a new domain. There was an archetypal figure missing from our pantheon, even among hundreds of names. An archetype embodied in the gods of other planes, like Valki of Kaldheim or Mochi, the Smiling Kami of the Crescent Moon of Kamigawa.
I, the Dea Pronoia, stood up. “For mine, I shall claim another domain,” I said, my voice full of a new confidence. “I am the goddess of information and knowledge, crafted from water. Now, I claim the position of trickster god.” I inhaled sharply as the divine power granted me what I claimed. I felt the composition of my very being alter to take in this third domain. Trickery settled in nicely with magic and water.
Reactions were mixed. I focused only on my creator’s. It was nearly impossible to read the expression of the Dea Xenia most days, but right now, I saw clear pride in her eyes and a small smirk at the edge of her lips.
The Dea Xenia stood up once I had sat back down. “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “Now, I must head out on business. The Dea Telos and the Dea Arkhe are in charge of the plane until I return.” With that, she planeswalked away in a rapid growth of thorned vines and poisonous plants that disappeared with her.
The other gods muttered among themselves and got up to leave once that was done. Cinderblaze found my hand and gently squeezed it. “Ballsy move, sis,” he whispered, keeping his voice down.
Bralla leaned over the table. “And a powerful one at that!” she whispered, her feathered wings fluttering the whole time and nearly knocking herself over from excitement. “Announcing yourself as a trickster? You’re gonna make everyone have to think three times now.”
I smiled a little. “Thanks, you two.” I noticed most of the gods leaving in one chunk – the Dea Lykeie, the Dea Eurynome, the Dea Euenemos, the Dea Haliplanktos, and the Dea Khalkeus were all trying to slip out together. Emboldened by my own actions, I stood up. “Going somewhere?” I called as I strolled after them.
The Dea Euenemos scoffed in disgust. “Is there a problem with that, upstart?”
I crossed my arms. “I was actually hoping to ask why you all seem so vindictive about the mortals lately,” I deadpanned. I was fishing for information and making it clear that I was. The older gods thought themselves so much smarter than I was, and maybe that was true, but I could leverage that.
The Dea Haliplanktos rolled his eyes. “Look, kid, I know you’ve been off playing mortal student on other planes, but we don’t have to justify ourselves to you. Why don’t you just run back to your mother and suckle her teat?” He realized what he had just said and slapped a hand over his mouth.
But not before my fury flared.
The fire in the hall went out immediately. “Oh? Is that hubris I hear?” Everything in the room suddenly became sharper. “You think you’re so good that you can insult the Dea Xenia herself?”
“Now, wait a minute, hold on-” the Dea Eurynome tried to intervene.
I jabbed my finger into the Dea Haliplanktos’s chest. “May the Ending and Beginning strike me down if I speak falsehoods,” I hissed out, knowing that my eldest sisters were listening. “You, Sea-Roaming God, are a sore loser and care more for stroking your own ego than being concerned about your mortal worshipers. I mean, really, inventing a new monster just because you lost a contest? You are pathetic.”
I turned towards the Dea Euenemos next. “But not nearly as bad as you, Fair-Winds God of cowardice. You punish a village simply because they do not experience the narrow kind of love you have become obsessed with. I would spit at your feet for such an insult, but you’re not worth the spit.”
Next on my list was the Dea Eurynome. “You, Pasture Goddess, I’m just disappointed in. Calling down a drought upon a village of treefolk for a slight? What are you, five years old? I suppose that was my folly, to expect maturity from one of the oldest goddesses on the plane.”
Then came the Dea Lykeie. “I’m not even sure what to make of yours, Wolf Goddess. I don’t know if I’m impressed that you managed to keep track of your descendants or disappointed that you decided to elect a paragon from your bloodline. Utterly fucking ridiculous to do divine nepotism when picking a paragon. Has the sinking of Nirias taught you nothing about what goes wrong when it comes down to mortals doing weird shit involving blood? You’re definitely old enough to know better than this.”
Finally, the Dea Khalkeus. “And normally I wouldn’t even waste time with you, Bronze-Smith, but really, announcing your intentions of punishing mortals in front of a bunch of other gods? I’d say ‘don’t be stupid’ but we crossed that bridge several planes ago.”
I threw my hands into the air. “This is the best that our plane has for divine beings? You all are acting like children. Now if you’ll ex-fucking-scuse me, I need to figure out how to clean up your messes.” I turned and offered a respectful nod to my sisters and brother, then willed myself to leave the divine realm. Unlike planeswalking, this one was instantaneous and had no fancy magic surging around it.
My chosen endpoint on the mortal realm was Actalia, the port village I had won patronage of in the contest with the Dea Haliplanktos that made him so angry that he decided to invent manticores about it. I had invented a Thyrsian kind of olive tree based on the trees I had seen on other planes and how useful they were to the mortals elsewhere. I looked upon the first olive tree I had created, now settled comfortably around the center of town, and frowned. What I had created was ultimately derivative. So, too, was the manticore that the Dea Haliplanktos had decided to create in revenge; such a manticore was identical to the varieties I had recorded on Zendikar. But that was fine. I could work with finding a weakness to that.
I made my way through the village and nodded towards the mortals that had judged the competition. I stayed out of their ways as they worked, and they stayed out of mine. I made it to the small library that had been built in my honor and silently slipped into the back room. Once there, I pulled a chair over to a desk, flopped into it, kicked up my feet, and turned on my communicator. Instead of going to the chats or my blog, I opted instead to use the search engine to refresh my memory of manticores across the planes. If I could recall the similarities between them all, then I could reverse-engineer a solution. I kept reading until the words melded together on the screen.
But I knew that I needed help and advice, from someone older and wiser than me. With a heavy sigh, I flipped back over to the communications network, logged back into the server, and sent a direct message to the Coalition fleet commander who had been offering me advice through my far more normal woes.
Good evening Miss Sussana, or whatever time of day it is when you receive this. I need some help. What does your fleet know about manticores?
The Dea Pronoia frowned at the results of her test. Not out of disappointment – it was full, perfect marks, after all – but rather because she didn’t feel anything. She had done perfectly, as was expected for a young goddess of knowledge and information. But that didn’t feel like enough. How was she supposed to care about tests and homework when it became an eternal cycle of complete and utter bullshit? Study, write, edit, present, cast, answer questions, rinse and repeat.
She crammed the results into her bag, not caring about any creases – not that it mattered, she knew spells that would get creases out of paper and parchment – and shouldered her bag. She quietly exited the classroom before the professor could find her and crow for five minutes about her being a model student.
Because it ultimately didn’t matter.
It was only once she made it back to her dorm room that Lily of Thyrsus finally exhaled the breath that she had been holding. It sounded exhausted, even though she wasn’t yet tired. She set her bag down on her bed and then sat down beside it.
Something she had learned from spending time among mortals was that exhaustion often had more than one source that compounded upon each other. She wasn’t tired just because of homework and studies and tests, she was also tired because it felt pointless. Regardless of how many classes she took on various subjects, they all felt like they kept drifting back towards simple, basic information.
Because that’s what it all was: information. Processed, stored, and transmitted data completely detached from what it arose from. It was only half of her assigned duties. The other half, knowledge – familiarity, awareness, and understanding gained through experience or study – was woefully underrepresented here. Quandrix differed from Witherbloom greatly in that way – there was no intertwining of its themes of theory and substance, not in the way that life and death were innately intertwined. There was no getting one’s hands dirty in Quandrix College.
Lily sighed and flopped down on her back. “Mother’s wilds, what I would give to be an adventurer again.” She had picked up adventuring in Odithis between years at Witherbloom as a teenager, which was how she had met her favorite mortals in all of the planes – Beatrice, Tabitha, Gideon, Lohiarm, and Koda – and began working alongside them. They were all newer back then, and Lily had learned much about how mortals worked from their shared adventures and quests.
Odithis had been very good for that sort of thing because, outside of the established centers of “civilization”, the plane changed randomly and brought in new “ancient” ruins and dungeons with prophecies and quests to match. Lily’s current hypothesis was that the plane was created by a planeswalker with an undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.
Something in the Dea Pronoia’s chest ached. Her divine duty of gathering information and knowledge from other planes to bring home to Thyrsus was the reason why she used the family spark the most, but it also meant that, when she pursued such things through formal channels like schooling, she wound up stuck on planes for far longer than she wanted to be.
Lily retrieved a pen from her bag to chew thoughtfully on. She had used the communications system to speak to one Sussana Libertaria, a fleet commander of the Brazen Coalition on the plane of Ixalan (or was the plane called Torrezon? It was named after one of its landmasses or the other, Lily just called it Ixalan-Torrezon when speaking to Koda) near the beginning of the month. They had spoken about just this sort of thing and how Lily craved adventure and the wilds again. She had even gone to the village of Sweettooth on Eldraine to pick fights with the giant man-eating desserts there and had a good time after Sussana tipped her off about it. But that had only been a temporary patch, because Lily still had to return to Arcavios to get back to her studies.
Arguably, she could get adventure in Arcavios if she went on an archaeological trip with the Lorehold College’s students, but since she was studying in Quandrix this year, she doubted they would let her tag along. Even then, it wasn’t like she could apply for that college – in the color system of magic categorization, it was firmly in the “colors” of mana that she could not access. She was created from life, death, and water – she was not created from fire like her brother or light like her sister. How frustrating, then, that she craved to work with the college that was beyond her reach because of how she had been crafted.
Perhaps, she mused as she chewed thoughtfully on her pen, beings crafted from pure magic sought out the very thing that they lacked? But that wouldn’t explain manaforms like angels who typically stuck heavily to their single “color”. Maybe the answer was beyond what the color system of magic categorization could reasonably cover. Despite its flaws, the color system was very popular in Arcavios and on the communications network. Lily personally found the entire thing foolish, as she found every categorization of magic to be foolish.
She sighed and finally tossed her chewed-on pen back into her bag, then went back to staring at the ceiling. She needed a change.
She chewed on her lip for a moment, then sat up and seized her communicator. It wouldn’t hurt, she imagined, to send a message to the Strixhaven student group chat and see if any of them could give her a lead.
