Pantheon

Ballantine

Envah is...not what they expected.

They don't know what they did. But it was, at least, something, and Envah is not. They can see nothing, but they don't think they've gone blind. They can hear nothing, and they don't think they're deaf. Rather, there is not anything to see or to hear. The only thing that exists in Envah is their own physical form.

They don't feel different. They can still feel the stretching of their dry skin as they move their fingers, and the wet shape of their tongue in their mouth. If they concentrate enough, focus inward instead of out, they can feel their heart beating. The rhythm grows and grows until it's pounding through their whole body, ricocheting in their skin, setting a beat for Envah to march to. The only, silent, rhythm in the universe.

"What is this place?" they try to ask, because surely this can't be all, but though they feel their mouth move the words don't project. It doesn't matter, though. Barely after the conception of the question, they find – no, they feel – the answer inside of them, dormant like a seed until now.

Whatever you want it to be.

What do they want it to be?

The answer to that question blurs into being around them. They're high above the market of ITU, vantage point floating among the rafters. A girder congeals into solidity under their bare feet, and they stand on it tall and steady.

"Excellently done," says Igan, leaning against a rafter just in front of them. "I'm sure that you're seeing a wonderful picture."

"Even if we can't tell what it is," Moa adds, sitting on a pipe with Aur and swinging her feet.

"Wait. Have you guys, like...been here the whole time?" Had Thess done anything potentially embarrassing while floating confused in the Envah-void?

"What do you mean?" says Moa. "We all just got here."

Aur laughs at Thess's expression. "Yeah, time is weird. Here, and just in general for us. What, did you, like, take a reeeaallly long time to figure out you could make Envah change shape? I did too, I got stuck for like a day. Cause I don't know what's going on ever."

"That's true," says Igan.

"Anyway."

"Pretty much," agrees Moa.

"ANYWAY!" Aur flings her arms out and flails her feet. "WELCOME to Envah!! If we stick around long enough you'll probably meet everyone else."

"Well," says Moa. "Not probably. You will. Welcome to goddesshood, huh?!" She breaks off awkwardly, looking to Igan. "I...haven't done this before." Igan just shrugs.

"Any questions?" Aur asks Thess.

They swell up behind their mouth like a tide, and Thess almost explodes. But the first thing that makes its way out isn't exactly a question.

"So. I am...the goddess of magic."

It still feels like they're lying to say it. Even though they've experienced, well, all that they've experienced...there's no explanation for that but this.

Igan nods, suddenly grave. "Looks like it."

They've grown up with the goddesses, of course they know all of the pantheon's abilities and domains and histories and mythology, but that's from the outside. They find, to their terror, that they have no idea what being a goddess actually entails.

"What does that...mean?"

"It means that you are magic," says Moa. "Humans sometimes call us the embodiments of what we preside over. That's not true. We are the consciousness formed from a concentration of the essence of our domain. You are magic. I am travel. Aur is chaos and mystery. Can you feel it? It might not feel very different from how you've felt all your life, and of course it's different for all of us. But – do you?"