Note: Training post for Tim's second magic.
Gods rarely reflect upon their actions; it wasn’t in their nature. Gods were impulsive beings. They love like it was their pastime, they feel jealousy like it was their air to breathe and the posh visage of arrogance they assume over everything was second to none. This was the reason why so few mortals understand the nature of being a God. There was a circularity between this astral selfishness and the metaphysical entitlement these deities possess in comparison, in contrast, to a mortal’s fickle mind.
How does a mortal deal with loss? They deal with acceptance, and the harrowing reality it leaves behind. Gods and those who pursue their likeness never think such things! They scheme and plan, they seek to overthrow some balance of power to fulfill their entitled wish. Many would-be ‘mortal turned gods’ have sacrificed many for this foolish pursuit.
It wasn’t a mature way of living, but then again, since when did Gods become the pinnacle of wisdom? Even Gods of Wisdom make childish decisions.
Hemera thought her mother had found an answer to such a dilemma in the arms of a mortal she eloped with. It was the most basic of mortal emotions, but it was something Hemera did not bother delving into. It was only when Nyx’s life went to hell and back did the primordial personification of day thought of intervening. Something compelled her. It never occurred to her what it was until, eons later, she stopped to see why had she been nurturing her mother’s illegitimate bloodline for so long.
Even now, as Tim T. Timson the 42nd was fighting another relative-turned-monster in the aptly named Spooky Forest in northern Fiore. Hemera had never actually sat down and reaffirmed it what had been driving her to such an extent?
“Hemera!” Tim shouted, bracing as the five-meter-tall monster slammed its inklike limb down sending a shockwave that sent the young man flying across the forest. The monster was a moving lump of tarlike matter. A single white eye was staring unblinkingly at them as its Vulcan-shaped body slowly moved.
“I’m screwing it all up again…” He hissed. In the month or so Tim had been in the Silver Wolf guild. He had a whole slew of completely polarizing events in his life. In that span of time, Tim had killed. He was reassured that it was a duel; a fair and honorable fight. But when Tim was alone in his thoughts, the memory of digging a piece of sharpened metal slab into another person left him awake for nights on end. Not to mention his last job had undermined the decade’s worth of self-control Tim had trying to end up a monster like how so many people had perceived him as. The primordial God, Erebus, had influenced him in a very rare moment of weakness for the young man. A fraction of a second was all it took for him to tempt Tim into letting the curse lose control.
The memory still made Tim livid. This monster in front of him was the same, but to an even greater extent. While Tim’s rampaged was focused on defeating bandits, here there was no rhyme nor reason for it.
Nothing Tim could notice, at least. I’ll save you, just give me time.
Hemera, the goddess-half-sister of Tim’s ancestor, crouched down slinging Tim’s arm over her shoulder. Her shapely body didn’t look like it was made for battle, her long pale red dress definitely didn’t paint her as a fighter, but she had carried Tim quite well.
“I… have been thinking why I’m doing this.” Tim finally heard the Goddess say. “I became distracted.”
“You tried figuring things out now of all times?!” Tim winced; the monster struck hard. If this had been an official job, this monster would’ve been classed higher than Tim’s currently measly C-Rank. The look on Hemera’s face as Tim spoke made the young man think he wasn’t supposed to say that.
She didn’t even say anything to retort. No insult, no witty reply as a comeback. “…sorry.”
“No, I… damn it, this isn’t working.” Tim muttered. “Wolf!”
Without a beat Tim’s companion materialized. Its flame-like fur glistened as the monster took notice of the large guardian wolf. “We need to hide, keep it busy.”
The wolf didn’t even look back at Tim as it moved towards the monster. They managed to hide under a rather large tree as the Wolf distracted the monster. Tim could feel it rampaging close.
“I never thought about it. You are right. It wasn’t something I needed to think about: Help mother’s decedents control their gift, and if not, help them move on to the afterlife.” She looked at him. “But I taught you an art which you could actively transform into a deity. Was this still a wise course of action?”
“Is this because of him?” Tim looked over the monster, careful not to let it see him.
“He had achieved Godhood to try and kill my father.” Hemera was talking about Timόtheos, the special son of Nyx and source of Tim’s curse. “If you end up like him…”
“Too late to care about that now.” Tim grimaced. “Unless you have some way for me to unlearn it.”
Divine Magic.
The magical art so repulsive to deities not a single of them even opened conversation with Hemera when she asked about it, or so she told Tim. Not one but the Icebergian God Baldr, that is. The Icebergian God had gotten wind of the Sinnian step-sibling deities’ plan of stopping Nyx’s lineage and deemed it an honorable enough cause. Being a God, of course, there was a catch: he wanted to see their champion, Tim (the God’s words not his), prove his resolve.
This resulted in the Hólmganga between Tim and an old Icebergian warrior who wanted to die fighting. This was the aforementioned first kill. Since then, Tim had not killed again. He had not killed the bandits in Quanny village (despite his rampage), and he never planned on doing it to anyone else. It wasn’t a matter of some naïve righteousness. It was a simple thought of ‘who in their right mind goes around killing people?’
The goddess muttered. “The resolve to destroy is the same as the resolve to save. The only difference is the hand who holds the blade.”
“Huh?”
“Baldr told me that. But I may have paraphrased it.” The goddess smiled. “There were a lot of swearing when he said it.”
Tim let out a breath, smiling.
“You taking my essence for yourself was not an accident, Tim, dear.” Hemera looked at Tim. “You understood divinity more than the typical mortal, that much is certain.”
She said it before. And Tim’s gut is telling him she was doing it out of some unfounded reason born from desperation. But if he was going to rescue the one inside that inklike monster, Tim would need to rely on his new magic.
The reason Tim’s direct line had survived was because of the sheer number of individuals awakened in their line. He was the forty second person in their line. Apparently, the others didn’t even make it past ten generations before being wiped out. The ones who were on the survived barely had anyone manifest it. This must also be the case for the one they’re currently after.
The spooky forest, even during midday, was draped with a very thick fog. But sunlight was abundant, it even bounced off the fog illuminating everything. Tim didn’t waste time. As they were talking, the young man had been absorbing light.
“Divine magic, huh.” Tim muttered. “Let’s put this to the test.”
Tim’s body suddenly enveloped itself with a dim purplish light, quickly disappearing into a purplish translucent glass-like matter. It felt like Tim going completely nightlike.
“Be careful, Tim.” Hemera called as Tim went for the monster.
“Wolf.” Tim muttered, and his companion materialized again. Tim saw the monster confused as it lost track of the Wolf.
Tim extended his arm and his palm conjured a dim purple crystal-like ball of light. “We don’t need to kill it. Just topple it down so I can purify it.”
The wolf huffed, keeping low, ready to launch at its prey.
“This can blind it.” Tim held the ball in front of the ethereal wolf. “This is also made from my light magic. You know what to do.”
Again, the wolf huffed. It held the crystal ball by its mouth and slowly walked around the monster as it went into its astral form.
After the disaster of a situation the pair found themselves when they tried protecting Quanny village. Tim tried to train his Wolf. Not conventionally, of course. The mutt would rather sleep than trying and humor his attempts at fetch. Instead, Tim spent a few hours demonstrating to the Wolf how his magic worked. Both the magic he had gotten from the company and, later, the skills he figured out with his Divine magic. It worked, somewhat. The Wolf would actually cooperate with how Tim would approach a situation. But they were far from a synchronized pair.
“Do it when I raise it up.” Tim slowly paced to the monster’s side. It finally noticed them.
Tim still needed to dictate what to do. Otherwise, the Wolf would just go back to its dominating instincts and fight it like a brute. And that’s all well good, so long as it was the creatures it would prey on around its territories back in the Phoenix mountains. But they were both out of their element here.
“Sorry ‘bout this!” Tim casted his most used spell: the Brand spell No. 042-T or, as Tim nicknamed it, the Grav-à-tête spell. “Wolf!”
The monster was flailing around as it helplessly levitated up. Its tarlike dark matter dripped on the ground making a pool of shadow as it rose a good twenty meters up. Tim’s Wolf kept its astral form as it jumped into the monster’s belly. It tapped its mouth against the monster’s unblinking eye. The Wolf crushed the crystal with its mouth and it exploded in an extremely blinding light. Tim, with the help of his new magic, was not blinded in the slightest and further casted his spell slamming the creature back into the ground!
Right before it hit the ground Tim saw his Wolf already changing colors from absorbing Tim’s light spell as it blinded the monster. Its ethereal blue hue changed into Tim’s purplish light.
“Good.” Tim dashed! He didn’t give the monster any quarter and casted another spell.
Tim summoned ten crystal statues of Hemera surrounding the grounded monster. The young man noticed his light slowly burning the tarlike substance as the statues grabbed the monster and immitted a very bright and burning light which emptied the foggy forest of any and all shadow.
“C’mon!” Tim added another spell on top it. The light rays from Tim’s crystal statues were very pronounced and with Tim’s spell, the rays of light quite literally crystalized into sharp blades cutting through the tarlike substance like a hot knife. The monster’s dark matter was quickly cut all over the place as it tried flailing around. It broke two of the crystal Hemera statues but the rest burned even brighter. The monster finally stopped moving as Tim’s crystalized rays of light became a labyrinthian cage of purplish crystals. As much as it wanted to move, each cut from the crystal blades burned through like it was actual sunlight.
With its last death throes, the monster finally went limp and stopped moving.
Tim was lest a bruised mess as his Wolf stood beside him, completely at the ready. It eyed the monster’s body. This was the first time Tim had subdued a proper monster. But the real prize was the one underneath. It was a kid! The one inside the monster was on his late teens, his unkept raven hair was close looking to Tim’s. The kid suddenly tried speaking. “Where…?”
He had a Savantí accent, Tim realized. Had this child been walking around as a monster till he reached Fiore all the way from Seven? “I feel light headed-” The boy tried sitting up, but Tim kept his upper body on his lap as Tim checked the child’s face for a minute or so.
“Tim? Has it been taken down?” He heard Hemera walk towards them.
A sense of dread washed over Tim as he noticed using magic sensory. The young boy’s magic energy was depleting fast! “Hey! Hey… you’re going to be fine.”
“You stopped me?” Tim heard the boy speak softly. “Thank you.”
“Wait, no no no no no…” Tim didn’t have time to look back. “Hemera! I… something happened to the-”
Tim exhausted all of his magic options. The boy had no visible wounds; Aid was out of the question. Also the nearest town was a least two hours walk. Even if Tim could somehow ride the Wolf and arrive under half of that time-
“You have slayed this semi-divine beast quite admirably.” The boy suddenly became full nightlike. But he didn’t move save for his lips. “Who knew a progeny from my quim-wife’s bastard line would come to learn God Slaying magic?”
“Father?!” Tim heard Hemera call as she ran towards them. “What have you done to this child?!”
The ‘boy’ laughed. “Absolutely nothing, for once. This was all thanks to the dear Tim here.”
It’s laughed morphed into a humorous cackle. “You actually thought you learned something called ‘Divine magic’? The only divine thing about that magic is the Goddess you have violated and taken its domain from!”
“God slaying? No…” Tim’s eyes became widened, morphing his face into a scowl.
“Credit where credit is due, bastard progeny.” Tim could feel the primordial God’s smile behind his voice. “You killed quite a strong divine monster.”
“…”
“Quite literally, you rend its divine essence much like in the stories. The perfect magic for killing Gods. Thus, the ‘Divine’ moniker.”
“I have high expectations of you, Tim. So does your father. We will see each other personally sometime in the future.” The ‘boy’s’ voice was fading. “Oh, the child’s dying now. I shall pass on the good word. Farewell.”
Tim was left with the dead child. He could feel the anger boiling over Hemera. “He knew… they all knew…”
Tim didn’t say anything to her. He was livid too, but there was nothing to be done for now. Tim closed the child’s eyes; he could at least manage to do that.
Word:
2423/2423
2423/2423
