1: Who she is

This story deserves to be an epic, unfortunately, I am no great story teller. What I am, is merely, a tree. Something that the other gods seem to have difficulty understanding, much to my amusement. 

In a world created by many gods, where for the sake of the world’s integrity (so it doesn’t fall apart like it already has several times in our disputes) we now limit our intervention in the world according to a series of rules. The most significant one, is that direct action may only be taken through the use of Avatars, which are denizens of the world with which we form a direct link. Each god gets one avatar, and may bless others and/or provide guidance based on how heavily worshiped they are. It’s basically a game, because the world kept breaking when we fought seriously, and that stops being fun pretty quickly.

My avatar is a tree. All I really want is to enjoy watching the world. My home is a place where nothing ever happens, so a world like this, so full of activity, is quite interesting to me. One particular entity of interest was a young woman who’d decided (quite irrationally I might add) to master self-transformation magic.

Self-transformation is considered taboo, though most wouldn’t know it. Seeing a mage transform into another creature isn’t too odd, but the reality is that no transformation is actually involved in those spells. They conjure up a new temporary body to put their mind and soul in, while storing their actual body in a pocket dimension for a while. Combined with a limited duration, even if they mess up pretty badly, they’ll just end up back in their original body after a while.

True self-transformation magic alters one’s original body. This can be incredibly dangerous as the changes are permanent. If one messes up and accidentally ruins their ability to cast spells, they will be unable to fix the problem themselves. Yet this young lady insisted on pursuing this study and actually managed to succeed. 

Well, actually, she was doomed to die a miserable death after failing and going insane. However, a certain god (wasn’t me) chose to intervene and guide her. This is truly what makes the story difficult to tell. You mortals do not see the world the same way we gods do. You see only what happens. We see so much more.

To properly explain why a god chose to help her out, I have to explain something happening in a different part of the world. Someone with great potential was chosen as a champion by the god of time. Champions are like someone a god chooses to give most of their blessings to. Some gods like to spread their blessings out to many, but the smaller ones often like to put everything on one person. I’m not yet sure if this strategy is because they have few worshipers, or the reason why they have few worshipers. I’m a tree, and never really cared about this whole contest to gain worshipers. I just like spectating.

This champion is seen by many as an antagonist. Their potential was just too great, and if the other gods didn’t intervene, they would conquer the world. This champion’s name was Wolfe. A commoner that just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, to learn time-magic. A magic, forbidden, because it is too powerful (and one of the few fields of magic capable of disrupting the stability of the world itself). Once the various gods realized what had happened, and how that change shifted the path of the whole world, they all began making their own plans to try and deal with it.

What makes Alicia special, is that she had the potential to oppose Wolfe. Her obsession with shapeshifting meant that she could be convinced to learn a technique for separating the body and mind that would preserve her memory when time is rewound. Except, she’s also a stubborn fool, and none of the gods involved in this tinkering were convinced it was worth the investment to do more than nudge her. So she did a half-assed version (I also suspect a few gods may have deliberately been sabotaging the efforts of others to guide her.)

The reason Alicia could be convinced to try this soul-magic trick, is because it enables greater safety when doing self-transformation. If her mind is separated from her body, then she doesn’t have to worry about accidentally making herself literally as dumb as a rock (A serious risk when doing self-transformation). 

However, Alicia wanted to preserve the sensation of living and being in a body. Full disconnection is like remotely controlling a body that isn’t yours, and she didn’t like that. So, after lots of study and research, she developed a way to do a partial split. Part of her mind was in her body, while part was secretly hidden in a pocket dimension. 

Thus, when Wolfe rewound time to redo things, her memories were partially affected and partially not (pocket dimensions and time magic interact in weird ways, and whenever the topic comes up, there’s always an argument over how it should work. At least item duplication is no longer possible, enough gods agreed on not allowing that). Poor Alicia was a confused mess the first few times as a result of the incomplete memory preservation. Despite the obvious problems, this was apparently good enough that no gods bothered with convincing her to protect her memories properly, and Alicia… well, she made a mess of things. Oddly enough, in the end, the final winner of all this was probably me, and one other god. Despite neither of us actually being very powerful.