30: Forest Formation
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Dremea, Tarmack, Stoneskin, and I met Artemis down an old alleyway near my school. A few days had passed since Spirit Boy’s death, and it was starting to sink in. A melancholy had fallen over me, and my parents, friends, and even teachers had noticed it. No chance I could explain what was going on, though, at least to anyone except Saoirse and Eva.

That was partially why we were here actually, having moved the timeline for the sideways district up considerably. We needed a place to escape from the hunters, since the secret war with them was heating up.

“My associate should be here any moment,” Artemis said, tapping her foot with a frown.

I gave her a skeptical look. “So what happened to the need for a lot of power?”

“If you’re going to be my priestess, I need you alive, and I need you to have a place of worship,” she said, still absent mindedly tapping her foot. “Thus, I’ve decided that I will call in a favour. My associate will provide the power to open a single doorway, and I will provide the tools to do so. It will be up to the rest of you to forge the new sideways district after this.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure what to say other than that.

“Artemis, ma’am?” Dremea murmured shyly. “If I might… ask a question?”

Artemis eyed the small peafowl girl up and down for a moment, then nodded. “Only if I may ask you one of my own?”

“Oh, okay…” she mumbled, brows scrunched together in thought. “Well, I was just wondering why you’re so… chill? Like, you’re a freaking goddess. It feels so strange to just be talking to you like this.”

“You are correct, I am a goddess,” Artemis smiled. “However, as much as it pains me to admit it, my current power is less than a shadow of my former might. Unlike some of my peers, I recognise that.”

“Ah… that makes sense,” the small girl murmured. “Y-you can ask your question now…”

“Are you interested in men? What about women?” the goddess asked bluntly. “Romantically, that is.”

“W-w-what?” Dremea squeaked, clearly taken off-guard by the question. “I mean, yeah? I’m straight? Why?”

“I was considering asking you to be one of my priestesses, but you appear to be incompatible,” the raven-haired deity, sighed, disappointed.

The little feathered witch looked more than a little perturbed. “How am I incompatible?”

“She asks her priestesses to take a vow of celibacy from sex with men,” I explained, wrestling with a giggle. “I’m gay, so yeah… it’s not a problem for me. If I had to guess, I’d say she really just wants to be surrounded by pretty lesbians, but—“

“Cheeky little piglet,” Artemis growled, stopping my words at the source with a hand.

Laughing, I mumbled through her hand, “What kind of insult is that?”

“An old one,” she huffed, taking her hand away, only to cuff me gently on the side of the head.

“Artemis, ma’am,” a voice from the darkness of the alleyway said, resolving itself into the shape of a woman. “You wished to see me?”

The woman was a bit on the older side, and with meat on her bones. She gave off some pretty huge motherly energy, and I instantly pegged her as some sort of caretaker goddess. What surprised me about her was the sharp ridges of stone that adorned the sides of her brows and cheekbones. Motherly stone goddess, maybe? Except she was obviously deferring to Artemis, the perpetual teenager.

“Cybele,” the huntress said, greeting the older woman with a touch to her hand. “Thank you for coming, I need your powers of safe harbour and protection.”

“Oh?” Cybele asked, tilting her head like an aging hound.

“This place was once the site of an entryway into the local sideways pocket space,” Artemis explained, poking a funny coloured stone wall. “I need you to open it again, and allow access to a small space for these folks to expand upon.”

“You… I will use much of my current magical reserves!” Cybele exclaimed, frowning in our direction. “Are you sure you wish to—“

“How much of my power did I feed you during the Contraction Wars?” Artemis interrupted. “You owe me, Cybele, and that debt has come due.”

Cybele didn’t look happy, and the expression she extended to us mortals was not a friendly one.

“We’ll be creating a temple to Artemis inside it,” I blurted quickly. “We can add a side shrine to you, if you’d like? Have people give thanks for the help you’re going to give us?”

She tapped her foot for a moment, frowning up a stony little storm, but then just as quickly deflated. “That is acceptable, for now. When there is room in the sideways district, I want a temple of my own.”

“You’re not in a position to negotiate anything Cybele,” Artemis said, almost hissing with displeasure. “However… what my priestess proposes is not a bad plan. The old pantheons are gone, shattered and destroyed. New alliances will need to be forged. We may as well start here.”

“Fine,” Cybele sighed, clearly losing her will to argue with the stronger goddess. “Let’s get this done, then. I can only spare enough for a space the size of a small city block. Everything else is on you.”

With that, she stepped forward, balling her fist as she did so. The magic that built in her hand was like a physical thing, pressing out against the surrounding world. The pressure of the magic began to feel like a strange, mental wind that pressed against us, pushing out in all directions.

Cybele’s fist began to change into something more. Grey stone flowed up out of her skin like water, then hardened into a dense ball of granite. Crystal grew out of that ball at random angles, until her fist had become a mace of rock and quartz. Then, in one swift, violent motion, she smashed it into the wall with the force of a mountain goddess.

The wall, rather than explode into rubble, remained intact after the initial blow. She pounded at it again, and again. For almost a minute, she vented her wrath on the old stone bricks, until they finally gave out. Even then, though, the wall wasn’t damaged. Instead, the bricks folded themselves up neatly, as though they had been crafted by a master of the art of origami. 

Beyond the new hole in the wall, a strange, black void twisted. It hurt to look at, like it was just… wrong in some fundamental, base way. Cybele turned to Artemis, gasping in deep breaths of air, and asked, “How do you wish it to be?”

In reply, the huntress placed her hand down gently on the mountain goddess’ shoulder and closed her eyes. Something passed between them, and Cybele nodded. “Yes. Fitting.”

Both goddesses closed their eyes and began to hum a haunting tune while reaching out to touch the wall. The black space beyond the door began to change, gaining first a massive, radiant moon, then stars. They twinkled with a soothing, but exuberant light that had me wanting to run through the woods, naked and laughing.

Slowly, as if revealed by retreating mist, old buildings were slowly revealed. They were obviously colonial era buildings, but as they became visible, they were just as quickly consumed by a wild, twisting forest.

Vines slithered up walls like hungry, writhing snakes, while moss crept over the stone and made its home in the crevices and cracks of the old buildings. Lush grasses and ferns pushed their way between cobblestones, buckling and smashing the ancient roads, and above it all, great towering oaks thrust up towards the night sky. They were joined by olive, fig, and pomegranate trees, which sheltered beneath the massive boughs of the giant oak trees.

They weren’t done, however, because huge boulders and weathered standing stones smashed their way up through the forest, knocking over trees and collapsing walls. The forest moved quickly to consume the interloping stone, even as yet more crashed their way out of the earth. In the distance, between the trunks of the recently grown forest, I saw a circle of such stones rise up inside what appeared to be a clearing. With them, the sound of rushing, gurgling water could be heard, and a stream quickly asserted a path through the rioting underbrush.

As we all watched the miracle of nature appearing in front of us, it was hard not to stand there in awe at the power of the two goddesses beside us. They had spoken of their current weakness, of how the poisoned leylines had sapped much of their old strength… and yet they could do this.

The formation of the forest beyond the door began to slow, until it halted entirely, and both goddesses gasped and pushed back from the portal. They caught their breath, eyes closed as they rested.

“It’s all yours, now, Gauntlette,” Artemis said after several moments. “There is a grove of worship within, and a shrine to Cybele near the entrance. I must warn you, though, explore the sideways with great care.”

“W-why is that?” I asked, still a little stunned from their display of raw power.

“The sideways space is just a stepping stone,” Cybele groaned, resting her back against the old stone wall. “Even the greatest of spirits, deities, and fae monsters do not dare to tread what lies beyond. There are realms of pure suffering, where the mind is stripped of all that makes it unique by intelligences so vast they defy comprehension, or endless twisting corridors of time and space that will trap you forever in their dusty embrace. I have even, once, when I was younger and more adventurous, glimpsed a strange forest, where great mirrored orbs hang.”

“She is correct,” Artemis almost whispered, her voice dipping low into memory. “The magic of those places is not receptive to the will of a spirit. I have heard tell of some few mortals who gained a fraction of control over the strange energies out there, but any who knew their methods were hunted to extinction long ago. So please, I know you are young and prone to bouts of hormonal stupidity, but I beg that you keep safe in the sideways. For your own sake, as well as mine.”

Bowing my head, I clamped down on my excited and overactive imagination and murmured, “Yes, mistress.”

“Good girl,” she smiled, tilting my head up with an outstretched finger. “Now, I think it is time for you to explore your new temple, and for us to rest. Maybe your prayers will speed our recovery along.”

 

WHY IS THIS STORY SO HARD TO WRITE?? It just doesn't flow like the others do :(. Getting this chapter done was a strugglefest. Still, I'm happy with the results :)

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