Chapter 4: Problems

It was a year since the Sundering.

Reella was floating in space over the barren ice at Hotera’s very top. She manifested physically here. Monolithic in scale, still no mortal lived close enough to this frigid wasteland to see her. She didn’t want to be seen.

As cold space winds fluttered white divine garbs, the blonde deity stared at a big ball of orange fire in the distant dark.

According to her religion, Lady Reella created day and night to give mortals time to rest and work.

A lie.

Like the planet, that thing was always there. It scared her, as it was huge. It had to be. She knew how distance worked. To look that big while being so far it had to be at least a hundred times as big as she was at her largest.

Although, the scariest thing up here was actually everything else. Or, rather, the ‘nothing else’. All that empty, dark space between her and it. It surrounded the two of them and Hotera itself.

The dark was speckled with lights. The mortals gave her credit for them. They say she even arranged them in amusing shapes. The humans called them “constellations”, and thought they were a gift to give them something to stare at when the day was done. She took the credit, knowing not what they were.

Reella reached out with her incorporeal form, stretching it as much as she could in the great fire ball’s direction. She had grown much this year. All its casualties were quite a boon. Yet, she was still so far: grasping at nothing with invisible, immaterial feelers.

She focused more on that gargantuan physical body still floating above the atmosphere. Why did she come up here this often? To feel pangs of anxiety at the unknown? At least such pangs were dampened by the songs of power, warmth, and pleasure her souls fed her.

No, she was here to remind herself of her goals, as always. With enough time, she’d reach it. Who knows what could happen then? It probably had energy like Hotera did for the taking: maybe more. Who knows what those lights in the void held? Perhaps more worlds. Perhaps more humans to guide and rule.

If only she had known what was really out there, and how small she actually was.

A disturbance wracked space nearby. The dark was warbling to the right of Reella. It looked like all the stars were moving, shaking. The deity was smart enough to know it was something else. The space itself seemed to morph. Invisible windows to the stars, made of paper, being tugged and compressed. It was massive.

Something came through: a foot bigger than Hotera. The skin tone was a mix of light-red and light-brown that was equal parts beguiling and foreign. The toes wiggled, jostling a loose, thin sandal strap about.

The rest of the leg stepped through, then another one and this whole being’s body was now intruding by Reella’s domain. A horrible sound rang forth as the entity exhaled a jarring roar.

Reella watched on in disbelief. It was a someone, not a something. It was female in fact, at least in shape. The deity assessed the invader from toe to head. The sandals had a bright-green shade of color she hadn’t seen even among the richest nobles. With just one strap, it hardly stayed on as the invader waggled her foot to and fro.

Slender yet shapely legs were bare up until the thigh region. The invader wore a thick stone-blue pair of super short pants. A smooth and flawless abdominal region was uncovered, but a thin white top of sorts draped over the invader’s bosom via the shoulders. No fabric for the arms or pits.

Then there was the face. Admittedly fetching, with dark brown lips. The eyes were red not just in the iris, but through and through. No pupil or sclera, just a deep, bright red that shifted with light. Her hair too: thick strands of bright blood red covering her ears and a bit lower. The hair was flashing, and the invader’s eyes perked up.

The being’s fingers grabbed a single strand. The megalith brought it to her mouth where it hovered in place. The flashing slowed, giving the briefest moment of respite for Reella’s senses till they were assailed by some harsh, incomprehensible noise louder than innumerable thunder storms.

“Bvzknokfnzzzxkbmtrturktailzkurztak”

Strident and sibilant syllables: each layered on-top the other as though the being was speaking millions of thoughts at once. Reella could gleam the complexity, but not the meaning, and it infuriated her to not understand. Fear returned as the Hoterian God noticed where this great being was looking: the great ball of orange fire.

Reella’s transcendent mind wracked with dread. She had to know this being’s intents. She had to protect her planet.

--==--==--==--

Kay stepped through her warp hole into a spot she deemed ‘decent’. The young adult dressed in comfy party clothes today. The jean shorts and crop top were new; her flip-flops just the ones she liked best from her wardrobe.

No sooner than she released a nice, deep sigh did she get a call from her friend. She lifted a strand of neural-filaments to her mouth.

“Hey Lise! What timing, I just found a star for tonight. It’ll be perfect for the party!” She paused, letting Lise speak while she studied the burning gas-mass in better detail. Always the chattier of the duo, Kay chimed in whenever she could.

“Yeah Lise it should be fun.”
“What, she’s coming too? No way~”

“Oh it’s an orange Dwarf.”

“Yeah I know, they are pretty rare. Usually they have some planets too. Let me see if I can find one.”

Kay looked down and left and, as luck would have it, there was a world right by her toes.

“Neat. It’s one of the best kind Lise.”

She leaned down to reach towards it all languid like. Pressing her fingers into the surface, Kay used her psionic will to stop the thing from breaking completely. Her pointed nails dug into the crust a little. ‘No biggie.’, she thought.

“Yeah it’s blue and green and everything. Looks young too.”

“I don’t know I didn’t check. I guess I can see a few hundred million where I’m looking.”

She straightened up and moved the planet towards her mouth. Kay paused as something pushed against her tummy: something tiny. She dismissed it as space wind or something, idly scratched her navel, and then brought the world right up to her lips.

“No I won’t save you any. I’ll tell you how it tastes.”

A chuckle later and she bit into the thing.

Mouth full with a big lump of the planet, she talked to Lise again.

“It’s not bad!”

--==--==--==--

Reella panicked. The invader was making a move straight for Hotera. It was hard to focus with all that otherworldly cacophony the red-brown behemoth emitted. Reella managed.

Every human’s gaze and every tree’s rustle and every rock and mountain and pebble and grain of sand gave her a most horrifying perspective.

Red-brown digits filled the skies of Hotera. They slammed into the world. Pillars as divine and large as Reella’s form. Her people were confused. They thought it was their Lady, but the strange shade of skin brought them doubts. Then again, what else could be that large?

One of the invader’s fingers took out Edath beneath its soft print. Macint had itself bisected by the invader’s long fingernail. Some of it was still alive, cast beneath continent thick keratin and within Kay’s nail bed.

Reella felt great wounds in the planet. Millions died. She saw them, but the souls didn’t flow into the earth for her ethereal form, or even into her physical avatar: they went right into the skin of the invader.

So quickly Reella’s perspective on things was changing. She went from being the apex to the vulnerable. Vulnerable: she hadn’t felt this since epochs ago, when she was the same as the ‘dirt’ caught in this space monster’s nails.

She had to protect herself first and foremost. She took her incorporeal body and brought it into her physical avatar. She had never done it before, though knew she could. In the moment it was her only option. Reella sucked it into her physical form. At once, her body expanded to the largest it could be.

She was was now twice the size of Hotera, yet still smaller than the invader’s foot.

Such a size was the largest she’d ever been thus far: it was the largest should could be now. Worse, it’d the largest she would ever be if this invader took the planet from her.

Reella flew up to the entity, eager to stop them. She couldn’t lose all those people. She needed to save them, at least some of them. She couldn’t lose her future here.

The deity started at the invader’s foot. She pulled and pried the toes. They were too heavy to move. Heavier than the world. Reella was humiliated here. She was the one to have beings by her toes: not the other way around. She made no progress and flew up to the invader’s stomach.

She pounded and punched. All she got in return was a faint gurgle. That umber-toned flesh didn’t even move. She was small here, but still bigger than a bug was to a human in comparison. Was the invader simply that strong that she didn’t feel her efforts?

The being’s attention was elsewhere, eyeing that planet with flickers of hunger in her monochromatic eyes. Reella was running out of time.

The deity tried using her radiant light. She fired searing beams at the expanse of skin. Wave after wave of crystal barrages exploded over the invader. Reella’s target paused for a moment, eyes fixated on the planet and... just scratched her stomach where the bulk of the assault landed.

Reella saw the invader bite into Hotera like an apple, still unleashing noise from her mouth. She was horrified. She wanted to assess the damage. She tuned into the prayers of everyone on Hotera. Even with her ethereal self disjointed from the world, there was still a residual connection of sorts.

She got back screams. Confusion, horror. Many held hope Reella would save them, but many did not. They gave up. Their Lady wasn’t there.

Reella’s fears disappeared, replaced with incandescent rage. She flew up to the invader’s bosom and yelled. She tried to communicate with the being through all the hissing harsh noises rocking her ears. Reella reached in with her mind to try and send a message.

“By my divine order, release my planet at once!”

It was taxing. It was millions of times trickier than speaking into the mind of a human. She didn’t even know if her message got through. Something must’ve though.

Mouth still full, the invader looked down towards her.