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Trust her to bring the conversation back to the practical.
“You and others from Otera have been taught that you are beneath the gods, and you were never even taught about the Greater Divinity. That is why you approach your abilities as clumsily as you do. Because you think you have to rely on your own power. But the Greater Divinity is a part of you as much as you are a part of it. Think of it this way: If the Divinity is like air, you can breathe it. You can imbue yourself with it.” Suddenly, I remember how energy coalesced inside Myter, almost as if they’d breathed it in instead of creating it themselves.
Myter seems to notice my realization, because they nod. “Next time you use your gifts, instead of reaching for the energy inside yourself, breathe in the Divinity. Connect with that which is already a part of you. And then use that to power your gifts. You are not alone in this world; you never were. And the sooner you understand that, the more powerful you will be.
“Now then, Deka, try to create a pathway.”
Nodding, I close my eyes. And almost immediately, the combat state surges, allowing me to take in the streams of air moving around me. If I concentrate, I can imagine them as currents. Currents of power through which the Greater Divinity, presumably, travels.
I inhale, eyes flying open when I feel the power flowing into me. It doesn’t feel that much different from mine, truth be told. In fact, it feels like it’s a part of me, like it’s always been there, an old friend waiting to welcome me. And that’s precisely why it’s so insidious.
Anything this simple, this easy, comes with a cost. I know this very well, which is why I stop. I let the breath settle just enough to fill my belly but not so much that it takes me over. I can feel it inside me now, a power suffusing the emptiness there, pushing back at it.
I cling to that feeling, let it build as I concentrate on one of the trees across the grove, an elegant silver sapling whose crystalline leaves are slowly fading around the edges.
“All right,” I say, readying myself. “Let’s do this.”
I pinch the space between the air. Even before I can blink, I’m there, and I have to hold my hand out to keep from crashing into the trunk.
“Deka!” Britta’s excited gasp fills the air. “Deka, ye did it!”
Heart pounding, I pivot to face my friends, who are still on the other side of the grove. Even stranger, my head doesn’t hurt from the movement, and neither does my body. Nothing hurts at all, not even my muscles, which were exhausted just moments ago.
It’s like I’m filled now, my entire body calm with the feeling that came after I breathed in that air. The Greater Divinity…So that’s what it feels like, the force the Maiwurian gods spoke of. It’s not harsh, or demanding, the way I expected it to be. It just is.
And yet, I still don’t trust it.
I turn as Myter makes their way to me. “I did it,” I say to them. “I created a pathway.”
“And yet?” The godsworn seems to sense my hesitance.
“It felt…too easy.” I struggle to put my feelings into words. “Every time I’ve used a new ability before, I’ve had to struggle for it, bleed for it. But this…”
Myter steps forward, placing their hands on my shoulders. Their green eyes bore into mine as they say, “Remember always, Deka, the Greater Divinity is as much a part of you as you are a part of it. That’s why it’s so easy for you to use. Because it’s always been there with you.”
“But that can’t be right,” I rebut, skeptical.
“Why not?”
“Because if this has always been a part of me, why haven’t I ever been able to use it before? Why have I struggled doing every other thing?”
Myter smiles. “Because you weren’t taught to. No one in Otera was. And when you’ve been led down the wrong path, when you’re focused on it, you fail to see what’s in front of your very eyes. Don’t continue resisting the Greater Divinity, Deka. It’ll only be to your detriment if you do.”
With those unnerving last few words, the massive godsworn walks off, beckoning to my friends. “You four—with me. Deka needs to train. As do you.”
Li frowns. “But we don’t—”
“Go with them,” I interject. “And do as they say. All of you.”
Sighing, Li follows Myter, as do the rest of my friends. And I turn my focus back to what Myter just taught me. After all, we have only a short amount of time before we return to Otera—back to our enemies and near-constant danger.
Until then, my friends and I will train, get our abilities as powerful as we can. Because if we don’t, it’ll mean the ascension of the Oteran gods and the end of us all.
21
The Irfut I remember was a small, simple village: rows of brightly painted wooden cottages with straw roofs, a temple on the hill in the center, and, just beyond it, the forest, yet more cottages scattered around its edges. The one I grew up in stood a little way from the rest, a humble wooden building with a small stable next to it. It should be dusted in snow now, as should the entire village and the wall surrounding it, the wall that was built just last year by the jatu, supposedly to protect the villagers from the dastardly forces of the Gilded Ones.
When I add its shoddily built ramparts to the memory of Irfut I’m building in my mind, I grimace. It’s just another of the thousand things I hate about the village of my birth, and yet I have to put that hatred aside now. I have a door to open.
