content notes: violence

Learning about Han the Sun was difficult. Not because he was hard to find — or follow. Like most of the isolated goddes, Han did little and said less. Some of what Iberto learned, he learned from the times Han helped him train.

Han could be stopped but never trapped. He would slip out of traps or bonds or holds like, well, like light through fingers. Not even the Great Goddess could capture him.

Discreet questioning of the other goddes brought more information. That Han was bound only by restrictions he himself chose. When he was not so weakened, Han had a need to learn and explore matched by few of the other goddes. A need he was unable to give into while weakened by the lack of Called.

If Han noticed Iberto’s interest and questions, he said nothing.

When Iberto had learned everything he could from Han the Sun, he turned to the monks.

Iberto knew, from his time before coming here, that many still worshipped Han the Sun. The god had only lost his called a generation ago. So, whatever the monks had done to weaken Han was recent (relatively).

Here, Iberto lucked out. He had continued stalking and spying on the monks when he had free time and had found a convenient niche to listen to the education of the youngest monks. The goddess watched through his eyes and raged quietly at the lies the monks told, the way they twisted the young minds entrusted in their care. But the Great Goddess was a patient hunter and did not distract him as he went about his own hunt.

Which was how he came to overhear a lesson one day on how the monks had ‘saved’ the people from the ‘misguided’ worship of the ‘dangerous sun god.’

In the monks’ telling, the peoples’ worship of the Sun gave him power — power that strengthened the physical Sun, until its rays became the brutal summer heat that parched fields and dried rivers. The Sun’s boundless light was not a gift given freely but a threat to the ‘natural order.’ According to the monks, the Sun encouraged peasants and other ‘lesser’ people to look above themselves, wives to break their marriage vows, and children to forsake their family.

Iberto had been lucky in his family, even if he had lost them early. In his opinion, some families deserve to be abandoned.

In short, the monks took every good thing of the Sun and twisted it into bad. Every bad thing of the Sun they magnified, making it worse. By spreading these new versions of Han the Sun and the danger of worship, the monks had weakened his following enough that when his old Called died, there had been none present to replace him and Han had not been able to leave the temple to seek one.

A fact which must have infuriated the free-roaming god.

—-

People still came to the temple — he had seen them many times during his months there. Most of them never saw the goddes. As he himself once had, they passed through the temple halls and paths blind to the powers that surrounded them. Commonly, he learned, people could only see a godde they had a tie to — as Iberto himself had had a tie to the Great Goddess even before he came to the temple.

And like Iberto, the called usually came to the temple for their own reasons. They met by chance the godde that called them. Few had arrived in quite as… noticeable a fashion as Iberto, or made sacrifice at the altar before meeting their godde.

Of course, the requirements for each godde were different. The chance that another would sacrifice just the right thing to be called, while saying to correct prayer, and avoid being ejected by the monks… well, Iberto had not realized at the time just how lucky he had been.

(He occasionally wondered about the people who had pursued him into the temple, but not often. They could not touch him now, even if they dared to try, and that part of his life was over.)

Hanna, called of The Green, told him of her calling when he asked. She had been meditating in the temple gardens when she stumbled across The Green and recognized it (as Iberto had not recognized the Great Goddess). Fear and awe had her reflexively reciting her own prayer — taught young to the charcoaler’s daughter who depended on The Green’s bounty to survive.

And that he realized, with the Goddess purring approval in the back of his mind, was the other key. Almost all the goddes which still had called were ‘good’ goddes — those the monks had not yet been able to poison people against. A follower of The Green might come openly to the temple to meditate in the gardens. It wasn’t common, since the main temple room was managed by the monks and few visitors went past its confines. But it happened.

One of the ‘evil’ goddes, like the goddess had long been and Han the Sun was becoming, would have few worshippers daring to enter the temple. They would stay far away from the monks and any who might recognize their allegiance.

Iberto had not expected to find a called for Han the Sun in the temple, but he was sure now it would not be possible. He would need to leave the temple, to go once more among ordinary people. Somehow, he would need to single out one who suited the godde and bring them back to the temple.

His thoughts were interrupted by a faint scuff. Iberto rolled out of his hiding spot just in time, as a giant paw swiped where he had just been sitting. Springing to his feet, Iberto smiled at his goddess. A whisper of a thought had his smile widening into a grin.

He ran toward the great cat, taking her by surprise. It was an advantage. Enough that he could dodge her second swipe and swing himself over her back, locking his arms around her neck and legs around her barrel.

The Great Goddess’ delighted laughter echoed in his mind as she ran — both trying to shake him off and taking joy in his presence.

Mine.

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