If there was one sensation I despised, it was insecurity, especially when it combined with ignorance. Questioning myself about whether to take a specific path, made worse by my lack of information to make an informed decision about the potential consequences of those paths, was something I utterly loathed. I wanted to have a reasonable chance of predicting the outcomes of a course of action before committing to it, not simply going in and hoping for the best. But here, I didn’t have that luxury. I had no idea what repercussions my actions, or even my inactions, would have. There was a power out there I couldn’t predict beyond some basic reasoning, and even that reasoning was sketchy at best.

  Worse, said power was, well, it was powerful. Beyond me, as much as that admission galled me, and in possession of a power base I had no way of touching, at least at the moment. A part of me wanted to purge the worshippers of Sunna, scour their little community until nothing was left. I was confident that I could accomplish it if I focused on their destruction and disregarded collateral damage, though that assumed that Sunna herself wouldn’t take action.

  On Mundus, the moment the Gods had taken off the kid’s gloves, I had been done for. There had been no defending against the attack, nothing but burning heat and instant oblivion. Sunna had, to the best of my knowledge, needed no army nearby, no agent to act through. There had been nobody in the vicinity but me and the Nidh?gg. And yet, she had been able to utterly annihilate me, probably without even noticing my destruction during her battle with the Dragon.

  Sure, I was more powerful here on Terra, even if my level hadn’t reached the same height it had on Mundus, I was stronger now. More powerful, more versatile, certainly more capable. More experienced in wielding my power, too, while adding additional facets to my powers, even if I didn’t understand some of those aspects, especially when it came to those of a divine nature.

  Additionally, it was possible, maybe even plausible, that Sunna was weaker when it came to influencing events on Terra, simply because she had a lot fewer followers here than she had on Mundus. Sunna, as part of the Asgardian pantheon, had been venerated by the inhabitants of two entire continents. Additionally, her domains of the Sun, harvest and fertility meant she was widely worshipped in other parts of the world, too. Countless farmers had prayed to her for good harvests, as had numerous people who wanted children, all adding their power to a massive stream she could drink from at her leisure.

  Here, on Terra, there were a lot fewer people, and neither of the two religions dominant on Mundus had been able to fully establish a hold on this world. So, it stood to reason that Sunna received less power from Terra. But whether that meant she could project less power into Terra was a question I couldn’t answer.

  Thanks to my interactions with Lady Hecate, I was reasonably confident that there were more worlds out there than Mundus and Terra, maybe many more. If the Gods were simply collecting power from all those worlds, similar to the way a government collected taxes, and could project that power wherever they wanted, it would mean Sunna was as powerful on Terra as she was on Mundus. Meaning, she could destroy me at her leisure with very little I could do to stop her.

  That possibility brought up the question of limitations. Why hadn’t she simply burned me away already? If she had the ability, she could have destroyed me numerous times, despite my usual avoidance of the sun. At times, I had been out in the sun, either bearing the burning sensation her curse inflicted upon me while in its rays or using some protection to provide shade for myself. But those protections were comparatively flimsy, certainly not strong enough to prevent a deity from smiting me if she had the desire.

  Logically, that meant something was stopping her. One option for that was apathy, or disinterest. Regardless of my own self-assessment, I might not rate Sunna's personal intervention at the moment. She might not care enough to smite me, as long as I was simply moving around the continent and doing my thing. If that were to be the case, wiping out a fairly large community dedicated to worshipping her could change that quite quickly. Or maybe not. On Mundus, she had only acted after the Nidh?gg and I had accomplished our goal, though that might have been because she needed to wait for the sun to rise.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  That particular course of events suggested a few more things I had yet to fully understand. Brought up questions I had yet to find answers to. For example, the question of why no other deity had intervened. Sunna was part of the Asgardian Pantheon, alongside deities like Tyr, Odin and Thor, all of whom could, or maybe should, have been interested in stopping me, given the domains mythology assigned to them.

  No such intervention had occurred. Only Sunna, who had been the one to bury the Nidh?gg’s Soulprison in the first place, had acted. Again, had it been apathy and disinterest that kept those deities from acting, or was it impotence?

  Another possibility, one that explained Sunna's lack of action, was that acting carried a price. Maybe a significant cost paid in something valuable, even to a deity. What currency that price might be, I had no idea, but given what punishment the system had inflicted on those people in the flooded valley, I could imagine that even a God would think twice about breaking a system-enforced rule.

  Similarly, Sunna’s attack on Mundus might have targeted the Nidh?gg, with me simply getting caught up as collateral damage. After all, if one wanted to destroy a building-sized primordial dragon, a human-sized target right next to the dragon could easily get crushed. So, here on Terra, I might be safe, as long as I didn’t stand too close to primordial dragons while they challenged the Sun goddess.

  However, it was also possible that the first indication that I had pushed things too far was a radiant beam of energy burning me away, leaving me unable to fight back. I had no confidence in defending myself from such an attack, so my best bet was to keep things on the down-low. To stay away from attacks similar to those I had used on Mundus, when I had worked to unleash the Nidh?gg and in the slaughter we had engaged together.

  Those events might have made me the Pale Lady, thus determining which domains the deity was linked to. Meaning, I should stay clear of large-scale Ice Magic, especially the kind that disturbed the weather. Draining the life of other beings to augment my power was also out, as that was what I had used to destroy the elven tree and funnel that power into the Nidh?gg’s devastating magic.

  A slow, almost lazy, smile started to creep on my face when I realised that I might just be able to hit two birds with a single stone here. One thing I hadn’t actively used when working with the Nidh?gg was Mind Magic. We had used devastating elemental magic, not the subtle, insidious tricks Mind Magic was much more suited for. Sure, it wasn’t impossible to use Mind Magic on a large scale, to simply blast Mind Magic out and try to shred your enemies with brute force, but it was about as inefficient and wasteful as one could magically be.

  For a moment, I cursed my impetuousness, as I had told Maggie about my presence and the lessons I was planning to take up again. Without that, I might have been able to keep myself completely concealed, not interacting with the locals at all. Instead, I could have become a ghost, creeping through the night and whispering into the dreaming minds of Sunna’s followers, planting doubts and creating conflict. With them knowing about my presence, it might be harder, but it could still work out.

  They would be confined inside, or in a fairly limited area around their community, meaning tensions should rise naturally, and with a bit of manipulation and mental corruption? It was quite possible, likely even, that their community started to turn on each other, especially if I managed to create some physical trouble, too. Framing people for mischief, implying impropriety, there were numerous ways to manipulate people, even without magical interference. The book Mrs Wu had given me, back when she had been training me, had multiple chapters on that, though I hadn’t memorised those chapters completely.

  But I had a feeling it could easily be enough to make these people question their life choices and break their community, until it all went up in smoke and flames. These people liked fire, so it should make them quite happy. Additionally, it would give me ample opportunity to experiment with my Mind Magic, until I mastered it to the point that I could recreate Sigmir’s mind. Lady Sunna’s followers would work quite well as test subjects.

  I only had to make sure that their magical defences couldn’t keep me out.

  For the first time since I saw their presence here, I started to smile. This might work out just fine.