Divi as a higher race of beings. I am aware of how this sounds, I uand the statements pretention and arrogance. Yet I also know it is true, if a mountain boasted of its ow, would we also decry the mountain as arrogant? Or simply true?

  With a few exceptions, most Divines are rather weak. Maisara’s orthodox cssification of Divines into Iions, Forces and Abstracts is fwed in this regard. A Force such as Zerus has little to do with almost every Iio an Iion like Asna easily rival an Abstract such as Kavaa. Maisara’s system is simply too orderly ao cssify everyone.

  In fact, why must a system eve? Do we need a guide to cats and dogs and horses, or are people simply able to y their eyes upon a dog and know it is a dog? Maisara would wish for us to pare graphs to make sure we are correct, I will simply trust my instincts. Everyone knows what a Divine is, because a Divine is a higher race of being. Maisara’s system reduces Divinity to a mere set of calcutions, mine once again races Divinity to its cssical ception. Mere iions are er than magis, I do not and have not ever sidered them as real Divines. If one gazes upon a Divine and those not feel respect for the sheer power within that being, then that being is simply an upjumped spirit, magi or some hastly pretender.

  After all, what is a God that feel fear?

  - Excerpt from “Natural Hierarchy”, written by Goddess Anassa, of Sorcery. Kept within the White Pantheon’s Closed Library

  A finger-snap caused a bright-red sphere to appear besides Anassa’s head. It lit up the tuhat the snake ahead was carving out, the monster was still bleeding but its wound was closing. It probably wouldn’t e at Anassa again. In fact, it definitely would not. Not with the frantic way it was digging through the dirt and tearing apart the Jungle’s roots as it tried to flee from the Goddess of Sorcery behind it.

  That gigantiake once again mao extend the distaween itself and Anassa by a mile. Anyone else but maybe Fer or Essa, it would have ran away from. Down here, even though two would have a problem. The Jungle roteg its defehe roots and vines were regrowing, trying to grab at Anassa to slow her down.

  Anassa let out a slow, deliberate yawn, her crimson eyes glinting with disdain. She could feel its gaze b into her, though it dared not look directly. Good. Let it watch. Let it uand just how insequential it truly was. Roots tried to take their shot at the Goddess in her pristine red silk dress. The sphere beside Anassa erupted outward, its crimson light slig through the air like a bde. Roots snapped and splintered into thousands of jagged fragments, their severed ends curling as if recoiling from her touch. Anassa finished her yawn and smacked her lips together. The snake had mao furiously burrow through the dirt and rod stone in that darkness, the trail of red blood from the hole Anassa had made when the monster had dived onto her was now growing thin. So it was a regeor, most Divines were, that wasn’t surprising.

  Anassa took a step. It was all a matter of perspective. He were snakes normally? Why should this snake be any grahan that? And if it was merely a snake, what sort of person would holy struggle catch up to it? Snakes were tiny little pests. Anassa took a step, and Anassa closed that tiny distaween her and the monster in a mere instant. The reptile screamed underground its rear was lit up by red. The tunnel behind them started to colpse.

  Anassa did not particurly care about such trivialities. A ck of a way back was a mere hindrance. She wondered how far they had gone already. She was trailing behind the monster for a while now. The Jungle’s murmuring was getting louder too. It wasn’t talking to Anassa though, it sounded faint, as if Anassa had her ear pressed against a door and was trying to overhear muffled whispers.

  And then, the jungle spoke, not in a single voice, but in a cacophony of tless others, each sylble yered atop another like yer of yer of posing bohey whispered, screamed, pleaded, and hissed, a symphony of defiand despair. Yet to Anassa, it was merely noise, background static to be ignored. “Who are you?” Anassa smiled to herself as she took aep. And again she was o the giant hissing snake.

  If there was anything that fuelled her fide was being grovelled before. It was knowing dominance was ensured. It was knowing that even though some creature did not know her was afraid of her. Anassa answered as Anassa would: “You do not have the credentials to ask me that.” Anassa said out loud as the snake kept on digging further. “Fer told me of your whispers. e at me!” The Goddess of Sorcery looked around in the underground tunnel. Dirt fell from all sides as the snake kept digging.

  The Jungle, in a rather disappointing manner, did not e at her. It remained silent. Anassa took a step in the darkness and stopped and waited. Sileno sound whatsoever. Anassa turned backwards, turned forwards, she was in the long tuhat the snake had just dug out… The snake was gone. She felt her dress g ts, her colr became tight. And Anassa burst out in ughter. “Who do you think you are?” Anassa shouted. “To attack me in my realm?”

  Anyone else would have shattered the delusion. Kassie would have been out of it already, Fer would have not been caught in the first pce. But Anassa let it keep going. She felt herself be strangled by her clothes. Naturally, her clothes were her creation, they would not strangle her. The illusion shattered and Anassa forced it ba herself. “Are we running already?” Anassa tauntingly asked again. The tunnel around her disappeared until it was just Anassa.

  Anassa gnced down, watg as roots slithered up her legs and coiled tightly around her neck. For a fleeting moment, she felt their weight pressing against her skin. But then she smiled, snapping her fingers. The pressure vahe roots dissolved into nothingness, revealed as mere struadness, figments born of the Jungle’s madness, now corralled by her own imagination.

  The darkness dissolved, repced by the familiar fines of the sunnel. Yet around Anassa, an eerie void stretched outward. It erfect sphere, as though some unseen force had radiated from her core and erased everything it touched. Trees, roots ah, all were gone, reduced to nothingness. “HOW!?” The Jungle roared at her and Anassa smiled.

  How was simple. Madness oed in one’s mind. Thus if heir own madness, could they not simply rationalize it away? Could they simply bring about ao its presence? How something hurt her if it did ? But try expining the logid rationale of that? Anassa took a step and once again closed the distaween her and the snake. A siep to cover a mile, in the same way that a mouse would gaze at a human i its strides.

  The Jungle’s cursing got louder as Anassa watched the snake. “ANASSA!” Kassandora’s shout echoed through the tuhe Goddess of Sorcery looked down to see the Goddess of War looking up at her. Crimson-haired Kassandora aly Fer. Iniri wood and Kavaa silver. Illusions, mad figments of imaginations. Kassandora clothed herself in armour as Joyeuse materialized in her hands.

  Did this pnt think it knew Anassa’s sisters and friends better than her? Did it think she could not fight illusions? Kassandora threw her sword up at Anassa. Fake. Immaterial. Kassandora would say something like “Ana!” instead, or she would have just said immediately what to do. Or she would have started buttering Anassa up. The sword touched Anassa’s red dress, slit it, touched her pale skin, and disappeared.

  Fer growled as Anassa reached out with her own mind. She heard the Jungle’s whispers, she silehem. They were mere figments of imagination, thus, they could be pushed away. This Kassandora was fake, but Anassa saw her. It wasn’t the Kassandora Anassa knew, but it was a Kassandora.

  And whatever the Kassandora was, any Kassandora was Anassa’s sister. The Goddess of War turned, her eyes started to bze, Joyeuse reappeared in her hand and she spun. Joyeuse arced downward in a fsh of crimson light, cleaving through the vine before it could reach her. The bde shimmered briefly, its edge glowing faintly as though imbued with purpose, before vanishing once more into nothingness. Fer’s nails grew into the roots hanging from the ceiling, Kavaa and Iniri followed suit to support her.

  That was how one tered madness. Many sidered it merely a on to be fired and fotten about. No, madness was just like magic. It was simply another realm of thought that required total and utter tration. Just as the Jungle created those illusions, so had Anassa possessed them. She knew Kassandora and Fer and Kavaa and Iniri. She was sure they would listen to her. In fact, she was so certain that any Kassandora would listen to her over some pnts that it was farcical to eain! In fact, it didn’t even have to be eained! It was simply how it was! Anassa fidently took aep forwards.

  She followed the burying snake as the moilted up. The Jungle would harmlessly cast its illusions at her. Kassandora would take over them once again, the Jungle would wipe them from existence. A beam of sunlight meant that the snake had reached the surface. Anassa took a delighted breath. It was getting stuffy chasing after it. She took aep, outside, as the snake hissed and fled from her. Now outside, she could see its magnifit size in its ey. As long as a small hall, it could have had a town built on the back of those shining green scales.

  Anassa took aep, to the front of the monster and looked down at it. The snake saw her, it kept its eyes on her. It hissed. Anassa snapped her fingers and a bst of sorcery, as if an artist had drawn a sword-strike onto reality, cut into the snake. House-sized scales cracked and hit the ground. The hissing stopped and the snake recoiled.

  It lowered its head as Anassa smiled down upon it and the ndscape. They emerged into a meadow led within the somewhere deep within the jungle. Where exactly, Anassa did not know but it was a surreal expanse of golden grass surrounded by t trees that scraped the clouds like skyscrapers. Anassa would have been fih being in the jungle proper, surrounded by flora of all kinds but this sunlit openness was surreal, as though the juself had peeled back its skin. Anassa put herself on guard as her crimsorailing behind her like spilled blood across the pristine field.

  The snake smiled at her.

  Anassa smiled at the snake.

  The snake was gone.

  Anassa cast a protective barrier around herself.

  Anassa took aep to the side, just in case.

  Anassa realised what had happened.

  She had gotten pulled into a delusionary realm of the Juhere would still be an Anassa outside, but she was the Anassa, and she was in here. Delusionary realms like this were bound to one’s soul. They were direct imprints onto the mind. Seperate realms, so to say, but real still. Just as real as when Anassa would awake Sorcery within mortals ahem into their own trials.

  This Jungle Divine was unique, Anassa had to give it that. It was rge, but what did rge matter? It was small pared to Arika, and it was tiny when pared to all the world’s os! Size was not a worthy qualifier for Divinity, else every elephant and every whale would be worshipped. And as difficult as inality was to achieve, it too was no a precursor to Divinity. All that these pnts had were madness. That simply was not good enough!

  Godhood osition earned. Godhood needed gatekeepers, the Juself demonstrated why Godhood needed people like Anassa. A thousand years in prison and she came back to find that eves themselves thought themselves Divine! What a farce!

  As had been done in the past, so will be done now: it was time to gatekeep Godhood once again.