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Her name is Osana and the Great Goddess of Glory and Battle chose her, not the other way around, despite what others say. They said, ‘Osana, a Paladin chooses the path she walks upon. Our family follows one God, as all before us, and it is the New God Roi’Gin. The Old Gods are dead. Do not disgrace us this way.’ Osana did not choose the Goddess Fai, Fai chose her. When she was a child, training with her papa, she ran from him when he hit her across the back with a bokken, deep into the old forest behind their home. She ran until she tripped on a rock and slid down a steep hill, rolling even through a church so old it had appeared hill before she smashed through it. She fell upon a ruined alter with a rusted symbol of Fai being the only thing not destroyed with age. Years later, she had found two more churches of Fai in the wilds, buried like her Goddess beneath the earth, waiting to be uncovered. She trained for her, to fight for her, to earn glory in her name and, if she must, die in battle with her crest over her breast. Her father cast her out, calling her a betrayer to their name, but her mother came with her and they moved to a larger city where she grew stronger, trained harder, and prayed often. Sometimes, as all do, her faith waned when things befell her that her Goddess, seemingly, ignored and she wondered if Fai truly was dead. Had she wasted her life in dedication to a dead god? But then the war began and the lands were bloodied and had no end in sight and she prayed more than ever and, for whatever reason, her prayers felt accepted. It started when she prayed for medication for her mother who had fallen ill with one of the many sicknesses that come with war. A day later she was given a job in exchange for such medicine. She prayed for companionship and, shortly after, she found a black bear cub whining near her mother’s carcass. She prayed, for nothing, just to speak to Goddess when it was a hot night, and she felt a chill breeze through the window. She was buzzing with excitement and wonder. Was her Goddess finally answering? Was it not in vein after all? She heard, from another Old Believer, that their God too had began to speak with them—actually speak!—and another and another until soon it was wide spread gossip that the Old Gods were alive and back. This set the church’s aflame with indignation but she could not care because Fai could be here, within hearings reach, and answering her prayers. And then she was grabbed by the guards and grouped with a crowd of skinny folk, scarred old men, plump men, old woman, beggars, thieves alike and told she was to fight in the war. She and her cub—who would be trained to kill—were going to battle. And a part of her was thrilled to do battle and earn glory as was her Goddess’s nature and plan but she was hesitant to leave her Mama behind. So she prayed. And Fai came to her. Truly, in person, and even touched her with warm fleshy hands. A blessing she gave and it remained in the color of her eyes, once black now speckled with flakes of gold, and in her heart. The kiss still felt warm and tingled even as she stood on the field the day of battle. Her boots squelched with each step, sinking deep not into mud but blood of battles past. So long had it been happening, the fields here never dried. It did not deter her. In fact, she felt no fear, no hesitation, no anxiety. None that were there before. The blessing, she surmised, has swept it all away. Likewise, as men and woman alike, fell beside her from one wound to the next, she continued to fight with a fury and a thirst for glory she had never felt before.
Her blade sung as she cleaved through bodies before her and left a trail of bodies to sink slowly into the ever bloody fields. Blood painted the face of her helmet and beneath it she smiled. Soon they realized she was a force unrivaled and, left uncheck, would swallow them like the sea and she knew, in the back of her mind, that Fai was pleased. And this pleased her. Despite the volleys shot at her and their painful lodging in her thighs and shoulders. She fought on. A knife skidded across her armor until it caught beneath her arm and slid deep. She fought on. A lance pieced her calve and was roughly pulled free, tearing the muscle as it went. And, boot filling with blood, she fought on. She fought through an endless amount of men, numbers not remembered in her haze, until she, somehow, was standing before their Queen. A viper of a woman who had been leading this war for over ten hundred years for reasons Osana was too lowly to know. She struck as fast as the snake bequeathed to her and another two, five, ten wounds were made in her flagging body. But she fought on. Because something, somewhere inside her, was keeping her strong and making her able to do this and she knew it was her Goddess. She did not remember the fight. She remembered the pain. She remembered the Viper wondering, loudly in a hiss, how she was even living still. She remembered falling to her knees just before the body of the Queen did and pushing it away from herself with the last of her strength. Many screams and shouts carried her closer to life than the nothingness of sleep or death. Many voices asked how she did it, how she, a nobody from nowhere, ended the endless war in one night. She had spoken only her Goddess’s name. Though it was not because she was answering them—she could barely see with the blood in her eyes—she was speaking to her Goddess who was kneeling beside her in her mud. A warm hand covering the gaping wound in her stomach, unaffected by the gruesome sight, and another stroked the hair stuck to the blood on her face. She did not remember losing her helmet. “You did well my Champion,” Fai spoke with that whisper like wind, “And you have made me so proud to call you mine. You brought me great glory and you have earned your rest but it is not time yet. I promised you a way home to your mother if you carried me into battle and you did so bravely so see your mother again, you will.” And she gurgles a bit on blood trying to exclaim her joy upon seeing Fai once more but she is tenderly hushed by her Goddess. Long fingers wipe away the blood foam at her lips and another kiss is gifted to her, as soft as before, to her exposed collarbone. She did not remember losing her armor. The Goddess’s lips come away painted in her blood and she feels her heart beat slow and blood rush to her ears before she falls into darkness.
When she awakes again, there is pain all over. They count her wounds with sloshing drinks and jovial mirth and said it’s over fifty and that she should be dead ten times over. They said she fought like a Titan and that even when the tendons in the back of her knee was cut they heard her only laugh and take down three more in a single swing. They call her the Beast of the Bloody Marsh and tell her she single handedly gave them the means to end this war. They call her a hero and ask her again and again how she did it and when she tells them it was Fai, she is sure she feels fingers ghost the nape of her nape. Many laugh and call her a liar but those are the ones that didn’t see her and when they do, covered in barely closed wounds, their laughter falls silent. She is bedside for such a time that she watches the weather change out the window. Many physicians come to see the hero and her war cub and all of them tell her she won’t walk again, that it’s unlikely she’ll regain full use of her eye, that her arm will always hang heavy and she’ll struggle for breath on hot days. She listens with little care because, even as they speak, she feels fingers stroking her hair and promises of a full recovery kiss her ear. “An earned reward,” Fai says, “For what you’ve done for me. I’ve heard prayers from many a voice since you fought in my name. A mighty Champion you are.” And she does recover, fully, only to further the amazement. She is glad the Goddess has gifted her this because she can hear the murdered skepticism when she strides through camp to her old tent. If they did not believe before, they certainly do then.
After that day, she becomes less a hero and is remembered as a legend. Much time passes but her name is not forgotten despite all that changes. Her mother dies. She aids in building the first new church to the Old God, Fai, because there so many new followers. It is made known that Old Gods have, in fact, been awoken by the vast offering of blood in the marshes that soaked down to even where the old ones slept. They tell her once she was enlisted she cannot leave no matter how hard she fights so they make her a captain and she lives far from her mothers grave. Another war, this one religious. The followers of the New Gods fight the ones who have converted to the Old Faith. It’s a short war. Priests and peasants are not soldiers. She kills young people and old people and fat assholes who have never held a blade and virgin priests who spit on her once they recognize her. She kills with a haze over her eyes and a smile on lips and she does not die. The legend does not die. Her fame draws more to Fai and she revels in strengthening her lady but Fai never shows the same kind of interest in her new followers. She tells Osana, “They come now to taste the glory you have bled for and hope for a sliver. You came to me when there was none to have and for that, you will always be my favorite. My beautiful Champion.” Fai comes to Osana often enough that she does not startle at her presence anymore and often finds herself lonely without the sight of her Goddess. She pets her beast of a cub now, scratches her ears, and waits for the next moment Fai will come to her. It makes life less listless. It’s usually at night, after Osana has bathed, and is lying in bed about to say her nightly prayers. She will close her eyes and her muscles will tense with excitement because she expects it now. “Holy Mother, Blessed-“
“Are you happy here, my Chosen?” A hand crawls so softly over her exposed arm above the covers as the voice sinks into her ears. Her eyes flutter open, delighted as always, to see the silken hair of her lady and the moonlit skin and the curve of her sweet smile. The hand settles on her throat and the thumb pets her pulse which spikes suddenly.
“I am happy you are here, my Lady.”
“Ah, polite as ever.” She pulls that divine touch away and Osana mourns it deeply as she always does now. The longing thrums like war drums beneath her skin. Fai gathers the tattered skirts of her dress and sits delicately upon the edge of her bed, gazing down at her with those inhumanly bright eyes. Like someone melted down the sun and made them into eyes to befit a goddess. “My dear Osana, that was not what I asked.”
“I don’t mean disrespect, never, but I don’t understand why it matters. I live only to serve you-“
“And that is why I ask. You live here, in this place, because it is the best way to serve me. You fight in these fights, for me. You live, not for yourself, but for me. I ask, my Dear One, if you are happy living for me when you are miserable doing this thing you hate.”
Osana sits up slowly in her bed, her body tired from the wounds of her youth. She’s not old by any means but she had been weathered more than any old man. Fai guides her with those maddeningly gentle hands, fingers splayed over her bolder like arms. “Are you this considerate with the others?” Its in a tone that means jest because she does that with Fai now. Fai’s lips quirk knowingly.
“My other followers are not as considerate as you. And they are not marked by my blessing.”
Osana smiles now too, “I’m your favorite.”
“Always and forever, my Champion.”
And it bubbles in her belly the way Fai says that. She recognizes what this is but it feels sacrilege to love a god as more than a devout. Yet she does. It’s difficult not to fall in love with the one person who always comes when you call, who is a gentle hand when life is rough, who is a soft voice at night when it’s storms and she’s lonely. But it’s a lot to love a goddess and difficult to know if it’s appropriate when she can’t speak of it.
“What else is there for me?”
Fai tilts her head and gives her a look that her mother use to give her when she was terribly disappointed. Fingers reach out to secure her chin, thumb dipping into the scar that runs through her lower lip. It makes her stomach spin round and round. “My dearest Osana, the world is yours if you want it. You need but ask.”
It takes a moment for her to decide. The candles have been snuffed long ago so all there is for light is the stars through the open window. Chow, her bear, she sleeps curled in the corner and occasionally snarls when she hears boots in the outside hall. She calms when Fai smiles in her direction and hushes her gently.
“Would you lay beside me tonight?”
Dark brows rise over golden sunlit eyes but it’s not an offended surprise and it quickly melts away before she can determine what it may have been. Fai presses insistent fingertips into her thighs and ribs and she obeys, moving aside instantly. It jars her bad knees but her excitement makes it easy to swallow. The Goddess slides into the place she just was and pulls the covers back over them and as she does, her knee stops pulsing.
“Thank you.”
“It’s been some time since I’ve done this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was a mortal woman once. I ascended to godhood, unlike my brethren, through my deeds on the battlefield. It was a bloody and difficult path to glory. I sometimes forget what it was like. Things like this, lying in bed beside someone.”
“I didn’t know mortals could be gods. I didn’t know that about you.”
“Not many do. The Gods would not like mortals to know they can ascend. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue?”
“Oh, I can.” Fai’s shoulder presses against hers, her long hair brushing against her scarred shoulder. “May I ask you something I’ve been wondering?”
“Have the Old Gods ever taken a mortal lover?”
Fai’s brows rise again in that way and she turns her head on the pillow towards Osana, “Do the Usurpers not?”
“Not that I know of.”
Fai makes a sound of indignation, “Of course not. They always thought themselves better than us.”
“Have you ever taken a mortal lover?”
Fai’s brows smooth out and a smile replaces the previous looks. She turns on her side and reaches for Osana, touching the scar that is still pink on her throat. “I think I see where these questions are leading, my Champion.”
Osana’s voice quivers when she speaks again, “There is something I would ask for that would make me very happy, Fai, but I do not know if I can ask it.”
“I told you already, you can have anything of me. You are special. Unlike any other. I would give you the world.”
“That’s what I want,” And for the very first time, she touches Fai, by curling her hand through her inky hair, “My whole world.”
“It is a little disorienting that you still find ways to surprise me, after all this time. It’s like you don’t want me to know in full.” Fai’s tone carries the edge of someone teasing though it is soft and whispered, a bit breathless. Osana scoots the slightest bit closer until their knees touch and she can taste the sweetness of Fai’s breath.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate, to want you. I’ve been trying to keep it hidden.”
”Worship of me has been hidden for far too long. And you have always been the one to make me known. So make me known.”