carl@fire

Lucia navigated the car she was driving to the left at an intersection of roads. The last two days on this wretched, polluted world had been educational, but only out of necessity rather than any interest or curiosity from her.

What use did a goddess have for knowledge of such a tiny, insignificant world in a non-magical realm? Even if she were to establish some sort of following here, she would hardly gain anything from the effort. There were a mere ten billion vaguely useful souls in this place, and the only interesting aspect of that knowledge was that there was a variant of humans here, though they were so short-lived and weak as to be laughable when compared to those who worshiped her on Eden.

The sooner she could be rid of this world, the sooner she could return to her rightful power. Perhaps she would give the valueless world to Dawn for her experimenting as part of her vengeance against Carl Theodore Weathers. She was uncertain whether he held any particular sentiment for his home, but it seemed likely; mortals were foolish in that way.

The man she'd first encountered upon her arrival here was example enough of the foolishness of mortals. So enraptured had he been with his desire that he hadn't noticed the obvious disdain she displayed so frequently, even as she eventually wrested his heart from his chest.

The goddess had already forgotten his name. Mortals were plentiful, and she couldn't be expected to recall many or even most of those she was aware of.

She was nearing her destination, she knew. She continued to make judicious use of divination to conserve the remains of her power, and the need to continue drawing upon it to maintain her course had lessened substantially after learning of the car's GPS capability, which served as an inferior substitute for one component of her divine senses.

She scowled at the injustice of it all. Physical inconveniences aside, she was cut off from the realms in which her faithful resided, and so she was forced to subsist on the disgusting, unclean light that filtered through whatever vile curtain had been erected between this world and its lone, dim sun. Shining down upon her in the topless car she drove, it felt that she was being covered in a greasy, viscous sludge. The slightest overdraw of her power would likely cause her material form to unravel, and then she would be unable to affect change in any way, just like so many feeble, forgotten deities she felt nearby, each clamoring pathetically for a share of her power.

The strength of her divine presence would usually have been enough to repel such loathsome beings without conscious thought. It was a power gained at the Great Gamble eons ago after competing on the advice of her mother, and the memory of her time before it as a fledgling deity without even a single world to call her own had long since faded. But then, with her mother's well-placed accusation against the then-Champion of Sateus, one of the most powerful, light-filled worlds had become part of her dominion, and her sensibilities had changed.

Lucia snarled and lashed out with her fist, smashing the idiotic radio which had continued to buffet her with a series of warbling, love-riddled ballads. In the beginning the sounds had amused her in much the same way as the various human performances on her own world she observed on occasion. Seeing the humans widdling away their time developing or enacting such creations rather than engaging in action which would, at the least, benefit them in some tangible way or, more ideally, genuinely entertain her had always been a contingency activity of hers during the years when she was feeling a sense of lethargy.

Now however, she felt that the sound was a reminder of her imprisonment.

Her debasement.

Her thoughts changed direction, as her current mood was already filled with sufficient rage to motivate her course of action.

It seemed that the object of her hatred was substantially less powerful than she had imagined. Were he a deity of great power, perhaps one of the more reclusive true deities who had grown content with their standing after ages of amassing faithful worlds, she knew that her endeavor would have ended abruptly the instant she arrived on his world, as his divine sense would surely alert him of her presence.

That had not been the case, however, as evidenced by her continued existence. Perhaps it had been rash to tread upon this world without any prior attempt at gathering knowledge of her foe, but her choices had been limited, and she had feared that timidity in her escape might lead to an eternity in that maddening, lightless gaol.

She rotated the steering wheel again, turning the car onto the short road which led to a house, its construction different than that to which she was accustomed but now familiar after too much time spent on this backwater world.

Her lips curved into a smile, her first true one in some time. A minuscule, chance usage of divination had revealed to her that the one she sought was distant from her location. How serendipitous! She quivered slightly with the knowledge that she could commence her revenge in an unhurried, structured manner rather than be rushed in her pursuits.

How to begin, she mused as she brought the stupid car to a halt. She wished to tear the contraption apart for its sluggishness and the way she had been forced to conform to traffic while she used it, but she refrained. An act of that magnitude wasted energy and risked alerting those nearby, which could thwart her intent if a stronger being arrived at an inopportune time before her preparations had been made.

She itched to divine the occupants of the house, but her power reserves were already dangerously low after being forced to fritter so much away for learning about this new world and concealing herself adequately, even with the enthusiastic assistance of the now-dead human whose car she now stepped out of, her feet touching down uncomfortably in the confining shoes purchased for her by that same human.

She strolled along the short path which led to the door in the front of the house. Her current attire, a tight, stretchy shirt made from an unknown fabric with similar pants that the human had selected after making the erection-accompanied claim that the combination would make her look 'hot', chafed uncomfortably in comparison to the loose, soft gowns she preferred.

This world and its inhabitants had irritated her to a more severe degree than she had realized. She deliberated on it over the course of a few steps. It seemed similar in many ways to the world described to her by the latest outworlder she had summoned, the child whose obsession with her breasts had led to her sending him on some vague quest just to be rid of his constant demands for attention. Perhaps she would seek him out when she returned and grant him dominion over this world. She imagined that would be a fate worse than bequeathing it to her sister, and her malice had grown with every moment she spent here.

Now Lucia stood in front of the door pondering her next action. Early on after escaping her gaol, she had used an unfocused divination to learn more of the one who had imprisoned her, the broad and disordered nature of it requiring a smaller expenditure of power, and from it she had learned the names and faces of those he regarded as important in some way. Their relationships could be effortlessly concluded using her divine intellect, and so she had developed the beginnings of a plan.

First, she would use some of her power to possess the wife of Carl Theodore Weathers, who was, she ascertained with ease, a blonde woman with a face like this and a body like that. His wife was not to be confused with a less attractive woman, obviously her sister, who had a face like that and a body like this.

Once safely ensconced in the mortal's body, Lucia would have no need to conserve power in order to retain her material form, enabling her to draw upon her reserves. From there, she could torture and slowly kill off the rest of those whose faces she recognized, the act made that much more satisfying from the face she would be wearing. Eventually, her enemy would agree to her bargain to be returned to her world in exchange for the remaining lives of those he held dear, and, once returned, she could finish torturing him as she pleased with the divinity she would regain, all the while wearing the face of his wife to multiply his anguish to an endless degree, just as she had promised herself she would do.

She tilted her head to the side as she thought over the plan in her mind once more. Was it the most inventive scheme she could have devised? Certainly not. But therein lay the reason she felt that it was eminently suitable for her purposes. The knowledge that he had been undone by such a lazily-constructed attack would only add to his torment, and he was nowhere nearby to thwart it, she already knew, so there was no way she could fail.

Her mother might enjoy the planning and scheming, but Lucia had always felt that there was a certain beauty in using precisely the minimal consideration required for a given task, providing her with more time for other pursuits.

With that thought in mind, she brought her hand up and rapped on the door.

It would not be long now.