NOVEL NEXT 55: The Fog Wall
Astrid, after blinking a couple of times, just froze in place like an ice structure.
Hesitant, Valencia reached up to pat her a couple of times. Watching Astrid’s jaw drop little by little, she then decided to sit up, grab the glass of water, and hand it to Astrid.
“Everything alright, my dear?” Valencia asked with a cautious tone.
Out of all of the... reveals per se, she was worried about this one the least. She had a reason to do it after all, and saving someone’s life was, well, forgivable most of the time.
“Y-... Yeah, just give me a bit.” Astrid trailed off, massaging her temples. “Let me just... process this stunning development. In the meantime could you, once again, explain... how? This doesn’t just happen naturally does it? Did you make, or, actually, to say it more clearly, did you make me a cult or something?”
Reassuring Astrid that she hadn’t created a secret cult or something, Valencia backed up. Starting off from when Astrid had been attacked, Valencia explained how Astrid had fallen into a long coma. More than half a year later, Valencia had then realized how close the rampaging deity's power in Astrid was to killing her.
One deification was thus in order and it brought Valencia to the current situation where she had taken Astrid to Marcen’s Cliffs.
“So that’s why I survived...” Astrid murmured while staring off into the distance. “I did wonder about that at one point.”
“What did you end up thinking then?” Valencia asked while sinking back against the couch. “Did you come to any conclusions or have any suspicions?”
“... Nope,” Astrid looked away with a faint hint of embarrassment climbing onto her face. “I just decided to ignore it and not think about it too hard. I do that with a lot of mysteries in my life. If it doesn’t make complete sense, but doesn’t hurt me, it’s probably just me being dumb and not knowing everything about the situation.”
“I... see,” Valencia shook her head with a chuckle. “Anyway, there’s a lot more other stuff I guess I should just tell you about that isn't as... world shattering. Or maybe they are world shattering, but not as personally relevant to you.”
“Such as?” Astrid ventured with a quiet sigh. “Well, can you explain the whole deal with the city?”
“Ah... yeah, where should I start,” Valencia lurched, getting up and taking the now-empty cup. “Let me fill up this cup of water before I start, since there’s a lot to say. It’s hard to start anywhere specifically, but I’ll try my best.”
Returning after a minute, Valencia took a seat before beginning the long process of explaining... everything this time. “So Marcen’s Cliffs, as you know, is a pretty large city. But, specifically, it’s one of, if not the largest city in the world. It doesn’t show up in any actual records online or on paper though.”
“Why?” Astrid furrowed her eyebrows, raising her hands to a half-shrug. “What makes this city so special?”
“Well, okay, so you know how I mentioned I’m a deity,” Valencia brought back up. Getting a nod from Astrid, Valencia brought up the group chat she shared with the other Primordial Deities. “So this city is special because it’s sort of a guard city founded by me, and a group called the Primordial Deities. The group is kind of the friend group we’ve been hanging out with.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Astrid interrupted while doing some light hand flailing. “Back it up for a second, how... okay. Wait, so Sylvia, Estelle, and the others are? Yeah... okay you kinda brushed by it earlier when talking about the divine rebirthing ritual. This... somehow isn’t even surprising anymore with the other stuff you mentioned. But guard city? What are you all guarding against? And also what’s special about the Primordial Deities?”
“Okay, so this is also kinda... no, very complicated.” Valencia flipped through her phone’s applications to pull up a map. “I have a map of the city here, right, run by the Library of Truth, of Marcen’s Cliffs.”
Getting an “mhm,” from Astrid, Valencia repositioned herself on the couch to sit next to Astrid. “If we zoom out here, you eventually get to this huge white blob, it’s called the Primordial Fog Wall. It’s a huge wall that surrounds the continent, but it’s only close the further north you go. It’s at the north end of our current continent that the wall becomes dangerous.”
Blinking, Astrid opened and closed her mouth a few times in confusion. With Valencia patting Astrid a couple times, she continued talking. “There’s not too much we know about it to be honest. I can tell you what we know though, and why we guard... ish? The fog wall, every once and a while will just spit out a mass of matter and divinity. Most of the time it’s a small abomination or whatever but sometimes it’s larger.”
“How large do they get?” Astrid asked, raising an eyebrow as images of sharks came to mind. “Also, is the Primordial the same as the group name you have with the others?”
“I’ll get to your second question in a bit. But, in regards to how large they can get, some are shipping barge sized. Like the gargantuan cargo ships we learned about in school. Usually, however, they’re quite dumb and don’t amount to much beyond a horrifyingly ugly wild animal.” Valencia explained motioning with her hands to try and convey a sense of their size. “I say most of the time though. There are two exceptions to this ‘monsterly’ and ‘stupid’ rule.”
With Astrid motioning for her to continue, Valencia took a quiet sip of water and put her phone down. “So, one exception is long, long ago, the fog wall gave birth to the world’s most powerful deities. The first two were Solomon and Joanna and they helped to... I don’t know, establish civilization or something. Over time, one by one, more of us Primordial deities were born.”
“How many of you are in total?” Astrid stroked her chin, “And which number... birth, were you?”
“There are eight of us in total, you’ve met six, as you know,” Valencia recalled while tapping on her chin. Counting on her fingers, she then began listing everyone out. “In order of being born, it was Joanna, Solomon, Sylvia, Clay, Sigmund, me, Rainier, and, the youngest, Estelle. Our domains don’t correlate too much with the order in which we appeared though.”
“Yeah, so, assuming those powers are your domains,” Astrid tapped her chin. “Total assumption by the way, since I'm... I'm kind of ignorant in regards to them. Estelle being the goddess of the night being last doesn’t make too much sense... What about the other two?”
“Sigmund’s the god of strife and Clay’s the god of the afterlife.” Valencia noted while pulling up a picture for each. “Clay, as you know, is in a relationship with Rainier, but both Sigmund and Clay aren’t in the city. Sigmund likes to venture the world watching fights and wars, but he doesn’t engage much in the fighting himself these days... Clay, meanwhile, is always busy maintaining the afterlife.”
“There’s an afterlife...?” Astrid had to ask, shaking her head once more with the astounding revelation.
Replying with an “mhm,” Valencia gave Astrid a moment to process, and, to Astrid’s credit, she just nodded and accepted the afterlife without too much shock.
Though, perhaps that just was a testament to how desensitized she was.
“Anyhow, not much separates us from the rest of the deities. It’s just because we get our divinity from the Fog Wall, or ‘the universe’ if you want to think about it that way, instead of human believers, and we’re generally stronger and our power doesn’t fluctuate as much.” Valencia wrapped up her explanation regarding the Primordial Deities. “Want me to go into the other exception right now or no?”
“Is it relevant...?” Astrid raised an eyebrow.
“Perhaps very soon based on what Solomon and Joanna have told me...” Valencia trailed off with an apologetic tone.
“Alright, feel free to explain, I’d rather just get all bombarded right now than later.” Astrid sighed while shaking her head. “Also, interesting, I guess, to know that you don’t have parents? You always said you were an orphan but... I guess you really are. I don’t know, random thought, sorry, continue.”
“No, no,” Valencia laughed, “it’s totally fine. Okay, so after we were all made by the Fog Wall, which was more centuries ago than I’d like to count, the Fog Wall, then, at some point, began making huge monsters with intelligence. They’ve aligned so far with the zodiacs but... well, that might not hold up forever. I believe there’s been like... four or five made, so it’ll probably continue far into the future. I’m not so sure why they’ve followed the Zodiacs though. Solomon has some theories regarding common belief, fear, mysticism, and some other random ideas, but I’m not clued in.”
“Good to know,” Astrid murmured while closing her eyes. Feeling her head swirl with all the information, Astrid pushed through it while motioning for Valencia to continue with whatever else she had to say.
Valencia, organizing her thoughts, moved on and began summarizing more... current events.
Thus began Valencia’s explanation of the three factions within Marcen’s Cliffs, the cults, and why the current conflict was happening. With her explanations covering the major deities in all the factions, Astrid’s jaw dropped as she realized how important each of their regular customers were in the grand scheme of things.
They couldn’t even be called business executives... more like... business tycoons! If that!
What the what?
The world... was crazy.
With her worldview shattered, Astrid headed off to bed after hours of back and forth conversation. Asking for a night alone, Astrid, while sitting on her bed, couldn’t help but sigh.
She was a goddess.
How...
Staring down at her hands, Astrid took a few breaths to slow everything down.
In... and out.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Marcen’s Cliffs...
It was a city where all the most powerful factions in the world congregated. It was a city full of deities and danger. It was a city that defended the rest of the world from the shadows.
And... well... It was her new home.
Leaning against the windowsill, Astrid rested her chin on her hand. “Even if it looks the same as yesterday... it feels so different now.”
