The Dark Goddess

Chapter 18

‘What if I explode’ this was Ami’s thoughts to herself as she headed for the powers class, all of a sudden she had begin to doubt herself without knowing the reason why.

It started since she knew this subject was next for the day and it was to hold from after lunch till dinner time, from this she knew she would definitely have a turn in display of powers.

‘There us no way I can sustain my powers for long without losing control’ she half mumbled to herself, so far all the time she had got to use her powers were all unintentionally.

Even the councilor’s case was just luck, and when she actually called on it when her father attacked, it failed, only to come up a while later after she had been riled up.

First of all, she knew there was no way she would be able to call up her powers out of the blue, and even if she was lucky there was still no way she could control it by herself.

She really didn’t want to fail though, not in front of a third of the new intakes, a few seniors and the teachers. 

‘I need a way out or at least a cheat code to the powers thing’ she mumbled to herself again, then she realized something that had stuck to the back of her mind for a while now without her noticing it.

Emotions

One way or another, her emotions had a big role to play in activating her powers, come to think of it, ever since the incident of the first power manifestation in her bath tub, activating it was all through the emotions outlet.

The bath tub, breakfast with her parents, the ones before the councilor, the councilor, the ones after the councilor, her murderous father and on and on.

So what if that was the cheat code she needed?, all she needed to do was have some emotional trigger then boom!, hello powers, bye bye control.

Only problem now is finding a good emotional trigger, the best she could come up with was anger, but then how was she supposed to suddenly get angry just like that, well she was going to have to figure it out at least before it was her turn to show her powers.

She heaved a sign and entered the building that Parker had said was for magicians to practice and control their powers.

The sight that greeted Ami made her mouth drop in surprise.

The inside of the building was similar to the dome where she was claimed and placed the day she first arrived at Haven, but the difference was that there was a couple of segments and partitions.

From these segments and partitions she could see a lot of activities going on, hieroglyphs flew about, sparks and light works could be seen and a lot of shouting in different languages (she was sure they were casting spells).

Ami saw a guy use a curved wand to trace out hieroglyphics in the air, then the hieroglyphs glowed right there in the air and formed a spell form but then it wavered and out of it a stream of water flowed out before the whole thing dissipated.

The guy cussed and an instructor patted him encouraging him that the path of Nephthys wasn’t particularly an easy one.

Looking elsewhere she saw another guy in a meditative posture – he was seated and his legs were folded about themselves with his hands on his knees – just then he raised his right to his chest with his fingers forming the ok sign, following that gesture a couple of glowing arms formed about him and he reminded Ami of how some Hindu gods are depicted, she later got to know that he was a magician of the path of Shiva.

Not too far from the multi-armed guy was another multi-armed lady but unlike the guy she seemed to have hers well in control and was a stage higher than the guy as the glowing arms had balls of flames on them which she was throwing at a couple of targets in different sizes, later on as well she got to know that the lady was a second year following the path of Agni the Hindu god of fire.

Ami saw being a magician as the best form amongst the types of people that were in Haven, they were humans with that had special powerful ancient blood flowing through them, they weren’t relayed to the gods like the legacies and demigods and they weren’t possessed by the gods either unlike the godlings who were like magicians but possessed by parts of gods.

The magicians studied the path of whichever god of their choosing - although she was told that there has to be blood compatibility as well meaning your ancient blood has to come from under that godly line, in a simpler term those following the path of Hindu gods had to have been descendants of those of the Hindu religion.

Ami also got to find out that some magicians are powerful enough to follow more than one god’s path, she had asked what following the path of gods meant and she learned it meant studying the way of life of said god, learning what the god stood for and represented and being able to channel the gods powers in the long run using spells, spell forms, ancient artifacts, talismans and so on.

It was Ami’s fifth day of learning (meaning seven days since she arrived at Haven) and she felt the need to be ahead of all the other new intakes, hence why she went the extra mile to know things.

She was lost in thought as she stood at the entrance of the segment that was indicated for her to come to, then someone bumped into her from behind.

Ami stumbled forward and dropped her books, after regaining her balance she turned around to pick her books while apologizing for being in the way, but the girl that bumped into her was already picking up her books for her.

“You don’t need books in this class yunno? Its pure practical, but I guess it’ll be okay to take down a few pointers though” the girl said as she stood up, she gave Ami her books and smiled at her before using a finger to push back her glasses.

Ami was dumbstruck for a moment, the girl was fiercely beautiful, she had this model look about her that wasn’t even undermined by the round rimmed glasses she wore over her brown eyes.

Her fair skin seemed to give off a glow of their own and body was perfectly shaped with pronounced busts and backside, her dark flowing hair seemed to tussle on their own and even her legs were like those of a model.

Ami immediately felt intimidated with her own tom-boy looks, her faux-hawk with purple highlights haircut was dull compared to the full flowing aura of the girls hair, and she was in T-shirt and crazy jeans while the girl sported gym leggings and a sweatshirt.

“Hey, you ok? I’m sorry for bumping into you, I kinda got carried away trying to remember a couple of my spell forms, I’m Casey by the way” the girl said shaking Ami off her daze.

“Uhm its ok, its my fault for being in the way, I’m Ami, thanks for picking up my books” Ami said and offered to shake her hand.

The girl looked uneasily at Ami’s outstretched hands and shifted from foot to foot “it.. Its fine, I uhm..” she started to say but Ami cut her off.

“Don’t worry about it, its fine, I understand if you can’t bring yourself to shake someone like me” Ami said bitterly and left Casey’s front, ignoring her calling.

She had really liked her from the first glance, why did she have to turn out this way, but it wasn’t her first time with racists so she was just going to ignore her totally as from now on.

One good thing that Ami got out the encounter was that right now she was really angry and she felt the turmoil of her power just around the corner of her mind.

So when she heard the lady instructor say “Ami kindly come forward please” all she did was steal a quick glance at Casey and her anger fueled some more.

“Yours is an even more special case as we have had so very few gods ever to come here, actually we have had only just one other, so we expect that you’ll pack a whole lot of firepower as well hence why you are in this segment” the instructor said.

She was a middle aged woman magician from the Aztecs godly line, Ami hadn’t been following enough when she was making introductions to know which god exactly.

Ami was puzzled by her words though, what did she mean by a whole lot of firepower and that was the reason she was in this segment.

She hadn’t been paying much attention since the start of the class because of the incident but then looking around, Ami actually discovered there were very few people in this segment compared to the others.

A total of seven were in this segment where there was at least fifteen in all the others and Ami was even surprised to see Zara in this segment, damn she had been so unbalanced by the encounter with Casey that she didn’t even notice her friend.

Zara gave a slight wave at Ami when she noticed she had finally seen her there followed by a thumbs up.

Ami is trying to learn the sign language from Zara every time they were together but its going slow so Zara stuck to a more popular signage whenever she wanted to tell Ami anything.

Ami got to the front of the class and read four boys and three girls to include herself, Zara and Casey, she faced the instructor and realized that she couldn’t even remember the woman’s name.

“So just activate your powers for us to see, I’m sure we would all like to know just what it is you can do as a goddess” the woman said.

Ami indeed saw eager eyes all fixed on her, “uhm I don’t really have a solid control on my powers, it tends to get uncontrollable for me eventually” she said to the woman.

“Haven’t you been listening dearie, that is why you are here, to learn control and why I am here is to give control to any that goes out of hand, such is the path of the goddess I follow, so let it out, I can take it” the woman said.

Ami didn’t think the woman can take it, but then she had witnesses to support her claim of warning the woman before hand.

A loud ripping sound shredded the air as Ami touched her powers, a gust of wind blew at everyone with her at the center, the wind was strong enough to blow back everyone’s hair and have them using their hands to shield their faces.

Storm clouds descended and swirled around her, lightening flashed in different colors and forked about the class.

Ami could feel another presence trying to impose its will on hers, ‘this must be the teachers powers trying to contain mine’ she thought to herself, but she had lost control as soon as the storm broke out of her.

It now had its own spirit and was feeding off of Ami’s powers, she knew this as well, if only she could switch off the connection between the storm and her powers Ami thought.

The storm now took on humanoid form and started to extend smoky tendrils about the class, burning off everything it touched.

The teachers presence was stronger now, trying to force down Ami’s powers, little did she know that the problem was actually with the storm now not Ami.

Ami tried to assist her teacher by reeling in the storm, but then she realized the storm wasn’t really from within her, she had actually called it forth with her powers and with the same powers she had given it spirit, 

‘maybe the problem is indeed me after all’ Ami thought.

Then she heard a short cry of pain and when she looked towards its direction, she saw Casey trying hard to keep back a tendril of the storm with a spell form in front of her hands and behind her was shy Zara scared out of her mind.

Every other person in the room were as well battling off a tendril or two but it only kept regenerating as soon as its beaten.

Ami thought about this, she didn’t want to be known as a monster spawning freak, or someone that hurt her whole class just in demonstration.

Before she knew it she was sucking her powers back in, in the process of doing that, the storm kept getting smaller and smaller till it got to the point where the teacher’s powers now worked over Ami’s shutting it all in.

Left in front of them was a miniature thunderstorm in form of a cloud, it spun around in a circle, raining and thundering till it totally dissipated.

“Phew” Ami said with humor she didn’t know she had “that almost got out of control”.

Zara made a sign language that Ami interpreted as ‘Not Funny’, she agreed but then she had given a clear warning fairly beforehand.

“uhm class” their teacher said sweating quite a bit “presentation is over for today, next class we focus on how to really handle and control each of our powers before we move on to learning how to properly use them” she finished and headed out.

Ami knew this class had ended early because of her, at least the other students had her to thank for an early release as well.

She made a ‘laters’ sign to Zara and then packed her books and left the class as well.

She was walking away pretty fast as if that would put the whole incident of the day behind her as well, but then she heard her name being called and she realized the day is still catching up to her despite her pace.

“Please Ami wait up” Casey hollered.

When she finally caught up to Ami, she tackled her with a hug that surprised her speechless.

“I am not what you think I am Ami” Casey said to her, then she broke off the hug and stepped back.

Ami realized her palms were folded, but she waited for the explanation that was coming.

“Ami, I don’t touch people with my hands because it activates a curse within me, I was hexed by a god right before I discovered myself as a magician, he told me my hands were the greatest threat to him to he placed an hex that prevents me from using it to cast spells” 

As Casey said this she open her palms and placed them side by side, then she said a word that must have been spell and as she did an hieroglyph burned forth from her palms then reddened, it was obvious that it would have been really painful but Casey’s expression was hardened.

“Before I came here I had broken people’s bones and disfigured others just by touching them because the stupid god didn’t know that even as he prevented me from being able to cast even a simple light spell like I just tried, he also made my hands a tool of destruction, the hex didn’t just destroy spells, it destroyed living things too” She said and a tear streamed down her cheek.

Ami started to feel really stupid, she did not know Casey’s story yet she had judged her wrongly, and to live while not being able to touch any living thing? Not even a pet? That was just cruel.

“Do you know which god did it?” Ami asked in a low tone, she was angry now, not at Casey anymore, but at the god that had subjected her to such a fate.

“I don’t, but his voice I will never forget, so whenever I hear it and get to know it is truly him, I will lay these hands on him making his prophecy come true, until then I have decided to grow my powers till I’m at a point where no god can be a threat to my existence ever again” Casey replied.

“I’m really sorry for reacting that way, I judged you without knowing you, I’ve been faced by that reaction so much in my life that I never thought it could ever be for any other reason again, I really am sorry” Ami said looking really sad.

“Hey, cmon lighten up, I totally understand you, but I am not like that, as a way of truly apologizing, how about we go for dinner together?” Casey asked.

“How about we have said dinner someplace else, just the two of us” Ami replied then surprised Casey by hooking her elbows with hers.

“I’d love that, I’d really love that, oh I know a place, you’ll love it” Casey answered smiling and they headed away elbow in elbow.

Glossary

Agni: Hindu god of fire, he represents the fire of the sun, lightning and of both the domestic and the sacrificial hearth.

Nut: Egyptian goddess of the sky and the heavens, she is associated with the stars, cosmos, mothers astronomy and the universe.