Gods of Inthya by Effie Calvin

Author:Effie Calvin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, magic, gods, fantasy, romance, anthology, short stories
Publisher: NineStar Press
Published: 2022-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Honey

EVEN IN DEATH, cats go wherever they please. Normally this isn’t a problem, for while they can walk through the barriers that separate the planes of Asterium, they cannot make it out of Asterium itself, and so they are in no danger.

But when Cyne, Gods of Animals and Eleventh of the Ten in Ioshora, is trying to locate one specific cat, their propensity to wander can be…frustrating.

With a few notable exceptions, animal souls are smaller and simpler than those of Men or Mer. They are not truly capable of faith, so Cyne receives little power from them individually. But they make up for the lack of prayer through sheer numbers. A single ant’s existence only grants him enough power to fill a grain of sand halfway, but there are trillions of ants on Inthya—to say nothing of beetles.

One might expect Ferra to be utterly overrun with insects, and there’s nothing Cyne can do to correct that misconception without explaining to the mortals what happens to their souls after they’ve been dead for extended periods of time. And he’s not allowed to do that because it tends to upset them. Instead, he explains that Asterium is infinite, and there is always enough space for everyone.

But animal souls reabsorb into Cyne’s consciousness more rapidly than their sapient counterparts. A Man might retain an independent consciousness for thousands of years before reabsorbing, but an insect will only last for a decade at most. A more complex creature, like a dog, will make it a few centuries—unless said dog is in the company of a Man who loved him in life, in which case both will last significantly longer.

Contrary to popular belief, there are Men in Ferra. He does not bar them from entry to his plane, nor would he bar a Mer or a dragon if one wished to enter, but none ever has. In his opinion, these are the best sort of Men, the kind that can be informed an elephant is a type of person and immediately accept it without argument.

Cyne moves through the planes of Asterium with ease. Any other god visiting different planes would attract attention, but his siblings are used to this from him by now. They will sense his arrival and know he is only looking for a cat. Most do not even bother to come and greet him anymore, not unless said cat has done something particularly rude and they want to complain.

His form shifts as he moves through the planes. He is a deer in Cembra, a falcon in Aletha, a dolphin in Salis—though it is rare for a cat to visit Salis, as it almost is entirely water. But sometimes he gets an irritated message from Merla, complaining that someone is perched on the edge of a sunlit island and batting at fish in the warm shallows.

The cats cannot kill, and the fish cannot die. A cat who does manage to catch a fish will find it impossible to hold on to, as all bodies in Asterium are simply illusions woven around a soul.

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