While Luna gave the locals an abbreviated lesson on the deities they made idols for, I had to figure out just what this might mean. Everything I knew about the divine told me that I couldn’t be a deity for people on Terra; their faith couldn’t bring me to apotheosis. At least that was what I had thought, what the scant information I had managed to find, mostly thanks to the Grandmother’s grimoire I was still using, suggested. Not that there was all that much to find on the process, the requirements or, really, anything on the topic.

Even asking Lady Hecate had only yielded an amused chuckle. No response, not even the denial of one, just laughter. That reaction drove the point home. Deities had no interest in discussing the inner workings of their ascension, not even Lady Hecate. Given that Lady Hecate had dragged me into Her realm so she could verbally vent her frustrations about Her fellow deities, it said quite a bit about the secrecy regarding the topic.

However, the people here had managed to create these idols by praying. Meaning some sort of divine interaction had happened, something or someone had given the statues form and linked them to the concepts they represented, though just what force that might have been was a strange question. Sure, it was possible that the system had completed these linkages, but with what I knew? That made little sense.

So, another source was more likely. Maybe Lady Hecate had put Her fingers in and pushed or prodded something, but if She had, I would think the result would be the statues of the Mother. The Mother was a concept linked to Lady Hecate and me, though I could not fathom why the Lady was so eager to associate me with it. I doubted there was a way to let her control me through it, though, as with many things divine, I couldn’t be confident and wasn’t that an unpleasant idea.

Even that didn’t explain where the Pale Lady came from. Given the absolute dearth of information regarding apotheosis, finding an explanation from an outside source would be impossible. There would be few who had the knowledge in the first place, and those few wouldn’t be willing to tell me, given that I suspected that they would all be deities of some sort, similar to Lady Hecate. Meaning, if I wanted to know, I needed to find out myself.

Immediately, I began to consider ways to figure this out, cataloguing my experiences in the past and what might link me to the divinity embodied by the Mother. There were the obvious actions I had taken, the adoption of Luna and the creation, or birth if you wanted to keep the comparison, of Lia and her subsequent raising, both of which put me on that path. Additionally, Lady Hecate likely put Her own finger on the scale to nudge things along, as it was nearly impossible that I was the only woman who had taken in children after the Change. Hel, I knew I wasn’t the only one. I had met a few who had done so, and yet, I was linked to the domain.

Unless the creation of a new race, as I had done by changing Lia, had a greater impact than I thought. Even the various creatures Luna and I had altered might play into this, or some other factor, such as my link to the Grandmother, giving me an extra-dimensional connection that might circumvent some of the usual rules for deities.

Then there were the various dreams I had of Neyto. Now, with the new information revealed, dreaming of the place, hearing voices on the wind and replying to those voices took on a new meaning. At least it might, I would have to try and gain more control over those dreams, not just let some subconscious part of me do whatever it wanted in them.

Nodding to myself, I focused on the Pale Lady and how it had come about. I knew that some people near Apple Gate Farm had called me that, due to my power and unnaturally pale skin. That’s how I had gained the title, to the best of my knowledge, but how had the title taken on a life of its own and somehow turned into a divinity?

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My thoughts were interrupted by the end of Luna’s explanation of different gods and their domains. With this done, we would be expected to join Lia in reporting to the chief and getting his buy-in to have his people raid the dungeon. Otherwise, the burned land would need to be permanently contained, constantly trying to expand, turning what I considered a temporary effort into a permanent challenge.

For a moment, I considered the possibilities of an enemy that could be defeated over and over again. Sure, the Bitumen didn’t give all that many EXP, but it was one of those cases where a steady drip would eventually wear down even the toughest stone. It would take months, maybe even years, but if the locals didn’t want to raid the suspected dungeon beneath the burned land’s centre, it might turn into that. An effort to slowly raise levels, constantly fighting and pushing back Bitumen, all the while they had to hope they wouldn’t get swallowed up by the expanding burned land.

Not the struggle I would want to engage in, but if the locals refused to invade the dungeon, it might be the struggle they got.

It didn’t take long for Luna and me to get to the place used as the primary meeting place of those interested in battle. The Chief had set up the area with a few paper maps of the region from before the Change, with pencilled-in additions to designate where the local geography had been altered, in addition to markers showing the territories of different beasts. It was a fairly useful resource, and I had added some markers and additions of my own, sharing the things I had learned about the burned land, although not many could take advantage of them. The area was fiendishly dangerous on a good day, and now, after the storm, it was even less predictable, so maybe adding a big warning sign to the already large warning about the burned area would be wise.

Inside, Lia was just finishing up her report and explanation to the Chief, going over the details I had seen from above and their implications. When Luna and I entered, the Chief looked briefly over before focusing on Lia again, making it obvious that he trusted me to have shared the important facts with my daughter. It was nice to see delegation work.

“So, it’s like a spring that needs to be plugged or the burning shit will contine to be pumped out, right?” he asked once Lia was finished with her report, the comparison quite apt.

“We have yet to confirm the actual status of the underground area, but it sounds about right. We encountered an area that might have turned into something similar by now, though we obviously can’t confirm that,” Lia agreed with a nod and a brief shudder, likely due to the Charland’s potential to cause havoc. It was a good thing we were far, far away from that particular mess.

A part of me wondered whether I had a strong enough connection to the shrine we set up back there. It might be interesting to take a few steps through the shadows and find out what happened, if the area still remained spatially contained or if the scorching radiation from the central crystal we had seen all those months ago had broken its containment and caused some interesting fallout.

“Would you please tell me what you can about these dungeons? All details can be important, especially if this turns into an active operation,” the chief asked, his words polite, but the tone was clearly that of a man used to having his orders followed.

“Certainly,” Lia nodded and began to explain, with me adding my own two cents as I had more experience in dungeons, even if a lot of said experience had been on Mundus. For now, I was content to assume dungeons worked in a similar enough manner, though I made sure to mention that they might not. That there was a wide enough variety in dungeon types and circumstances to make plans somewhat hazardous. Without more information on this specific dungeon, we couldn’t plan. And without plans, gathering the necessary information was dangerous for those heading in, unless we could devise an alternative way to scout the target.

Given the Chief’s expression and grumbling, I was fairly confident that he understood the circumstances just as well as I did, maybe even better. After all, he had been a military man for much of his adult life, and while he still hadn’t shared just what his job in the military had been, the things I had heard him describe were enough to give me a hint or three.

He knew that people would likely get hurt, and yet, he also knew that the mission we were proposing was unavoidable. Sometimes, being the leader and the one responsible truly and seriously sucked.