"I want you to understand the basis of our relationship going forward." Rowan paused and finished another glass and sighed as he poured himself a new glass, "I am not here to help you or to harm you. I am just here to offer a service, which I’m certain that other people desperately need at this moment. How you choose to interpret my actions is entirely up to you."
"Fu*k, I think this is also what Erohim would say." Circe mumbled.
Rowan blinked, "you’ve lost me here, this name the town folk gave me, what does it mean?" Rowan said as he finally sat down.
"I suppose we can take this information as a sort of payment for the help you rendered me previously?" Circe smirked.
"It has no value, Circe, nothing is stopping me from asking any random person in the street for that answer."
"Well, they won’t tell you the same way I would say it. Trust me, hearing it from anyone else but me would be a loss, I happen to be a good storyteller."
"I have heard no great story tellers praise themselves quite like you, so I’ll take my chances."
"I did say I’m a good storyteller not a great one, mind you."
"Then start talking, time is not on our side, and I refuse to accept this as my payment." Rowan focused on her and went silent.
Circe bent forward, and her body pressed against her frilly gown, which accentuated her lovely shape, "by the gods, your eyes are stunning."
Perhaps sensing the growing impatience in Rowan, she began to speak, "Can’t handle a compliment?.. Duly noted."
"Your condition is not a particularly strange one. It often occurs with extremely powerful Dominators who encountered serious trauma. Most likely you fell to the edge of death, maybe you fell farther than the edge, but the power in your blood brought you back. Most times it doesn’t bring back all of you… I know someone like you. He was a dear friend."
"That’s an interesting theory, and I suspect that it is closer to the truth." Rowan sat back, with a thoughtful look on his face.
"This is most likely the truth because I can’t read the depth of your power, and I’m at the peak of Incarnation, only a single step towards the second Great Circle and I cannot even sense the Natural Aura generated from your body, it’s astonishing, as I’m among the most perceptive in my generation."
Somehow Rowan felt she was underselling herself when she said among the most perceptive, she must be the best in her generation. A term she said struck a cord with him, "Natural Aura?"
"Oh… The Boreas family are Storm Callers, we’re sensitive to forces involving heat, cold and lightning, and every living being as its own unique bio–signature associated with those forces."
"I am able to easily detect the bio–signature for everyone around me, except for those who are dead or are far more powerful than me. You don’t appear any more dead than me, so… it’s a safe bet to pick the latter of those choices."
"Are you in the second or third. I would pick second. Okay, let me get back to answering your first question about Erohim." Circe took a deep breath before she started talking.
"I am told you came down from the mountains, with the sun in your hands. You see, the name of that mountain is Erohim!"
She paused for effect, and Rowan blinked and rubbed his forehead, "if that’s all to the story, then I’m impressed, you truly are a good storyteller."
"Shh… I’m about getting to the good part. As you know, before this world was assimilated into the glorious domain of the Great Empire by my Ancestor Boreas, it had its customs, it had its histories, it had its heroes and also its gods."
"Unlike the other families, we are pretty open to the ideas of foreign gods and a people preserving their history and culture, so most of the legends of the past of this planet are relatively intact."
"Relatively?" Rowan asked.
Circe smiled, "Erohim is a being that embodies the last two, both a hero and a god. According to the stories passed down by the locals of this planet, Erohim was born from the union of the Moon— Ganesha and the Sun—Orum."
"It was said that his birth was very difficult and Ganesha tried to bring him into the world for more than a thousand years of labor but she could not. They said the milk from her ever full breast rained down on the world every ten years, bringing about the Great Storm that froze the planet."
"Anyway, as the Legend goes, Erohim became frustrated and angry at his mother for failing to birth him after a thousand years, and he became angered, the result of his wrath caused his mother Ganesha great pains, and her cries of pain soon reached the Sun—Orum, who decided to sought help from their father who lived at a very distant sea."
" The journey took another ten thousand years, but finally, he had a solution, but it was already too late…"
Rowan turned to look at the west, a frown beginning to grow on his face, it took a little while before Circe stopped, she had been deeply engrossed in her tale and Rowan wanted to smile at her tiny frown of annoyance as he had broken her away from her introspection, that was before she also looked at the west, and she muttered, "Rico, you crazy bas*ard… Even if you die, I’ll still kill you."
"One of yours?" Rowan said, and he stood up after her.
"Yeah… My Ward. Let’s continue the story after I return." Circe opened her windows and the wind began to swirl around her and her blue hair slowly started to glow. Static electricity filled the entire room as the temperature plummeted.
She brought her hands to her back and unzipped her dress. Letting it fall, it was revealed that she was wearing a sleek body hugging tactical gear that was light blue, she had a pair of chakrams strapped to her back, and she instantly transformed from a lovely noble woman to a goddess of war.
"I can do you one better, I’ll follow you." Rowan dropped his glass and walked towards her, and stood beside her. This close to her, and he could feel the intense energy being generated from her body, causing glimmers of electricity and frost in midair.
"Then you should keep up!" she gave a little laugh and crouched a little before leaping with cat like agility, and the wind carried her into the skies.
Her movement just now had inspired him, and Rowan took a few steps back, and wrapped his feet with a pad of telekinesis, he was about to leap, and then he remembered that some fundamental forces of nature still worked in this universe, and he stopped.
If he made that leap, he would shoot forward by hundreds of feet, but he would inevitably destroy this office, and looking at the mounds of books that were inside, he would loathe to see that happen.
He jumped down from the open window, and from four storeys up, he landed without a sound since he basically killed all his momentum with his Telekinesis, setting his sights on the gates, he began running, it took him five seconds to reach the gates, and he leaped over it, to the astonished cries of the guards below him.
He heard the faint rumble of thunder ahead of him, and he saw a flash of lightning slicing down from the skies and slamming into the earth where a mass of snarling creatures in their tens of thousands were assembled.
They were rats!
Giant rats the size of dogs and elephants, the wind brought their smell to his nose, and it was foul, like rotten eggs.
