Divine Awakening

“Would you have believed me?” the girl asked.

Phoenix swallowed hard and his hands trembled.

“What’s wrong with me?” Ash asked, concerned by the old guy’s reaction.

“We don’t have time to go through that list,” the girl said, poking Ash’s shoulder. She looked up at Phoenix again. “What about now?”

Phoenix took three calming breaths, but they didn’t seem to help. His hands shook even as they returned to Ash’s back and chest. The trembling stopped and Phoenix leaned down. “How?” he asked the girl.

“Try your best,” the girl said. “You know Lal will deploy his Gems.”

Phoenix bent over Ash for another thirty seconds until he stood and dropped his hands. “It is the same every time. I can only see two now.”

“Yay!” the girl said and rubbed her hands together. “Aren’t I amazing? Which ones?”

Phoenix gently placed a hand on Ash’s head. “Light.” With the other hand he touched Ash’s spine. “And Order.”

“Perfect,” the girl said. “Those will be of the least interest to the Infernals.” She pointed a finger at Phoenix. “Don’t treat him any different. Right now, he is ignorant with an unfortified body. He is nothing special. Understand.”

Phoenix clasped his palms together and bowed to the girl. “As you wish, goddess.”

Ash turned from Phoenix to look at the girl. “Did he just call you a goddess?”

The girl shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”

“I wish I understood a fraction of what was going on here,” Ash replied as Phoenix returned to his seat.

The girl adjusted one of her pigtails and studied Ash. “I’ll summarize. I cleansed your grandpa of disease, saving his life. The guardians watching over you for the past eighteen months did so at the behest of a true goddess.” She turned to Phoenix. “This guy did not in fact melt.” The little girl looked back at Ash. “And I already told you what I am. A simple girl, tending a garden until spring arrives.”

Ash held up his hands and dropped them. He didn’t understand any of this, and most of what the girl said sounded like nonsense, but now that his body had calmed down from the shock of her arrival, he could sense its messages.

A warm sensation on his forehead radiated trust, and the cool feeling in his throat, like he’d just swallowed menthol, signaled honesty and conviction.

“Okay,” Ash said. “Thank you for helping my grandpa, and I’ll do what you ask.”

“Just like that?” the girl asked.

Ash nodded. “I trust my gut.”

“Interesting.”

“But there’s something I need to tell you,” Ash said. “Since the Clypse, things are different. I’m different. My body, meditation makes—”

The girl waved her hand, interrupting Ash. “That’s from the influx of Spirit. All your meditation has set a foundation, and the building supplies just arrived. The femites he infected you with probably aren’t helping. The release of Spirit here has triggered them in your body and agitated the native ones.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “They’re everywhere in a hundred-foot radius of you, and that will expand after you form your Core.”

“Say what now? It sounds like I have a virus or something?”

“More like miniature versions of what you call nanites, but these are clonal and semi-autonomous. They thrive in Spirit rich environments, and without a deity to regulate them with a template, they’ll try and create their own connections. I wonder—”

The bruja narrowed her eyes at Ash and tapped her chin with a tiny finger.

Five uncomfortable seconds passed before Ash couldn’t take it any longer. “What?”

“I’m trying to decide if he saw this moment or if he’d just planned for everything.”

“Who?”

“A dear friend, and he gave me a template that might help with your femite problem.”

“Is that why meditating makes me dizzy?”

“No, but to be effective you’ll need one. Do you want it?”

“I don’t know what a template is?”

“It’s just a crutch to see what’s already there.”

Ash thought about taking the template and his chakras remained quiet. “Alright, if you think—”

“It’s done,” the girl responded. “I modified it a bit and included a little something to help manage it.”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“It might take a bit to activate. The Spirit density is still increasing here.”

It concerned Ash something had happened to him, and he hadn’t sensed a thing. He hated surprises. “What about my vertigo?”

“That’s caused by poor technique, and why Phoenix is here. The chaos in your center is affecting your Meridians.”

“Wait, Meridians like on the commercials?” Ash asked. His intuition fired and he immediately followed up. “Phoenix got the shakes after doing that thing to my chest. I have a bunch of those don’t I? I heard if you have more than six it’s like winning the lottery.”

The girl shook her head and looked at Phoenix. “The fact they use words like Meridians in commercials means the Infernal Realm’s presence here is overwhelming.” She turned back to Ash. “I will tell you this with all sincerity, if another soul, outside this table, thinks you have more than six Meridians connected to your center, you are lost forever. It will be millennia before you leave the Infernal Realm, and you will most certainly no longer be human.”

“What in the holy hell,” Ash whispered.

“Instead of hiding you completely, I’m revealing two of your connections. This is for your survival. Those connections don’t matter yet anyway, as you first need to form your Core. That’s why Phoenix is here. To help guide you.”

“Core? Like in magic energy?”

“Something like that,” the little girl said as she signed the bottom of the drawing and handed it to Ash. “For your fridge.”

Ash took the offered page and glanced at the signature. He looked up to find the little girl smiling.

“Yes, I’ve decided I like that name. It has a nice ring to it, and sounds are important. I’ll check back on you later.” She pointed a little finger at Ash’s face. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’m already babysitting two idiots and I don’t need a third.”

And then the girl disappeared along with her booster seat and crayons.

Ash turned to Phoenix.

“How does she wish to be addressed here?” Phoenix asked.

Ash rotated the paper so the vegan wizard could read the signature carefully drawn in big blocky letters.

Bruja.

Phoenix smiled at the name.

“Who is she?” Ash asked.

Phoenix considered the question. “She is the most powerful creature in existence.”

“Creature?”

Phoenix nodded. “We are blessed beyond comprehension to have spent time in her presence.”

“You sound like a real fan.”

“How many deities have you met?”

Ash glanced down at the drawing. “I guess just one.”

Phoenix leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “Imagine a being with the power to destroy your world. Then one who could obliterate your solar system. Finally, take a moment to contemplate the power it would take to annihilate your entire galaxy. Then consider the magnitude of that creature taking the time to draw you a picture.”

Ash looked down at the colored centipede and stick figure. He swallowed hard. “Okay, I get it. We’re lucky.”

“Oh, Child, we aren’t lucky. You will rue this day and look fondly back at what you thought were problems. We are cursed. Caught in the maelstrom of the gods.”

“I’m really getting mixed messages, Sombrero. I’m going to put the terror and confusion behind me and focus on picking up whatever you put down.” Ash pointed at the sarape. “But if you don’t change out of that, you’ll never leave Mexico alive.”

“Very well,” Phoenix said. He glanced at the wall where an old picture hung of Ash’s smiling parents, his grandma, and grandpa Pine. Only grandpa remained. The sombrero and sarape disappeared, replaced with a red plaid button down and cowboy hat, exactly as they appeared in the picture. “Is this better?”

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” Ash said. “How am I going to explain you to my grandpa?”

“Oh, I’m not staying near you. That is far too dangerous. I will give you lessons and then monitor from a distance, much like your guardians do.”

“Too dangerous to stay?”

Phoenix nodded. “The Infernal Realm will immediately snatch you if they find anyone from Grave near you. You must not discuss anything you’ve witnessed or are taught with anyone. The Infernal Realm will have agents everywhere.”

“Do you know what happened in that Pit?”

“Only that one of the Infernal Realm artifacts exploded and Spirit leaked through the resulting dimensional tear.”

“What does all this mean? How much danger are we in?”

Phoenix didn’t respond immediately. “That depends on how involved the Infernal Realm becomes. The goddess made it sound like they are fully engaged here which means many more will survive.”

“Survive? Is that Spirit going to kill people? Give everyone cancer or something?”

“No, the opposite actually. The danger comes from three sources. The Infernal Realm itself obviously, visitors from Grave, and everything here that the Spirit will wake from hibernation.”

“The Bruja mentioned that place earlier. What is Grave and why would things come here from there?”

“The details are very complicated, but a simple explanation is that your planet is now one of the few places in the Universe with enough Spirit to make it a viable place to live.”

“That all sounds dangerous. The Bruja should have left her ward on me.”

Phoenix frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The Band-Aid,” Ash said. “She took it—”

Ash glanced down and stopped talking. The Hello Kitty Band-Aid had disappeared, but another had replaced it: a purple unicorn with wings smiling at a blue unicorn. “My Little Pony” was written in bright yellow script. He didn’t bother trying to remove it. He already knew it wouldn’t budge.

“I hate that witch,” Ash muttered as Phoenix laughed.