Page 10 of The Goddess is Awakened
“My mom—”
“Oh, sweetie. Your mom has a title. I have cosmic powers. Shut up.”
Oh, damn. Azren wasn’t just a god. They were the God of Death and a primordial. And apparently, the witch sitting next to me was the daughter of another primordial. This low-powered witch looked like she was about to keep going anyway, but Azren had zapped her with some kind of god mojo where she physically couldn’t speak.
There was an adorable pixie with a green mohawk sitting to my left. His hand shot up after that exchange. I’d give it to Azren. We were all pretty pissed at little Miss Entitled, but Azren had already forgotten about her and nodded to the pixie.
“Your roster is going to say Elizabeth Nevermoon, but I go by Dexter now. Headmaster Krauss refused to change it.”
“Ah. I see where her mini-me gets it from. I happen to know that my good friend Reyson took his daughter to have her name legally changed to George a few years ago. Dexter might not have paperwork, but it takes zero seconds out of your day to call him Dexter instead of Elizabeth. Iwilltake five minutes out of mine to correct you if you don’t in my classroom, and you really won’t like it.”
Half of this conversation didn’t need to happen. I followed all of it because Azren signed the whole thing, even when he wasn’t speaking. I seriously appreciated it.
I only knew three people in this school. One was my boyfriend, one was my translator, and I was getting to know Church. I was getting a pretty good idea of who I wanted to avoid and who might end up being pretty cool to hang out with.
I hadn’t met a single one of my other professors, and Azren hadn’t officially started their lecture yet, but after watching them sign for me and shutting down a bully like that, they might just end up my favorite professor so far.
george
My dad used to tell us bedtime stories about how he created the universe with the other gods. All of us kids loved those stories. I knew it wasdrasticallydifferent from the creation stories they taught in history classes. It was a bit of a game of telephone as the millennia passed until they decided on something and taught it as fact.
Azren started with creation, and hearing it from a different perspective was interesting. I was pretty sure they just blew everyone’s minds. It wasn’t a bunch of divine beings creating a universe for their creations to play in. They didn’t know what would happen either.
They just existed one day with this vague idea they were supposed to do something. Azren gave credit to Gaia just like my dad did. It was her idea to combine their power just to see what happened. The whole ass universe happened kind of by accident. After that, they figured out their purpose through trial and error, but Azren mostly just covered creation.
Hearing it from a different perspective was awesome, but I was pretty sure Azren just blew a lot of young minds. There was alotwe didn’t know, and we had to figure shit out just like everyone else. I was here to figure out mine. Azren wrapped up their lecture with enough time for questions but didn’t open the floor right away.
“George and Matilda. Fact-check me. What did Reyson tell you about creation? Iknowhe told stories because he likes to talk.”
“He told all of us,” Matilda said. “It was our favorite bedtime story. The stories are the same.”
“But since you aren’t the same kind of god, you experienced it differently,” I said.
“Excellent. Any questions?”
Every hand in the room shot up except mine and Matilda’s. Kaylee had hers up, but I wasn’t sure if Azren was allowing her to speak. Witches could do that, too. Between my dad, Mom, Gabriel, and Felix, they could shut us down at any time. Theyrarelydid. Only when we were being rude and knew better.
Kind of like Kaylee. Seriously, what the fuck?
I didn’tknowif I’d be taking my necklace off while I was here, but that was the plan. I liked Azren. I already knew what they taught today, but I’d learn loads more in our private lessons. Right now, I was watching my classmates and how they reacted to Azren and their lecture.
There were several cool people I thought would react well. Others looked like they were about to start kissing Kaylee Krauss’s ass because of that toxic display. I doubted she’d act like an ass towards Azren again, but she was going to be a raging cunt towards me.
There was a basilisk sitting way in the back I couldn’t get a read on at all. They were supposed to be one of the most dangerous supernatural creatures, but they were nearly hunted to extinction by rogue witches who got deep in dark magic because their entire bodies were powerful spell ingredients. Not many people stopped them either because they were scared of basilisks.
This one had the glowering, sexy, ‘bad boy’ thing down, but I could only tell what was on the surface. He had a complete lockdown on his facial features and emotions. The basilisk never raised his hand, either. Their face was utterly neutral as Azren answered all the questions. I was staring, and I wasn’t exactly being sly about it.
His gaze turned to meet mine, and his eyes turned to snake slits. Was that a threat?
azren
Iloved teaching. I did it a lot back on the realm I created for my reapers. I always wanted a collaborative school with the gods where we figured out exactly what we were capable of. Most of them had their heads too far up their asses to take me up on it, and most didn’t trust me because I was the sole God of Death. There was only a handful of them that were interested in experimenting with me, and two of them were related to the little god I was here to tutor and hope to fuck wasn’t responsible for the death I could sense was coming.
I needed more information, and our first session wasn’t until tomorrow. George did well in our history class. She didn’t rise to it when that terrible girl opened her mouth. Maybe she never would, but it was a big risk. George was limiting herself with that necklace. Lindsay and Kaylee Krauss weren’t the first low-powered supernaturals who had been given the opportunity to do something great and became total assholes with it.
As it so happened. Freya was a good friend of mine who was back in my realm doing some research. I had most of the gossip from when she was Minerva Krauss, and I knew she thought her entire family was a bunch of money-grubbing wank stains. Clearly, there was some history there with the younger Krauss and George. Minerva adored the Bell family, but I didn’t think it was jealousy because they weren’t even nice to Minerva when they wanted something.
I could have asked George tomorrow, but despite being older than the universe, I had the patience of a flea when I desperately wanted to know something. Everything died eventually. Godscoulddie, and we experienced death of belief. But sometimes, people died when they weren’t supposed to, which seemed to happen often on these grounds.
